Delvefall

← The deck lens

The most original Commander precons

Every preconstructed Commander deck, ranked by how unusual its cards are. Not how strong, not how expensive, and not how popular: how little the rest of Magic looks like it. A card scores high here when nothing else in the game does what it does.

What most original means here, and what it doesn't

Every card scores 0 to 1: one minus how close its nearest match anywhere in Magic gets, so 0.30 means something out there is 70% like it. A deck's figure is the average across its most original half of nonland cards, so it climbs by holding cards with less competition, never by holding more cards. On the board below that runs from 0.242 at the top to 0.105 at the bottom.

On the newest decks this is still settling. A new deck reads as more original than it will look in five years, and that is half real: design space fills up, so a card printed today has had nobody to copy it yet.

It is not measuring how good or how expensive a deck is. Against the decks' median EDHREC rank the correlation is r = -0.05, which is nothing. Original and popular turn out to be unrelated, and both are on this board as separate rankings for exactly that reason.

It is partly measuring how recent a deck is (r = +0.46 against release year). Some of that is real: design space fills up, so a card from 2011 has had fifteen years of imitators, and being imitated is the opposite of being unique. The ranking still separates decks inside a single era, which is what the era buttons are for.

Read from the top HALF of each deck's nonland cards, a share of each deck rather than a fixed number, so a deck holding 53 nonland cards and one holding 66 are judged on the same slice of themselves. Half rather than a third because a third of a commander deck is mostly the mana base's neighbours and the staples every deck brings, and reading deeper than half only pulls every deck toward the same middle.

178 decks, most original first. Collector's editions are folded into the deck they reprint. 25 of them came out inside the last year and are marked new. Read those placings with the note above in mind.

  1. 1
    0.242
  2. 2
    0.234
  3. 3
    0.231
  4. 4
    0.226
  5. 5
    0.222
  6. 6
    0.218
  7. 7
    0.213
  8. 8
    0.211
  9. 9
    0.210
  10. 10
    0.210
  11. 11
    0.208
  12. 12
    0.207
  13. 13
    0.206
  14. 14
    0.206
  15. 15
    0.203
  16. 16
    0.203
  17. 17
    0.202
  18. 18
    0.201
  19. 19
    0.199
  20. 20
    0.198
  21. 21
    0.198
  22. 22
    0.197
  23. 23
    0.197
  24. 24
    0.197
  25. 25
    0.196
  26. 26
    0.196
  27. 27
    0.195
  28. 28
    0.195
  29. 29
    0.195
  30. 30
    0.195
  31. 31
    0.195
  32. 32
    0.194
  33. 33
    0.193
  34. 34
    0.193
  35. 35
    0.193
  36. 36
    0.193
  37. 37
    0.193
  38. 38
    0.192
  39. 39
    0.191
  40. 40
    0.191
  41. 41
    0.191
  42. 42
    0.190
  43. 43
    0.189
  44. 44
    0.189
  45. 45
    0.188
  46. 46
    0.188
  47. 47
    0.187
  48. 48
    0.187
  49. 49
    0.186
  50. 50
    0.185
  51. 51
    0.185
  52. 52
    0.184
  53. 53
    0.183
  54. 54
    0.182
  55. 55
    0.182
  56. 56
    0.182
  57. 57
    0.182
  58. 58
    0.181
  59. 59
    0.180
  60. 60
    0.180
  61. 61
    0.180
  62. 62
    0.180
  63. 63
    0.180
  64. 64
    0.179
  65. 65
    0.178
  66. 66
    0.178
  67. 67
    0.178
  68. 68
    0.178
  69. 69
    0.177
  70. 70
    0.177
  71. 71
    0.177
  72. 72
    0.177
  73. 73
    0.177
  74. 74
    0.176
  75. 75
    0.176
  76. 76
    0.176
  77. 77
    0.176
  78. 78
    0.176
  79. 79
    0.176
  80. 80
    0.175
  81. 81
    0.175
  82. 82
    0.174
  83. 83
    0.174
  84. 84
    0.173
  85. 85
    0.173
  86. 86
    0.172
  87. 87
    0.171
  88. 88
    0.171
  89. 89
    0.170
  90. 90
    0.170
  91. 91
    0.170
  92. 92
    0.169
  93. 93
    0.169
  94. 94
    0.169
  95. 95
    0.169
  96. 96
    0.169
  97. 97
    0.168
  98. 98
    0.168
  99. 99
    0.168
  100. 100
    0.168
  101. 101
    0.167
  102. 102
    0.166
  103. 103
    0.166
  104. 104
    0.166
  105. 105
    0.165
  106. 106
    0.165
  107. 107
    0.164
  108. 108
    0.164
  109. 109
    0.164
  110. 110
    0.163
  111. 111
    0.162
  112. 112
    0.162
  113. 113
    0.162
  114. 114
    0.162
  115. 115
    0.162
  116. 116
    0.161
  117. 117
    0.161
  118. 118
    0.161
  119. 119
    0.160
  120. 120
    0.160
  121. 121
    0.159
  122. 122
    0.159
  123. 123
    0.158
  124. 124
    0.158
  125. 125
    0.157
  126. 126
    0.156
  127. 127
    0.156
  128. 128
    0.156
  129. 129
    0.156
  130. 130
    0.155
  131. 131
    0.155
  132. 132
    0.155
  133. 133
    0.155
  134. 134
    0.154
  135. 135
    0.154
  136. 136
    0.152
  137. 137
    0.152
  138. 138
    0.152
  139. 139
    0.151
  140. 140
    0.151
  141. 141
    0.150
  142. 142
    0.150
  143. 143
    0.149
  144. 144
    0.149
  145. 145
    0.149
  146. 146
    0.148
  147. 147
    0.147
  148. 148
    0.146
  149. 149
    0.146
  150. 150
    0.146
  151. 151
    0.145
  152. 152
    0.144
  153. 153
    0.144
  154. 154
    0.143
  155. 155
    0.143
  156. 156
    0.143
  157. 157
    0.141
  158. 158
    0.141
  159. 159
    0.140
  160. 160
    0.139
  161. 161
    0.138
  162. 162
    0.138
  163. 163
    0.134
  164. 164
    0.134
  165. 165
    0.133
  166. 166
    0.131
  167. 167
    0.130
  168. 168
    0.130
  169. 169
    0.128
  170. 170
    0.126
  171. 171
    0.125
  172. 172
    0.123
  173. 173
    0.121
  174. 174
    0.116
  175. 175
    0.110
  176. 176
    0.107
  177. 177
    0.107
  178. 178
    0.105