http://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/83k-games-of-battle-for-zendikar-limited-analyzed
Basically, the author scraped 83,000 replays of BFZ draft games and analyzed all the data, including how long the games are on average, and what each individual card's win percentage was.
Since I'm a statistician and also a giant nerd, I can't get enough of these types of articles and analyses. After thinking about it some, I decided to try an experiment. I am going to draft a deck and, for the first handful of picks, I'm only going to select the card with the highest win percentage.
This method is similar to the Ben Stark method of drafting - spend the first few picks of each draft taking the strongest card, and then settle into whatever colors happen to be open. Gerry Thompson also had an article about BFZ draft on SCG (today, actually) that mentioned this method. The driving principle is that if you settle into what's open, you might give up some really strong first few picks because those colors dry up, but more often than not you'll end up with a strong deck on average since you remain flexible. This is basically an implementation of that method, except my picks are influenced not by what cards I *think* are strongest - they are influenced by cold, hard data.
Some side notes: Cards like Swarm Surge and Inspired Charge have highly biased win rates, since they usually aren't cast until the turn that they win the game. A similar phenomenon can be found with Dispel - its win rate is very high, but it's only seen in about 1% of analyzed games, so what's happening is that it's being boarded in only when it's most effective, and it tends to hit hard in those scenarios. For the purpose of this exercise, I'll be ignoring Swarm Surge, Inspired Charge, and Dispel as early picks - but anything else is fair game.
(Also, if you read the article, and I hope you did, I'll be using Likely Win % as the first criteria, with Win % as a tiebreaker if necessary.)
Pack 1 pick 1:
58.80% Drana, Liberator of Malakir
55.30% Courier Griffin
54.60% (56%) Murk Strider
54.60% (55%) Nettle Drone
54.30% Retreat to Emeria
My Pick:
Pack 1 pick 2:
55.80% Windrider Patrol
52.40% Benthic Infiltrator
51.70% Dominator Drone
50.90% (53%) Stonefury
50.90% (51%) Tunneling Geopede
My Pick:
Pack 1 pick 3:
54.50% Kalastria Nightwatch (!!!)
53.50% Grovetender Druids
53.30% Valakut Predator
52.40% Makindi Sliderunner
51.80% Mist Intruder
Gideon's Reproach, the card I assumed would be strongest in this pack, came in 6th place with 51.10% win rate.
My Pick:
Pack 1 pick 4:
55.50% Kalastria Healer
53.60% Incubator Drone
53.30% Sludge Crawler
52.70% Kor Castigator
52.40% Makindi Sliderunner
Akoum Stonewaker, a card that I thought was very good simply by virtue of being a 2 drop, only has a win rate of 48.60%.
My Pick:
Pack 1 pick 5:
55.80% Angel of Renewal
52.80% Shadow Glider
52.30% Valakut Invoker
51.70% Dominator Drone
51.00% Stone Haven Medic
Sheer Drop also has an unexpectedly low win rate of 48.10%.
My Pick:
Pack 1 pick 6:
This is where I started to deviate - Infuse with the Elements has a win rate of 58.30%, but not only is it green (yuck), both the cards I have AND the cards I'm getting passed support a black/white allies/life gain/flyers deck. For me this pick came down to Courier Griffin and Mire's Malice.
57.60% Mire's Malice
55.30% Courier Griffin
My Pick:
Pack 1 pick 7:
53.30% Tandem Tactics
51.90% Nirkana Assassin
I think Nirkana Assassin would have been better for my deck, and that I'm more likely to be able to pick up Tandem Tactics or similar cards later if I want them, but I was still in some version of a by-the-numbers mode.
My Pick:
Pack 1 pick 8:
Ondu Rising, a card I don't like very much (for reasons outlined by Reid Duke in this awesome, but month-old, article), has an astounding win rate of 60.20%.
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Although I was still looking up the numbers out of curiosity, at this point I had detached from them completely and was just drafting based around what I thought my deck needed since I'm firmly in a black/white deck.
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I think this deck is pretty good. I was pleasantly surprised with how this draft went. although I do think I got a little lucky to open an awesome card like Drana, have most of my early picks be black, and then have both black and white to be reasonably open.
Unfortunately, I lost in the first round with this deck. I won game 1 very easily, but I was on the draw in game 2 and got beat down very quickly with a Grove Rumbler and a Tajuru Warcaller that I was powerless to stop, and I just plain never drew any white mana in game 3 after a reasonable keep and eventually died with six white cards in hand.
Still, it was a fun experiment, and I immediately ran it back and will write about the second attempt.
This is the dankest article ever
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