How to Rate a Card
An article by Paul Enfield, webmaster of Deck Meister Online.

Rating the effectiveness of a card can be a very elusive skill. Cards that seem awesome often do not end up being so. While there is no fool-proof method of making such ratings, there are some things to keep in mind to help you weed out the obvious loosers.

There a couple main points to take into account when considering a card. These break down to:

Card Advantage

Also refered to as card parity

Being a game of cards and card combinations, Magic is all about generating some type of effect from a card or a combination of cards. Generally speaking, card advantage means that you can accomplish an effect using fewer cards than your opponent, resulting in more cards in your hand to use for other effects. For example, an opponent might Chaos Lace your creature to turn it red, and then use Blue Elemental Blast to destroy the creature. By using Terror or Swords to Plowshares you could achieve the same effect and use only 1 card. Card advantage has a large amount of overlap with card efficiency.

Single vs. Multi-Use Cards

While people generally realize that creatures tend to be the most effective cards in the game due to their reusability, it is important to extend this thought to other cards. Any card that can cause some type of effect more than once can be described as multi-use. In general, these cards have more value than other single-use cards. For example, when choosing between something like Formation (white Instant grant banding) versus Helm of Chatzuk (Artifact, pay 1 to give creature banding), precluding certain circumstances, it would be pretty much of a no-brainer to choose the Helm. Why? Because it can be used more than once, where as an instant, interrupt, sorceries, or local enchantment would be used, have 1 effect, and then be gone. This gives the person using the Helm more flexibility and opportunities throughout the game.

This is not to say that single-use cards are always deficient, but in general you will receive more use out of a multi-use equivalent than its single use counter-part.

As further supporting evidence, consider your standard red burn deck. The best known counter strategy for this deck is to stay ahead in card count (ex. throw out a creature that takes 2 bolts to kill). This strategy capitalizes on the fact that a burn deck generally relies on single-use spells (with the primary exception of Hammer of Bogardan).

Advise: Beware of decks that are very heavily weighted with one or the other, especially if they are all single-use cards. A balanced deck will utilize both for their strengths.

Buy-Back Spells

Tempest's new buy-back spells greatly alter the effectiveness of what used to be single-use cards. Suddenly cards that might have previously been single-use only might be re-usable. The unfortunate aspect of buy-back spells is their tendency to be a little on the expensive side in total cost. Casting a spell with a casting cost of 3 and a buy back of 3 means you now have to have 6 available mana, and with that cost, forget about casting anything else that turn.

Advise: My personal opinion... buy-back spells that are really worth their cost will be few and far between.

Stand-Alone value

The next most important factor in determining if a card will promote card advantage is IF it can be used by itself. The best example of this is a creature enchantment. Not only does a creature enchantment suffer from the fact that it is essentially a single use spell, but it also MUST have a creature in order to be used. In scenarios where you cannot afford the creatures in your hand, or simply cannot draw a creature, you get stuck with what now amounts to a completely useless card in your hand... Why? Because a creature enchantment has absolutely no stand-alone value.

Advise: See below under Combos.

Combos

Card combos suffer in almost the exact same ways. Card combos generally have absolutely no power without the combo. George Baxter breaks combos down into 2 categories in his books. Combos that when seperated still result in cards that have some play value, and those that render the cards involved ineffectual. Unfortunately 95% of the combos out there involve cards that are quite powerless when used independently.

Advise: Look at a card for stand-alone value. If it does not have a base usefulness in and of itself, it won't likely be a very effectual card on a reliable basis. This is not to say that there are no good decks that use combos, but it does mean that over the course of MANY games, a deck containing all cards that are useful in and of themselves will perform more consistently than one that relies on combos.

Efficiency

Card efficiency encompasses a variety of points as well. As indicated earlier, the stand-alone value of a card should also be considered when evaluating the efficiency of a card.

Efficiency essentially describes how valuable a card is compared to other similar cards. For example, how good is a Pearled Unicorn 2/2 creature at a casting cost of 2W compared to other 2/2 creatures?

Casting Cost

Casting cost is the primary, and most important aspect of card efficiency. What type of effect can you get out of a card for a given casting cost?

The first criteria I use when evaluating a card is it's total casting cost. I add up the colorless and the colored mana costs for the total. If it is above 4 then I'm concerned. 4 casting cost cards can be considered slow, anything above 4 will be worse, and should only be considered for a deck as a supplementary card and NOT a primary component of the deck.

Creatures

Creatures are a little easier to evaluate in regards to casting cost than are other spells. This is because creatures come with power/toughness numbers by default. With these we can make a direct comparison of casting cost to power and or toughness. I've put together the following as a Rudimentary set of guidelines in evaluating creatures.

#PointsAreaCriteria
a-1/2Power for each point of POWER < total casting cost
b+1/2Power POWER >= Total casting cost and POWER > 1
c+1Power for each point of POWER > total casting cost
d-1/2Toughness for each point of TOUGHNESS < total casting cost
e+1/2Toughness TOUGHNESS >= Total casting cost and TOUGHNESS > 1
f+1Toughness for each point of TOUGHNESS > total casting cost
g+1/2Toughness Toughness > 3 (non-boltable)
h+1/2Ability Text Each Normal Creature Ability: First Strike, Banding, Trample, Rampage, Protection from X, Flying, Landwalk, Regen, Shadow, Celerity, Non-tapping attack
i+3/4Ability Text Non-tapping activation special ability. Ex: Dragon Whelp - R: +1/+0
j+1/2Ability Text Tapping special ability
k+1/4Ability Text Ability requiring sacrifice
l-1/2Ability Text Upkeep cost (subtract more for stiffer upkeep costs like GGGG for Force of Nature)
m+/- XAbility Text add or subtract points for other abilities. Generally max of 1/2 per ability
n-1/2Casting Cost for each additional colored mana beyond the first colored mana. Ex: BB = -1/2, BBB = -1

Example Ratings:
Juzam Djinn : 1/2(b) + 1/2(e) + 1(c) + 1(f) +1/2(g) -1/2(l) -1/2(n) = 2.5
Elvish Archer : 1/2(b) + 1/2(h) = 1
Yotian Soldier : -1(a) + 1/2(e) + 1(f) +1/2(g) +1/2(h) = 1
Ernham Djinn : 1/2 + 1/2 + 1 +1/2 -1/2 = 2
Savan nah Lion : 1/2 + 1 = 1.5
Pearl ed Unicorn : -1/2(a) + -1/2(d) = -1
Cyclop ean Mummy : +1/2(b) -1/2(d) -1/2(m) =-1/2
Serra Angel : -1/2 + -1/2 + 1/2 + 1/2 + 1/2 = 1/2

Note that these ratings are simply guidelines. You'll notice that for the most part these points will work but there are ALWAYS exceptions to the rule (Dervish and Serra Angel are good examples). When adjusting ratings, be careful to consider traits that are not normal for a creature of that color. A good example might be a green flyer. Such a creature might get an extra 1/4 point for that.

Also, when considering creatures with */* power, it might be best to consider the best possible scenario for their power/toughness. If adding 1 more to whatever determines * doesn't change the rating, then you've probably found a decent rating point.

Other Spells

Rating the efficiency of non-creature cards is a much more difficult thing to do. This is because the only comparable #'s from one card to the next are in the casting cost. This where the unfortunate reality of evaluating based on need comes into play. One card may work well in one deck, but not so well in another. Erhnam Djinn is a first class creature, but it won't work well in a Stasis deck.

This means that probably the best way to rate a non-creature spell is based upon card advantage. If a spell can allow you to affect more than 1 permanent its more likely worth more than a one-time usage spell. Great examples of this are Wrath of God or Armageddon. Other more subtle examples of this might be Orcish Oriflamme, or Bad Moon.

Advise: Try to stay away from cards that have 1 specific target. In general these cards are too focused. Examples of this are local enchantments. Cards that are close to this but are NOT too focused are Terror (affects most creatures), Incinerate (any creature), Counterspell, etc.

Upkeep Costs

Upkeep costs are generally a major negative for a card, especially when cumulative. If you find a card that is attractive and has an upkeep cost, consider how long you will need to use it. If it's more than 1 or 2 turns of upkeep paying, you probably won't want to use it. If the card grants you an effect you cannot find in another card, and the effect can be gained in a short amount of time, you can generally get away with using the card. A great example of this is Dystopia. Black has no good way of getting rid of enchantments. When facing a white player, Dystopia can be the answer to this.

Other Costs

Other costs are frequently involved with cards. These costs might include something like a required sacrifice for the casting of a given card. Casting a spell that requires some other event or permanent is generally a bad deal. This is because you can never be guaranteed that the other component to the spell will be available when you want to cast the spell, which can lead to a useless card in hand.

Abilities

Abilities are quite simply what the card can do. Some simple guidelines and notes should be kept in mind when considering a card. This section will help highlight some obvious and not-so-obvious things about cards.

Creature abilities

Creature abilities break down to a set of standard abilities, and extended abilities that are unique to special creatures. The following is a listing of standard abilities, ordered in general order of usefulness.

When considering standard creature abilities, you can use this ranking as a way of guaging how many bonus points to grant a creature when using the rating method I described.

Creature abilities can be further broken down to 2 major categories. These define how useful an ability is in a large scale. Abilities can be determined to be Global (always applicable), or focused (only applicable). A good example of a focused creature ability is Protection from Black. This ability is very strong, but only useful against certain decks. Compare this to Flying which is beneficial no matter what color opponent you are playing against, and you can see that some abilities are generally more useful than others.

Globally Useful Abilities

Non-Tapping Attack
Non-tapping attackers such as the Serra Angel are extremely efficient creatures to have. When you consider that a standard creature is only useful as either an attacker or a defender, you can already see that a non-tapper is twice as efficient as any normal creature.

Flying
Flying is a multi-faceted beneficial creature ability. Its most obvious use is as a means of avoiding being blocked. This in and of itself is a very useful aspect of Flying. The added ability of being able to BLOCK flyers makes it even more valueable. Finally, what makes flying better than other evasion abilities such as landwalking is its applicability no matter what color or lands an opponent is using.

Celerity
Attacking without summoning sickness

The most valuable cards in Magic are ones that force your opponent to react as opposed to him knowing how a game will progress. Celerity essentially makes a creature that would normally be predictable almost the equivalent of an instant. This forces opponents into guessing games, and may cause them to play defensively even when they don't necessarily need to. This might mean they hold back a 1/1 weenie to block any potential creatures with Celerity. This might not seem like much, but each 1/1 adds up.

First Strike
First strike tilts creature balance to your favor. While both players might be using creatures of the same basic size, for the same basic casting cost, if a player has creatures with first strike, his opponent will generally be forced to come up with bigger creatures which equates to higher casting costs, which results in slower decks, or slower opponent deck progression.

Banding
The key benefit of banding is that it tilts the balance in combat to the advantage of the player with banding creatures. By having more control over which creatures receive damage, and how much damage they receive, one can affect card efficiency/parity in their favor.

Licid
This brand new ability with Tempest is fairly interesting. The ability itself versus the effects it grants is what makes this a useful ability to have on a creature. The fact that this ability allows a creature to change forms into an enchantment and consequently lose its "creature" trait is what makes it good. Generally the abilities such as granting Celerity or First Strike are not that exciting. Where this ability becomes useful is when something tries to target the creature. Being able to "dodge" a targeted effect makes lichen creatures good. The unfortunate thing is... at this point, existing licids are fairly whimpy creatures and licids are not likely to ever be larger than 1/1.

Pumpability
Pumpability is a very good ability. It allows a player to control the amount of damage a creature can deliver generally to the end of shortening game length. The main drawback of pumpable creatures is their mana sink tendency. Pumpable creatures force you to use mana resources to enhance their power/toughness instead of using it elsewhere where it is doubtlessly needed as well. The effect of this is the limiting of your game options, development and potentially speed.

Regeneration
Regeneration is a great defensive ability. By this statement alone it is often disregarded as being a useful ability. Proponents of offensive deck tactics will not likely bother with creatures with regeneration due to their general low power ratings, and tendency to slow down a deck. Additionally, the defensive posture forces you to reserve mana which (like pumpability) slows down your deck speed and development.

Rampage
Rampage is a fairly rare ability introduced in Legends. Essentially what this ability amounts to is making a big creature bigger. This unfortunately generally relegates it expensive creatures, severly lessening its usefulness.

Shadow
Another new ability released with Tempest, Shadow boils down to a variation of flying, but with further limitations. The inability of shadow creatures to block normal creatures severly cuts down on the versatility of a creature and consequently reduces their efficiency. With 95% or more creatures NOT being shadow creatures, you can essentially consider a shadow creature incapable of blocking. With this limitation you are forced to use it as only an attacker. This makes a shadow creature about 1/2 as effective as a normal creature.

The big catch on this is the evasion abilities of shadow creatures. In offensive based decks, shadow creatures will thrive. However, if you are playing a defensive or slow deck, avoid them.

Focused Use Abilities

Focused use abilities are abilities that might not always be useful. As previously mentioned, Protection from XXXX is a good example. Listed below are a couple more.

Protection from X
Protection from XXXX is a great ability. Unfortunately it's only good SOME of the time. The main usefulness of Protection from X creatures is when you consider the bigger picture. To understand how this ability really shines consider the following cases:

Protection from X should not be taken at face value. One must consider what forms of creature removal given colors have at their disposal when evaluating a creature with this ability.

Landwalking
Landwalking is probably the best evasion ability. This is because there are not blockers for landwalking creatures. The unfortunate aspect of this ability is the lack of a guarantee that your opponent will play a land need for the landwalking to be effective.

Trample
Trample is a nice ability for making sure you get through and cause damage you might not with a normal creature. The unfortunate aspect of Trample is that is is not ALWAYS useful. For this reason, I consider Trample focused. As you should generally be aware,

Phasing
Phasing is listed under focused use due to its inherent deficiencies. Specifically, phasing renders a creature 1/2 as useful as his normal equivalent. This is normally a major drawback for a phasing creature UNLESS a deck is built around the phasing. Therefore a phasing creature is "focused" to specific deck designs.

Reusable Abilities

Tying back to card parity, any creature ability that can be used more than once will be far more valuable than those that have limited uses. An example of a single use ability is the Icatian Javilineers. Luckily, this type of single use ability is rare.

Tapping Abilities

Most creature abilities require tapping. The effects of this are multi-fold. First, the ability cannot be used until the next turn of the creature's existance because of summoning sickness. This can become a big problem when looking at cards such as Tim (Prodigal Sorcerer). If your opponent has a similar creature out already, your stuck with a useless card due to the inability to use the special ability immediately. This essentially gives your opponent 1 full turn of opportunity to toast your creature.

Additionally, tapping abilities are generally designed to be performed only once a turn. If you can find an equivalent that does not require tapping, it should be a far better card assuming the casting costs are comparable.

Permanent effects

Some cards grant lasting effects. An example of this might be the Thrull Champion. Giving all Thrulls +1/+1 while in play is far better than anything that requires some type of activation cost. The comparision is quite simple... Free versus Paid???

Activation Costs

Activation costs are very important to consider when looking at the ability of a card. It's easy to get mislead by a very strong ability by overlooking the actual costs involved. Consider Time Elemental. A GREAT effect no doubt, but at a cost of 2UU per usage, you'll be depleting nearly all of your mana in the early game, and half in the late game. This severly impacts what else you can do during your turn. Consider that mana is one of the simpler costs that can be involved, and realize that other activation costs end up being quite costly. At this point you must weigh the potential gain you get against the actual cost. This becomes very relevant when considering cards that bury, destroy or remove other cards from the game in order to activate. Sac 1 card to remove 1 opponent card? That's an iffy proposition. The only case where it might prove advantageous is with the likelyhood that the card you will lose is of less value than the one you will remove.

Abilities requiring sacrifice

This ties in strongly with activation costs. Always consider the effect on card advantage when looking at abilities requiring sacrifice. How many cards will you cause your opponent to expend compared to the # of cards sacrificed. Anything less than 1 for 1 is not acceptable.

Some cards are difficult to rate against this. Consider Firestorm. This card is admittedly a very powerful card, but it SUCKS from the card advantage perspective. It's a gamblers card. You gamble all of the cards in your hand that you will win the game with the use of this card. If you loose the gamble, you suffer terribly... no cards in hand to an opponent with a full set of cards????

Non-Creature Cards

Non-creature cards break down into to forms. Permanents (Enchantments, Artifacts, and Lands) and expended spells (Instants, Interrupts and Sorceries). The inherent nature of these cards further affects their usefulness.

Expended Spells

With the exception of buyback spells, expended spells are one-shot deals. When dealing with this nature of these spells, you must once again weight the benefit that the spell will give you against the costs it carries (casting cost, activation costs, and most importantly the actual space it takes up in your deck). If you find the card to be questionable in any of these categories, the other categories must make up for this deficiency. i.e. if you find a card that suffers from a high casting cost, it should not ALSO suffer from a tough activation cost, OR it's benefit must be very large.

For example: Braingeyser. This card costs XUU to cast and will likely deserve all mana you have available. That is quite expensive. The benefit? Cards in hand. This end benefit must be weighed against the fact that 1 full turn's worth of mana will be burned on this spell.

Another important thing to consider is how many cards will be affected by the card. Consider the single use cards Earthquake versus Incinerate. Both are good cards, but 1 affects almost all creatures on the board while the other is targeted. Circumstances may dictate one over the other, but none-the-less 1 promotes card advantage in a much bigger way.

Permanents

Permanents by nature are more economical than expended spells because of their lasting effects on the game. Unfortunately very few non-creature permanents will actually DIRECTLY promote victory. In considering the effects of these permanents, we must step back and look at the game as a whole. Victory is known to be achieved through either damage or expending of all cards. Any card in a deck that does not help move you towards one of these goals must be considered more heavily than those that do. This isn't to say you should forgoe defense, but an avenue towards victory must always be kept in focus.

Reusable Abilities
Permanents can effect the game in one of 2 ways. They either:

An example of a continuous effect would be the enchantment Bad Moon, or the artifact Meekstone. Lack of activation is a good thing because of the simplicity in use of these cards. They also tend to be fairly economical due to their lasting effect for a single casting cost (unless there's an upkeep cost involved). The main drawback to these cards is their lack of a surprise factor. The fact that these cards lie in plain view of your opponent all during play is actually quite detrimental. It is easy to factor the effects of this type of permanent into the game.

An example of an activated effect is any land, or Circle of Protection. These cards can be less economical if they have an activation cost unless the activation cost is only tapping (ex: Touchstone), in which case they are very economical to have in a deck. While requiring a little more skill to play, these cards can tend to affect the game more readily because they force your opponent to think about more aspects of the game when considering their plays. It's very easy to forget about that Blessing on your creature when 10 other cards and 8 other creatures are on the board.

Abilities requiring sacrifice
Some cards require some type of sacrifice as an activation cost. These types of cards can be tough to evaluate due to the fact that most of the sacrifices involve a card which consequently amounts to card disadvantage. Very few effects warrent such a trade. The exceptions being those that gain you more cards, cause damage, or deprive cards from your opponent. These effects essentially equate to roads to victory. i.e., if an effect requiring sacrifice can help you achieve victory directly it generally offsets the sacrifice cost. Other cards that require sacrifice for any other misc ability are generally not worth their cost.

Versatility

Versatility is a look at how well rounded or generally usable a card is. An example of this might be to compare a card such as Fallen Askari with another creature such as Black Knight which both have a casting cost of 2 (admittedly BK requires an extra black...). Both are 2/2 creatures, but one is deficient in its inability to block, whereas Black Knight also has the added ability of Protection from White and First Strike for the meer difference in cost of 1 black instead of 1 colorless. Obviously in this case the Knight is a more versatile creature.

Unfortunately accessing versatility requires a good working knowledge of all of the possible comparible card options. This can either be done by gaining familiarity with all of the cards you use, or by using some type of database tool. When comparing cards in this method, look at similar cards in one attribute. i.e. if you are looking at a 2/2 creature, search for all other 2/2 creatures of the same color. Compare their casting costs, and abilities. If you find one with a lower cost or more abilities for the same cost, reconsider the card you are using.

Conclusion

There are obviously MANY other aspects of each of these points to consider. Hopefully this article will give you an idea of where to start. I welcome any comments or ideas you have on this topic.

Paul Enfield

Back to the Dojo!