I'd like to see someone actually test this in OCTGN.

One deck uses every card legally possible to include into a deck in a house that has draw. The empty slots are filled with cards that provide some other form of reveal, recursion. All other empty slots are random cards added to fill out the rest of the deck form that house. Then it faces against a deck with no draw, no recursion and built in a highlander format. Lets see what the win ratio is.

If we remove the equation of Draw=Win from the context of the game, A Game of Thrones, then we can definitely say that it is an untrue statement. This game though frequently has draw effects on cards that also are versatile and do other things, or let you do something else in order to provide draw. Meaning you can potentially build a deck that is full of characters, events, locations, and attachments that all will allow you to still win challenges while they provide you with draw... so, depending on exactly how one wants to break down the statement, Draw=Win it could be a true statement, the cards that provide you draw in this game will win you the game against a deck which removes all attempts at manipulating your draw statistics.

Like most of my posts, I will preface this by saying my play experience is very limited, albiet less so with OCTGN lately. I find that increased(or decreased) draw is important when it comes to, as someone else in the thread said, hand advantage, but I don't think that it is big of a deal as some people make it. I have won my fair share of games where my opponent had draw outside the draw phase, and I was limited to my 2 cards per round. I think draw influences the types of decks that are able to be built and played competitively. A deck that focuses on 'combos' or even cards that work extremely well together relies on either luck or draw(or both) to get all the moving pieces into play. Whereas a deck that has all of its pieces aimed at the same goal can function no matter what cards it has in hand.

I think there are sufficient cards to limit the power of draw, while still making it a very important part of deckbuilding. Stannis, fear of winter, ruled by decree, kings of winter and a few individual cards on a lesser degree all focus on taking away the advantages of having more cards in hand than the opponent. All of this being said, I can't think of a deck I have that wouldn't slot 3 'massing at the twilight' into it if for whatever reason it was reprinted...

More of the games I have played in, or witnessed have been won or lost by good or bad play respectively. Timing that outwit on a valar, forgotten plans on a fear of winter or first snow of winter, retaliation when you think search and detain is coming, remembering to trigger shaggydog to lower strength of a character to win a challenge, remembering to trigger your maesters agenda so that you don't have 17 power and 1 chain left..to me those are the things that = win.

It depends on the draw.

Andy (SithLord) used to dominate NYC back in the CCG days, but when he started he did horrible, someone told him draw = win and so he just loaded the deck with every single draw effect lannister had. And he did better. Granted back then Lanni draw was like: Put a metal Pipe up the opponent's ass, then draw 3 cards.

Here is the equation:

Win = 15 power first.

You essentially need the right combination of cards in hand and in play to get 15 power, before the opponent can. A Larger hand size increases this chance.

But so does a larger pool of cards that when played effect the game immediately. This is a form of card advantage called redundancy.

Now I'm trusting this site: http://www.kibble.net/magic/magic10.php which in my memory of combinatorics makes sense.

I'll look into this a bit more. While he used 4 for seeing the chance of getting 1 lightning bolt when 4 are in a deck. In Lanni you would just count the total kneel effects for instance to see the effect of redundancy.

Such a nice thread! Lets science this up some more, because we need more equations here!

My theory would be if you don´t count 1-2 round wins, the side with better board postiion than the oponent ihas a better chance to win.

And I´d describe board postition as *Amount of cards in play and playable this round cards in hand* x *cost of those cards* x* efficiency of those cards* +*hand reserve* (no idea how to add this in exactly)

So you can improve your postiotion by somehow having a better gold engine and playing more expensive cards (works in draft nicely), just playing stark (teh bestest card efficiency ) or as the easy way, just adding draw to increase the card ammount.

UNLESS your draw angine is so crappy iand not cost efficient at all, it weights down the overall card efficiency, like ...in Targ. ( bam! what a burn! Horrible pun intended! I´m sorry)

lol man I love these threads! I think that redundancy does really help to offset a lack of draw. That was the theory behind my Bara Noble Rush deck, and it seemed to work out fine. I hardly ever drew cards, but I always had what I needed because I had three roberts, three mels, three stannis, etc.

@Moneylender: Also yeah sometimes draw can be ineffective enough to actually decrease your overall hand advantage. Open Market is a pretty good example, but Davos' Fingers is another.

If: Draw =Win

Clansmen = Lose?

Mighty Jim said:

Well, Clansmen have abilities that offset the "lose" of discarding. The question is, do the postitives of Clansmen offset the "lose" of discarding.

sWhiteboy said:

Draw still gives you options. If you wish to discard something to generate an effect, you have a wider variety of cards to choose from. Lannister also has some discard pile recursion that works with Clansmen and its sometimes more beneficial to discard a card.

I don't know how other people build their Clansman decks, but mine still provide a whole lot of draw. You have to have the cards to discard. Discarding cards you can safely part with is not really losing card advantage as far as I'm concerned, particularly when it allows you to launch several three- or four-claim attacks.

WolfgangSenff said:

This is true.

However, I do believe that draw is the most consistently under-costed ability on cards in the game. That's the reason everyone plays with so much of it, and what leads to this topic/perception within the game. You'll see decks sacrificing other mechanics (attachment or location removal, gold/location lite, character-lite); but, you'll rarely see a deck that doesn't have draw.