Improving on Vanilla

Hello all!

My name is JWiley129 and you might recognize me around these here parts. I don't post many decks, but I enjoy engaging in discussions all over the site. Here, I am going to talk about an idea that I've had brewing in my head for some time now about a favorite format of mine, Limited. So bear with me as we delve into some Limited strategies.

What is Limited?

Limited is a style of play where instead of constructing a deck from your entire collection, you build a deck from the cards you open from a limited (heh, get it?) card pool. Limited formats include Draft, where you select cards from packs and pass those you haven't chosen to your opponents, or Sealed, where you open a set number of packs and build a deck from your pulls. The common thread is that you have no control over what you open. This presents the challenge for Limited deck building: determining which of the cards you select or open are good enough to play.

Before we go on, let's quickly discuss how Limited decks are different than Constructed decks. In Constructed Magic, you have a minimum deck size of 60 cards and you can only play up to 4 copies of any non-basic land card. On the other hand, in Limited your minimum deck size is 40 cards and you can run any number of copies of a card. Of course, it's harder to get 5+ copies of a single card in your deck, but if you drafted 23 Jace, the Mind Sculptors you can play all 23. In those 40 cards you usually want to run somewhere between 17-18 lands and 22-23 spells. Among those 23 spells you should be running 16-18 creatures, which means that creatures are the most important card type in Limited. Many Limited games come down to a key combat step or finding the right removal spell to open up an attack for lethal. So if creatures are the most important card type in Limited, being able to determine which creatures are better than others is a skill that we need to develop. Now it's obvious that Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet is better than Zada's Commando, however it may not be so obvious whether Ondu War Cleric is better than Makindi Aeronaut. That's where we use one of the most popular tools in the Limited players' arsenal: The Vanilla Test.

Vanilla Test? Why not Chocolate?

The Vanilla Test is a way to gauge how effective a creature is, if it has no rules text. It gets its name from the slang that a "vanilla creature" is one with a name, mana cost, power, toughness, and a whole bunch of flavor text but no rules text. Some popular examples are Grizzly Bear, Nessian Courser, and Broodhunter Wurm. How the Vanilla Test works is you compare the Power and Toughness of the creature to its Converted Mana Cost (CMC). So a Grizzly Bear is a 2/2 for , a CMC of 2, so our Grizzly Bear passes the Vanilla Test since we’re getting 2 power and toughness for 2 mana. On the other hand a creature like Catacomb Slug would not because it's a 2/6 for , a CMC of 5, where 2 power or 6 toughness for 5 mana is not a great deal.

This test lets us compare two creatures to see which one might be better than the other, however it fails in some respects. In triple Battle for Zendikar draft, an odd format for those who have played it, I could present two creatures and ask which one does better on the Vanilla Test and then which one is better in the format: Snapping Gnarlid and Kalastria Healer. I don't think anyone would argue that a 2/2 is better than a 1/2 on the Vanilla Test. However the Healer was much better than our Gnarlid friend in the format. Part of it was with how poor Green performed in BFZ draft, but also the abilities of each creature have to be taken into account. And that is where I came up with a better way to compare these creatures.

Vanilla is Boring, Let's Modify It!

I have a Bachelor's degree in Math, and I even have a published paper to my name (not so humblebrago), so forgive me if I think in terms of numbers and formulas. To start improving on it, I'd like to quickly formalize what the Vanilla Test does:

In this formula V is the Vanilla value, P is the Power of the creature, T is its Toughness, and CMC is the creature's converted mana cost. We then take this Vanilla value and compare it to a favorite number of mine, 1. With this formula, any creature with the same power and toughness as its CMC will score a 1. That way it makes sense for us to make 1 our tentpole to compare creatures to. There are some weird cards like Ancient Crab with a 1 Vanilla value despite being a 1/5. But still this doesn't explain why Snapping Gnarlid with its 1 Vanilla value is worse than Kalastria Healer with its 0.75 Vanilla value. This is where I started with how to improve the Vanilla Test, and where the initial question came from: "How can I take into account a creature’s abilities into the Vanilla Test?"

Before we make any changes, the Vanilla Test does help us predict what sort of rules text a non-Vanilla creature might have. Let's take two rares as examples: Inverter of Truth has an absurd 1.5 Vanilla value whereas Munda's Vanguard has a 0.6 Vanilla value. The Inverter's Vanilla value draws our attention and tells us that there should be some downside, which the rules text does show us. The Vanguard's lower Vanilla value of 0.6 should be weaker than the Inverter, however the ability on the Vanguard is an upside. So what I hope to achieve with my new Vanilla Test is a way to capture how an ability impacts its power level.

And that is what led me to the following formula:

Here the only change is the A variable, which I call the Ability Modifier. Whilst I'd love for this to be purely objective, the Ability Modifier is quite subjective. But in a game where many decisions we make, from gameplay to deckbuilding, is subjective I find this to be an acceptable use of some subjective variables.

The Ability Modifier attempts to give a value to the abilities a creature has. My inspiration for it came from an old article by Gavin Verhey, Magic designer, where he mentioned the scale that R&D uses to compare a card's strength in Limited. In the article Blind Phantasm is a B creature while Wind Drake is an A. So despite the fact that the Phantasm is a 2/3 for 3 mana, and a Vanilla value of 0.83, the Wind Drake is considered better despite the fact that its Vanilla value is less, at 0.67. So what's the difference? The Wind Drake has flying! This tells me that R&D values Flying as equivalent to adding 1 mana to the Vanilla value of the creature. Just as we expect power and toughness to have an impact on CMC, we also expect abilities to have an impact on CMC too! So in the example of Wind Drake you’re paying for the 2/2 and an additional for the ability to fly. This leads me to put the Ability Modifier of Flying at 2. With this in mind, here is a table of all my Ability Modifiers for the Evergreen creature keywords:

I came to these numbers through looking at many different sets and creatures to determine which values make the most sense. So with the Modified Vanilla Test (MVT) our Wind Drake from before has a MVT of 1, which is the threshold we needed for the Vanilla Test (VT) to equal 1, as seen on a 3/3 for 3 like Nessian Courser. Some other often-used abilities I also apply an Ability Modifier to include: -N/-N (decreasing power and toughness) is 2N, +N/+N (increasing power and toughness) is N, Life gain of N is N, Life loss of N is N, Tapping a creature on ETB is 2, Untapping a creature on ETB is 1, Drawing a card is 1 for each card drawn, and Discarding a card is 1 for every 2 cards discarded.

So let's see how some popular creatures fare under the MVT.

Ah, Gary. The first creature I applied the MVT to. Under the VT, Gary has a measly value of 0.6. However under the MVT alone he causes a life drain of 2 (2 lifegain, 2 lifeloss), so his MVT is 1.0 if he's the only black permanent in play. Gary is the first instance we have (in this article) of a variable ability modifier that scales with the devotion to Black. That is, an ability which scales up. If you have 3 devotion, then Gary’s MVT improves to 1.2, 4 devotion is 1.4, and so on. This is what the MVT is supposed to do, to quantify how much better a creature is than vanilla! And this doesn't take into account multiplayer play!

The Thragmother, bane of Standard of ole. On the VT, Thragtusk sits at 0.8, not quite vanilla. However if we add in the 5 lifegain, Thragtusk has an MVT of 1.3. But that’s not all. When Thragtusk leaves play you get a 3/3 back! Because of this, we need to add in the 3/3 to the MVT. This means that Thragtusk's final MVT is 1.9!

Let's talk about our favorite pachyderm, Dr. Siegeman Rhinocerous. Siege Rhino is already above the curve with a VT of 1.13 without the rules text. But then Siege Rhino drains our opponents' for 3 and has trample! So the MVT for Siege Rhino is 2!

Back to the commons for a key creature in many White decks in OGW-OGW-BFZ draft. The Sky Climber already sits at a reasonable 0.83 VT, so you'd play her anyway. But the ability to gain flying, even with a mana payment, fits the 2 of Flying. You can reduce the Ability Modifier to 1 if you value being able to maximize your mana, however either way Kor Sky Climber has a MVT of 1 at worst or a MVT of 1.17 - well above Vanilla.

For our last card, let's consider Kalastria Healer. On its own, without any Ally support, its MVT improves from the earlier VT of 0.75 to 1.25. Then, with each Ally you play after it, you improve the MVT by 0.5. This allows for the Healer to snowball out of control and be a Must Kill.

Well That Was a Thing

I'm not going to claim that this is perfect, it could use some iteration and refining. But I feel like the MVT does a better job of assessing a creature’s power level than the Vanilla Test by also taking into account the abilities of the creature. Hopefully this can be informative, and perhaps shape your picks, at your next Limited event!

If you have any questions, you’re free to comment below. I'm also available on Twitter @jwiley129 and on MTGO at the same handle.