I was doing some data analysis today, and I thought people might be interested in the results. I have a static backup of the whole database easily accessible for queries so I can get a lot more data on any other metric people would like.

But for starters, here are three statistics I thought were interesting:

Frequent Card Names

By far the most common card name is "", the empty string. Makes sense. After that come Forest, Mountain, Island, and then Plains and Swamp tied. Again, not especially surprising, though it's perhaps interesting that there are more basic Forests on Multiverse than any other basic land.

Anyway, then the most common card name after empty and basic land is: Giant Growth. Then comes a 4-way tie between "Elemental" (presumably mainly used on tokens), Naturalize and Pacifism (sensible staple common reprints), and... Ornithopter!

Most Prolific Card Creators

Here's a table of the users who've created the most cards, along with their number of cards created (only counting cards that still exist today):

­

10   Circeus                     838
 9   Vitenka                     925
 8   Alex                        936
 7   Shiny_Umbreon              1108
 6   dude1818                   1163
 5   Jack V                     1229
 4   Sorrow                     1333
 3   Camruth                    1903
 2   jmgariepy                  1927
 1   L2i0n0k7                   1946

Most Prolific Commenters

And here are the 15 top commenters, with their number of comments posted:

­

15  Joz                          383
14  Chris                        506
13  SFletcher                    520
12  M_Houlding                   557
11  SadisticMystic               672
10  Circeus                      681
 9  amuseum                      716
 8  Shiny_Umbreon                811
 7  dude1818                    1673
 6  Camruth                     1729
 5  Jack V                      3622
 4  L2i0n0k7                    4420
 3  Vitenka                     4426
 2  jmgariepy                   6643
 1  Alex                       10537

The site's been running for 3-and-a-half years now. Many thanks all for all the contributions: over 28000 cards right now, with over 35000 created ever; and over 48000 comments across the site's history!

Wow, Alex! I love statistics. Thank you for providing these, and thanks again for providing this site to us. It's one of my most cherished sites, even when I have long lapses in my contributions.
Could you show us how many cards have been created for each color and color combination, if that's not too hard?

Geez... you'd think the most prolific card creators would be fairly spread out near the top. But the difference between 1st and 3rd is only 43 cards? How weird...

If I didn't have a tendency to go on hiatus for long periods, the gap might be larger.

I am deeply and easily amused that I'm the only one at the same position on both lists XD

Took me a while to get around to doing another data analysis run, but here's the results of Link's query: the number of cards created for each colour and colour combination.
Again, this is restricted to only cards that currently exist (haven't been deleted), because that data's easier for me to get at.

The most frequent colours, sorted by count:

W                         4232
U                         4081
R                         3836
B                         3772
G                         3736
Artifact                  2330
Colourless                 576
Land colourless            291
Land multicolour           176

All gold cards, sorted by count:

Multicolour no-colours     307

Multicolour UB             279
Multicolour WU             272
Multicolour GU             271
Multicolour RG             247
Multicolour UR             247
Multicolour GW             236
Multicolour WB             225
Multicolour RW             225
Multicolour BR             223
Multicolour BG             203

Multicolour WUR             60
Multicolour WBG             56
Multicolour WUBRG           55
Multicolour URG             55
Multicolour WUG             51
Multicolour WBR             51
Multicolour UBG             44
Multicolour WUB             42
Multicolour WRG             33
Multicolour BRG             31
Multicolour UBR             27

Multicolour WUBG            27
Multicolour WBRG            22
Multicolour WUBR            19
Multicolour WURG            18
Multicolour UBRG            14

Smaller categories, sorted by category:

Hybrid                     177
Hybrid WU                   76
Hybrid WB                   97
Hybrid UB                   50
Hybrid UR                   79
Hybrid BR                   49
Hybrid BG                   76
Hybrid RG                   54
Hybrid RW                   73
Hybrid GW                   66
Hybrid GU                   89

Land W                     144
Land U                     147
Land B                     140
Land R                     145
Land G                     169
Land WU                     82
Land UB                     69
Land BR                     58
Land RG                     68
Land GW                     69
Land WB                     49
Land UR                     49
Land BG                     43
Land RW                     40
Land GU                     41
Land (misc)                 68

Tokens:

token B                     16
token W                     12
token Artifact               8
token R                      7
token Colourless             6
token G                      5
token U                      4
token Hybrid RW              3
token Land multicolour       3
token Hybrid GW              2
token Multicolour            2
token Land R                 2
token Hybrid BG              1
token Hybrid RG              1
token Hybrid GU              1
token Hybrid UB              1
token Hybrid UR              1

Miscellaneous and Weird:

Misc/Unknown               163
Scheme                      61
Plane                       13
Multicolour G                2
Multicolour W                1
Multicolour B                1
Artifact Multicolour         1

(I think most of the Planes must have come out in the Misc/Unknown category, because there are actually 37 Planes on the site.)

I do find it interesting that just looking at monocolour cards, there are 150 more white than blue, 150 more blue than red, and 100 more red than green. You could attribute some of it to people filling in skeletons from the top down, but that wouldn't explain why there's more red than black.

What does "Multicolour 307" at the top of the list indicate? There's obviously more than 307 gold/hybrid cards, so it can't be that. But I have a hard time believing we designed cards with no color in the casting cost, then selected 'multicolour' for the frame 307 times...

Oh, hold it... the Multiverse Challenges. That's close to 90 instances of that happening right there. Okay, maybe that isn't so weird after all...

Yep, that's cards for which someone's selected "Multicolour" but the card cost doesn't indicate any other colours. Transguild Courier and variations on Intervention Pact would count, as would almost all the Design Challenges. I think there are also a couple of special-purpose (non-MtG) cardsets for which people have used the gold frame to indicate something, such as the Dominion card Army.

Awesome! I'm teaching at a band camp and have very little free time right now to contemplate this, but seeing the less popular options makes me want to design cards for them.

This is cool. I'm surprised there are so few gold cards honestly. Time to go all Alara Reborn up in here.

About 3000 altogether? When each mono colour is about 4000, that seems pretty respectable to me. Consider that many sets will have about 50 in each colour and 0-10 gold cards total.