The statistics of Friendship is Card Games, Part 3 · 1:30am Dec 21st, 2017
Part 1: In Which An Important Message Is Delivered
Part 2: The Colour Of (Friendship Is) Magic
Welcome back to The Statistics of Friendship is Card Games, a fascinating look at what happens when you let someone perform statistical analysis of a card game while heavily sleep-deprived. This time, we'll be looking at the real meat of Magic: Creatures!
Are there ponies?
Yes. There are all the ponies.
Ponies, Unicorns, and Pegasuses take all of the top spots, with Ponies dominating massively. Note that Pony doesn't quite equate one-to-one with "earth pony", as the Pony type is also used for other equinoids and "pony-shaped" beings, such as changelings.
The chromelanistic denizens of the Equestria Girls universe/plane also get a respectable representation here under the Human subtype. There's also, I think, a surprisingly high number of Constructs, which is probably an inevitable result of sharing a plane with Discord.
We can try to do a little pony demographic breakdown at this point:
Alicorns need some special consideration in FiCG as there is no "Alicorn" subtype; in fact, "Alicorn" is a keyword which grants the subtypes of Pony, Pegasus, and Unicorn to a creature. There are 27 Alicorns in FiCG, which might seem like a lot, but after factoring in alternate versions of characters, alternate universes, and the fact that "Alicorn" is more of a state of being than a species, it's actually about right.
As before, we can't entirely rely on the Pony subtype either to represent earth ponies. This chart isn't very reliable.
Who would win in a fight between earth ponies, pegasi, unicorns, and alicorns?
You did hear what I said about the demographic figures not being reliable, right?
My question still stands
I mean, it's not even really a question that can be answered through statistics alone. There's far more to Magic than just the raw numbers; we're not even considering what these cards can actually do. Magic is all about the complex interplay of
COME ON I WANT TO KNOW WHO THE BEST PONY RACE IS
Okay fine. It's alicorns. Obviously.
Anyway, I thought it might be interesting to break down the subtypes by color to see what that looks like:
Not too many surprises here. Pony takes the top spot everywhere, although Pegasi and Unicorns don't even make the list in green. One surprise might be the number of white Insects, which usually tend to be a black/green thing (in fact, FiCG contains more white insects than the whole of actual Magic). This is, I think, partly a reflection of Equestria's more benign nature, and also partly down to the reformed changelings, who are categorized as Insect Ponies.
Now that we have our creatures, let's see how they weigh up. How great and powerful are Equestrians?
In both cases we get a nice bell curve centred around the 2/2 mark.
Of course, P/T is only one half of the equation. How much is all this costing us?
The mana curve is centered around 3-4-ish. Okay now if I remember my Magic theory correctly, a vanilla bear is like 2/2 for 2 mana, but since most creatures in FiCG aren't vanilla, it probably makes sense that the average mana cost would be a little bit higher if most creatures are 2/2 on average. I think that makes sense. Let's pretend that made sense.
The most expensive card is the fearsome Cerberus, Nether Guardian, at 9 mana. A bargain if you ask me.
What's the most powerful and the most toughest creature?
Two creatures are tied for most powerful: The Statue of Harmony, and the Ursa Major, both 10/10.
Meanwhile, the single most toughest creature is the Tree of Harmony, a 1/12.
Who would win in a fight between the Tree of Harmony and Tree of Perdition?
Stop that.
Anyway, bar charts are fine and all, but they're a bit linear and don't really give us a full sense of the shape of the FiCG meatspace. For that, I think we need to go... up a dimension.
I blinked.
Color surrounded me in every direction; not the five genteel shades of mana, but every color, all colors, bleeding in and out and through each other in patterns that made my brain hurt. The very space itself was fluid; distance, direction, and dimension were all verboten here.
And yet, something was navigating the chaos. Something lived here in this incomprehensible void. A thousand arms swept busily in and out of perceivable reality; working with purpose to an unknown end.
I followed the undulating limbs back to their source, and my jaw fell open.
It couldn't be.
A golden, feminine form of unimaginable immensity; too big to fit in a paltry three dimensions. Its eyes were blazing emerald stars, and its crimson hair erupted and crackled endlessly into the void, painting an entire horizon red.
My throat tightened. "Sunset -?"
The being froze, ceasing all activity. It turned to face me.
I was suddenly aware of how quiet the void was.
"No," said the goddess. "Not Sunset."
I flailed suddenly, as a thousand hands gripped me by the neck from every direction.
"Sunrise."
The thousand hands squeezed.
"Sorry about that," said Strawberry Sunrise, the star-sized goddess roiling aethereally as she loomed over me. "Farmer's instinct. Maybe you should adopt an astral form that's a bit less... verminous?"
I gasped, paws clutched to my heart. "Wh... What? What just happened?"
"You jumped dimensions," said Sunrise. "Probably shouldn't do that. It's dangerous. Plus it's extra work for me."
"Wha..." I tried to shake all the insanity out of my head. "Wait wait wait. Aren't you Sunset Shimmer?"
"She's on vacation," said Sunrise. "I'm covering for her."
"That doesn't..." I faltered incredulously. "You can't just take a day off from being the cosmic lynchpin."
Sunrise shrugged. The universe rippled dismissively.
I fell back onto the non-ground I was standing on, breathing more easily now. "Okay, well... how do I go back? I was in the middle of doing, like, this statistical analysis thingy. I can't just take time out in the middle of it. People came here to see all the facts and charts and stuff."
Sunrise made a dismissive "pfff". It sounded like the dying breath of a red giant. "Facts are stuffy and dull. And you know it."
I yelped as she poked me with an accusing finger. "I..."
"You don't care about numbers, or mana curves, or any of that stuff." said Sunrise. "You don't even care about winning." She leant in close, her hair enveloping the entire void. "You just like cool cards."
"I do care about that other stuff too," I protested.
Sunrise swept back, and rectangular shadows of cards emerged from the aether in her wake. "The Smooze," she announced, as a green card turned to reveal its face. "When you first saw this card, your squee was heard ten dimensions away."
"It's... well, it's in my colors," I mumbled. "Plus look at all the things it does! They're all useful things!"
"Starlight Glimmer, Unifier," Sunrise continued. "You wanted her to be your commander."
"I thought it'd be interesting," I muttered.
"Bygone Hydra," Sunrise hissed. "You -"
"Oh come on!" I whined. "That one's in my colors and it's a freaking hydra skeleton. And it's not legendary either which means I can play four of them and it turns indestructible and everything!"
A dull boom filled the void. Sunrise had withdrawn into shadow, but still more and more cards emerged, each turning their faces toward me. And some of them begin to sing.
"Holder's Boulder!" Sunrise bellowed. "You... well, you just wanted to have Holder's Boulder in your deck."
More and more Songs joined the chorus, forcing me to cover my ears as it became ever more cacophonous. Six months of winter coolness bled into an imperative for me to shake my tail.
"Breezie Swarmminder! You wanted to make some kind of blue-white breezie-slash-fashionista deck with this."
"I STILL THINK IT WAS A GOOD IDEA," I yelled over the din. Motes of colored mana were beginning to collect on the Songs now, building a pentachromatic constellation before my eyes.
"Thorax, the Unhungering!" screamed the goddess. The shriek of one hundred and nineteen simultaneous Songs drowned out whatever accusation followed.
"Please..." I begged, curling into a ball to protect myself against the sensory onslaught. "If you can, just... send me back? Please?"
Sunrise emerged from the shadow. "I can."
She sacrificed every Song at once, and the universe came apart.
Next, we have bubbles.
To be honest, I was half-expecting Ditzy's cutie mark to appear.
I like that it has a horn. Actually the horn is just the line formed by all the N/N cards. Overall I find the shape of the P/T space to be quite satisfyingly smooth and regular, with most of the fight centred around the 2/2 region.
Finally, let's see where the various members of the FiCG menagerie stand in relation to one another. The following scatter plot shows the power and toughness averages of each subtype.
Ponies, pegasi, and unicorns are somewhere in the middle of the 2/2 clusterfudge. I think if there's one lesson we should take home, it's this: in Equestria, cake is more powerful than dinosaurs. And really, does anyone doubt it?
Final part coming soon.
Well. That was unexpectedly flattering and statistically fascinating.
Also, Strawberry Sunrise is definitely on the short list for substitute lynchpin.
Nice story! Cool stats!