How hipster is your MTG Commander deck? A new app by Magic Data Science lets you calculate exactly how special your EDH deck is. You might think yourself a pretty nonconformist deck builder, but we bet you’re running Sol Ring, and that alone adds a whopping 84% to your ‘Hipster Quotient’! Confused? We’d better explain.
The Hipster Dragon Highlander Calculator is designed to work out how mainstream or underground an MTG Commander deck is, by considering the popularity of every card within it, doing some clever sums, and then providing a grand total: your Hipster Quotient. It’s been built by Magic Data Science, known for being one of the biggest maths wizards in the Magic: The Gathering community.
The idea behind this app is to calculate your Hipster Quotient, then share it with friends before starting a game. It’s a tool that may help overcome a growing problem within the MTG Commander format. As more and more powerful ‘must include’ staples are printed, or rise to the surface every year, the format starts to become more homogenous. MtgDS therefore suggests setting a self-imposed restriction, only playing decks of a certain hipster level, which means your playgroup will get to experience a wider variety of cards.
The Hipster Dragon Highlander Calculator works by first considering what percentage of decks each card shows up in, then totting up the totals. Sol Ring appears in 84% of decks, so that’s 84 onto your quotient. Say you’ve also got a Command Tower, that’s in 72% of decks, so your total is now 156. And so on. Basic MTG lands don’t count, of course.
The calculator uses data pulled from EDHREC’s collection of close to 1.9 million player-made Commander decks. Apparently, a value of 457% is about average, while below 150% gives you legitimate hipster credentials. MtgDS has also worked out which are the most hip and least hip MTG commanders in this article.
It’s not quite perfect of course – cards that are a shoe-in for a strategy that is itself rather niche will appear more hipster than they perhaps deserve to, as will cards of a more restrictive MTG color combination. But it’s definitely worth bearing in mind next time you build a Commander deck.
No doubt some playgroups will seize on the idea, as a way to put a sense of wonder and discovery back into the game.