...not to mention validity.
I compiled these charts for fun a few months ago. Yesterday I was cleaning my desktop and found it and they were an interesting read so I updated them and thought maybe they'll be interesting to you too.
I believe I started working on this as a response to Dingan's excellent post:
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=15011.msg582479#msg582479. The idea is the same (describe card distribution over time), but I'm analyzing it cumulatively instead of expansion-by-expansion.
I got somewhat carried over and I described a few quite hard-to-define cathegories (eg: remodelers, virtual Buy, Gainers...), so the data carry a big dose of subjectivity. But we're here for fun, so I hope you don't mind. I'll try to post the file so that you can have your own subjective version too.
Split piles are considered singularily, Prizes are ignored, upgraded cards (travellers, Urchin and so on) are counted as one card.
All graphs are cumulative, i.e. they describe how the total base of cards has changed over time. With the second edition, the 12 removed cards are thrown out of the analysis.
On the x axis are expansions, and promos released near them.
So, let me show you how I waste my time!
Here is the obvious one. Note that Actions are out of scale, I had to divide them by ten to make you see the interesting stuff happening.
You can clearly see alt-treasure and alt-vp being geared up in their respective expansions, and then Victory declining slightly as time goes by (but Landmarks and vp token cards are not considered), while treasures staying constant after Prosperity.
Donald has said several times that he had to lower the percentage of attacks in each set to cater to his fans, and we see the effects here. I didn't do a "nonAttack interaction" line but it would be interesting.
Here you can see the cards divided by cost. The "Other" cathegory is essentially made up of Potions, Debt, and Peddler. I translated them to coins to have a cleaner graph:
We can see how
ers cards are steadily taking over the once much more common
ers.
The other three lines have been very constant since Prosperity, after some turbulence due to Seaside and Intrigue's cheapness that was then balanced by Prosperity's spendiness. (in this chart Alchemy also boosts
-costers at the expense of
-costers due to how I translated potion)
Now, let's delve into the subjective charts:
Thinners. I divided them into mass thinners (can do 2 or more cards at once), single thinners, and remodels (can't usually trash without gaining). I put Trader as remodel and sentry as single. Events are counted as things. Total is the sum of all three groups.
Anyway, Total has gone somewhat up, and we're glad for that because thinners are cool.
After an early disappearance, Remodelers went back to being a common card paradigm, wich is nice.
This is probably my favorite chart.
I divided cards into terminals and villages (the uncounted cathegory being nonterminal actions, treasures, and victory). Some cards are only sometimes terminal (like Conspirator, Ironworks, or Nobles), and some are villages with significant twists (like Cotr, Throne Room, or Nobles). These make up the dotted lines.
Anyway, wow. 68% to 45% is a
huge fall.
And on the subject of terminality:
Reliable Lab variants are cards that you can use to draw in most games. Unreliable Lab variants include Menagerie (*dodges rotten tomatoes*), Herald, Magpie, Vagrant, you get the general idea.
Menagerie should probably be reliable, and maybe Page/Warrior too, but that's what I did 6 months ago.
Anyway, look at all that terminal drawness drowning in nonterminalness. It seems that drawing one's deck has become much more about adapting to the perks of the Lab of the day than about lining up a Village and a Smithy.
A flexible gainer is something that lets you choose what you gain. Limited gainers are stuff that goes "gain a Gold", "gain a Magpie", "gain one of the trashed cards", you know who I'm referring to.
True +Buy says +Buy, virtual +Buy gives you cards according to how much money you can field, like Haggler, or it gives you extra turns to buy more cards using the money you (or someone else) can field, like Outpost. Black market and Ball also ended up here.
This one's quite messy.
Attacks.
I went with:
Discard attacks hurt the opponent's economy next turn, like Militia, Minion and Bridge troll (I bet you didn't expect that)
Topdecking attacks hurt the opponent's turn after the next, or their ability to draw useful cards next turn, like Rabble, Relic, and Spy.
Junking attacks and Trashing attacks are exactly what you expect.
Stuff like Torturer, Sea Hag and Ghost Ship got several classes, and also the Combined class.
Junkers got a big boost in the first expansions, and then kept their position as the most common attacks out there. Topdeckers and Trashers seem to be in decline, the latter of which is a shame if you ask me. Sab and Spy leaving unreplaced made a significant dent in the respective populations.
And lastly, for something a bit different, I wondered about power level in expansions.
I chose the quartile because I felt that that's where the set-definers started for most cost levels.
Unfortunately, I didn't think about finding over-/underrepresentation. I'll just say that Cornucopia's share is pretty impressive. Base seems to be suffering a bit, and Adventure and Dark Ages might be just benefitting from having more content than the others. Overall, the split is much more even than I expected.
Alchemy is not present because most of its cards are ranked separately.
And here is the bottom decile, which is where I felt laid the pity boundary.
Honorable mention to the absent: Dark Ages, Guilds, and Adventures, which interestingly are the most recent expansions.
Base takes a quarter of the pie, the other early expansions split the rest quite evenly. Which is surprising, I was expecting to see Intrigue dominate a bit more.
Removed cards make up for about a third of the cards, which means that we can look forward to a bottom decile smaller by 33%, how great is that!
So, I hope this was interesting. Thanks for your attention.
No, I wasn't serious about the decile.Edit: trying to attach the file. If you have suggestions for stuff to plot, I can try and make it happen if it's reasonably simple.
Edit2: New file with expansions in the correct order!