Statistics for my 2023 EDH decks [Article]

[Oversoul]

I'm excited to be back again for my fifth annual entry in this series. I don't really know whether it's true, but I feel like I'm getting better at putting these together. In fact, when I collapsed all of the thousands of individual spreadsheet cells into a column for tallying up card usage for this year, everything added up with no apparent discrepancies. Last year, I had to spend a couple of hours hunting for my typos! Let's start off with relevant links.

• 2019 Report.
• 2020 Report.
• 2021 Report.
• 2022 Report.
• My decks on Moxfield.

I wrapped up last year's report with this:

Some thoughts for 2023...

I won't attempt to keep up this intense pace for building EDH decks next year. The most obvious answer would be to say that I'm burnt out, but that's really a pretty minor factor, actually. I want a change of pace for five reasons.

1. I want to focus on quality over quantity. Throwing decks together in a short timeframe is a skill, and it's one that I honed a lot this year. But many of my builds were pretty flawed. I'll still build many new decks in 2023, and some of them might be highly experimental. But I want to take more time to savor the really cool decks, and this year I found that sometimes I took apart decks I'd really rather have continued playing with, just because they'd had their moment and I needed to scrap them for parts.
2. Spending less time on building new decks gives me more time to revisit old ones or overhaul existing ones. I looked back on my log of revisions to Gitrog County Municipal Lake Dredge Appraisal and found that I really missed that aspect of the game. I used to really value an ideal that EDH was primarily about getting to have the same deck for the long haul, tweaking it as time passed, watching spoilers for potential new inclusions, etc. I want to go back to that. In order to keep a few decks for the long haul, I need to curb my tendency to poach my decks for parts.
3. Speaking of revision, that's a skill, and one that can be exercised the same as brewing decks. This year, I swapped out just five cards. I could have made more changes to decks, but the drive to build a new deck every week conflicted with that. For 2023, if I can update or adjust three existing decks instead of building a new one from scratch, I'll consider that time well spent.
4. While I don't have any concrete plans for this, I'm really hoping to branch back out into other formats. Back in 2019, I shifted away from Legacy and Canadian Highlander, becoming focused almost exclusively on EDH. I've never been happy with the idea of EDH as the dominant way to play Magic. I want to engage with other formats.
5. Also, yeah, I'm kind of burned out on this.

Looking back, I'd say that this went pretty well. I built 30 decks this year, and I used a line break to continue the column for each deck with all of the cards that I removed from that deck as the year progressed. Adding all of those substitutions together, I swapped out a total of 110 cards across those 30 decks. This brings my grand total of individual card slots for 2023 to 3,110. Those 3,110 slots were shared between 1,485 unique cards. And although I can't represent it here with actual data, an important point to note is that most of my decks this year saw a lot more play than my decks in previous years. 2019 and 2022 saw me build more decks overall, but the frenetic pace of one new deck per week meant that I was frequently scrapping decks for parts. Many of my 2022 decks only stuck around for a couple of weeks. That generally hasn't been true this year. Here were my 30 decks of 2023, in chronological order of construction. In bold, I've noted the number of card substitutions in editing decks over time.

1/2: Rohgahh, Kher Keep Overlord "Global Kher-nquest"
1/10: Titania, Voice of Gaea "Argoth Bureau of Land Management" 1 card swapped
1/25: Phelddagrif "Epic" 5 cards swapped
1/31: Tameshi, Reality Architect "Postmodern Reality"
2/6: Otharri, Suns' Glory "Red Turban Rebellion" 13 cards swapped
2/13: Amber Gristle O'Maul & Agent of the Shadow Thieves "Amber Shadows" 1 card swapped
2/25: Liberator, Urza's Battlethopter "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Cards"
3/4: Hakim, Loreweaver "Hakim's Enchanting Story Club"
3/13: Ayesha Tanaka, Armorer "Wootz Eggs" 1 card swapped
3/22: Spirit of the Night "Spirit of the Pestilence" 3 cards swapped
3/27: Zirilan of the Claw "Doctor Claw" 7 cards swapped
4/11: Torsten, Founder of Benalia "Unsavory Deeds 2: Benalia Drift" 6 cards swapped
4/19: Heliod, the Radiant Dawn "Compleat Discount" 6 cards swapped
5/9: Kasla, the Broken Halo "Convoke Ascendancy"
5/16: Nissa, Resurgent Animist "Ninety-Four Percent Lands" 38 cards swapped
5/23: Sisay, Weatherlight Captain "Secret Lair: From Cute to Brute"
6/21: Rosie Cotton of South Lane "Rosie the Riveter" 4 cards swapped
7/4: The Ever-Changing 'Dane "Sacrificial Baby" 1 card swapped
7/26: The Lady of the Mountain "Giant Lady" 1 card swapped
8/9: Omarthis, Ghostfire Initiate "Unbound and Down" 5 cards swapped
8/29: Bruna, the Fading Light "Secret Lair: Angels: They're Just Like Us but Cooler and with Wings"
9/6: Beluna Grandsquall "Adventure Awaits" 3 cards swapped
9/12: Eriette of the Charmed Apple "Take the Apple, Dearie"
10/11: Johan "Johan's Aria"
10/24: Alesha, Who Smiles at Death "Alesha's Old Frame Festival of Horror" 1 card swapped
10/31: Savra, Queen of the Golgari "Golgari Save the Queen" 4 cards swapped
11/7: Tuknir Deathlock "Deathlock Goblins" 2 cards swapped
11/14: Barrin, Master Wizard "BMW Shops" 1 card swapped
11/28: Xolatoyac, the Smiling Flood "Smiletown" 6 cards swapped
12/19: Sol'Kanar the Tainted "Christmas Gift Exchange 2023"

In 2019, I used 1,360 unique cards across 4,160 total card slots. So my decks were about 32.7% unique.
In 2020, I used 677 unique cards across 1,460 total card slots. So my decks were about 46.4% unique.
In 2021, I used 700 unique cards across 1,500 total card slots. So my decks were about 46.7% unique.
In 2022, I used 1,719 unique cards across 5,405 total card slots. So my decks were 31.8% unique.
This year, I used 1,485 unique cards across 3,110 total card slots. So my decks were 47.7% unique.

Uniqueness is up. It's kind of obvious that, beyond some threshold, increasing my number of decks decreases the overall uniqueness of my decks. I could mitigate this a lot by refusing to build with cards I've already used in that calendar year, but I have no interest in such a restriction. There are format staples and there are personal staples, and reusing the same card more than once is bound to keep happening more often as I squeeze more decks into a given dataset. So it's notable that 2023 has been my year with the highest uniqueness in EDH decks. I seriously don't know what to make of this! 2020 and 2021 saw similar numbers, despite different overall environments and circumstances. 2023 crushes them on this metric. In 2023, I even used more unique cards, in total, than I did in 2019. Not just as a percentage, but in total. And that's despite the construction of far more decks in 2019.

If I wanted to assume that this is a positive development, I could say that spending more time, taking things slowly, allowed me to be more creative with the decks I built. On the other hand, the ridiculous glut in new Magic card printings might have enabled me, quite by accident, to use a lot more unique cards: ones that didn't exist in 2019. It might be possible to analyze this in different ways to get a better understanding of what's going on with the shifts in uniqueness, but that would require far more work than I'm willing to put into this report. Oh well.

Last year, my coverage of color identities was essentially complete (I exclude four-color identities because they're only achievable with handful of specific commanders, most of which do not interest me). This year, I came close, but did fail to build decks in certain identities. I'll bold the ones I hit last year, but missed this year.

WUG: 1
UBG: 0
WU: 3
BR: 2
RG: 2
WUB: 1
WRG: 1
W: 2
R: 1
WG: 1
UB: 0
UR: 0
UBR: 1
WUBRG: 1
U: 2
UG: 1
BG: 1
WBR: 1
UBRG: 0
B: 1
G: 2
WB: 1
WR: 1
WUR: 1
WBG: 0
URG: 1
BRG: 0
WUBR: 0
WUBG: 0
WURG: 0
WBRG: 0
C: 2
Total: 30

In hindsight, I'm a bit surprised that I missed Dimir (UB). I like Dimir and there are plenty of options in that color identity. Shards tend to be trickier than wedges, so I'm not shocked that I missed a couple of those. I suspect that missing Jund (BRG) was a subconcious thing related to my desire to eventually build my white-bordered Xira Arien deck. Perhaps that should be a goal for next year. Izzet's boring and I'm not surprised that I missed it. Anyway, let's move on to the top cards by category.

 

[Oversoul]

The distribution of basic lands is markedly different from last year! In 2022, swamps were my most used basics and plains were my least. Somehow, they've switched places. I am a bit baffled that I managed to do that accidentally. At least mountains continue to do well? I don't know. I feel like a bit of a failure as a black mage.

Basic lands
Plains: 114
Mountain: 97
Forest: 77
Island: 77
Swamp: 44
Snow-Covered Swamp: 29
Snow-Covered Forest: 23
Snow-Covered Island: 8
Snow-Covered Mountain: 5
Snow-Covered Plains: 3
Wastes: 1

As per tradition, here are the non-basic lands that I used in at least 3 different decks. I can't believe that my beloved Underground Sea missed the cutoff on this. I mean, looking at how many of my decks are both blue and black, it's obvious. But I just noticed.

Non-basic lands (that appeared more than twice)
Maze of Ith: 21
Strip Mine: 21
Misty Rainforest: 17
Arid Mesa: 16
Scalding Tarn: 16
Flooded Strand: 15
Polluted Delta: 15
Verdant Catacombs: 15
Wasteland: 15
Wooded Foothills: 15
Marsh Flats: 14
Windswept Heath: 14
Bloodstained Mire: 13
Reliquary Tower: 12
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth: 11
Ancient Tomb: 10
Command Tower: 9
Gaea's Cradle: 8
Urza's Saga: 8
Otawara, Soaring City: 7
Buried Ruin: 6
City of Traitors: 6
Crystal Vein: 6
Hallowed Fountain: 6
Prismatic Vista: 6
Treasure Vault: 6
Tundra: 6
Volrath's Stronghold: 6
Boseiju, Who Endures: 5
Glacial Chasm: 5
Inventors' Fair: 5
Mishra's Workshop: 5
Mutavault: 5
Phyrexian Tower: 5
Tranquil Thicket: 5
Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth: 5
Badlands: 4
Bazaar of Baghdad: 4
Bonder's Enclave: 4
Cavern of Souls: 4
Darksteel Citadel: 4
Hall of Heliod's Generosity: 4
Karn's Bastion: 4
Mishra's Factory: 4
Plateau: 4
Stomping Ground: 4
Taiga: 4
War Room: 4
Arcane Lighthouse: 3
Arch of Orazca: 3
Blood Crypt: 3
Breeding Pool: 3
Castle Ardenvale: 3
Crawling Barrens: 3
Drownyard Temple: 3
Dryad Arbor: 3
Fabled Passage: 3
Forbidden Orchard: 3
Hall of Tagsin: 3
Myriad Landscape: 3
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx: 3
Rogue's Passage: 3
Sacred Foundry: 3
Savannah: 3
Scrubland: 3
Seat of the Synod: 3
Steam Vents: 3
Temple Garden: 3
Thespian's Stage: 3
Tropical Island: 3
Vesuva: 3
Volcanic Island: 3
Yavimaya Hollow: 3

I've done this next part every year, but I always think it might be a bit awkward to the uninitiated. I'm going to list the top ten cards in each category, but because there are ties, some of the "top ten" lists will actually be a bit longer. For instance here are my top 12 non-land artifacts. Compared to last year, Ashnod's Altar leapt ahead of the competition.

Artifacts
Sol Ring: 29
Ashnod's Altar: 13
Lightning Greaves: 11
Mana Vault: 10
Phyrexian Altar: 10
Crucible of Worlds: 8
Sensei's Divining Top: 7
Arcane Signet: 6
Grim Monolith: 6
Memory Jar: 6
Mox Diamond: 6
Solemn Simulacrum: 6

My top 10 white cards of 2023. Pretty similar to last year, really.

White
Swords to Plowshares: 11
Generous Gift: 9
Enlightened Tutor: 7
Serra Ascendant: 7
Kami of False Hope: 6
Academy Rector: 5
Esper Sentinel: 5
Karmic Guide: 5
Sun Titan: 5
Terminus: 5

My use of blue is apparently down this year. Most of the top blue cards are the same, but their order is different. Rhystic Study has fallen from glory, probably because even I am getting a bit bored with it. Here are my top 13 blue cards.

Blue
Brainstorm: 9
Force of Will: 8
Cyclonic Rift: 7
Arcane Denial: 6
Mystical Tutor: 6
Counterspell: 5
Mana Drain: 5
Rhystic Study: 5
Time Spiral: 5
Echo of Eons: 4
Evacuation: 4
Timetwister: 4
Windfall: 4

I've got a top 16 for black cards because I had to dip all the way down to cards I only used three times this year. Ouch.

Black
Demonic Tutor: 8
Vampiric Tutor: 8
Victimize: 8
Dark Ritual: 5
Diabolic Intent: 5
Culling the Weak: 4
Dread Return: 4
Reanimate: 4
Toxic Deluge: 4
Buried Alive: 3
Dark Petition: 3
Decree of Pain: 3
Kokusho, the Evening Star: 3
Living Death: 3
Oversold Cemetery: 3
Reassembling Skeleton: 3

Unfortunately, I couldn't get to a top 10 in red without hitting cards I only used twice, which means I have this unwieldy top 28 red cards. The strange thing is that I obviously used a lot of mountains and had a lot of red decks. Despite this, I apparently still cannot manage to employ red cards as staples in my EDH decks unless they're named "Wheel of Fortune."

Red
Wheel of Fortune: 9
Chaos Warp: 5
Anger: 4
Goblin Bombardment: 4
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker: 3
Sneak Attack: 3
Taurean Mauler: 3
Anarchist: 2
Ancient Copper Dragon: 2
Balefire Dragon: 2
Blazing Rootwalla: 2
Bogardan Hellkite: 2
Bonecrusher Giant: 2
Braid of Fire: 2
Dragon Mage: 2
Dragon Tempest: 2
Faithless Looting: 2
Fervor: 2
Gamble: 2
Goblin War Drums: 2
Goldspan Dragon: 2
Hamletback Goliath: 2
Jeska's Will: 2
Mana Echoes: 2
Minion of the Mighty: 2
Siege-Gang Commander: 2
Squee, Goblin Nabob: 2
Worldgorger Dragon: 2
Wrathful Red Dragon: 2

My green staples are as pronounced as ever. Here are the top 16.

Green
Regrowth: 10
Beast Within: 9
Abundance: 8
Bala Ged Recovery: 8
Harrow: 8
Sylvan Library: 8
Crop Rotation: 7
Seasons Past: 7
Spore Frog: 6
Conduit of Worlds: 5
Eternal Witness: 5
Genesis: 5
Life from the Loam: 5
Manabond: 5
Spike Weaver: 5
Survival of the Fittest: 5

My use of gold cards has gone down. Here are the 6 multicolored spells I used more than once.

Multicolored
Time Wipe: 4
Dovin's Veto: 2
Heartwarming Redemption: 2
Last One Standing: 2
Simic Ascendancy: 2
Thrilling Discovery: 2

Other than 2019, Serra Ascendant has always made this list. Now it's taken the top spot. Here are my top 13 creatures of 2023.

Creatures
Serra Ascendant: 7
Kami of False Hope: 6
Solemn Simulacrum: 6
Spore Frog: 6
Academy Rector: 5
Esper Sentinel: 5
Eternal Witness: 5
Genesis: 5
Karmic Guide: 5
Spike Weaver: 5
Sun Titan: 5
Triskelion: 5
Walking Ballista: 5

I sure do like green enchantments, I guess? Here are my top 15 enchantments of 2023.

Enchantments
Abundance: 8
Sylvan Library: 8
Urza's Saga: 8
Manabond: 5
Survival of the Fittest: 5
Goblin Bombardment: 4
Aura of Silence: 3
Burgeoning: 3
Concordant Crossroads: 3
Dryad of the Ilysian Grove: 3
Earthcraft: 3
Greater Good: 3
Mystic Remora: 3
Oversold Cemetery: 3
Sneak Attack: 3

Here are all 14 planeswalkers I used this year.

Planeswalkers
Tezzeret the Seeker: 3
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon: 3
Ugin, the Ineffable: 2
Ajani, Strength of the Pride: 1
Archangel Elspeth: 1
Arlinn Kord: 1
Arlinn, the Pack's Hope: 1
Elspeth, Sun's Champion: 1
Garruk Relentless: 1
Karn, Living Legacy: 1
Karn, Scion of Urza: 1
Liliana of the Dark Realms: 1
Nissa, Voice of Zendikar: 1
Wrenn and Six: 1

I can't tell whether or not I'm joking, but let's throw in the top battles I used this year. That's right, battle is a new card type, as of 2023.

Battles
Invasion of Segovia: 1
Invasion of Tarkir: 1

And now my favorite category. Here are my top 10 sorceries for the year.

Sorceries
Regrowth: 10
Wheel of Fortune: 9
Bala Ged Recovery: 8
Demonic Tutor: 8
Victimize: 8
Seasons Past: 7
Diabolic Intent: 5
Life from the Loam: 5
Terminus: 5
Time Spiral: 5

I didn't have to go very far down to find my top 10 instants of 2023.

Instants
Swords to Plowshares: 11
Beast Within: 9
Brainstorm: 9
Generous Gift: 9
Force of Will: 8
Harrow: 8
Vampiric Tutor: 8
Crop Rotation: 7
Cyclonic Rift: 7
Enlightened Tutor: 7

And rounding out the categories, here are my 54 "favorite" EDH staples. The premise here is that lands and artifacts that tap for mana, while important, would clog up the list of my most used cards. So I remove those, and present a list of all other cards that I used in at least 5 different decks.

Ashnod's Altar: 13
Lightning Greaves: 11
Swords to Plowshares: 11
Phyrexian Altar: 10
Regrowth: 10
Beast Within: 9
Brainstorm: 9
Generous Gift: 9
Wheel of Fortune: 9
Abundance: 8
Bala Ged Recovery: 8
Crucible of Worlds: 8
Demonic Tutor: 8
Force of Will: 8
Harrow: 8
Sylvan Library: 8
Vampiric Tutor: 8
Victimize: 8
Crop Rotation: 6
Cyclonic Rift: 6
Enlightened Tutor: 6
Seasons Past: 6
Sensei's Divining Top: 6
Serra Ascendant: 6
Arcane Denial: 6
Arcane Signet: 6
Kami of False Hope: 6
Memory Jar: 6
Mystical Tutor: 6
Solemn Simulacrum: 6
Spore Frog: 6
Academy Rector: 5
Chaos Warp: 5
Conduit of Worlds: 5
Counterspell: 5
Dark Ritual: 5
Diabolic Intent: 5
Esper Sentinel: 5
Eternal Witness: 5
Genesis: 5
Karmic Guide: 5
Life from the Loam: 5
Lion's Eye Diamond: 5
Mana Drain: 5
Manabond: 5
Rhystic Study: 5
Spike Weaver: 5
Sun Titan: 5
Survival of the Fittest: 5
Terminus: 5
Time Spiral: 5
Triskelion: 5
Walking Ballista: 5
Zuran Orb: 5

As I've done in the past I present my "frequency curve" for the year. This weird, but it's actually just the numerical data that would go into a bar chart of appearances of cards in my decks, if I bothered to create such a bar chart.

114:1
97:1
77:2
44:1
29:2
23:1
21:2
17:1
16:2
15:5
14:2
13:2
12:1
11:3
10:4
9:5
8:12
7:7
6:17
5:34
4:43
3:74
2:196
1:1067

Some thoughts for 2024...

2019 was the year of the West Coast Commander League. When I started these reports, I was originally going to make them be specific to that arena. 2020 was the year of pandemic, and my deckbuilding was curtailed by that. 2021 was the year of returning from the pandemic-induced hiatus, and the year got off to a late start. I initially tried to approach deckbuilding too much like I'd done in the West Coast Commander League. But things were different, and there was an adjustment period. 2022 was the year of cramming as many new decks into one calendar as I could manage. After all that, 2023 was supposed to be the year of revision, of pumping the brakes on new decks and spending a bit more time on editing existing decks. I didn't set a numerical goal for myself on this, but I count 2023 as a success. 30 different decks instead of a whopping 54. Almost every week that wasn't introducing a new deck saw me making thoughtful revisions to existing ones, and I closed the year out with a total of 110 card substitutions across those 30 decks.

So now what? I suppose that I'd prefer for 2024 to look more like 2023 than like 2022. But I want to come up with something more meaningful than that. 2023 has been a successful year of creating decks and then revising those decks. And I think that I'd like 2024 to be a year of revisiting and updating old decks. I'll still craft some new ones, and I already have an idea for a new deck I want to build right out of the gate. But I'm committing to spending more time reviving my old decks, even if it means fewer total decks than 2022 and fewer card swaps in existing decks than 2023.