#187: Marvel Super Heroes Draft Deck Skeletons with the Skeleton Crew

And the first thing that I normally do, uh, just to give my guests a bit of a breather, is looking at the statistics of damage-based removal and looking at some conditional removal in the set, just how it aligns with the creature in the set.

So this is the picture from, um, Strixhaven, Secrets of Strixhaven.

You can see that Tome Blast was killing, like, 50% of common creatures.

Uh, Last Gasp was killing 77% of the common creatures, and so on and so on.

Um, it was a regular set.

It was...

Its numbers are more or less aligned with, uh, all the other sets previously.

Now let's fast-forward to, uh, Marvel, and, um, you will see instant differences.

So for example, a thing that deals one damage, and I found only the example of Photon Blast Barrage, will kill- One in five common creatures that exist in the format, which is actually quite a lot more than it was in, uh, Secrets of Strixhaven.

Uh, furthermore, thing like a Shock, which doesn't exist, but we have Helicarrier Strike, we have the minus two, minus two spell in black.

Those kill 62% of common creatures and around 50% of uncommons.

This is much more than it was in, uh, Strixhaven, where it was only 50% and 36%, and yet Tomb Blast was one of the better cards.

Now, of course, Tomb Blast was basically a natural two for one.

That's what the card- why the card was good.

But, uh, we can expect things that deal two damage being quite decent in this format.

Uh, Lightning Strike kills 86% of common creatures.

Uh, it would've killed only 77 of cr- percent of creatures in, uh, Strixhaven.

And the numbers for the uncommons and rares stay relatively the same.

So percentages don't tell us the full story, as we are going to learn in a second.

And then a thing like a Dark Deal, 95% of commons will get killed by this thing.

So basically a two mana spell can kill 95% of common creatures, um, at their face value.

Look, I'm not going to reevaluate every specific situation like, oh, but what if they use the power up or what if they cast the backside of the card? I'm just looking at face value, um, stats as printed on the card just for the sake of sanity because the, you know, myriad po- possibilities that appear, uh, later in the game, um, can of course complicate things.

And a thing like Repulsor Blast will kill weirdly, very weirdly 100% of rare creatures as they are printed and, um, in Secrets of Strixhaven dealing five damage only killed 85% of rare creatures, so, uh, 15% of the rares were larger than that.

Here it kills literally every single rare, uh, and mythic creature, uh, in the set, and also, uh, around 98, 95% of other creatures.

So actually Repulsor Blast barring five creatures that it doesn't kill, um, is almost unconditional removal, which is, which is shocking, I have to say, when I saw that number.