Aggression

Ladies and sane blood sports understand that size does matter (HEYO!) Boxing has cute terms like "pound for pound" to acknowledge the prowess of a light weight who'd die in the ring from a punch by Bowe or Lewis or Klepto (is that his name?). Scrappiness doesn't have the ability to overcome monstrous size.

I spent Sunday watching the Royal Rumble at a friend's home. Royales and Rumbles are marvelous spectacles where there's this illusion that any man can become a winner. Even Epico. If he was present.

I was playing WWE '13 a few weeks ago, playing a multi-player rumble and I went wire to wire playing Epico to the dismay of the rioting virtual audience witnessing the abomination before their eyes. It must have been the absolute worst event for the citizens of Reboot to watch. I'm glad to get my Revenge against Boob, Enzo, and the rest of the cast of the horrid little show.

Magic can operate similar to a Rumble match. Start with a few creatures. More come in as time goes by, as others get eliminated. Ideally start with 1CMC creatures, move to the 2s and 4s, and once there's enough mana, once Rey-Rey Reckless Waif starts getting into the impossibly shocking predicament of being around STILL after turn 1 being summoned to tussle with a durdling Avacyn's Pilgrim, here comes a Thragtusk fattie and it is lights out as the red zone clears beneath the weight of the 5/3. It only gets bigger and better from there. The durdling utility shenanigans that the light weights provide goes to the wayside as the match turns into a top decking fattie slobber-knocker.

Some creatures are born to pick fights with things above their weight class, though. They'll take as much a beating as Jet Li against Dolf. Still, the scrappy howitzers will leave it all on the kitchen table as its Heyman-esque controller gleefully tags him into the next round's brawl.

For use of any environment, I'm developing what I'd call an "Aggression" index for creatures. Within their CMC (wieght-class), how are they compare to the Power of their peers. I have not finished the list for GTC, only because I'm lazy about doing data mining and input, so the Aggression Index for creatures will have to wait a few days. I've covered White, Blue, and Black creatures so far. I have Red, Green, Artifact, and Multicolored to go. This isn't the ability for these pound for pounders to survive against their competition. this is only where they stack in in terms of power versus their peers. The methodology I'm using is:

is Power of X-CMC Creature at Common/Uncommon or Rare > Average Power for Creatures X-CMC at Common/Uncommon or Rare

So, I've thrown all the Commons and Uncommons together into a pot. Averaged the power for creatures at 1-12 CMC. Then look to see if a creature is greater than that average.

If you're curious what i'm finding, right now, I'm finding that Evolve really skews the data. Evolve creatures start out at atypically low power/toughness. They have the prospect of growing bigger over time, but when they appear they're generally underpowered for 1-2 turns.