Excellent points, Deashira. I like how you think.

So I have a 60 card deck all cards I like all cards I use all important to my plan. Where is the problem?

there's no problem except that will get more than a few ocasions where your deck just won't draw riight or it'll just ground down all together

EDITED due to this post copying something already said in this discussion - no point in rehashing an old comment.

Wytefang said:

The differences between Dormouse and I are that (1) I acknowlegded that I made a mistake and corrected it, (2) no-one's attempted to defend Dormouse's incorrect maths, whereas mine has been supported here and, well, everywhere. I don't really care if he has some crazy notions, but I do care when they are presented as fact when they are not. Not only will this potentially influence other players but it's teaching people maths that is incorrect.

You are proving to be reactionary to the point of blind stubbornness. Minimum-sized decks are the most efficient build and therefore give you the greatest chance at winning the game. The fact that this is demonstrated across a wide range of games does not demonstrate indoctrination but rather that people who understand proabability know that this is the best strategy. It doesn't matter what the strongest build is. Developments do not change this either. They might give you something to do with narrow meta cards, but that's not an excuse to build a flabby, unfocused deck.

I realise that you're enthusiastic about the game and that you want it to occupy its own niche, but you're taking things too far. All card games are, at thier core, an excercise in probability. That you love this one more than others doesn't change this. The maths isn't different for Invasion, the principles that you find in every other CCG apply here.

Like I've said in other threads (also), I agree in principle that every deck should be focused and as trim as possible based on its theme. I just find it laughable that some of our posters in here worry about it to the detriment of certain deck-types. And while you may not appreciate the usefulness or influence of both Developments and the fact that we much more quickly control our card drawing in this game, that doesn't change their impact on deck-sizing, either. You'll note that I'm not labeling your remarks in any other fasion - we can agree to disagree and that's fine. You've clearly locked in your thoughts and you've made it clear that you're not up for any discussions about these things (and that's okay). Others of us are more willing, I suspect, to allow some wiggle room with deck-design, not having been so deeply programmed by our passions for previous games.

its got nothing to do with being indoctrinated, its to do with consistency.

simply shown if i have a card x i want to see it in most games i stand a better chance of seeing it in a smaller deck.

in card games consistancy is king, you want your deck focused and doing what it does every game, poor deck building comes from playing a lager deck there will be a worst card and you should cut it. its not a bout wiggle room but making sure your deck is consistant as possible.

other games do because its the best idea.

And other games, as we've explained repeatedly in here (myself and others), don't include some of the mechanisms that W:I does that make it both unique and a bit different when it comes to deck design. That's not to say that using certain general principles are a bad idea, overall, but that you don't have to be totally married to pre-programmed rules from other games since this is its own game. Once you can get a hold of that concept, you'll better understand the points that some of us have made in here about deck-sizes. We're all basically on the same page, to some extent, it's just the level of fanatical dedication to strategic interests where we differ.

Wytefang said:

I think it is actually the opposite happening. I don't intend to sound mean or anything, but maybe the fanaticism is coming from you and a couple others about how "different" this game is compared to other and how you fight tooth and nail to exaggerate the differences while glossing over the similarities.

I have played so many other games (I even played AGoT before it was an LCG wanting so bad to get those kennel masters to make a deck around them) and have about 15 years of card gaming experience. There have been games where you wanted to play more than the minimum for certain decks. DBZ for example had 4 types of decks. Anger, Dragonball win, Physical beatdown, Energy beatdown. You don't have to know what they are, just know that the mechanics of the game allowed for it. Anger and Dragonball wanted minimum cards because they were kinda combo-y. The beatdowns typically went for max cards. The reason was that damage in DBZ was taken by discarding cards from the top of your deck. So your deck was your Health/HP/Life total. The beatdown decks just played as many cards that did a lot of damage as possible so that no matter what you drew, they were quality attack cards. Buffing your deck just increased your longevity.

Star Wars was similar in that damage was taken from your deck, but everyone was required to have exactly 60 card decks so people couldn't be different. If there was a deck size range, it would have turned out the same in that more generic beatdown oriented decks would have gravitated to larger decks.

Warhammer Invasion is more similar to Magic in that the point of winning is not tied to the number of cards in your deck. So typically, the fewer cards, the better. As an example, lets say you are playing a beatdown deck that has nothing but a ton of units that are extremely similar but not exactly the same. Because damage is not taken by reducing the opponents deck, you would be better off cutting all of the worst performing cards until you had a deck of 50 cards so you were guaranteed to draw the better performing cards. In combo and control it should be obvious why you would want fewer cards in the deck.

Just to avoid the hated Magic comparisons maybe, Warhammer Invasion is more like Shadowfist than any other game I have played. In Shadowfist you played down your locations/sites and they determined how many resources you made each turn. The similarity to W:I is that you could attack any front row site and defenders could only defend the site they were at or the adjacent site. That is a lot like the 3 zones in W:I. Decks in Shadowfist still stayed close to minimum though, because once again, damage in that game was not tied to the size of your deck.

It also has similarities to Babylon 5 where the cards you played were able to generate additional influence for you up to a point. That influence could be spent to both play additional characters and fleets and to draw additional cards.

It was also a multiplayer game which lasted over many many turns. One still infamous UK national final went for over 7 hours. Whole other tournaments started and finished in the time that single game took to be played. That one game actually took longer than all of the preceeding rounds to get to it. Still, every deck in that final was at the minimum number of required cards because in the majority of cases it simply is the best strategy, even where you are able to draw additional cards.

Hi,

Based on my experiences decks between 50-55 cards are the best in the current enviroment. As 4-5 card draw per turn is far from unmanagable some extra cards won't hurt as much as (for example) in MtG, and even singles is much easier (and more often) get into hand.

The only real problem I seen with even bigger decks are the starting turns, as it is not too many good 1-2nd turn cards in many deck, and include more just hamper in later turns. (as anybody could tell who drew 2 excavations and an armory at turn 6 in a pitched battle)

Culling out 2-3 otherwise usefull cards from a deck often deals a bigger damage on versatility as it helps in reliability in this game in my experience. Of course, there are decks which should be strickly minimal in size (as rush)

Cain

darkdeal said:

I didn't take your remarks as being mean-spirited at all, to the contrary, I've usually agreed with much of what you say in these forums and find you reasonable helpful and polite. No offense taken at all.

I'd say that while I may be pretty fierce in my determination about this game's uniqueness and in my annoyance of the faceless gaming masses who make lazy comparisons of this game to M:tG, I'm not the only one who feels this way nor do I think that it's just a few of us. I speak to many players at the FFG Center (and other forums) who also have indicated their annoyance with players who mindlessly compare the two games, despite the clear dissimilarities, so I feel (mostly) confident that we're not really in the minority. But I suppose that's beside the point anyway.

Moving on. I agree, I also thought that it seemed remarkably similar to ShadowFist and also (in some ways) to Spellfire. When I worked at FFG (in 2008), Eric Lang and I frequently spoke fondly of how fun Spellfire actually was as a MP game compared to the poor public perception of the game (fueled mostly by a crappy 1st edition AND even more so by InQuest's uninformed harassment of the game - I once asked their Editor-in-Chief at GenCon if they even had ever played the game to which he admitted they had not). Anyway, Eric had recently mentioned to me that he had parts of Spellfire in mind when designing the game, also.

I'd also like to add that Eric is an absolutely awesome guy - a gamer's "gamer" if you will. Super friendly, super kind, and a game design genius.

I am proud to be able to call myself part of the lazy faceless gaming masses. It's what I wanted to be as a kid growing up.

Well then, congrats!

I got a lot of expirience with other card games and I think that a small deck (in W:I that would be 50 cards) is better. It gives us more chance to play the card that we want and need to play our strategy. But the minus of a small deck it that when the opponet has some good card that can discard our hand or make us to take more cards we can lose with no card in the pile.

So the small deck is really good in W:I but I prefer playing a bigger deck, why? It's easy, it gives me more pleasure when playing, more options even when the chance of getting the right card is smaller but my opponent don't have the chance of winning by discarding my deck.

And yes, Wytefang wrote here that W:I is unique and a bit different when it comes to deck building. That's true but it is still a card game (and one of the best I played ever) so You need to think of a strategy that You will use when playing. So my advice for someone that does not know how he want's to play (small or bigg deck) is that You should try all of them and then make Your mind.

I'm going to come off as a jerk here, but its OK because I'm doing it in service to the community.

TO: anyone reading this thread wondering how many cards you should have in your decks

FROM: me

Play 50 cards.

Seriously, just do it. It is criminal that people are trying to tell you anything else. They are misleading you. They are wrong. They are bad at this game. Put them on your ignore list and never listen to anything they say about W:I theory ever again .

You will be a better player for it.

I guarantee it.

I just did a bit of minor researching into how the probabilities come about with cards, and basically found out I don't have a clue how to work them out, luckily some mathematicians did work it out and there is a function in excel to do it.

Its called Hypogeometric distribution, which is basically is a posh term for talking about probabilities if you are removing things, such as cards.

The Excel formula is =hypgeomdist(0,7,3,50)

Now if your like me you may not have a clue at what any of the numbers mean.

The first number 0, is how many of the, cards in this case, you will have in your hand after drawing

The second number 7, is how many you are drawing

The third number 3, is the number of copies of the card you have in your deck

the fourth number, is the size of your deck.

So for instance the formula above will give the probability of not getting a lobber crew in your opening hand if you have 3 copies of it in a 50 card ork deck.

The probability of having 1 or more lobber crews in your opening hand is of course 100%-the % of not having it.

I personally have just set up the hypogeomdist formula in the excel cell a1, in a2 i've set up another basic formula =1-a1 which gives the percentage of actually getting the card in your hand rather than the percentage of not having it

To make sure this works properly you have to format the cells to percentages

Anyway I hope at least some of this made sense, and is useful to some of you. It cleared up things for me at least

ddm5182 said:

It doesn't make you a jerk to have a strong opinion about the subject. No worries there...we all feel strongly about it. I do think that this black & white mindset towards the subject matter isn't terribly helpful, though, to people trying to understand why (or why not) they should have to have the minimum amount of cards in their decks. It's important to take into account the impact of not just the probabilities but also WHY drawing a specific card would be useful and at which time, what the impact is of developments in the game (and how the gameplay functions itself - also considering how quickly players can adjust their card drawing). Leaving that stuff out when discussing this topic makes your strongly worded points (ironically) "misleading" and doesn't really make anyone a "better player for it."

Good intelligent thought on the subject isn't to just ape the strategy advice from a different game (we all realize that it's mostly - key word there - the M:tG players making the claims that everyone simply "has to use the minimum deck sizes." If this game was M:tG, perhaps these points would be fool-proof - but the key point is that this is not M:tG but its own game and as such provides several different aspects to take into consideration when mulling over the deck-size conundrum. Players have already won tournaments with more than the minimum deck-size of 50 cards, so I'm not sure that it's that critical of a rule. Or to put it another way, there are other considerations at work with W:I than just increasing your probabilities.

Wytefang said:

Ultimately, deck size isn't that large of a varience from one card to another. It does start to add up the more cards you put in your deck though. The difference between 50 and 60 is quite large.

To say that leaving out factors such as manipulating cards drawn is misleading, is a little incorrect. Every deck, giving the larger deck the benefit of the doubt, is equally able to develop their card drawing ability. The same cards can go into the decks. So that point is ultimately moot. Also, the idea that you can develop doesn't make a card more valuable if it had no value at all in the deck. It took the spot of a card that you would have rather drawn. You can use any other card in your hand as a development, if you even want to develop.

I think the argument is getting a little too much slippery slope. The basis of the argument is simple. If you play less cards, you have a better chance of drawing any given card. Thats it. Extrapolate what you want out of that, but it doesn't change the argument at its base.

Decks can win if they play more cards, but with only a few rounds in a tournament and decks not always being terribly competative, the difference in deck size will probably not be enough to matter much. To a competative player though, any advantage, however minimal, is still an advantage.

darkdeal said:

I agree about the variance between a few different cards not being that big of a deal. That's why I try to make that point whenever I see people agonizing (pointlessly so, in many cases) over the die-hard rule of 50. If you think you're deck needs that extra card to make it "go" then add the stupid extra card. It's unlikely to genuinely cost anyone a match.

My thought on the development issue isn't that you should blithely put in useless cards, but rather that the extra value provided by the ability to use a card from your hand (that might otherwise be momentarily useless) as a means to increase the HP of a zone, makes some of the angst over "The Rule of 50" as I've decided to jokingly call it from this point on, less painful.

I don't agree that the ability to boost your card draw at any time is totally moot because it means you can, in turn, boost your probabilities. So people who might worried about card ratios can rest a bit easier with that ability behind them and it does tend to take the sting out of having a larger deck - to some extent. Sure a small deck can do that as well, and with even less cards that could help it but that's besides the point, really, I think. Since we're discussing the possibility that a larger deck is less effective, this point does have merit.

While the heart of the argument may seem simple, the reality seems to reveal that there definitely is more to consider than just that aspect of things when designing decks. I'm certainly not disagreeing with the probabilities being discussed (less cards will equal a better chance to draw a specific card) - but as Dormouse has frequently pointed out and others of us, too, it's NOT just about that when playing a competitive match. The way you play your deck, particularly in regards to adjusting your card draw, can also affect your probabilities. That's something cool about this game that isn't as easily manipulated in other games and, as such, requires some consideration when making a deck.

Or put another way, it's not just about having the minimum deck size, imho.

Deck ..........Percent chance to draw a specific card
Size ............given 3 copies in the deck.
50 ...............37.04%
55 ...............34.07%
60 ...............31.54%
65 ...............29.36%
70 ...............27.46%
75 ...............25.78%
80 ...............24.30%
85 ...............22.98%
90 ...............21.79%
95 ...............20.72%
100 ............19.75%

I used the excel program to get all of these. They assume 3 copies of the given card in the deck and this is the percent chance you will get the given card in your opening 7 card hand. Note that the percentage gap gets greater as the number of cards in the deck gets smaller. So if you have a 35 card deck vs the opponents 45 card deck (because you are a few turns into the game), you are a lot more likely to draw that given card (about 5% if both players are drawing 3 a turn and the percentage goes up the deeper both players get into the deck).

Another way to go deeper into this is to analyze the odds that you will draw a card that can give you more hammers into your kingdom/quest zone first turn. Its rare that you won't be able to, but the odds are still there. They are also complicated by things like Innovation if you play several 4 cost supports that can go into the zone as well. That isn't really applicable in an orc rush though so we will use that as an example. I'll use the list that was also contentious.

Orcs

3x Lobba Crew
3x Crooked Teeth Goblins
3x Goblin Spider Riders
3x Followers of Mork
3x Snotling Pump Wagon
3x Clan Moulder Elite
3x Veteran Sellswords
3x Squig Herders

3x Contested Village
3x Warpstone Excavation
3x Choppa
2x Rock Lobba (2 Greyseers instead)
1x Basha's Bloodaxe (1 Greyseer instead)

3x Innovation
3x We's Bigga
2x Waaagh!
3x Seduced by Chaos
3x Pillage

It was also noted that Greyseer should have been in the list, but not knowing what to cut from his point of view, I will trade out 2 cards that cannot be used for quest zone buildup turn 1. -2 Rock Lobba and -1 Basha's Bloodaxe

So you have these cards that cost 3 or less that can be played to the quest zone.

3 Squig Herders
3 Followers of Mork
3 Greyseer Thanquol
3 Warpstone Excavation
3 Contested Village

15 cards total.

So with a 50 card deck, the odds of drawing just one of these in your opening 7 is 93.27%
A 55 card deck is 90.81%
60 card deck = 88.25%
65 card deck = 85.65%
70 card deck = 83.07%

Not very much variation, but the larger the deck, the more often you will have to mulligan still. We also don't really want to play our attackers into the quest zone when they could be attacking. So lets see the percentages with the orc units taken out.

This is done with only the Greyseers, WE, and CV.

50 card deck = 77.49%
55 card deck = 73.62%
60 card deck = 70.02%
65 card deck = 66.69%
70 card deck = 63.61%

So the 50 card deck will, theoretically, need to mulligan 22.51% of its opening hands. A little more often than 1 in 5 games.
The 55 card deck will need to mulligan 26.38% (3.87% more) of its hands. A little more often than 1 in 4 games. So about every 26 games of the 50 card deck not taking a mulligan, the 55 card deck would need to take one. If you average 2.5 games per round (some rounds go to 3, some rounds stop at 2), you will mulligan an extra time every 10.4 rounds. Not that big of a deal right now, but if you have 4 rounds of swill and make it to the finals of a top 4, that is 6 matches. That extra bad hand could be the difference between first and second place, and that is only a 5 card difference. I see some players say they like to play 60-65 card decks.

So this is really the sticking point for me. The orc deck was just an example to show the numbers. They apply to any deck. The more cards you have, the less chance you have of drawing that opening hand that gets you a start. I had this problem with chaos when they first came out. I had to mulligan a lot because I didn't have a turn one play. Even with 9 cards out of your 50 being turn 1 plays, you would mulligan 22.51% of the time. Thats too high for my taste and it gets worse the more cards you play in proportion to the number of turn one plays. There is a ton of analyzing that can be done and these numbers are really useful when you construct a deck. Before you even test it, you can sit and count the number of cards that fit a certain role and calculate the odds of getting it in a certain circumstance.

Thanks for the posting the data AND for the interesting analysis.

Hi,

Thanks for the analysis.

Hovewer I still think (even based on your numbers) that the difference between an 50 and a 55 card deck is extremely little, and also 1 mulligan in 20+ games won't matter at all, since there is no penalty for mulliganing.

Also, your numbers are a little bit misleading, as you would definetly play Lobber Crew into KZ for example, and even other units if needed, so you will never have 22%+ mulligan, only if you want an almost perfect starting hand.

Also, even if you have to mulligan it don't mean that you will have a bad hand.

With your numbers, chances for hand after mulligan (from all games) :

50 card deck

- There is a 5% chance that you won't have anything from the 9 cards even after the mulligan
- There is a 1,4% chance tha you don't even have a unit (not counting Lobber Crew) to play int KZ

55 card deck

- There is a 7% chance that you won't have anything from the 9 cards even after the mulligan
- There is a 2,4% chance tha you don't even have a unit (not counting Lobber Crew) to play int KZ

Well, I don't think that this difference really matters, especially because most decks have much more options for turn 1 play than 9. Also, don't discount that maybe some of the extra cards are also first turn plays, which would decrease (or even negate) even more these differences.

Cain

Also, about the MtG comparison :

- In MtG about 35-40% of your cards are "passive" > don't do anything at all but makes resources (these are lands)
- normally you draw a single card a turn
- the minimum deck size is 60

I think it's not terribly hard to understand why putting in some extra cards will be pointless : You will rarely draw them, and your ability to draw particular cards decreases.

Another comparison :

- In W:I if you have 1-2 "cheap" permanents you are fine to start your KZ and QZ (1-2 cards out of 7)
- In MtG you want to see 2-3 lands and at least 1-2 other cards to play in the first 3 turns (3-5 cards out of 7)

Also, note that in MtG you draw one less card (6 instead of 7) if you mulligan.

Counting with minimal deck sizes for both game, the chances to draw a particular card in turn 2 :

- In MtG it's 1,8%
- In W:I it's 2,3% if you put no power into your QZ
- In W:I it's 4,5% if you put a single power into QZ

So if you put even single WE or contested village into your QZ you have about 250% chance to draw a particular card compared to MtG ! And you could increase these chances even more turn by turn. This, combined their 35-40% of drawing a land card clearly shows that an extra card with usefull ability is much easier to justify in W:I than in it's rival.