Alright guys, the question of the century is going to be decided once and for all. Does Draw = Win? Well I'll let you guys be the judge of that.

Discuss!

The answer is:

Basically, yes.

/thread

Luck = Win

You play specific cards in specific quantities to reduce the amount of luck needed to win. In my opinion, Search > Draw > Preservation > Recursion in terms of usefulness. If you have none of these, you're simply at the mercy of your (or your opponent's) deck. Since most cards have additional costs tied to them the relative proportions of the card types may change.

But what if you have ONLY draw. Then Draw =/= Win.

Staton said:

The simple answer is: Of course not. You also have to have a decent deck behind it. You could draw your entire deck of locations and attachments and lose. I would say that draw is necessary but not sufficient for winning. Duh.

Staton said:

Of course. If you go to cardgamedb, search for "draw" in the field for Cardtext, and just make up a deck consisting entirely of radom draw effects, then you'll get a crappy deck. But that's a reductio ad absurdum.

First off, I think it should be clear that Draw=Win is shorthand for Hand Advantage = Win. Then, it's also clear that draw has always an ancillary function in any deck. Draw doesn't win games by itself. Draw allows you to win games, though. And Draw is necessary to win games most of the time. To win a game, you need to bring a combination of cards to bear that allows you to dominate your opponent. If you have hand advantage over your opponent, you're more likely to get out the cards that allow you to win.

In short: Draw is an indispensable, but not sufficient, condition of winning.

Therefore I believe that the equation Draw = Win is missing a few variables. Which means that the basic equation Draw =/= Win must be true.

Staton said:

Make a no-draw deck and see how well you do. Use no draw (or search). Run KotHH to remove setup or simply skip it altogether. Finally, make the deck Highlander to limit the effectiveness of the games draw phase.

Yes, it does boil down to card advantage but having draw and search gives you greater opportunity to obtain more card advantage effects. This is why card preservation and recursion are worse than draw.

Make a no-draw deck with Stannis Baratheon and annoy the hell out of your opponent who depends on draw. :-D

That's why I just run StannisKOTS and Altar of Fire. If I'm not getting any cards then neither is anyone else.

Edit: Somebody beat me to it.

DieMyDarling said:

You know what the problem with the whole Bara draw denial sub theme is? You have to draw the cards to make it work. By the time you get it going, your opponent may have a mittful of cards.

Speaking of which, eff TLS and Threat From The East.

playgroundpsychotic said:

Yes I agree. I'm not arguing that draw isn't needed for winning. All I'm saying is that the equation Draw = Win is false.

Staton said:

Interestingly, this from ratatoskr:

"Of course. If you go to cardgamedb, search for 'draw' in the field for Cardtext, and just make up a deck consisting entirely of radom draw effects, then you'll get a crappy deck. But that's a reductio ad absurdum."

Is also accurate - he used reductio ad absurdum to show that a deck with only draw, i.e. the deck represented by draw = win, cannot win (for obvious reasons), and hence draw = win is false.

I find this debate to be kind of silly. Everyone knows you need *some* draw, but that other cards are necessary to actually win the game. A better question, in my book, would be: What is the right balance for which decks? In the same way that Rings has said it before, draw is itself a resource in the game, and you have to balance it with your other resources in order to optimize the deck.

I think most of the people here missed a giant thread from awhile ago. People were literally arguing about the logical validity of the equation Draw = Win. It was hilarious.

I believe the equaition should be:

Draw + Luck = Win

In the sense that, you have a good deck behind it, and are drawing the good cards you need. When you draw, the card advantage is always helpful, but if you are drawing cards that are not advantageous of the situation you are in, they are not helping you at all, except to possibly scare your opponent into thinking you have got some epic hand.

Staton said:

Ha, oh. Yeah, I did miss it. That's too bad. I'm usually up for a good sarcastic trolling, as you all know.

HOLY ****! Not only is that a Jeppedo siting, but he's got something legit to say. **** me. The world really is ending this year.

WolfgangSenff said:

I necroed the thread. Lannister's Perceived Draw Dominance

I would like to chime in and say that in tournament play I think luck is a tiny percentage that would decide whether you win or not. Another thing, I do not believe that draw = win. Card advantage = win. Whether you have the card advantage in characters, locations or what have you. There are ways to accomplish these things without have more draw than your opponent. It all depends on how you take access that card advantage. I think people confuse draw = win with card advantage = win because draw is the easiest way to get there. Of course I could be wrong, this is just my speculation.

Yeah I would agree with you there. Luck really doesn't come into play THAT much. Also I think you're right with card advantage. I think Draw really is the strongest and easiest way to get card advantage. I wish recurrsion was stronger actually.

Draw+Luck=Win doesn't make any sense. How do you add Luck to Draw?

It should be Draw*Luck=Win

Where Luck is a modifier based on current cards in play, hand, discard, dead pile, and deck.

More importantly, does Discard*Luck=Lose?

Go.

Luck is a strong component of any card game. Whenever you blindly draw from a stack of randomly distributed cards of fixed quantity, a certain amount of luck is involved. You hope you can minimize that by adding cards that can draw or search or whatever you like. However, every so often I have a game where I drop two cards in setup after mulligan and I then proceed to draw only two cards per turn till the game finishes (usually a loss). All the fun cards which is supposed to mitigate this are at the bottom of the deck.

In fairness to GoT, the plot deck really helps mitigate this since its a non-random element. Still the plot deck doesn't help everyone evenly. I play Building Season to get Dany's Chambers. The opposing Lanni player gets GTM instead. Who's ahead of the game? That's why Draw = Win. Its simply better. If things had different resource needs, it would be different but that isn't always the case.

Well I feel like Luck can also be bad luck. So maybe Draw*Luck=Win wherein Luck>0. Draw*Luck=Lose wherein Luck<0.

I wasn't necessarily adding luck to draw. Luck would be a completely different component, like X + Y = Z. Although Luck * Draw would be better, or the draw raised to the exponent of luck??

Anyway, I think luck does play a part. Just because you have good cards does not mean they would be helpful in the situation, and sometimes only 1 card will help. So you need a little luck when you are drawing. Card advantage can be cool and all, but if you have a hand full of all +1 gold or reduces, but no characters to play, how does that help??

Not saying anything is wrong or whatever, just I think the luck has to play a part in drawing the cards you need, just like in discarding a card in the opponent's hand that they would like to have had. You picked the card completely by chance (unless they have like 1 card) and sometimes they love it (as when Kennon pulls the best card out of my hand every single freaking time), or they don't need it (when I am discarding from Kennon's hand). Luck plays a part, which is why I put it in the equation.

Equations? Somehow we've an online forum for a collectible card game even nerdier!

Edit: not to exclude myself from that, I'm the one reading it on a Friday night.