And, yet again, resources aren't really a good metric for power.

Actions are the resource I'm interested in, and Holocron is nicely balanced by how many of them you need to spend, and how many opportunities that gives your opponent to counter even your best case scenario. It's vulnerable to virtually *all* forms of dice manipulation and removal at least once and often several times over the course of a turn, and if it doesn't roll special its zero cost makes it worthless for a simple replacement discard.

Theory is all well and good, but in practice, there are many other combos that can hit just as hard and much faster. If anything, I'd accept that the problem with Sith Holocron is that it's a no-brainer auto-include for a Blue Villain mono-color deck, but the same can be said for cards like It Binds All Things, Infamous, Datapad in pretty much everything...

Summing up the collected answers to your original post, there are many ways to deal with its die directly, and furthermore in practice the card *looks* a lot more powerful than it actually is the vast majority of the time.

Yes, Sith Holocron is a good card. Nobody is arguing that it isn't.

If snarkiness and hostility are going to be your SOP moving forward, that's where I'm going to leave it.

If snarkiness and hostility are going to be your SOP moving forward, that's where I'm going to leave it.

Just wait until they open up a rules subforum.

If snarkiness and hostility are going to be your SOP moving forward, that's where I'm going to leave it.

Just wait until they open up a rules subforum.

The horror... the horror...

Summing up the collected answers to your original post, there are many ways to deal with its die directly

This is irrelevant when comparing upgrades, because the same can be said for any die. The point is not entirely "What can Holocron do in a turn", it's "When you compare Holocron to pretty much any upgrade in the game, it's better." But even in the counterplay it comes off better - what other upgrade can force you to counterplay it so hard just to remain even? If you do spend your counters against the Holocron, it costs you a counter and it costs me absolutely nothing. I'll then spend my resources to play an upgrade just like you did, but I'll have my counters still available. Even when it does nothing, it puts me ahead.

This is a different topic, but I believe people VASTLY overvalue action economy in the early game. Sure, you'll get to claim if it takes me more. If you've got dice-based control you will have a better chance of getting it into play first. But that's it. If you're not killing a character in the turn we're both going to resolve all our dice. You'll probably claim, but that may or may not be valuable. Action economy is about a lot more than just who can burn through everything the fastest.

If you want to be snarky, why don't you math me up the likelihood of you drawing *two* Sith Holocrons *and* two Mind Probes *and* rolling both specials on turn one for that eight resource swing? I'm sure it's super high.

You don't need two Holocrons. You need one. It's very hard to take your evaluation of the card seriously when you don't even understand how it can be used. But sure, let's math it out.

Let's assume that one Holocron as a given - this "You might not draw it" applies to any card in your deck, so arguing the power level of a card based on whether you draw it is just stupid.

Hello? It is completely relevant and not at all stupid. Sure, you can say "if you draw it" about any card and claim that it's a bad argument. Except this isn't a card you can just get whenever and have it be good. If you don't see it early, it is borderline useless. That's a big difference.

Compare that to most other cards. If I draw Electroshock Turn 5 I am perfectly happy, since it works just fine there. If I draw Holocron I am looking to use it to reroll dice.... that's a pretty big distinction.

When a card is only incredibly strong early, the chance to get it early is arguably the most relevant argument there is. Is it worth including a card that can have huge early game impact at the risk of not drawing it and thus seeing it late when it is useless? That's an extremely important question. One you seem happy to ignore and dismiss with name calling.

I'm going to stick with one Mind Probe, because the math is a lot cleaner I think a 3-resource swing is still dramatically better than what you'll get out of any other upgrade. Which I've been trying to point out, but nobody seems to want to deal with anything but the extreme arguments.

Chances of drawing at least one Mind Probe are 2/49+2/48+2/47+2/46=17%. It doesn't quite double that if you mulligan for it aggressively, but lands around 31%. If you're willing to take any of the blue abilities in the deck (there are usually 8) it's 67%, or 90% with a mulligan. If we just look for Mind Probe or Force Throw (both notable for their control abilities and >2 cost) it's a bit over 50%.

Except the guy you seem content to ignore.

The issue is that the only blue ability upgrade that directly contributes to you winning or losing among the lot of 6 is Mind Probe. If you could drop Lightsabers with it, then fine, we agree, it's broken. But you can't.

The three resource upgrade that you *might* get more often than not has no overly relevant dice faces aside from specials, since so few of them have any damage sides. Force Push is terrible if you never/rarely roll the special, which is a 1/3 Force Training? Immobalize? Not exactly game breaking. That's why the argument for the extreme. Mind Probe is the dream, because it will drastically increase your damage potential and thus the speed of the game, something that Vader decks need to be able to do in his worst match ups.

So you find the Holocron, which is a 17% chance (assuming your math for the Probe is accurate), you play it, roll the dice and get the special (33%), your opponent ignores it for some reason, AND you drop a force throw and MAYBE roll the Special (also 33%)

I'm sorry, every example you have given is just really mediocre, even in the best case scenario. Hell, I could have stopped at the fact that getting a Holocron opening draw was sub 20%.

Again, I think the card has a high ceiling and that if you are playing a lot of Blue Ability Upgrades, then fine, why not I guess. But to claim it's broken is just asinine.

But still, stick with the Mind Probe. 31% chance to draw it, 33% chance for the Holocron special, 33% chance for the Mind Probe special = 3.5%. Now that's hardly automatic, but it's worth pointing out that I haven't been suggesting any given rolls on the upgrades that come into play, merely that they can get there. But it's still about a thousand times more likely than what anyone else has suggested they could pull off that's "equal". You've also saved a resource that your opponent would have to spend on their comparable 2-cost upgrade, that you can spend to cancel or for other upgrades.

Which is important in a deck that has no great way to generate resources I guess, but otherwise not noteworthy.

You are aware that if we are strictly talking in resources saved that It Binds All Things will save you more resources throughout the game than Holocron will...

Summing up the collected answers to your original post, there are many ways to deal with its die directly

This is irrelevant when comparing upgrades, because the same can be said for any die. The point is not entirely "What can Holocron do in a turn", it's "When you compare Holocron to pretty much any upgrade in the game, it's better." But even in the counterplay it comes off better - what other upgrade can force you to counterplay it so hard just to remain even? If you do spend your counters against the Holocron, it costs you a counter and it costs me absolutely nothing. I'll then spend my resources to play an upgrade just like you did, but I'll have my counters still available. Even when it does nothing, it puts me ahead.

This is a different topic, but I believe people VASTLY overvalue action economy in the early game. Sure, you'll get to claim if it takes me more. If you've got dice-based control you will have a better chance of getting it into play first. But that's it. If you're not killing a character in the turn we're both going to resolve all our dice. You'll probably claim, but that may or may not be valuable. Action economy is about a lot more than just who can burn through everything the fastest.

It's not about burning through stuff faster, sure. But if I am putting pressure on you to counter 2-3 different things at once because I have gotten even 1+ action on you then you are much less likely to be able to and will take massive damage as a punishment. People like to think that without upgrades its easy to counter multiple dice, but that isn't true at all, especially if your opponent is doing it back.

Tempo is very, very important. You can go too far with action gain, but that doesn't change the statement.

You actually do have a slightly better chance of having what you need in your opening hand due to Mulligan rules. If you say.... get Mind Probe, but NOT Holocron, you can keep mind probe and mulligan 4.

I don't know the odds once you factor in those things, but it can be done. And it's FUN when you get to do it!

And hey, even if nothing else, it's a free card and can get you a focus... and works GREAT with power of the dark side... it's just a great all around card for dark side decks.

You actually do have a slightly better chance of having what you need in your opening hand due to Mulligan rules. If you say.... get Mind Probe, but NOT Holocron, you can keep mind probe and mulligan 4.

I don't know the odds once you factor in those things, but it can be done. And it's FUN when you get to do it!

And hey, even if nothing else, it's a free card and can get you a focus... and works GREAT with power of the dark side... it's just a great all around card for dark side decks.

Agreed. It's generally not game breaking. It's a good card that seems like an auto-take in a deck with more than a couple of blue ability upgrades. IF you happen to pull the perfect opening hand AND roll amazingly well, you'll be so far ahead that you'll likely win... but that's going to be a rare circumstance.

You actually do have a slightly better chance of having what you need in your opening hand due to Mulligan rules. If you say.... get Mind Probe, but NOT Holocron, you can keep mind probe and mulligan 4.

I don't know the odds once you factor in those things, but it can be done. And it's FUN when you get to do it!

And hey, even if nothing else, it's a free card and can get you a focus... and works GREAT with power of the dark side... it's just a great all around card for dark side decks.

Agreed. It's generally not game breaking. It's a good card that seems like an auto-take in a deck with more than a couple of blue ability upgrades. IF you happen to pull the perfect opening hand AND roll amazingly well, you'll be so far ahead that you'll likely win... but that's going to be a rare circumstance.

This. No one is arguing that Holocron is bad. We are arguing that the card is broken/the best card in the game, which was the assertion in the OP.

So I consider Sith Holocron to be this games, "Exodia, The Forbidden One". You read it and you think to yourself, "OH MY GOD. You mean all I have to do is just draw a few cards, and just HAVE them, and I win?. That's it? BUSTED"

Except, not really. Having a set of specific cards in hand is a tough situation to get yourself into. There are few things with higher variance as the specific deck position of a few specific cards. You COULD draw all five in your opening hand, and win.

The good news here is that Sith Holocron lives in a place that lets it be playable.

So is Sith Holocron good? Yes. Of course it is. Is it ALWAYS good? Nope. Not by a long shot. This is the only upgrade in the game that on it's own, is utterly worthless. Disregarding the die itself, it comes with a serious albatross. So it's a free die (which is AWESOME), which is only useful if you have one of a fairly small subset of cards in hand. (not awesome). Your odds of getting a favorable scenario are good, but your odds of it being a dead card are also high enough to give pause. even worse, it's a dead card you won't want to get rid off, making it much worse than something you would be willing to toss for a re-roll, and running the risk of being a dead card on the NEXT turn too.

By comparison, every other card is exactly as good as it always is. A jetpack is always a jetpack, and so is a Survival gear, a Holdout Blaster, and a Force Training. They are all guaranteed to do their thing when get them.

The Second thing that must be considered is that time is an investment. Spending 3 turns (plus 1 more for any re-rolls or manipulation) to do its thing leaves you open and vulnerable to a lot of interference. Getting a kick-ass upgrade becomes not so worth it, if in doing so you are in a worse position for it compared to your opponent at turns end.

When a card is only incredibly strong early, the chance to get it early is arguably the most relevant argument there is. Is it worth including a card that can have huge early game impact at the risk of not drawing it and thus seeing it late when it is useless? That's an extremely important question. One you seem happy to ignore and dismiss with name calling.

That had nothing to do with the comment I made. His sample scenario required drawing two Holocrons in your opening hand. Being able to cycle a single Holocron across two characters is one of the things many people miss when evaluating the usefulness of the card. It's not name calling to say that someone who obviously hasn't realized that hasn't fully analyzed the card's potential, thus making their evaluation suspect. If you don't know the tricks you can do with the card, you are of course more likely to think it's fine. If you think a 0.0025% good turn is the same as a 10% good turn, you are of course more likely to think it's fine.

I also disagree that it's only strong early. Do you never play upgrades late game? Not sure how your games normally go, but most decks don't seem to have any easier time getting big upgrades out on turn 3 or 4 than they do on 1. If anything, I find it to be MORE valuable late. Once both players are established, you need to devote a lot of effort and resources to your control options. Being able to do so and still improve your board at the same time is not a trivial benefit.

As for the rest, it seems like you just don't respect any of the blue upgrades. Which I can only disagree with. Immobilize is an automatic dice removal per turn, and half facings shields if you don't want to use it. Force Throw may rely on the special, but combining both dice cancelation and damage is huge. Heck, Reversal does the same thing as a one shot, but only for damage facings, and it costs 3. Hard to think that's not pretty awesome.

Similarly, if I get an ideal roll off the best first play in my Jango/Bala deck (Which involves only drawing ONE card, Holdout Blaster, rather than two), I can potentially land 10 damage in HALF the actions that doesn't depend on my opponent's hand size and leaving precisely *ONE* chance for my opponent to counter.

Your "ideal roll" here requires one specific facing on each of those five dice. That's a 0.0024% chance of happening.

But sure, tell me more about how unlikely it is to get one of the ten usable upgrades with a Holocron in my opening hand.

I'm just getting into Destiny, but I teach math at the college level for a living. Sorry to jump in, but that computation isn't correct if I'm reading what you said correctly about an ideal roll having one specific face on each of 5 dice.

If you want to have a specific value on each of 5 six-sided dice, each of which only appears on 1 of the 6 sides, then the probability of that happening in a single roll is (1/6) ^5 = .0001286 which converts to .01286%. Still small, but not quite as small as suggested above.

The Second thing that must be considered is that time is an investment. Spending 3 turns (plus 1 more for any re-rolls or manipulation) to do its thing leaves you open and vulnerable to a lot of interference. Getting a kick-ass upgrade becomes not so worth it, if in doing so you are in a worse position for it compared to your opponent at turns end.

Sure, it's 3 turns. But that doesn't stand in isolation, you have to consider it in line with what your opponent is doing. For instance, those 3 include activating the character. Your opponent is probably doing the same, so you're not falling behind at all.

If we're going to compare apples to apples, it's one action slower - both deploy an upgrade, both activate, now I resolve the special to swap the card. And even this may not actually slow anything much down, because there's at least the potential to hit another special and resolve it immediately.

So you're one action behind for the benefit of saving 1-3 resources, per play of the Holocron. Unless that one action is going to be killing a character, I just don't think it's that big a deal.

I'm just getting into Destiny, but I teach math at the college level for a living. Sorry to jump in, but that computation isn't correct if I'm reading what you said correctly about an ideal roll having one specific face on each of 5 dice.

If you want to have a specific value on each of 5 six-sided dice, each of which only appears on 1 of the 6 sides, then the probability of that happening in a single roll is (1/6) ^5 = .0001286 which converts to .01286%. Still small, but not quite as small as suggested above.

Yeah, knew how to do it, looks like I typo'ed the calculator for 6 dice instead of 5. My bad on that.

But I agree with the last - by the time you hit one in 7,000 I think it's rare enough to consider non-relevant for the purposes of accomplishing it in a game

So is Sith Holocron good? Yes. Of course it is. Is it ALWAYS good? Nope. Not by a long shot. This is the only upgrade in the game that on it's own, is utterly worthless. Disregarding the die itself, it comes with a serious albatross. So it's a free die (which is AWESOME), which is only useful if you have one of a fairly small subset of cards in hand. (not awesome). Your odds of getting a favorable scenario are good, but your odds of it being a dead card are also high enough to give pause. even worse, it's a dead card you won't want to get rid off, making it much worse than something you would be willing to toss for a re-roll, and running the risk of being a dead card on the NEXT turn too.

Again, this is missing a lot of the tricks you can do with the card.

It plays for free, so there's very little drawback to it. And even without an upgrade in hand, it's going to be useful. It'll feed Power of the Force. You probably don't know I have no upgrades to use it with, so it makes a spectacular decoy and you just wasted a precious cancelation. It's net resource gain with the Mos Eisley Cantina. Emperor's Throne Room can guarantee it, although admittedly that's a high-risk battlefield. It's not a "small subset" of cards, it's most of the upgrades in your deck. Even if you don't hit the special, it's still got a focus which is always useful, and a +resource side which might be. And if it's so obviously useless late game, it's an easy choice to dump for a reroll, which isn't bad either, and if you really want to clear it out of your hand you can do so without discarding it.

When a card is only incredibly strong early, the chance to get it early is arguably the most relevant argument there is. Is it worth including a card that can have huge early game impact at the risk of not drawing it and thus seeing it late when it is useless? That's an extremely important question. One you seem happy to ignore and dismiss with name calling.

That had nothing to do with the comment I made. His sample scenario required drawing two Holocrons in your opening hand. Being able to cycle a single Holocron across two characters is one of the things many people miss when evaluating the usefulness of the card. It's not name calling to say that someone who obviously hasn't realized that hasn't fully analyzed the card's potential, thus making their evaluation suspect. If you don't know the tricks you can do with the card, you are of course more likely to think it's fine. If you think a 0.0025% good turn is the same as a 10% good turn, you are of course more likely to think it's fine.

I also disagree that it's only strong early. Do you never play upgrades late game? Not sure how your games normally go, but most decks don't seem to have any easier time getting big upgrades out on turn 3 or 4 than they do on 1. If anything, I find it to be MORE valuable late. Once both players are established, you need to devote a lot of effort and resources to your control options. Being able to do so and still improve your board at the same time is not a trivial benefit.

As for the rest, it seems like you just don't respect any of the blue upgrades. Which I can only disagree with. Immobilize is an automatic dice removal per turn, and half facings shields if you don't want to use it. Force Throw may rely on the special, but combining both dice cancelation and damage is huge. Heck, Reversal does the same thing as a one shot, but only for damage facings, and it costs 3. Hard to think that's not pretty awesome.

I like how you were willing to quibble about being able to get the Holocron off twice in one turn via a rules interaction (exceptionally unlikely) with someone, but then didn't understand that Immobilize is NOT dice removal, which is printed right on the card. Fair is fair it seems.

Maybe I don;t respect the Blue Villain abilities, because most of them neither a) do damage or b) further a mill victory. Dice removal is great and all, right up and until you die anyway. Trying to control the game via favorable dice rolls seems like it will either work great, or fall flat on it's face. I'd prefer to remove the dice (no pun intended) as much as possible from my chances of winning.

..... you seem unwilling or unable to accept that getting a Holocron off turn 1 and then using the upgrade for multiple turns is 100% more important than getting a trigger 3-4 turns into the game, where the game is likely already decided in many cases. Agree to disagree I guess? I honestly don't think I can explain it to you any better than what I have already said. Turn 1 it is a massive swing. Turn 4 on, it's a "whoopadeedoo".

I guess time will tell how "broken" it is either way. Having played with and against the card many times, I frequently feel it is not worth the slot it occupies. To each his own I guess....

I like how you were willing to quibble about being able to get the Holocron off twice in one turn via a rules interaction (exceptionally unlikely) with someone, but then didn't understand that Immobilize is NOT dice removal, which is printed right on the card. Fair is fair it seems.

Poor use of keyword - I consider it effectively removing a die. I did know what it does But ran into a keyword conflict in my phrasing. Apologies for the confusion, even if it was completely irrelevant to the actual conversation.

I like how you were willing to quibble about being able to get the Holocron off twice in one turn via a rules interaction (exceptionally unlikely) with someone, but then didn't understand that Immobilize is NOT dice removal, which is printed right on the card. Fair is fair it seems.

Poor use of keyword - I consider it effectively removing a die. I did know what it does But ran into a keyword conflict in my phrasing. Apologies for the confusion, even if it was completely irrelevant to the actual conversation.

How convenient. Apparently, everything but your own viewpoint is irrelevant to the actual conversation, despite all the points that have been brought forward.

When the only person claiming it is broken is you and you still can't even acknowledge the counterpoints...sigh...I don't know why I bother. The internet is for trolls it seems.

Immobilize does not "effectively" remove anything (except from it's own dice I guess)....there are a many ways to set/reroll the dice afterwards....especially if you have tempo...

You claimed that I undervalued the upgrades and when I say why I value them lower you say it's not relevant to the conversation, despite over blowing one because you are incorrect about the text. Yep, checks out.

Sigh...

Similarly, if I get an ideal roll off the best first play in my Jango/Bala deck (Which involves only drawing ONE card, Holdout Blaster, rather than two), I can potentially land 10 damage in HALF the actions that doesn't depend on my opponent's hand size and leaving precisely *ONE* chance for my opponent to counter.

Your "ideal roll" here requires one specific facing on each of those five dice. That's a 0.0024% chance of happening.

But sure, tell me more about how unlikely it is to get one of the ten usable upgrades with a Holocron in my opening hand.

I'm just getting into Destiny, but I teach math at the college level for a living. Sorry to jump in, but that computation isn't correct if I'm reading what you said correctly about an ideal roll having one specific face on each of 5 dice.

If you want to have a specific value on each of 5 six-sided dice, each of which only appears on 1 of the 6 sides, then the probability of that happening in a single roll is (1/6) ^5 = .0001286 which converts to .01286%. Still small, but not quite as small as suggested above.

Could you do the math for drawing 1 each of 2 different cards from a 30 card deck when you have 2 copies of each card in the deck, then rolling a particular result on a six sided die twice when 2 of the sides have the desired result?

You draw 5 cards and may mulligan all 5 of them.

Buhallin, we've heard a lot of reasons why you think it's good, and there doesn't seem to be much disagreement on that front. Can you tell us how any of the things you've just said actually make it broken? Extra points if you can analyze its various matchups.

When a card is only incredibly strong early, the chance to get it early is arguably the most relevant argument there is. Is it worth including a card that can have huge early game impact at the risk of not drawing it and thus seeing it late when it is useless? That's an extremely important question. One you seem happy to ignore and dismiss with name calling.

That had nothing to do with the comment I made. His sample scenario required drawing two Holocrons in your opening hand. Being able to cycle a single Holocron across two characters is one of the things many people miss when evaluating the usefulness of the card. It's not name calling to say that someone who obviously hasn't realized that hasn't fully analyzed the card's potential, thus making their evaluation suspect. If you don't know the tricks you can do with the card, you are of course more likely to think it's fine. If you think a 0.0025% good turn is the same as a 10% good turn, you are of course more likely to think it's fine.

You seem really focused on a casual slip up describing a scenario in which two vs one changes nothing of significance.

It makes zero difference whether or not you have/need two, you still have to play the card, roll/modify the special, resolve it, play it again, roll/modify special, resolve it again... rinse and repeat, with this action inefficiency and requirement for modification or luck being the primary argument against.

What do I know about the card, though? I only play a deck with two of them regularly. Clearly my evaluation is suspect.

EDIT: Speaking of which, pulling one out today. Two strikes me as too many compared to another It Binds All Things.

I run three because my FACE is also a Sith Lolicron.

When the only person claiming it is broken is you and you still can't even acknowledge the counterpoints

I'm hardly the only person claiming it, I'm just the the persistent one in this conversation, and it's rather insulting to everyone else for you to pretend they don't exist. MANY people have a problem with the Holocron. I have also actually acknowledged the counterpoints, including doing much of the grunt work for people who can't be bothered to actually analyze the card themselves. I simply continue to disagree.

Yes, I slipped in how I described Immobilize. Is the precise function of Immobilize deeply impactful on the value of the Holocron? Blanking the die is still a very useful and consistent control option, although obviously not as useful as actual removal. Would you think the Holocron's usefulness increased dramatically if Immobilize did remove a die? I don't, and I doubt you do either - which makes the misspeak irrelevant to the discussion. I don't want to put words in your mouth, so if you think the exact mechanic has that large an impact, I apologize.

It makes zero difference whether or not you have/need two

Given that you were asking what the probability of a specific opening hand was, it actually makes a rather large difference. Especially since if you have one, the odds of being able to redeploy it (functionally, not the keyword, I'd hate to get into another round of terminology shaming) are dramatically higher than the odds of drawing the second one in your opening hand. I'll let you do the math on this one.

I said basically every card can be considered really great if you roll perfectly for it, which is absolutely still true, even for Promotion. Play your holocron and piddle around your activations trying to make your voodoo force magic work go ahead, you've prioritized a target for me to just start dumping damage on.. Not saying its not a nice card, but it has just as much of a chance of rolling blank as it does rolling the special.

Everyone in this post agrees its a good card, but people are pointing out that it isn't an "I always win when I have this card in my deck!" If you want us to be like, "Ooh wow, its so broken. Thanks for showing us I guess this game sux now" then that isn't going to happen here.

Also, your previous notion that " Many decks run about half upgrades and half events" is ridiculously. Ooh, those support cards like Black One, Millennium Falcon, AT-ST, First Order Tie Fighter and many more are completely ignored in a lot of decks. It seems you like to generalize to give yourself credibility in regards to deck builds and the number of people complaining about this card and then scrutinize to try and remove others credibility. There is nothing left to gain from discussing this with you because you don't want a fair conversation you just want to be right.

Sith Holocron- Really good card, especially with good luck on the draw and rolling. Broken? Nah. There was even a post a page back giving a breakdown of a few games of somebody just trying to abuse holocon and dominate with it and as already mentioned with perfect rolls and a good card draw, yeah, its effective. If you don't get the draws or your rolls struggle some then it really crashes back down to earth. That can be said about EVERY SINGLE DECK though. Find me a deck that doesn't still rely on luck in drawing and rolling and then I'll call THAT deck broken.

MAAAAAATH

Calculations are done using a quick python script I hacked up to sum the probabilities. It worked for some stuff I knew soooo I am assuming it is right . Go below the dotted line if you just want to see the results

Method for mulliganing, given we want at least one of type A and one of type B.

calculate pr(at least one A)

calculate pr(at least one B)

calculate pr(at least one A and at least one B)

pr ( no A or B) = 1 - pr(at least one A) - pr(at least one B) + pr(at least one A and at least one B)

now we need to calculate the mulligan part:

calculate pr(at least one A | B is the first card)

calculate pr(at least one B| A is the first card)

total probabilities = (calculate pr(at least one A) - calculate pr(at least one A and at least one B)) * pr(at least one A | B is the first card)

+ (calculate pr(at least one B) - calculate pr(at least one A and at least one B)) * pr(at least one B | A is the first card)

+ (pr ( no A or B) * pr(at least one A and at least one B)

+ pr(at least one A and at least one B)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Probability of drawing at least 1 of each given two ofs (without mulligans) = ~8% (bit over)

Probability of drawing at least 1 of each given two ofs (with mulligans) = ~24% (bit under)

so that gives about an 8% chance of rolling the special first time in that circumstance.

If you have 8 of the abilities you are happy with the probability of having at least one of holicron + ability is ~46%. The ability to keep cards gives you dramatically better odds of getting combinations you want.

I do feel you are overstating the action inefficiency, as it is an upgrade (so doesn't cost you extra to roll it into the pool) and gives you back an action by immediately rolling in the upgrade dice once you resolve it. So it essentially costs you a single action in the end vs someone who is just playing out an ability the old fashioned way. This puts it on par with actions that grant credits, and ahead of upgrades/supports that are trying to do so. Certainly behind just playing aggro but faster than other ways of getting more out.

I think one of the strongest arguments as to why it is pretty broken is that it has such a little cost to your deck for playing it. You would expect a card that gives you an 8% chance of a huge edge on the first turn to force you to restrict your deck a lot, but it doesn't really make you work for it. Abilities don't seem to be, on average, dramatically worse than their weapon counterparts for the cost and all cards have an alternative use so you don't clog up your hand with the holicrons when you don't want them. You also don't have to commit resources to it or additional actions after the first so any answer from the opponent would put them behind.

anyways, I was mostly just here to post the math

MATHS AWAAAAAAY

Similarly, if I get an ideal roll off the best first play in my Jango/Bala deck (Which involves only drawing ONE card, Holdout Blaster, rather than two), I can potentially land 10 damage in HALF the actions that doesn't depend on my opponent's hand size and leaving precisely *ONE* chance for my opponent to counter.

Your "ideal roll" here requires one specific facing on each of those five dice. That's a 0.0024% chance of happening.

But sure, tell me more about how unlikely it is to get one of the ten usable upgrades with a Holocron in my opening hand.

I'm just getting into Destiny, but I teach math at the college level for a living. Sorry to jump in, but that computation isn't correct if I'm reading what you said correctly about an ideal roll having one specific face on each of 5 dice.

If you want to have a specific value on each of 5 six-sided dice, each of which only appears on 1 of the 6 sides, then the probability of that happening in a single roll is (1/6) ^5 = .0001286 which converts to .01286%. Still small, but not quite as small as suggested above.

Could you do the math for drawing 1 each of 2 different cards from a 30 card deck when you have 2 copies of each card in the deck, then rolling a particular result on a six sided die twice when 2 of the sides have the desired result?

You draw 5 cards and may mulligan all 5 of them.

This one is a bit trickier because of all the cases, but here's what I did. Let me know if I didn't interpret something correctly. I do a lot of stats/math/odds stuff on cardgamedb for the Star Wars LCG forums so I've got a bit of a reputation there as the math guy. Since I'm a teacher, I always tries to work out some details so people can see what's going on more clearly, so bear with the length of this. Warning: Math incoming.

I use what is call combinations for the counting part and then the combinations can give you probabilities.

Combinations are often denoted n C k . It represents the number of ways you can pick k objects out of a set of n objects where order doesn't matter. That's what happens when you draw a hand of cards, the order you get your hand doesn't matter, just what the cards are.

n C k is computed as n!/(k!*(n-k)!)

Let's put it in a more specific card context simply because I think it makes it easier to follow.

.

Say you have 2 Holocrons and 2 Mind Probes in your deck of 30.

In general you are picking 5 of 30 cards to make your hand, so if there weren't any conditions on your draw there are actually 30 C 5 ways to draw a 5 card starting hand. That number is 142506.

Ultimately, you want to figure out what are the odds that after you draw and mulligan up to 5 cards, you have at least 1 Holocron and 1 Mind Probe in your hand. There are a few different ways this can happen and you have to add all the cases together. Factoring in the dice part in after that is the easy part so I'll put that in at the end.

Case 1 - you get lucky and have at least 1 Holocron and at least 1 Mind Probe in your opening 5 card hand from your deck of 30. This means a mulligan isn't needed to get the cards you wanted. The number of 5 card hands where this happens is actually 11726. So the odds of this happening are 11726/142506 which is about .0823 or 8.23%

Case 2 - you have at least 1 Holocron but no Mind Probes. At this point you have to factor in the mulligan along with the number of ways hands that would have resulted in 1 or 2 Holocrons but no mind probes (I'm leaving that aspect out to avoid number overload). Even if you have 2 Holocrons, you want to maximize your chances of getting a Mind Probe, so you'd keep only 1 Holocron (even if you had 2) and mulligan 4 cards. Without going into all the messy details involved with the subcases here, the probability of starting with at least 1 Holocron and no Mind Probes, then taking a 4 card mulligan and getting at least 1 Mind Probe (to go along with the Holocron you kept initially) is about .0595 or 5.95%

Case 3 - you have at least 1 Mind Probe, but no Holocrons. The computations and reasoning are the same as Case 2 (just switch Mind Probe and Holocron everywhere you see them above). The probability of starting with at least 1 Mind Probe and no Holocrons, then taking at 4 card mulligan and getting at least 1 Holocron (to go along with the Mind Probe you kept initially) is about 0.595 or 5.95%

Case 4- your opening hand has 0 Mind Probes and 0 Holocrons. At this point you need to mulligan all 5 cards and draw again hoping to get one of each. The probability your starting hand has no Mind Probes and no Holocrons, then taking a 5 card mulligan and getting at least 1 Holocron and at least 1 Mind Probe is about .03798 or 3.798%.

So to get the probability of having at least 1 Holocron and at least 1 Mind Probe after any selective mulligan that will maximize your chance to get one of each, you have to add the probabilities/percentages from the cases together - that's 8.23% + 5.95% + 5.95% + 3.798% or about 23.928%. So roughly a little less than 1/4 of the time you should expect to be able to get at least 1 Holocron and at least 1 Mind Probe at the start of any game. That's actually pretty decent odds IMO, but certainly not game breaking.

Now for the roll part, I'm hoping I'm understanding your scenario correctly. I'm assuming you're rolling a single die twice or you have 2 copies of the same die and the die itself has 2 sides the same. I'll say the symbol that shows up on 2 of the sides is a special, just for illustrative purposes. If that's not what you meant, let me know and I'll work it out again based on what you really were assuming.

It's essentially the same both of the ways I described it above though (I.e. rolling 2 copies of the same die one time is equivalent to rolling 1 copy of a die twice) . You'd have a 2/6 =1/3 chance of getting the special you want on the die (or dice). Whether you roll that die twice or have 2 copies of it and roll each of those copies 1 time, the probability you'd have the special show up each time is (1/3)*(1/3)= 1/9. So you just multiply the above percentage we computed by 1/9 to figure out the probability you asked for. That would be 23.928% * (1/9) which is about 2.658%.

If I didn't interpret the die part of question correctly let me know and I'll fix it.