Hi All,

So I understand the 50 - 100 constraint, but when entering competitions do they specify an exact amount, or are decks competitive even when one may have 55 and another 70?

I play with my friends and I always just built the decks to be exactly 50 OR 60 OR 70 each.

Cheers

i tend to find sticking as close to 50 as possible is the best approach, it means your more likelyto get the cards you need when you need them with some good management of your quest zone.

There has to be an incredibly good reason to play more than 50 cards.

Less cards means you ll get the cards you want faster. So, competitive decks will be around 50-54 cards max.

The "theory" is that less cards should translate to better overall decks but it's hardly been proven 100% true, regardless of claims to the contrary. Common sense seems to indicate that less cards should boost your chances to draw a card but as Dormouse has shown in these forums in a different thread, that's a bit misleading too. I tend not to worry about being a few cards off of the minimum amount, in general, but with the current gameplay environment being pretty heavily slanted towards Rush, it does help to have closer to the minimum amount.

Good luck.

Wytefang said:

Dormouse used faulty logic, slanted comparisons and incorrect maths in his argument. To say that he showed anything that supported his argument is incorrect.

The logic behind small decks is this:

Some cards are better than others. You want to see those cards as often as possible in a game so the smaller the deck the higher the likelihood of seeing those cards.

Realistically you won't notice a difference between 50 and 51 cards, but you'll also never know how often you're one card away from the one that you want to see. It's also much easier to talk yourself into playing a 52, 53 etc card deck once you've crossed the psychological boundary of minimum deck size.

I'm sorry but we'll have to agree to disagree here, CrowdedMind. No one (to my knowledge) has successfully and from a mathematical perspective refuted Dormouse's points about card-draw. Most people refuse to address the other points (also) about the impact of the game's resource-generation engine (by placment/location) and the usage and impact of Development cards as they affect deck-size, either.

Can anyone provide a link to this thread you're talking about? I'd like to check it out.

I'd also like to say that all this talk of deck size is kind of missing the point. The real issue is deck size vs number of card copies. For instance, you have a higher chance of drawing a single card that you have three copies of in a sixty card deck (one in twenty or five percent chance) than you do drawing a card you have two copies of in a fifty card deck (one in twenty-five or four percent chance).

Ideally, you want a fifty card deck with three copies of each card (or, at least, each card that is vital to your strategy).

RM

deck size is an important factor in this game, but given that you have ways of controlling how many cards you draw and how much res you can generate a bigger deck may not always be a disadvantage. But by the same token given most of the dominant decks are very rush based and always operate at optimum with a smaller deck size, i personally think the closer to 50 the better.

Again it really does come down to the local meta game in your area and what your play style is.

I usually stay around 60-65, personally, i know that 50ish is better for the rush environment currently, but i think as more key cards come into the game, the number of cars in a deck on average may increase a bit, but since of the small card pool now, there usually iant more then 55ish cards that would be useful in any given deck.

Can someone link the thread where dormouse discusses this (bump to whoever else asked for this).

Without seeing a supported argument for either side, i DON'T THINK HAVING A SMALLER DECK MEANS YOU ARE MORE LIKELY TO GET A CARD YOU WANT - card games are almost like dice chance in the manner with which you draw cards. I do think it just means you have LESS BAD cards in a smaller deck, and it is therefore overall better.

Has anyone had issues with people forcing them out of cards if they stick to the minimum? Because this seems very difficult, i threw about 8 power in my friend's Quest zone, but somehow his deck seemed to go down very slowly and I think I won the game a few turns after then anyway...

Dormouse's post is on this page, reply number 66: www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp

Wytefang said:

I responded in post 74. The maths he uses is incorrect: I and others point out that he needs to use hypergeometric distribution and not (to be blunt) his made up numbers. He isn't using a more simple system, he's using an incorrect system. He follows this with a lop-sided argument that unfairly allocates more of an important card to his larger deck than to the smaller deck. There's a bit of hand-waving regarding drawing cards where he again creates a biased argument by letting the larger deck draw more cards due to a limit he creates to satisfy his position. He is discussing probabilities without being able to calulate them and then with that incorrect data creating biased scenarios to support himself. I honestly can't see how anyone can support his argument knowing that the entire foundation is wrong. For you to to post that comment implies that you don't understand the arguments. I'm not trying to insult you, but for you to agree with what he says you must disagree with those that say his maths is incorrect. Also how does the postition change if you draw more cards? 1 card or 10, you're more likely to see the cards you want in a smaller deck. I don't dislike Dormouse but I find that he posts unsupportable arguments without a logical base. I object to that because intentionally or not (and I assume not) he is misleading players. If you don't understand probabilties then educate yourself, that's what I had to do when I started playing cards.

I'm also fairly sure that I addressed developments. If not here it is:

Developments mean that a card which is of no use to you can have some purpose, but it is not a reason to put a lot of poor cards in your deck. It allows cards with a narrow focus to be included in your deck for certain match-ups but they are still dead cards outside of those games. This begins to move into the area of virtual card advantage. Developments mean that one dead card in your hand each turn is OK (if you were intending to play a development), but more than that is not. I'd rather have a hand of good cards and play one as a development than half a hand of good cards and half a hand of dead cards in this match.

even if you dont see the maths side of it, just look at other games. its very rare to see a magic deck jump over 60 cards because they want to see the better cards more often. playing 60+cards in this game is crazy imo and you should have a very very very very good reason to do so.

agg said:

Its not just magic either. Keeping to the minimum deck size has been a feature I have seen in every competitve card game I have ever played in, including those which permit additional card drawing such as B5.

JayDe said:

Its basic math. If both decks are drawing the same number of cards, the smaller deck is more likely to see any specific card more often. Here is the math.

50 card deck
.0600
.0612
.0625
.0638
.0652
.0666
.0681
=====
44.74% chance of drawing a specific card, that has 3 copies in the deck, in your opening hand.

60 card deck
.0500
.0508
.0517
.0526
.0536
.0545
.0555
=====
36.87% chance of drawing a specific card, that has 3 copies in the deck, in your opening hand.

To be fair, I assume both decks have can draw the same number of cards. That is, if the 60 card deck is able to play something in the quest zone to draw more cards, the 50 card deck is just as likely (more likely in most cases*).

*In most decks, there are a certain number of cards that you can play to the quest zone. Assuming both decks are the same 50 cards, and the 60 card deck just added 10 additional cards, If the number of the additional 10 cards that can be played into the quest zone are too few, then you actually have less likelyhood of starting with a card you can put into the quest zone.

The chance of drawing at least one copy of card X in your opening hand is 37% (50-card deck), dropping to 32% (60-card deck).

So, I've read Dormouse's post and this is my take on it: in a larger deck, you can include more cards with redundant effects, thereby improving your chances of drawing any one card with that effect, as opposed to smaller decks which tend to include fewer redundant cards to assist in drawing specific cards. While the exact math he uses may be questionable (I'm not a statistician, so I'm not going to pass judgement here), this is not an unreasonable position. However, what Dormouse portrays as an advantage is also the great weakness of this style of deck building. Redundancy increases your chances of drawing an unbalanced hand.

Let's say I'm building an Empire deck and I wish to include cheap quest zone units. In a fifty card deck, I decide to restrict myself to three copies of one card (let's say Errant Wolf). In a larger deck, to improve my chances of drawing a quest zone unit, I use three copies of Errant Wolf and three copies of Huntsmen. In the larger deck I now have a chance (albeit minute) to draw all six quest units into my hand at once. Now, I may have vastly superior quest draw, but limited resources, offense and defense. In the smaller deck, I am slightly less likely to draw any one copy of Errant Wolf, but I will never find myself in a position where I only have cards that I can play in my Quest Zone.

That said, this deck-building strategy could be viable if you had access to a large number of redundant, but flexible cards. The current environment does not support this, however.

Now, I'm going to go edit my deck and make sure I don't have too many redundant effects. Drawing multiple attachments and no units makes life hard.

RM

That whole argument is moot though. The whole point of the discussion is that if you need to draw that troll vomit and that is the only card that you need it. Your odds of getting it are better if you have 30 cards left in the deck rather than 40. If you want to take into account that you can add a completely different card that has the same effect you have to also consider that the exact same redundancy can be added to the smaller deck. My 50 card deck can also run 3 errant wolf and 3 huntsmen giving me an even greater chance of drawing them than the 60 card deck. Thats it, thats the whole argument. Its simple and there shouldn't really be disaggreement on it.

A completely seperate argument arose when people were equating the better likelyhood of drawing a specific card to the deck being better. It may not be. If there is a deck that doesn't really have any cards that would save your butt in a situation like that, and you need another turn or two against a metagame filled with decks that try to run you out of cards, the bigger deck may very well be "better".

I disagree. Even in a case where your opponent's strategy is to deck you out, you should still be trying to win. Adding more cards to your deck simply dilutes it (in most cases). In fact, I would say it's even more important to have a smaller deck against a milling deck because it's even more important to get the cards you need right out of the gate. Throwing "filler" cards to avoid decking out doesn't do you any good if you end up drawing the "filler" and discarding your core cards.

Even if you include redundant effect cards instead of "filler" cards, you still run the risk of drawing too many redundant effects (all support cards, for example) and not enough of other effects (units, tactics, etc.).

As mentioned, you can also include redundant effect cards in a fifty card deck, greatly increasing the chances of drawing those effects. Depending on the effect, this may be desirable, but in general I think the argument I made earlier is an even greater problem in a smaller deck; having six copes of one effect in your deck means you have a chance of drawing six copies of that effect in your hand at one time. I, for one, would hate to see a starting hand of six units I can only play in my quest zone. Sure, I could get a ton of early draw, but I have no resources to play those cards.

RM

deashira said:

I don't disagree, I was simply trying to pose a scenario where it may be desirable to have more than 50. I, personally, will always try to cut cards to get to 50 or 51 as I like my decks streamlined. I have in the recent past said that it is important for rush decks to be as streamlined as possible, but if you consider combo decks, it would be even more important there to insure you get your combo pieces asap. It is also vitally important for control decks to insure you get those board wipes and other control elements before you get overrun by rush or you get your Disdain before combo can combo out on you.

It seems whatever situation or strategy, whether its trying to get the right card or attempting to rush / use combos - a smaller deck is better.

Question: how and what is rushing in Invasion ? I assume it the classic zerg style: get as many units and start attacking ASAP. But how is it done in Invasion? Do players pack their decks with lots of cheap units to try and draw a hand of them? Is this done to the detriment of building up across the board as the battlefield is really the only zone played into?

Pretty much. Blitzing is an version of aggro that attacks early (in theory sacrificing late game development to do so) in order to beat the other player before they can get set up. Orcs do this very well primarily because they have a lot of cheap units that have 2 power.

agg said:

Thankfully this isn't one of those other games but rather is its OWN game. So no, we have no need to look at other games since they're almost entirely different. I've whupped some good decks with a much larger one so I'm not at all convinced that it's "crazy" to have a larger deck. I understand that we have several here who have been indoctrinated into following other games' player-developed logic about what works and what doesn't but your best bet is to work things out for youself when it comes to deck sizes and how the work with a particular faction or deck type.

The main thing that informs these claims that using the smallest possible deck is the best idea is the Rush environment right now - if that was gone, that argument would really lose a bunch of its teeth, imho. Or at least a portion of it.

crowdedmind said:

Unfortunately, he claims the same things about your remarks and we've already seen that you were incorrect about the math for having a WE in your hand so one could make the argument that you're claims are a bit suspect, too, at this point. And I also am not meaning that in a mean-spirited fashion either. Just making the point that stats and math can always be manipulated to support a point.

I think the gameplay aspect of being able to quickly raise the amount of cards you can draw along with the aspect of developments has a significant (though still somewhat confusing) impact on the idea that players simply MUST have the smallest sized deck possible.

Wytefang said:

You are right that the current environment is what drives our arguments for a small deck. We could certainly make solid arguments for larger decks in theory, but if the cards don't actually exist to build those decks, it's moot. Currently, there aren't enough cards to support a single strategy in a larger deck. A year from now, that might not be the case. The "Rush environment" compounds the problem. If your opponent has a chance to beat you in two turns, you need to create a solid strategy to combat that AND you need to draw the cards that support that strategy immediately. If you can build a hundred card deck and still be sure you're going to want/need every single card when you draw it, then I would say the more cards, the better the deck.

RM