Hello,

I made some effort to check distribution of special abilities on all fate cards.

ALL triangle rectangle circle hexagon
Ability 20% 20% 40% 20%
Rout 13% 17% 7% 20%
Damage 27% 33% 13% 40%
Nothing 40% 30% 40% 20%

Taking into account all fate cards we can see that triangle and circle has the most misses. Ability works the best on circle units. Interesting is that all other type has very small probability to trigger special ability (20 %). Regarding damages and routes circle is the weakest.

More interesting will be comparison taking into account only BLUE cards. Remember you can always check fate card discard pile to verify how many different colour is in play. (We have 4 yellow, 8 blue and 18 red)

BLUE triangle rectangle circle hexagon
Ability 0% 75% 75% 0%
Rout 0% 0% 13% 13%
Damage 25% 0% 13% 38%
Nothing 75% 25% 0% 50%

You will be shocked here.

Triangle units misses in 75 % and hexagon in 50 % !!! Circle never misses having 75 % of special ability and 26 % either damage or rout. Rectangle units have 75 % chances to trigger their ability !!! So having a lot of blue cards in fate deck is very good for circle and rectangle units.

Let's check yellow cards...

YELLOW triangle rectangle circle hexagon
Ability 0% 0% 0% 75%
Rout 50% 0% 0% 0%
Damage 50% 0% 25% 0%
Nothing 0% 100% 75% 25%

As you see again very interesting statistics. Rectangle units miss always !!! Circle almost always. Interesting is fact that triangle units never miss !!!

Hexagon has 75 % to trigger their ability.

And time for red cards...

RED triangle rectangle circle hexagon
Ability 33% 0% 33% 17%
Rout 11% 28% 6% 28%
Damage 22% 56% 11% 50%
Nothing 33% 17% 50% 6%

Here again some interesting findings: triangle and circle units have 1/3 chance to activate special ability which is not so bad. Rectangle and Hexagon have good chance to give damages and/or routs, both types miss very rarely. Circle miss 50 %.

To summary as you see you can use colour breakdown for your analysis before fight as well (not only before diplomacy and hero test)

RED cards support rectangle and hexagon units. (very rare miss and good damage and rout ratio). they are not bad for trigger special ability for triangle or circle units.

BLUE cards are perfect for circle (no miss) and very good for rectangle. For both types give 75 % for trigger special ability.

YELLOW cards are perfect for triangle (no miss) and very good for hexagon (especially for trigger their ability)

Let me know what do you think about above...

berto said:

I think if I was playing against someone who seriously sat down and calculated the odds of hitting based on how many "blue" and "yellow" cards were out of the deck before each battle, I would stand up, walk around the table, and punch him in the face. =P

I can see the fun in playing with numbers (especially if you, like me, have a background in mathematics) but I would never support this sort of analysis as a practical application to playing the game. Looking at how a deck of all "blues" or all "yellows" plays out is interesting in a theoretical discussion, but the odds of this coming up in game are pretty slim (and the amount of attention you'd have to be paying to the discard pile to even notice it would probably mean everyone else is getting pissed at you not taking your turn.)

The overall percentages are good to know. I believe Corey (or someone) also mentioned in broad strokes how rectangles have twice the hit rate of triangles and cirlce units will get the most orbs in one of the preview articles, which lead to some early guesses on percentages that IIRC are pretty close to what you've got here.

Everywhere should be common sense. I started using number of yellow and blue in fate discard before every negotiation attempt and this allowed me to win almost all diplomacy actions. That's the reason that I started thinking about using this in the battle. Especially it's usefull when fate deck is small. Let's assume that you have 8 cards in fate deck and 5 are blue. does it make sens to attack with triangle? I can send then only rectangle and circle. Additionally if there are almost all red cards there it's a bad idea to send to the battle circle as they miss in halve of actions etc. I mean it can give you some advantages if you use this knowledge wisely. Of course I don't encourage you to memorize each card number with exact value and calculate before each battle with small laptop your chances In some cases however can give you small tip when to attack and how divided your forces.

While it's an interesting analysis, I don't know how practical it would be in most situations. It only really helps if the Fate Deck is low AND you are planning only a small skirmish. If you are planning a huge invasion, it may not matter what's in the deck. If the deck is full or near-full, there will be too many cards drawn to really predict what's going to come up. If it's near empty, a large invasion will only affect the first few units to pull.

Plus, it doesn't take into consideration that there are sometimes more reasons to bring in specific units besides just whether they will hit. Even if I knew my Triangles had a harder time to hit in a combat, if I was planning a big battle I'd probably bring in several of them anyway to absorb damage and protect my more powerful units.

If it was a small battle, I can see this being useful, but for a big battle, you are going to go through a good chunk of the deck, enough that trying to determine individual statistics isn't going to help much.

(As for the hit chances, I think the rulebook itself even mentions that Rectangles hit more often than Triangles, and Hexagons hit more often than Rectangles, and that Circles have twice the chance for a Special Ability. It may not have exact ratios, but it isn't really "new" knowledge).

Try using this variant... this should solve all of your card counting problems...

http://boardgamegeek.com/article/5530568#5530568

Steve-O said:

Agree. What's the joy of playing when you calculate everything? And what when it's down to like 15% of success? You walk away from the table cause your robot-senses tell you it's too risky? Do you have any fun playing games my friend? Sometimes it's better just to relax and play whatever comes instead of cold analysis which imho kills board games.

Designer gave us possibility to look into fate deck to encourage us to use this information. For some players it can be fun for others nightmare. Anyway depending how seriously you play you can maximize your chances to win all treat this as a social event.

You wouldn't get pissed at someone for knowing the percentages in poker, why do you care if they know them in this game.

blarknob said:

For knowing, it, no; but in Poker, players/casinos/etc DO get rather mad when people are COUNTING cards

However, Runewars does specifically allow you to do so. In practice, though, the only time I can see it being beneficial to count cards is when counting the Destiny results. As I mention above, in almost all battles, trying to count cards for the battle results isn't going to be very helpful due to the number of cards drawn and the variety of different units that will be drawing from it.

It can be really usefull. For example one of the best mens unit is knight. If you know that they have only 6 special abilities in grey cards, you can decide if it makes sense to attack or maybe change attack sequence etc. Last time due to this information I could get 5 tactic cards in one shot.

berto said:

This would only work in an extremely controlled environment, though; In order to guarantee anything regarding the battle, the units you want to pull for must be the FIRST units to go. Which means, for the Knights, you can't bring any bowmen, and you can't be fighting against any enemy Sorcerer's, Razorwings, Skeleton Archers, Archers, or Flesh Rippers - because any of those units will cause cards to be drawn before your knights get to go, and thus completely change the odds.

Now, if the deck is down to the last few cards AND you are able to control the battle in such a way, sure, it can be useful. But in most battles, being able to control things to that level is going to be very difficult, and you'd probably end up hurting yourself in the preparation more than getting benefit back. For battles, I think it's far more useful to just know the overall stats of the cards, not the specific "what does the deck look like right now" information, because controlling the individual unit stats at that point just isn't going to be feasible in MOST battle situations.