This may have been discussed at length already, but I couldn't find a relevant topic and it might help someone who is still confused about this.

In skirmish, if a figure qould suffer strain, its controller may discard a card from the top of their command deck to prevent this strain. I've noticed that a lot of people don't really understand this. In short, discarding cards does NOTHING to affect the quality of your deck and outside of "tutor" effects, the ONLY consideration should be whether you think you will run out of cards in the command deck or not .

What do I mean by this? I've heard my friends say "I won't discard here, I might discard a really good card" or "it's so early in the game, I don't want to discard yet because I'd be limiting my options of which command cards I can draw," (the second one holds some merit if you have Devotion) which are basically nonsensical arguments.

If your command deck is truly random, discarding a card is random as well, and as likely to "push" a good card to the top as it is to discard it. Let's say you're looking for Son of Skywalker and have 10 cards left in the deck. You will draw two cards over the next two turns. Your chance of drawing SoS is 2/10 . Now let's say you discard a card for strain. There's a 1/10 chance that you discard SoS. But there's a 9/10 chance that the card is in the other 9 cards. This increases your chance of drawing it to 2/9. So your chance of drawing SoS is 9/10*2/9=2/10 . If you discard 5 cards, it's 5/10*2/5= 2/10 . (Here's a Monte Carlo simulation that a player developed for Magic, you can try various simulations with multiple "good" cards etc.) This becomes different, of course, once you discard 9+ cards.

There is a number of ways to help your brain grasp this. You can imagine that the cards you discard are placed on the bottom of your deck instead (if the deck is random, this does nothing) where you won't draw them. You can imagine that you are discarding from the bottom of the deck (if the deck is random, this is the same as discarding from the top). You can imagine that the cards you discard are placed face-down (they are unavailable and they are as likely to be useless as useful).

Anyway, I hope this helps, as it's a relatively unintuitive concept, but it's also something that can help you easily improve your skirmish game.

Well, it all depends on how much cards you plan to have left in your deck at the end. Some builds with Jabba, R2, planning, black market ... often can go through the whole deck. That's the only reason I would see not to discard a card.

Yep I've had to explain this a few times and it's part of why I don't think the Strain list works at the moment (I've played Under Duress lists in the past with some success but you have to really push it.

Unless your opponent comes to draw a card and has no cards left, all of your strain was almost worthless (there is some value in knowing what cards they don't have in hand)

All you're doing is making them draw different cards, not less cards

The only time I ever discard a command card is when I can't afford to take a damage (it will defeat my figure). My command deck is always built with 15 cards that I'm not willing to just discard. Command cards are so powerful and can sway a game more than losing a figure in many cases. It's also not worth the risk of discarding one of my best command cards like Blaze of Glory, Son of Skywalker, Assassinate, Element of Surprise, etc. As @burek277 points out, if the discarded card is not one of the most important cards in your deck, your chances of drawing them increase. That's all good and dandy, but if it is, that could mean the difference in winning and losing. In other words the decision to discard a command card or take damage for a strain is more than just understanding the statistics. You have to gauge if you are willing to discard a game changer. Again, in my 15 command cards, all of them are good cards that I for sure would rather be able to use.

You should not forget, that discarded cards are open information. If you discard a SoS or Take Initiative, then your opponent knows this, and can adjust his strategy. This can be pretty devastating with the right cards.

27 minutes ago, DerBaer said:

You should not forget, that discarded cards are open information. If you discard a SoS or Take Initiative, then your opponent knows this, and can adjust his strategy. This can be pretty devastating with the right cards.

This. Even if you're not going to run out of command cards during the game some cards are so impactful that your opponent will play around the possibility that you have them in your hand. These are cards like Take Initiative, Negation, SoS, Blaze of Glory, On the Lam, Squad Swarm, Strength in Numbers, etc., cards that can literally win you games and that often comprise at least 30% of any given deck. Your opponent's strategy will completely change when they see these cards safely discarded. Sometimes the right thing is to take damage, other times discard a card, but I strongly disagree with the notion that when taking strain " the ONLY consideration should be whether you think you will run out of cards in the command deck or not . "

1 hour ago, wannabepudge said:

The only time I ever discard a command card is when I can't afford to take a damage (it will defeat my figure). My command deck is always built with 15 cards that I'm not willing to just discard. Command cards are so powerful and can sway a game more than losing a figure in many cases. It's also not worth the risk of discarding one of my best command cards like Blaze of Glory, Son of Skywalker, Assassinate, Element of Surprise, etc. As @burek277 points out, if the discarded card is not one of the most important cards in your deck, your chances of drawing them increase. That's all good and dandy, but if it is, that could mean the difference in winning and losing. In other words the decision to discard a command card or take damage for a strain is more than just understanding the statistics. You have to gauge if you are willing to discard a game changer. Again, in my 15 command cards, all of them are good cards that I for sure would rather be able to use.

But I think the point that burek is trying to make is that, even if every card in your deck is awesome, it still doesn't make any difference whether you discard them or not. And yes, I acknowledge that that seems really counterintuitive.

Let's say that you play a game where you always elect to take your strain as damage. Let's err on the high side of a standard tournament game and say that that a game lasts four rounds and that you take a terminal on the first round and hold it, uncontested, all game. In this case you'll get the three cards you start with plus you'll draw two cards at the end of rounds 1, 2, and 3. That means that throughout the course of the game you're going to see 9 of your 15 cards. That also means that throughout the course of that game you're not going to see 6 of your 15 cards.

So no matter how good your command deck is, you've got 6 cards that you're never seeing and you're wasting for nothing. You would almost certainly have been better off discarding them for strain and preventing damage. Again, notice here that it really doesn't matter at all how good your command cards are - they're worth exactly nothing unless you can draw them.

Edit: Just one further point. You're equally likely to discard a game-changing card as you are to discard a different card which allows you to draw a game-changer that you would have otherwise left in your deck.

So like burek said, the only time it makes sense to take damage instead of strain is if you think that you're in danger of running through your entire deck of command cards. That or if you really don't want to take the chance of letting your opponent know that you've discarded a useful card, but in my opinion the chances of that both happening and influencing the game substantially are not huge.

@manatee_x I understand that its highly unlikely that I will see/be able to use all of my command cards, but I put high stake in the fact that when I discard any in the list that @turkishvancat listed (Take Initiative, Negation, SoS, Blaze of Glory, On the Lam, Squad Swarm, Strength in Numbers, etc.,) that changes the game substantially. Like @DerBaer said, if my opponent knows I don't have SOS or Blaze of Glory in my hand anymore, that changes the make up of the game quite a bit. I just don't think the decision to discard a command card or take damage can be made simply by assessing the probabilities since there are several intangibles involved.

I gather that if you already have a few or several of (Take Initiative, Negation, SoS, Blaze of Glory, On the Lam, Squad Swarm, Strength in Numbers, etc.,) in your hand, you are more willing to discard one from the deck to prevent suffering the damage (which you would otherwise suffer instead of suffering strain).

Unfortunately most cards only allow for 1 instance of each in a deck. All the ones mentioned so far in the thread are only allowed 1 instance.

I meant that if you have 3 out of 4 of your gamechanger cards in your hand, you are more willing to discard cards from the deck because

a) it is more probable that you draw the 'lesser' cards and

b) even if you then lose one 'gamechanger' card, your opponent may think you are out of options now.

@a1bert , Understood, and accurate point of course

but there are so many more useful cards now. Taking 1 damage is usually outweighed by what the command card can do for you.

I've played this game so many times with and without command cards. Without the cards, its really a different type of game. You can fill a deck with at least 50% of it being very impactful type of cards. I'd say in certain lists (spy, hunter or smuggler and soon, Force User cards) you can fill a command card deck with 70-80% game changing type of cards and there is very little room for redundancy.

I suppose we need to make one hunter-strain list and play it against itself.

With team A ALWAYS discarding for strain and team B sometimes discarding and sometimes taking damage.

And run this match around 500 times.

And then compare the success rates.

#Science

I understand your point, but two things change this for me. The first is I'm probably running Rebels, which means I have SoS and Devotion in my deck. Devotion gives you the ability to search your whole deck, so your entire pool of cards is relevant, not just the ones you draw. The other thing that affects this for me is that I often see most of my deck and have run out of cards at times. The scenario given above of a four round game... well, I can't assume that. What if it goes five rounds? That's 11 cards if I hold a terminal each round. But I also might draw Planning, so now I've seen 13 cards. I'd rather wait to draw my best cards before discarding cards for strain. If I suffer strain three times, then I've already shorted myself a card.

On top of this, I also often use Rebel High Command, or if I happen to run Scum I have Jabba, so even if the game only lasts 4 rounds I might see 14 cards (if I draw Planning).

Command cards are king makers, so it's hard to part with them. But if I've already drawn SoS, I'll probably discard the card.

-ryanjamal

@ryanjamal - Devotion and running out of cards are the exact examples I gave as being the only consideration to not discarding.

There's a lot of misunderstanding of randomness here. ManateeX gave another good example. There are going to be cards you never see in pretty much every game of competitive skirmish (let's call them wasted cards). After the game ends, those wasted cards can either be in the discard pile or on the bottom of your command deck. It doesn't matter where they are, so using them to prevent some damage is always worth it.

The only relevant point here is that the opponent can play accordingly if they know you can't draw a certain card, but the same goes for you. If you know you can't draw Son of Skywalker, you can adjust your play a bit. You're also equally likely to discard something useless and not giving anyone much relevant info, whereas not taking damage is always a net positive. But this has nothing to do with "losing a card," which keeps popping up.

a1bert's and ryanjamal's examples above show the logical misstep that keeps happening (this discussion has been around in Magic for over 20 years and some people still don't understand it). I'll try to demonstrate with a simple example:

Your remaining deck consists of Son of Skywalker, Take Initiative and a useless card (let's say Devotion and all your droids are dead). The possible combinations are (top to bottom):

1) SoS, TI, D
2) SoS, D, TI
3) TI, SoS, D
4) TI, D, SoS
5) D, TI, SoS
6) D, SoS, TI

You are about to take one strain at the end of the round and have to decide what to do. The game will end during the next round and you don't control any terminals or ways to draw extra cards. (If you do draw more cards, we're in "running out of cards" territory and the situation is different.")

If you take the damage, you have: 1 and 2 will draw you SoS, 3 and 4 will draw you TI, 5 and 6 will draw you D.

If you discard, you have: 3 and 6 will draw you SoS, 1 and 5 will draw you TI, 2 and 4 will draw you D.

So we can see that the chance of drawing each individual card remains completely the same! If we replace TI with another useless card:

If you take the damage, you have: 1 and 2 will draw you SoS; 3, 4, 5, 6 will draw you useless cards.

If you discard, you have: 3 and 6 will draw you SoS; 1, 2, 4, 5 will draw you useless cards.

Once again, the chances of drawing something good or something useless remain the same!

Basing your decision whether to discard or not is a logical fallacy. It's like saying "I've rolled this (random) dice 12 times and #6 hasn't come up yet. I will bet 1v1 that the next roll is going to come up a #6."

I have a challenge for anyone that still has doubts about this: give me one example of a combination of command cards left in the deck where you feel that discarding will actively hurt you. This can't include situations where you run out of cards, for obvious reasons.

25 minutes ago, burek277 said:

@ryanjamal - Devotion and running out of cards are the exact examples I gave as being the only consideration to not discarding.

There's a lot of misunderstanding of randomness here. ManateeX gave another good example. There are going to be cards you never see in pretty much every game of competitive skirmish (let's call them wasted cards). After the game ends, those wasted cards can either be in the discard pile or on the bottom of your command deck. It doesn't matter where they are, so using them to prevent some damage is always worth it.

The only relevant point here is that the opponent can play accordingly if they know you can't draw a certain card, but the same goes for you. If you know you can't draw Son of Skywalker, you can adjust your play a bit. You're also equally likely to discard something useless and not giving anyone much relevant info, whereas not taking damage is always a net positive. But this has nothing to do with "losing a card," which keeps popping up.

a1bert's and ryanjamal's examples above show the logical misstep that keeps happening (this discussion has been around in Magic for over 20 years and some people still don't understand it). I'll try to demonstrate with a simple example:

Your remaining deck consists of Son of Skywalker, Take Initiative and a useless card (let's say Devotion and all your droids are dead). The possible combinations are (top to bottom):

1) SoS, TI, D
2) SoS, D, TI
3) TI, SoS, D
4) TI, D, SoS
5) D, TI, SoS
6) D, SoS, TI

You are about to take one strain at the end of the round and have to decide what to do. The game will end during the next round and you don't control any terminals or ways to draw extra cards. (If you do draw more cards, we're in "running out of cards" territory and the situation is different.")

If you take the damage, you have: 1 and 2 will draw you SoS, 3 and 4 will draw you TI, 5 and 6 will draw you D.

If you discard, you have: 3 and 6 will draw you SoS, 1 and 5 will draw you TI, 2 and 4 will draw you D.

So we can see that the chance of drawing each individual card remains completely the same! If we replace TI with another useless card:

If you take the damage, you have: 1 and 2 will draw you SoS; 3, 4, 5, 6 will draw you useless cards.

If you discard, you have: 3 and 6 will draw you SoS; 1, 2, 4, 5 will draw you useless cards.

Once again, the chances of drawing something good or something useless remain the same!

Basing your decision whether to discard or not is a logical fallacy. It's like saying "I've rolled this (random) dice 12 times and #6 hasn't come up yet. I will bet 1v1 that the next roll is going to come up a #6."

I have a challenge for anyone that still has doubts about this: give me one example of a combination of command cards left in the deck where you feel that discarding will actively hurt you. This can't include situations where you run out of cards, for obvious reasons.

Shhhhhhh I like when people take extra damage from Terro.

As we see more recycling effects come into this game, we can expect this question of 'Command Card vs. Damage' when taking strain to develop.

For example, Rebel Alliance has Leia. If you have Leia, do you care so much about losing SoS or Take Initiative if you can just bring it back?

The recent Droid Wave also brought us a card that allows you to redraw it from the discard pile, so it probably isn't a big deal if you lose that either.

You also have to factor in if your opponent is running spies. You must consider what proportion of your command cards would be usable by your opponent to your severe detriment as data theft becomes a threat.

Situationally I think I would rather let my opponent do 1 damage then drop a card if i know my last 3 cards are heightened reflexes, tools' and assassinate and they have active spies on the board, haven't used data theft yet and have multiple cards in hand.

This is currently only likely in a rebel spy/ranger list, I think this will realistically be more of an issue when scum will have spys of their own in the next wave.

2 hours ago, burek277 said:

a1bert's and ryanjamal's examples above show the logical misstep that keeps happening

Not to argue, just to make it clear(er): I said that if you have some proportion of your best cards in your hand you don't care what you discard from your deck. I did not argue how you ended up in the situation of having your best cards in your hand... I also said that it would sometimes even be advantageous that the opponent sees a great card being discarded from the deck.

And yeah, if you have lost the figure(s) that can use the best cards still in the deck, you would naturally discard instead of suffering damage from strain. But the top-tier decks rarely rely on signature cards or otherwise narrow traits.

So are you only talking about the additional information you might give your opponent? Because discarding does not make it any more or less likely that you will draw good cards, or bad cards, or any specific card, or any subset of cards in you command deck.

While your math is obviously correct, I don't think it is as relevant as you make it out to be. Rather, I think the information given from discarding plays a much larger role than you give it credit for. It is infinitely better for the opponent to know that you can't (ever) play Assassinate or Son Of Skywalker, than it is for you to know the same. The knowledge that I can press a little harder because you don't have x y z powerful Command Card at your disposal - ever, is a strong knowledge to posses. But you already know that within this particular turn you cannot play those cards (because they are not in your hand), so having them discarded only makes little difference on your side of the table.*

*Obviously there are fringe cases.

Personally I think you're downplaying the importance of the fact that discards are open information. I 100% agree with the statistics in that it doesn't change the likelihood of drawing a particular card during the course of a game (assuming you don't run out of deck), but the complete knowledge that certain cards will not be played significantly affects gameplay. Losing Negation or Take Initiative means your opponent can safely extend at the end of a round (depending on who has initiative). Losing squad swarm and/or Strength in Numbers also let's your opponent extend safely when they previously couldn't. As a bit of anecdata, during the finals of the European Championships this year I skipped some high risk-high reward plays because of the possibility that my opponent had On the Lam and would negate a focused attack and with the free movement reach my backline. If On the Lam or Squad Swarm had been previously discarded, you can bet I would have played very differently and I would have had an advantage. And at the end of the match when my opponent drew On the Lam with Black Market, my play changed again because of the perfect information that he did have it.

Also you assert that not taking damage is always a net positive, but it can be net zero too. What matters in IA is not so much the individual points of damage but rather how many actions it takes to a defeat a figure. If I have a figure on 2 health and my opponent doesn't have special damage abilities a la Vinto or the Bantha, I'll take the damage because that figure will still take exactly one attack to defeat. Taking strain damage on Jabba also has essentially zero effect on the game, since if your opponent is in a situation where they're attacking Jabba, you've probably already lost.

I don't disagree that discarding cards for strain is often beneficial, but I think it's a bit more nuanced than just "always discard, unless you'll run out of deck".

As long as we agree that discarding cards doesn't affect the quality of the remaining cards in the deck and that statements like "there are cards in my deck I can't afford to lose" are pointless, we have already got somewhere!

Your opponent gaining value from knowing which cards you can't have is a different matter, and I admit it is much more relevant in IA than in other games where you can have multiples of (all or almost all) cards. I still don't think the value is all that high, especially since:

a) you are equally likely to discard a less important card which doesn't really tell your opponent anything,
b) you are also gaining infromation about what you can and cannot draw,
c) command decks are designed in a way that limits the number of "dead draws," meaning that even the less desirable cards still have a lot of value,
d) command decks are becoming ever more refined and powerful, with the gap between the best and worst cards shrinking rapidly.

I agree with your math, and I agree with the above example you gave (when you quoted me above). I'm just saying that those are pretty narrow parameters. You're mainly arguing about mathematical probabilities, which I concur with, but strategically I'm still left with feeling that it's often best to take a damage and save your cards. You gave the example of game where I no longer had devotion and knew the game would end the following round. In that case I would dump the card. But if it's early game I still want to keep my cards if at all possible. And there's the open information aspect, as discussed above, which may mean I'd opt for damage instead (especially if it's a figure with, say, two health left; that guy's dying the next attack regardless).

-ryanjamal