nedink/mtg-decks

MTG Collection Visualizer (WIP)

Requires Python.

Please note that this project is a work in progress. It has not been optimized and larger collections may take several minutes to process.

Contents

• Installation
• Creating Collection Files
• Running the Script
• Understanding the Output

Installation

Python

Make sure you have python (python3) and can run it in the command line.

Chromebook

1. At the bottom right, select the time.
2. Select Settings.
3. Under "Linux (Beta)," select Turn On.
4. Follow the steps on the screen.
5. A terminal window opens. Follow Linux instructions below.

Linux/macOS: get the python script and example deck

Either clone the repo, or just get the files needed to run the script. To do the latter, you will grab the file "examine.py" and a data file from this repo using curl:

1. Check for updates; this is good practice before installing tools.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

2. Install curl.

sudo apt install curl

3. Get the examine.py script, and the example deck.

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nedink/mtg-decks/master/examine.py >> examine.py
mkdir test-collections
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nedink/mtg-decks/master/test-collections/warrior_draft_1 >> test-collections/warrier_draft_1

4. Allow script execution.

chmod +x examine.py

Install requests module

Depending on your default environment, you may need to install the requests module (allows the scripts to make HTTP requests).

pip3 install requests

Test running the code

examine.py test-collections/warrior_draft_1

Now that you can run the code, let's go on to making your own collection file and looking at options to the script.

Creating Collection Files

Create your own collection file. Collection files have one card per line, in the following format:

[SET CODE]/[COLLECTOR NUMBER]

Example:

znr/138

The above card code represents the card Expedition Champion:

Running the script

Display a collection or a subset of a collection, filter by attribute or keyword, reorder the file if desired

examine.py [-h] [-o {name,cmc,type_line,power,toughness}]
[-c {W,U,B,R,G}] [-w WORDS] [-k] [-t] [-M] filename

Required Arguments

filename

The name of your collection file

Example:

python3 examine.py my_collection.txt

Optional flags

-h (or pass no arguments)

View usage

-c --color

Filter by color identity (union operation is performed for multiple)

• W white
• U blue
• B black
• R red
• G green

Example:

python3 examine.py my_collection.txt -c W -c U

-w --word

Show only cards which contain some text (intersection operation is performed for multiple)

Example:

python3 examine.py my_collection.txt -w pirate -w human

Values for color and word filtering are case-insensitive.

-o, --order-by

Order the output by a card attribute

• name the name of the card
• cmc the converted mana cost
• type_line the type line
• power the card's power
• toughness the card's toughness

The values for power and toughness are cast to an integer. If that fails, they are interpreted as 0.

Example: order by card name

python3 examine.py my_collection.txt -o name

-k --show-keywords

Display any common MTG words found in the type line or oracle text

WARNING: This feature is not implemented efficiently, and may take several minutes to process for larger card collections.

-t --show-text

Display the oracle text for each card

Example:

python3 my_collection.txt -t

This flag only affects whether or not the oracle text is printed to the console. The absence of this flag does not affect ordering or filtering (-w, --word will still inspect each card's oracle text).

-M --modify

Reorder entries in the collection file (the operation may fail if there are malformed entries in the file)

WARNING: THIS WILL CAUSE THE SCRIPT TO WRITE TO YOUR COLLECTION FILE. You are encouraged to make a backup of the file before using this feature.

Understanding the Output

The output begins (and ends) by stating the number of cards returned by your query, out of the total cards in the collection.

The first section lists each card, with the following components in columns:

• The card identifier ("znr/138")
• The name of the card (e.g., "Expedition Champion")
• The card's type (e.g., "Creature - Human Warrior")
• The card's converted mana cost

The next section, called "Mana curve", displays information about the mana cost across the cards in the query result:

1. The converted mana cost distribution, by number of cards.
2. The converted mana cost distribution, by color identity. If a card has two colors, then it will be included twice, once for each color.

The "Example hands" section shows a couple of randomly generated starting hands.

The output ends with the number of cards returned by your query, and the time it took to run the script.

Boosterize

(Under development.) When this feature is implemented, random booster packs will be created from the input collection.