Hi all !

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only to open lots of displays.

At the moment I've opened 4 (that's 48 decks) and I've seen that there are things that are not random in opening the boosters.

In a same display, there are often 3 or 4 times the same rares ! And I've noticed that the common/uncommon pattern is very similar from decks to decks (in the same display).

For example, yesterday, I've opened 5 deck in a row that contained library access. In those 5 decks, 4 had the time traveller !

The same with bait and switch pattern... I knew before opening the pack that my deck would have bait and switch because the previous one had it...

It's an example but I've noticed this in all my display so far and I'm very disappointed with that ! What are your explanations FFG ? How do your algorithm work to do that ? It's not very customer friendly I think because with this behaviour, I don't think it's worth buying displays if you want diversity... You said, each deck was random but I see it's not totally the case...

In 48 decks, there are rare cards that I own more copies of than some uncommons (for example only 2 zookeepers in 48 decks and 4 times the time traveller)

Have some people noticed the same things ?

48 decks is a small sample size. There are over 100k decks registered to the app now, so odds are many people will encounter similar "patterns" as you have, while the majority won't. Real random doesn't always look like what humans tend to think of as random.

5 minutes ago, A1win said:

48 decks is a small sample size. There are over 100k decks registered to the app now, so odds are many people will encounter similar "patterns" as you have, while the majority won't. Real random doesn't always look like what humans tend to think of as random.

This. Fortunately FFG even offers us a look at a database of most of the decks around, so patterns like those OP suspect could easily be found.

I've only opened one display box. 8 decks contained Sanctum, 8 Shadows, 6 Untamed, 5 Dis. 6 decks had Bait and Switch, most paired with Miasma. Most Dis decks had Arise! Most Sanctum had Inpiration. The thing is all those cards are common so it's not that weird. None seemed to have recurring rares.

While it does seem odd that 11 of the 12 decks had either Sanctum and/or Shadows it is a pretty small sample size. Also, I'd be crazy to complain about getting lots of Sanctum and Shadows.

Not sure if you can filter by single cards, but filtering the deck database by faction reveals that there are currently around 43.000 instances of each faction, with none diverging from that by more than 1.500 instances.

5 hours ago, Dimmu222 said:

How do your algorithm work to do that ?

and

Quote

You said, each deck was random but I see it's not totally the case...

...are incompatible statements. The decks aren't generated at random. They are generated by an algorithm. Decks are, instead, "unique", meaning that no two are identical. I expect you know this, but your expectations about diversity are coming from conflating the ideas of "random" and "unique".

The question isn't really whether the same cards show up in different decks...of course they will! The question is whether those cards will play the same way when included with a different "supporting cast".

Take two of my decks as an example: Dis/Logos/Mars and Dis/Logos/Sanctum. There are many cards in common between the two decks. They don't play anything like one another, and the cards that are common to the two decks have different ways to use them. In one deck, Laboratory Work is used to set up a powerful creature synergy in Archives for use on one big turn. In the other, Laboratory Work is used to pile cards into the Archives to thin the deck while drawing lots of cards to keep the same actions going over and over.

This would lead me to the following: Don't buy display boxes, but buy a deck here and there.

I have bought 6 decks, I already feel pretty set for a few months. When are you gonna have the time to play 48 decks 😋

56 minutes ago, Amanal said:

This would lead me to the following: Don't buy display boxes, but buy a deck here and there.

Same thing. I was just thinking that I should purchase decks from individual box displays rather than buying two decks from the same box

6 hours ago, jrainey said:

Same thing. I was just thinking that I should purchase decks from individual box displays rather than buying two decks from the same box

This sounds like similar superstition to making a lottery ticket by picking numbers here and there insted of picking 1, 2, 3, 4, ... The odds will be the same.

12 minutes ago, A1win said:

This sounds like similar superstition to making a lottery ticket by picking numbers here and there instead of picking 1, 2, 3, 4, ... The odds will be the same.

Part of the bias here happens because there is a 3/7 chance of getting a duplicate house on the first selection, if you get a unique house you then have a 3/6 of getting a double up and if you are lucky enough to have no double ups a 3/5 chance on the final draw.

If you then get 2 completely unique decks after that you don't stand a chance, you will always get a duplicate.

Just because I could, I looked at the App. There were 109,393 decks when I started and by the end of my searches there were some 109,426 decks registered. I doubt the addition of 33 decks would be significant. Looked statistically average for the most part.

Brobnar was in 47010 decks

Dis was in 47353 decks

Logos was in 47284 decks

Mars was in 46872 decks

Sanctum was in 47259 decks

Shadows was in 46627 decks

Untamed was in 45819 decks

I had 3 decks with Shadow that had 2 copies of Routine Job in each. That is from a 12 deck display.. so yeah, sure feels a little less random than i could have hoped for.

Untamed is clearly a rare faction. Worthy of jacking up the price of my Untamed decks in the secondhand market. 😉

ps. I an actually keeping all of my decks.

4 hours ago, Amanal said:

Part of the bias here happens because there is a 3/7 chance of getting a duplicate house on the first selection, if you get a unique house you then have a 3/6 of getting a double up and if you are lucky enough to have no double ups a 3/5 chance on the final draw.

If you then get 2 completely unique decks after that you don't stand a chance, you will always get a duplicate.

Just because I could, I looked at the App. There were 109,393 decks when I started and by the end of my searches there were some 109,426 decks registered. I doubt the addition of 33 decks would be significant. Looked statistically average for the most part.

Brobnar was in 47010 decks

Dis was in 47353 decks

Logos was in 47284 decks

Mars was in 46872 decks

Sanctum was in 47259 decks

Shadows was in 46627 decks

Untamed was in 45819 decks

The averages don’t address the original posters complaint, however.

They are alleging that the display boxes have a tendency to contain decks with (mostly) the same faction groupings and many of the same uncommon or rare cards repeat through decks from the same display case.

The only way to corroborate if this is a real phenomenon would be to examine the outcomes of many sets (ie open several display cases together). That being said, I doubt anyone will do this, and it’s fairly unlikely for it to be an issue.

Edit: Other weirdness, zero decks are coming up with the Timetraveller and Help From Future Self.

What gives?

43 minutes ago, Derrault said:

The averages don’t address the original posters complaint, however.

They are alleging that the display boxes have a tendency to contain decks with (mostly) the same faction groupings and many of the same uncommon or rare cards repeat through decks from the same display case.

The only way to corroborate if this is a real phenomenon would be to examine the outcomes of many sets (ie open several display cases together). That being said, I doubt anyone will do this, and it’s fairly unlikely for it to be an issue.

Edit: Other weirdness, zero decks are coming up with the Timetraveller and Help From Future Self.

What gives?

I have a deck registered with that combo, so it must be your search parameters.

I have two decks with that combo, both registered.

8 hours ago, Derrault said:

Edit: Other weirdness, zero decks are coming up with the Timetraveller and Help From Future Self.

What gives?

The ability room search for specific cards has been removed, hopefully only temporarily.

I don't know if the pattern observed by the OP is true. But I was suspecting that it is possible that individual boxes have a weird combination of houses. Now, it could all be completely random. Out of thousands of boxes sold there ought to be some with a lot of decks that are from the same 2 houses. This being said, just to be on the safe side, I've instructed my LGS to put aside 1 deck everytimes he opens a new box.

Again, it could totally be a bias, but it could also be a result of the algorithm.

8 hours ago, jkayati said:

I have a deck registered with that combo, so it must be your search parameters.

It was card name search, good to know it’s just the engine not working.

I only have two decks, but the box that I've seen opened had like four decks with the same house combination.

2 hours ago, Wandalf the Gizzard said:

I only have two decks, but the box that I've seen opened had like four decks with the same house combination.

My family purchased ten decks from a display for the three of us to split. Out of those ten decks, three of them were Sanctum/Dis/Shadow. *shrugs* Could be something, could be nothing. Afterall, RNG is gonna do what RNG is gonna do.

If everyone who got duplicate house combinations from a display box posted in this thread, it would seem like a lot of people, even though it'd be only a small fraction of all people who opened multiple decks from one display box.

It is true that only those affected will notice. If we had 10,000 people posting they've had the exact experience there might be something to it, but right now the data set is just too small.

The problem is that we have self selection problem has some people have stated above. People interested in this question will be people who got many deck of a similar faction in the same display.

It is obviously easy for FFG to test. My only hope is that with people stating their concern here, someone at FFG will at some point notice and run the necessary test. It wouldn't be really hard for FFG to figure this out by selecting a random sample of boxes.

Pretty hard for us to determine without spending more cash than we want too.

Huh, I just checked, and four of the twelve decks had Evasion Sigil. Weird.