The statistics of Friendship is Card Games, Part 4 · 12:50am Dec 23rd, 2017
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3: Have I Got Smooze For You
Part 4: They're Eating The Words
FoME once told me that Magic is a great source of new vocabulary. It was something that hadn't occurred to me, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized why it was true. Cards don't have a lot of space. Magic (and, I assume, other card games) deals with this by being economical with its wording; choosing the right words and using them with precision to convey the intended effect. It's one of the things I like about it. Well, that and being able to command an army of indestructible zombie megahydras, but you get my point.
And it's something that FoME is just really darn good at. He takes this elegant language of Magic and inventively blends it both with pony lore and with flavorful mechanics in ways that are really satisfying and fun.
And so, for the final part of The Statistics of Friendship is Card Games, we'll be looking at some of the language and words of FiCG.
The great majority of cards have 2-word names. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, really; the adjective-noun binomial pattern is a staple of Magic. Giant Adephage. Supreme Verdict. Sonic Rainboom. It's the most simple and flexible way to identify a thing.
The two seven-word names are both Song cards: "Can I Do It On My Own" and "What My Cutie Mark Is Telling Me". In this case, the length is justified since Song names are canonical.
The creature with most words in name is Luna, The Light In The Dark. And, y'know, she's one of Luna's super forms so I think she's allowed to have an awesome title.
Anyway, let's focus on 2-word cards for now. What's the most common first word in two-word card names?
CRYYYYYYYYYSTAAAAAAAAALS. I guess that makes sense. Crystals are magic, after all.
Interestingly Canterlot just beats out Ponyville on cards. Advantage of having the resources of a city I guess.
And on the flipside, let's look at the most common second word:
Noncreature spells win the day here, although there's a delectable assortment of dragons to choose from and a whole rainbow of rainbooms. Also, ponies throw things more than I realized.
A common naming pattern for Magic cards is "Xing Noun" or "Xed Noun", since -ing and -ed are common adjective endings. Overall, 671 FiCG cards fit that pattern, so I was curious to see which were the most common as first words in two-word card names:
Oh yeah. Changelings. Hey, it still counts.
What card has the longest one-word name?
Two cards are tied for this, both blue instant spells: Counterdistortion and Photomanipulation, with 17 letters. It's probably lucky that you don't have to call your attacks in Magic.
"Photomanipulati-"
"DOOM BLADE"
Okay but what's the creature with the longest one-word name?
It is the delightfully and ingeniously-named Tatterdestallion, with 16 letters. (If Google is to be believed, FoME is the only person in the world to have thought of this pun).
What's the card with the longest name overall?
Not counting Songs (which use canonical names) and Schemes (which are long-ish on purpose), the card with the longest name is Mineighmo, School at the Horizon, a legendary land, which has 32 characters.
And the creature?
Fluttershy, Death of the Party, with 30 characters. (The Great And Powerful Trixie is particularly galled to have been beaten to the title by 1 character).
What's the longest card?
By character count, the card with the longest text is The Doctor's Fob Watch, a legendary artifact that clocks in at 500 characters exactly.
And how about the shortest
The most succinct card is Ravenous Chimera, which is so ravenous it don't even got no time for flavor text. Maybe it ate it.
Another common pattern in card names, which you may already have noticed above, is "Character's Noun". This one particularly interests me because it gives us a window into the lore of FiCG, which is otherwise difficult to probe through statistics alone. So... who owns the most things?
Pinkie and Discord comfortably hold the top spots; probably not too surprising given their status in Ungula... although that said, Ditzy didn't even make the top ten. Maybe she'd better start pillaging some stuff.
Looks like Sombra left behind a bunch of stuff in his spooky basement, too.
also go Maud yaaay
But we do have another way to gauge character influence in FiCG, and that's to look at what ponies say. Who talks the most?
"Why does this biped keeping writing down everything I say?" - Pinkie Pie, Bearer of Laughter
Pinkie's motor mouth easily bags her the top place, even before you factor in pronouncements made under other titles.
If Friendship is Card Games was a fic, how long would it be?
If we take only the wording (rules text and flavor text) of each card, then the combined length of FiCG is approximately 0.3 Fallout Equestrias, and would take around 12 hours to read.
I tried to add MLP Time Loops to the list, but my laptop caught fire.
And... that's everything! Well, I mean, not everything. Actually nowhere near everything. Actually there's like a whole ton of stuff I didn't get into. But, for now, we come to the end of this brief numerical journey through the world of ponies and cards. I hope you enjoyed the adventure.
Merry Christmas!
I greatly appreciate all of this. I'm at Friday Night Magic right now, funnily enough, but I'll be sure to plug this soon.
Also, note that Bearers without honorifics are their human analogues.
Also also, is it possible to see how many times I did alliterative card names?
4756660
Yes indeed! Darn, I should have thought of that one.
And... whoah. 539 times. ^^
Question 2: Notice the history of the entire world reference.
That's not a question, but I did it anyway.
Nice going, hawthornbunny!
You could make a religion out of this.
But seriously, I like statistics and stuff.
@hawthornbunny: Hm, the images are broken. Might you be able to reupload them somewhere else, maybe imgur or somewhere similarly stable?
5186663
Fixed! Thanks for spotting :) I haven't reuploaded them for now, but I fixed the URLs (I guess Postimage changed their URL structure while I wasn't looking)