Like Sand in an Hourglass
These Are The Cards of Our Days

by Jeff Zandi

As anyone who regularly visits this website knows, the Pojo reviews a
different card every day in a popular feature known as Card of the Day. As
of today's date, the Pojo has reviewed 611 cards. Sort of. It might be more
accurate to say that Pojo has published 611 card reviews to date. Some of
those reviews were for a collection of cards, like the five common Familiar
creatures from Invasion that were reviewed on August 22, 2002, or the five
fetch lands from Onslaught that were reviewed on October 23, 2002.

Even before I was a writer for the Pojo, I was a big fan of the commitment
Pojo made to the Card of the Day column. I like to think that every Magic
card SHOULD be reviewed, even though different people will inevitably value
cards differently. That is the added value of Card of the Day feature
because you normally get to learn WHY each reviewer feels the way they do
about each card reviewed.

Obviously, the hard part is deciding what cards to review each week.
Sometimes, the five cards for the week are related in some easy to
understand way, like last week's CASUAL COMBO WEEK. Sometimes there is a theme and sometime there isn't. The first theme week was ATOG WEEK way back in the week of December 17, 2001. It would be pretty hard to have a theme
every single week for the card reviews, and I think it's far better to not
abuse the idea of theme weeks.

While I would love to see every card in Magic someday reviewed in the Card
of the Day column, fate and possibly the greed of Wizards of the Coast are
likely to get in the way. First of all, there are a lot of Magic cards that
are not particularly interesting. Hard to imagine Boring Creature Week on
the Pojo featuring Grizzly Bear, Segovian Leviathan, Durkwood Boars, Hurloon
Minotaur and everyone's favorite, Craw Wurm. The real reason you can never
get every card reviewed in Card of the Day is because Wizards of the Coast
is creating these cards at a rate GREATER than one per day. Every fall, 350
new cards, followed by 150 more new cards early in the next year followed by
another 150 new cards in the late spring/early summer. Even when WOTC
reprints a large number of cards in a "new" set, and Wizards has already
reprinted a record number of old cards in the current Mirrodin block, there
are still more than 365 new cards created each year.

A month ago, the Pojo team asked each card reviewer to submit a set of five
cards to have reviewed in the Card of the Day column. The first thing I
thought of was how would I know if the cards I selected had already been
reviewed? Since the Pojo keeps all of the 611 past and present daily card
reviews on the site, it IS possible to go back and look up all the entries
in order to see if a desired card has already been reviewed. Unfortunately,
there's no way to sort this list or to see it in alphabetical order or
anything like that. Hmm, sounds like a job for STAT-GEEK MAN. If you know
me, you gotta know that I LOVES ME SOME STATISTICS. In this case, all that
was needed was a very simple Excel spreadsheet showing the cards that have
been reviewed and the date on which the review was published on Pojo. Of
course, with over six hundred entries, this was a lengthy undertaking. In
fact, it was three weeks before I had finished the job.

Before I got into this project, there had been anecdotal evidence to suggest
that a few cards had been reviewed twice. This anomaly, as it happens, has
occurred twelve times. There are two more duplicate efforts currently
scheduled for next week, Daring Apprentice and Opposition, and two more in
the first week of May, Cabal Therapy and Brainstorm.

This article would be very lame it the point was to suggest that there was
something wrong with reviewing cards more than once. I am definitely not
trying to do that. While I do think that some of the duplication that has
occurred in the past MIGHT have had something to do with not having a good
sortable list of the cards that had already been reviewed, there are other
reasons why a card would be chosen to be reviewed a second time. In fact, it
seems obvious that some of the past duplications were certainly on purpose,
re-reviewing cards after the new set containing these cards had been "on the
streets" for a month or so after having previously reviewed the card early
or before its actual release.

Having said all this, I think it IS funny, in a way, to see cards that have
been reviewed more than once on this site. Part of the fun is seeing the
kinds of cards that have been double-reviewed. The twelve cards that have
already been reviewed twice on this site fall into two glaring categories,
REALLY GOOD cards and REALLY BAD cards. Call it human nature, but I kind of
believe that, in general, the cards that have been reviewed as a Card of the
Day generally are very good or very bad. Good cards are fun to talk about,
and bad cards are fun to talk about, but who wants to spend much time
talking about average cards. (Actually, I see another big flaw developing in
my theory already. Obviously, we do review average cards all the time. When
a card gets reviewed with a score of around 3 on Pojo's 1-5 scale, that card
has been reviewed as average.)
The cards that have already been reviewed twice are, in alphabetical order,
naturally, Angelic Chorus, Backslide, Big Furry Monster, Birds of Paradise,
Drinker of Sorrow, Eron the Relentless, Grave Consequences, Library of
Alexandria, Mobilization, Power Conduit, Reya Dawnbringer, Verdant Force
(reviewed for a second time only YESTERDAY) and Vine Trellis.

Mobilization was the card reviewed twice with the shortest amount of time in
between. Originally reviewed on September 18, 2002, it was reviewed again
less than two months later on November 7. The first time Mobilization was
reviewed, it received an average constructed rating of 3.45 and an average
limited rating of 4.2. In September, Judge Bill liked the card the most,
giving it a perfect FIVE rating for limited. Rob Lawing, the Godfather of
Texas Magic, gave the card only a 1.5 for constructed and a 3 for limited.
Two months later, when Lawing reviewed the card again, he then agreed with
Judge Bill, now giving a perfect five to Mobilization for both constructed
and limited play. Curiously, in all twelve past cases of a card being
re-reviewed, Scott Gerhardt's personal review of the card remains precisely
the same as the first time he reviewed the card. I think this proves a
theory about him that I've always wanted to share with someone, and that is
NOTHING GETS PAST SCOTT GERHARDT. Scott did, however, note in his second
review of Mobilization that the card was selling for $14.95 on Shuffle and
Cut Games. Hard to believe. I guess there really is gold in them thar cards!

 

(editor's note:  Well, some things do get past me, but I'm working on those as we speak *grin*.  Furthermore, if anyone wants to buy Mobilizations at $14.95 each still, I will even do a 2-for-1 sale. *smile*  Those were the days - selling Mobos for $14.95 and people PAYING it.  Just goes to show you how fast an environment can change.  -Scott)

Backslide, a bad Onslaught common, was reviewed twice with the second
shortest amount of time in between reviews. Curiously, while the card was
determined to SUCK when it was originally reviewed on January 7, 2003, when
the card was RE-REVIEWED three months later on April 24, it was determined
that this card.STILL SUCKED. This is the value of checking and rechecking
your work.

When you review really good cards for a second time, they seem to REMAIN
really good. Birds of Paradise achieved an average constructed score of 4.26
when it was initially reviewed on April 10, 2002, a score that rose slightly
to 4.8 when it was reviewed again on July 23, 2003. Similarly, Library of
Alexandria was considered a near perfect 5.0 in constructed when first
reviewed on October 13, 2003 as well as when it was reviewed again on
January 23 of this year.

Tacitus once said "who will guard the guards?" Similarly, who will review
the card reviewers? Who will keep track of all this incredible minutiae?
Looks like a job for Stat-Geek Man!

As always, I'd love to hear what YOU think!

Jeff Zandi
Texas Guildmages
Level II DCI Judge
jeffzandi@thoughtcastle.com
Zanman on Magic Online