"Hate" cards? What means this? (Sadly, I'm guessing another term that I'm not terribly familiar with, d'oh!)

Do you mean cards that only exist to spite or ruin other cards (that's what I'd assume based on the usage). I have to admit I do somewhat agree with Terrorshard (cool name, that) in this regard. Spellfire tried to keep its balance doing things that way and it just didn't really work all that well.

Yeah, a hate card is a narrow card that is useful only or mostly in a single matchup. For example, Mob Up! for Orcs is dead in many matchups but golden against the bolt thrower decks.

Maybe I'm missing something (I did just get the game after all.) but why would this card need banning? Sure the fact that it's free is nice but it comes at the cost of corrupting anything you put in that zone. Seems like a fair tradeoff to me. In fact I doubt I'd ever even use the card that much. Looks very risky.

Vonpenguin said:

Because rush plays no units into the Kingdom or Quest zones and finishes games in 3-4 turns making defence almost entirely irrelevant. Warpstone is the Mox of WI.

Here is a huge wall of text-based death as to why Warpstone Excavation should be banned:

What is a broken card?

The term ‘broken’ is often misused. Many people who describe something as broken mean to say that it’s overpowered. An overpowered card is one that is too good not to use. A broken card is a step beyond overpowered: it breaks the game. This might be that it’s so overpowered that the game revolves around this card, or that the game doesn’t work because the card exists.

Why is Warpstone Excavation broken?

Warpstone Excavation is broken because it is likely to prevent accurate card design and creates a huge mismatch in production during the game’s opening turns.

In general when cards are designed for a CCG the designers have a good idea when they want that card to be available to the player during the game. They give powerful cards high costs to prevent them being played too early and distorting the game. Imagine if Grimgor Ironhide was 1R1L: you’d want to play him in your first turn if you could. To prevent this he was given a high cost (both resource and loyalty) so that the other player would have a chance to develop their board before he arrived.

How does the design team know what a high cost is? Usually design teams have a good idea because they have carefully calculated what a player can do during their first turn or two. They know that each player starts with 3 resources, 1 loyalty icon and the ability to draw one card each turn. From there they know that if they print several 2R1L1+P* supports and 1R1L1+P units for each race then there’s a good chance that a player will play one of each on their first turn. If these two cards can be played to any zone then a player will start their second turn with 3 loyalty icons and either 5 resources and 1 extra card, 4 resources and 2 extra cards or 3 resources and 3 extra cards. With this information design can decide if a powerful card that they might not want in play before turn three should cost 4,5,6 or more resources.

What happens if a player gets lucky and can play three copies of a 1R1L1+P unit in their first turn? They will be able to start their second turn with a number loyalty icons and resources or cards that design hadn’t planned for which could allow that player to play powerful cards earlier than design had intended. To avoid this design put limitations on where 1R1+P units can be played (eg Quest Zone only), extra costs (loyalty costs or delays on power) or how many can be played in one turn (Limited). If you check you’ll find that every 1R unit has something that prevents them being played freely to either production zone (Kingdom or Quest).

Warpstone Excavation breaks these design rules. It doesn’t cost anything, has no limits on where is can be played and you can play as many of them as you want in one turn. This means that players can start their turn with potentially either 8 resources (board, 2R card, 1R card and three Warpstone Excavations), drawing 6 cards or a blend of the two. With such a range of potential turn two starts design can no longer be sure that a card that was costed at 6R and designed to be played mid-game won’t actually start seeing play on turn two. Drawing three Warpstone Excavations is highly unlikely, but one or possibly two is not unreasonable (about a 37% chance of seeing at least one copy before you shuffle your hand in).

What is design supposed to do now? Their costing structure based on a player’s expected economic curve is compromised. Do they design card X knowing that it might be played earlier than intended and possibly have a damaging effect on the game? Do they print a weakened version of card X in case it does come out early? Do they increase the cost of card X so that it cannot be played early but accept that now it is likely to be played later than intended, possibly rendering it worthless?

You might feel however that all this is the problem of the design team and not the players. You might feel that design can somehow overcome this issue and trust that all the cards that they release have avoided the above pitfalls. Even if this is the case Warpstone Excavation still causes problems.

In every card game a player’s economy (resource generation and card draw) are critically important. A Magic or Wow player is unlikely to choose not to play a land/quest each turn, an L5R player will buy gold-producing holdings in their first few turns and AGoT CCG players always used that plot that er, got some resource production on turn one (it’s been a long time since I played that game sorry). Your economy in the early turns of a game is even more important if resource production is non-linear (ie the number of resource-producing card you can play each turn is dependant upon how many resources you can spend rather that a rule that limits you to playing a fixed number each turn). A boost to your economy in the early turns of a game can have a massive effect later on.

In Warhammer: Invasion you have three resources to spend in your first turn and they will likely yield an extra two resources in your second turn (giving you a total of five resources to spend). A single Warpstone Excavation played in your first turn yields a 50% increase in your resource growth for turn two (you produce an extra three resources rather than two). This might not seem like a lot but when combined with cheap cards it can create a massive disparity between the production curve of a player that is running the card and one that is not.**

You might still be reading all this and now say “So what? Both players can play this card?” There are three reasons why this is a bad thing™:

1. Cards that are so good as to be in every deck regardless of their archetype create a stagnate environment. They remove player choice as everyone has to run that card or fall behind.
2. Because players can’t easily control how many (if any) Warpstone Excavations they have in hand games become lotteries of who can draw the most Warpstone Excavations. Whilst everyone may have an equal chance to draw them in a global sense each game will suffer from that random but powerful swing.
3. Warpstone Excavation does have a drawback but it only really applies to decks that have to defend***. Therefore decks that don’t need to defend gain an unfair advantage from playing this card.

There are several ways to fix this card, but it would be far easier to just ban it and release a similar, balanced version at a later date if design still felt that it was needed.

I realise that you could begin to make the argument that Innovation is broken if Warpstone Excavation is but I don’t agree. I could write an explanation of why, but my fingers are tired.

*R is the resource cost, L is the loyalty cost and P is the number of power icons. 1R1L1+P would there be 1 resource cost, 1 loyalty cost and has 1 or more power icons.

**A similar argument applies to card draw.

***I’ll save why only some decks need to defend for another day.

Well written explanation of your position here, CrowdedMind.

The only part I didn't necessarily agree with was that Warpstone Excavation's only drawback is for deck's who might need to defend. That's not its only drawback - it can also greatly help Chaos decks (and thus hurt non-corruption-based decks) with its inherent Corruption abilities.

I know that (due to some inside info) Chaos was initially looked at as over-powered by playtesters. So they nerfed Chaos a lot before launch but I suspect that this card slipped through the cracks when the nerf-gnomes showed up. It may have not even been an intended effect for it to help Rush so very much. If I had to guess, I'd say that the designers wanted a card which was too good to pass up using by non-Corruption deck users but one which really helped boost Chaos' corruption effects when the game launched. Unfortunately, Corruption just doesn't come with a stiff enough penalty to make it really powerful. Personally I'd love to see Corruption not only prevent a card from Attacking or Defending but to also disallow for a Corrupted card's powers to be used. THAT would make it potent and worthwhile...

(And yes, then it would probably swing the other way as a game effect and be over-powered, LOL.)

i agree that a corrupted card should be unable to do anything accept be sacrificed, that would make a huge difference to the meta game. It is annoying knowing you've corrupted a jumping jacks deck only to have it all bounce to other areas to avoid being hit. As for warpstone yes it is powerful but it is by no means game breaking. I think astime goes on it'll be replaced by other cards, hell i personallycan't wait for greyseers lair

deviant-dj said:

Such a powerful counter-argument has forced me to reconsider my position.

crowdedmind said:

Fine then a powerful counter arguement. Yes the card is powerful in that it can speed up a deck because it is free. However in my oppinion it is only really useful if you were to get them in your starting hand or in your first or second turns. This means as the game goes on the card goes down in effectiveness, because in future turns it's more likely you have other cards generating more res/card draw for you.

Now given that there is no way to hand manipulate or scout for selected cards as there was in say raw deal, in my oppinion it all comes down to when you get it. In a starting hand yes it can cause a rush deck to just dominate.

Now imagine how much worse it would be in a game where you have the ability to go get specific cards and put them in your starting hand, it would be truely destructive.

I don't believe there's enough justification to ban it, yes it's strong but it's not an instant you win card, it just makes life a lot more complicated to play against. I also feel banning is never a good option because it just opens up the flood gates on what does and doesn't constitute a fair card, It also leads to a lot of arguements from various players about what should and shouldn't be banned, and a lot of the time people shout about it because the card that was banned was infact integral to thier deck design. By the same token i also despise the magic bullet approach that raw deal especially suffered from. Again it makes the game take the forced evolution of each set being designed just to bullet all the power combo's from the last set.

deviant-dj said:

You mean apart from being able to re-draw your starting hand? You've got a 37% chance of seeing at least one in your opening hand and if you re-draw your hand this jumps to 64%. You acknowledged that it causes blitz to dominate (I believe that it goes further than that) but you're suggesting that a 64% isn't consistent enough to make it an issue. How high would that percentage have to be in order for the card to be an issue?

This is of course ignoring the assertion that the card damages the design process.

I started this post a few weeks ago and its had over 80 replys, thanks guys some very interesting points have been raised. I not great at discussion so have enjoyed the feed back. A ban is not an option for FFG if they read all this!!!!

I still use the card and feel it is slightly broken, but I play in a very strange group where 75 percent of them say its the worst card ever lol.

Keep up the goodtalk!!

crowdedmind said:

Being able to mulligan is a very very limited form of hand manipulation, it's not like your actively selecting cards to add to it. Yes 64% is a high percentage (one i wasn't aware of) but again i don't feel this in itself is enough to warrent a card ban. I have never denied that it's not a strong card because it is. I actually feel banning any card especially at this stage in the games development will only harm the game long term. I'm willing to bet that in the next cycle we will see something that not only will end the dominance of rush but will also change the face of the meta game. Right now we have a limited card pool to work with and yes warpstone stands out as one of the strongest cards in the meta at the moment. I also believe if corruption was amechanic that locks out a card totally then a lot of people would think twice about putting it into play.

crowdedmind said:

Stats don't work that way.

If you don't have one of your cards in your starting hand and you're drawing a second hand after shuffling your deck.. You've still got 37% to get one of your cards with your second hand.

Two 37% chance to get something doesn't make it 64% if you start over after the first try. If it was.. Lotteries and casinos would have been put out of business a long time ago.

Supa said:

I suggest that you open up Excel and copy and paste the function

=100%-HYPGEOMDIST(0,14,3,50)

I also strongly suggest that you don't argue math or statistics with Crowdedmind, as you'll very quickly look like a fool.

The actual % is 63.57%, but 64% is near enough for me.

Added to that, given his Stats knowledge. I was hoping Crowdedmind could check if this is right.

Using the NEGBINOMDIST function, what the probability is that in the three games you will fail zero times to get a Warpstone in your opening hand.

=NEGBINOMDIST(0,3,0.64)

Which is 26%.

In other words, across the three games you have a 74% chance of having a Warpstone in your opening hand in each game (if you mulligan each time when you don't have one).

There is however, to balance that out, a 12% chance that you get bugger all in all three games

=NEGBINOMDIST(3,3,0.64)

Is my math-jedi-skills weak?

Looks like Supa beat me to it.

I'll say it anway,

IT is not a 64% chance. It would be a 64% chance if two hands were drawn without putting them back and shuffling them. But since the hand IS put back and shuffled, it resets the card draw, you are drawing out of 50 cards the first time, and then out of 50 cards the second time, meaning that, in a tachnical way, you would be drawing out of 100 cards.

An equivelent to what is happening during a mulligan would be to have a 100 card deck (or double what ever the number is) and then put 6 waprstones in, then draw 14 cards, it would still be a 37% chance, since the ratio is the same.

Thats the way i see it, not trying to argue, just stating that i think 67% is sort of a bit off.

There is stil a massive chance of getting warpstone, just not quite that high.

I may be able to be proven wrong, but i am pretty sure that this is the right way.

i thought it worked that way too facepalm, but my maths fu is weak, give my sond production or anything related to it and i'm your man, but maths i fail

deviant-dj said:

I'm glad it's not just me I think I'll let the people who really know their stats Fu work it out. Their Tiger Claw Style is stronger than my Tubby Panda Crane

Bountyhunter said:

I shall stick to my mastery of wind through the reeds style It's easier that way

deviant-dj said:

lol, ya i am pretty sure what i said is true, i would like to think i know enough about it =P

facepalm said:

I shall bow to your superior grasp of numbers my sensei

Let me just jump on in on this one to get the numbers right (I am going to be a meth teacher one day, so i couldn't resist )

To answers the question of the probability of having at least one WE in your starting hand (including mulligan) is answered by the similar question:

"How big is the probability of NOT having a WE in my starting hand (including mulligan)?"

And we don't need excel functions for this, i hope to explain it, so everyone will be able to understand it

First i assume the deck to be 50 cards in size, WE being in there 3 times, and the staring hand consisting of 7 cards,

so we have two piles, our remaining deck (43 cards) and our hand (7cards) .

What is the % of NOT having your FIRST Warpstone in your hand?

Well, it is 43/50

Now the first WE takes away a spot of our deck which now consists of 42 unknown cards and 1 WE.

So, what is the % of NOT having the SECOND Warpstone in your hand?

It is, 42/49

Now the first and second WE take two spots of our deck.

Therefore the % of NOT having the THIRD Warpstone in your hand is

41/48.

All those probabilities have to be multiplied to know the % of NOT having ANY Warpstone in your hand, so

(43*42*41) / (50*49*48) = 0.630

So you have a probability of 63% of NOT having any WE in your hand.

And what about the mulligan? In 63% of the draws you have to take a mulligan which again gives no WE with 63%, that means the probability of NOT having any WE in your hand after mulligan (if needed) is:

0.63 * 0.63 = 0.397 (roughly 40%).

So the % of having at least one WE is (100% - 40%) aka 60%.

facepalm said:

You are correct, as is Supa.

plueschi has beaten me to it. After posting my 64% figure I was mulling it over and after Bountyhunter posted =100%-HYPGEOMDIST(0,14,3,50) I knew that I'd been lazy and got it wrong. The answer is indeed 60%. Despite Bountyhunter's praise please point out any mistkes I make as I'm only really an interested amateur when it comes to this type of stat and probability work. I've only just started to learn negaitve binomial distribution but as I understand it this is the process that you'd use to calculate mulligans (although as you can only mulligan once it's easy to calculate it by hand).

The more intuitive solution is using combinations. In Excel:

(COMBIN(3,1)*COMBIN(47,6))/COMBIN(50,7) + (COMBIN(3,2)*COMBIN(47,5))/COMBIN(50,7)) + (COMBIN(3,3)*COMBIN(47,4))/COMBIN(50,7) ~ 37 %

This the probability of drawing at least 1 WE, in an opening hand of 7 cards with a 50 card deck.

Considering 1 mulligan: 0.37 + 0.63*0.37 ~ 60 %