It's time for another post, and today I'm going to step back a bit form the abstractions I've been posting lately. Rather than discuss theory, let's look at a deck I've been using recently. It's 10-4, but probably should be 11-3 except that I can't play it right! I used it to a 3-1 record at PA states.
You will quickly notice it's a heavy defensive deck, but it's built a little bit more complex than that. The goal is for the deck to set up as quickly as possible - specifically to begin taking souls as soon as I possibly can. You'll notice some unique choices because of that.
Cards in deck: 56
Lost Souls: 7
Lost Soul (can't be prevented)
Lost Soul (deck discard)
Lost Soul (female only)
Lost Soul (N.T. only)
Lost Soul (Site Discard)
Lost Soul (site doubler)
Lost Soul (Wanderer)
Dominants: 7
Angel of the Lord
Grapes of Wrath
Son of God
Christian Martyr
Destruction of Nehushtan
Mayhem
Vain Philosophy
Fortresses: 3
Herod's Temple
High Places
The Garden Tomb
Sites: 4
Golgotha
Caesarea Philippi
Lystra
Chorazin
Artifacts: 6
Chariot of Fire
Darius' Decree
Gifts of the Magi
Holy Grail
Lampstand of the Sanctuary
Magic Charms
Heroes: 7
Jephthah
The Generous Widow
Watchful Servant
Hur
Ethiopian Treasurer
John
The Magi
Hero Enhancements: 3
Feast of Trumpets
Meeting the Messiah
Authority of Christ
Evil Characters: 12
User of Curious Arts
Lot's Wife
Simon the Magician
Emperor Galba
Emperor Tiberius
Emperor Vitellius
Foreign Wives
Scribe
Antiochus Epiphanes IV
The Winged Leopard
The Goat with Horn
Evil Enhancements: 8
Ashtaroth Worship
Abomination of Desolation
Joseph in Prison
Stone of Thebez
Wrath of Satan
Balaam's Disobedience
Heavy Taxes
Namaan's Chariot and Horses
Let's start with my offense. Obviously in this style of deck, Watchful Servant is the main hero and champion of soul rescuing, but if you look deeply, he's actually not even my best hero. That distinction lies with The Generous Widow. If she rescues with Abomination of Desolation active, I get to discard 3 resources of my opponent at the cost of 2 of my own (which are usually recurable with Chariots of Fire in my case), plus some times I get to draw 4 resources with Gifts of the Magi. She also helps my opponent deck out faster so I can use the glory of the Watchful Servant.
Another interesting choice is The Magi. My thoughts are simple - I need to keep up, and Gifts of the Magi does that for me, and The Magi give me a second out to Gifts. Playing AoC for an early rescue isn't bad either. Hur acts as a way to draw with Gifts and triggers Abomination, so that seems like a good add too. Feast of Trumpets is more nuanced though - it's the only way to discard a Nazareth if my opponent has decked, which matters in some strange circumstances if my opponent has some rare cards that could ruin my win conditions.
Jepthah, Holy Grail, Meeting the Messiah, Ethiopian Treasurer, and John are simple - I want souls fast, and The Garden Tomb is usually good at that.
This doesn't really fit in any category, but the overall focus of the defense is a lockout. This can occur several ways. I have a soft hand lock out (Galba, Heavy Taxes, Generous Widow), a soft Abomination lock via discarding everything, a soft site lock out (4 sites, 2 in neverused Red + limiting souls), and a harder hero lock (tons of discard/removal + Asheroth Worship). The many options I have let me react accordingly to the game and offer both long and short term solutions.
I'll just address some of the uniqueness of the defense. If you have questions about a general Greek subset for Abomination, comment and I can explain that more. I chose Romans as the primary subset of the defense because of several factors 1) they are protected by Caesarea Philippi/Chorazin/Golgotha 2) Heavy Taxes is absurdly good 3) they let me play NHC (which is primary super broke on Antiochus). The rest of the defense is primarily just the best characters that fit in the NT theme in my brigades. Scribe can play every enhancement, Simon can hold a Charms protected from discard as well as mess with Disciples/TGT, and Users is Simon 2.0 and can play any enhancement in the deck. If I play this deck again, I would try to fit in a Proud Pharisee, but I'm not quite sure what I'd cut. Disbelieving Sadducees isn't bad either but I'd never be able to find space for him.
Enhancement choices were simple. Effectively destroy all my opponents heroes. There isn't really a ton to say here. I don't feel like I was missing anything. Scattered is ok but I'd rather kill heroes than underdeck them, so it wasn't worth a slot.
The last area of substantive discussion is the dominant selection. I would love to have New Jerusalem in here, but I couldn't figure out what to take out. Angel and Grapes are too clutch with TGT, Mayhem and CM help me lock players out, Vain helps me block super well, and Destruction of Nehushtan solves too many problems. I just couldn't figure out where the NJ belonged.
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Deck Ratios: Offensive-Heavy, Balanced, and Defensive-Heavy
To be honest, I didn’t really know how to start this article off, so I guess I’ll just come right out and say it: Offensive-heavy is the best. Now when I say offensive-heavy, I’m really breaking my rule from my previous article about Complimentary Deck Building because I’m actually referring to the good alignment. The fact of the matter is, while the term is misleading, it’s still the current term for describing heavy good. But before I get to the conclusion, I’ll overview the three types of balance (or lack thereof).
So first I’m going to debut the oft talked about offensive-heavy, which relies on a powerful good-alignment to overwhelm any defense. If you’ve been around for any amount of time, you’ve certainly seen these types of decks at the top tables. They are consistently good, and don’t depend on the local metagame. Most of the best offensive-heavy decks are ones that are also hero heavy, boasting of upwards of 10 heroes. My current offensive heavy deck uses 12-13 heroes. The deck’s goal is to rescue five lost souls as quickly as possible.
Now for balanced, which won 2012 Nationals. Now wait, how can I say offensive-heavy is the best when balanced won nationals? I’ll get there, don’t worry, but I’d first like to explain the focus of balanced. So you’re probably going to have about 1:1 ratio of good to evil, although many balanced decks are more like 18 good and 16 evil (including fortresses, not including dominants). However, the definition pretty much ends there. Balanced decks are among the most versatile, as you can pretty much just mix and match the aggro, speed, turtle, and standard styles of play. While the national winning deck was definitely aggro style, I found a lot of success towards the end of the 2011-2013 format with a turtle style balanced deck. Balanced is probably the most common deck, but that’s mostly because most people start out with balanced decks. Among top tier players, it’s probably the second most common. This deck tries to fend off the opponent while also rescuing souls.
Finally we have defensive-heavy, the undeniable least popular deck. These decks may be rare, but every now and then one pops up at the top. They are largely a meta call, which we generally call “rogue” decks. They focus on using a massive defense to immobilize your opponent’s offense, allowing yours to go in for the win. The difficulty with defensive heavy, however, is that it’s difficult to win with such a small offense, especially with a time limit, which is why they are played less.
That’s the basic overview of all three, but why is offensive-heavy the best? It’s really surprisingly simple: the point of the game is to rescue 5 lost souls, and offensive-heavy does this best. “But wait!” you say, “Don’t you have more opportunities to rescue lost souls if your defense blocks?” Yes, that’s true, but it’s a matter of consistency. In a real game, you’re going to be drawing a bit of everything, so while your defense may hold off a turn, it also may prevent you from rescuing a soul because you didn’t draw into your offense. A streamlined deck will be more consistent, and a deck that is streamlined to rescue lost souls is a deck that will win.
Now, that’s not to say that offensive-heavy is the only deck you should play. While it is, on the whole, the best type of deck, there’s also another side of things, and many balanced decks and defensive-heavy decks successfully counter offensive-heavy decks. My last two games I was beaten by (to put it simply) Judges/Prophets/Babylonian decks. Part of that was because my deck is bad, but another part of it was that it was able to provide my opponents with enough heroes to rescue against my extremely weak defense (I only got a couple blocks between the two games), and still fend me off. In the same way, defensive-heavy can hard counter both offensive-heavy and balanced decks. However, despite offensive-heavy’s disadvantage, they always have a better shot at winning because it’s more focused on winning. Defensive-heavy struggles to fend off offensive heavy early game, and often times you can outspeed a balanced deck. After all, most games you only need to rescue 3 lost souls (plus Son of God and New Jerualem).
I do want to say that this is not a “rock, paper, scissors” type thing. Balanced doesn’t necessarily beat offensive-heavy, offensive-heavy doesn’t necessarily beat defensive-heavy, etc. It’s very dependent on what type of good/evil is being played in the decks. Matchups play a big part, but so does drawing. A well built offensive-heavy is the only deck that can reliably make rescue attempts even if it draws poorly.
Now, armed with this knowledge, you can study your local metagame and decide what kind of deck you want to play. There is no right choice, but if you’re unsure, I will always recommend offensive-heavy. It is, after all, the best.
So first I’m going to debut the oft talked about offensive-heavy, which relies on a powerful good-alignment to overwhelm any defense. If you’ve been around for any amount of time, you’ve certainly seen these types of decks at the top tables. They are consistently good, and don’t depend on the local metagame. Most of the best offensive-heavy decks are ones that are also hero heavy, boasting of upwards of 10 heroes. My current offensive heavy deck uses 12-13 heroes. The deck’s goal is to rescue five lost souls as quickly as possible.
Now for balanced, which won 2012 Nationals. Now wait, how can I say offensive-heavy is the best when balanced won nationals? I’ll get there, don’t worry, but I’d first like to explain the focus of balanced. So you’re probably going to have about 1:1 ratio of good to evil, although many balanced decks are more like 18 good and 16 evil (including fortresses, not including dominants). However, the definition pretty much ends there. Balanced decks are among the most versatile, as you can pretty much just mix and match the aggro, speed, turtle, and standard styles of play. While the national winning deck was definitely aggro style, I found a lot of success towards the end of the 2011-2013 format with a turtle style balanced deck. Balanced is probably the most common deck, but that’s mostly because most people start out with balanced decks. Among top tier players, it’s probably the second most common. This deck tries to fend off the opponent while also rescuing souls.
Finally we have defensive-heavy, the undeniable least popular deck. These decks may be rare, but every now and then one pops up at the top. They are largely a meta call, which we generally call “rogue” decks. They focus on using a massive defense to immobilize your opponent’s offense, allowing yours to go in for the win. The difficulty with defensive heavy, however, is that it’s difficult to win with such a small offense, especially with a time limit, which is why they are played less.
That’s the basic overview of all three, but why is offensive-heavy the best? It’s really surprisingly simple: the point of the game is to rescue 5 lost souls, and offensive-heavy does this best. “But wait!” you say, “Don’t you have more opportunities to rescue lost souls if your defense blocks?” Yes, that’s true, but it’s a matter of consistency. In a real game, you’re going to be drawing a bit of everything, so while your defense may hold off a turn, it also may prevent you from rescuing a soul because you didn’t draw into your offense. A streamlined deck will be more consistent, and a deck that is streamlined to rescue lost souls is a deck that will win.
Now, that’s not to say that offensive-heavy is the only deck you should play. While it is, on the whole, the best type of deck, there’s also another side of things, and many balanced decks and defensive-heavy decks successfully counter offensive-heavy decks. My last two games I was beaten by (to put it simply) Judges/Prophets/Babylonian decks. Part of that was because my deck is bad, but another part of it was that it was able to provide my opponents with enough heroes to rescue against my extremely weak defense (I only got a couple blocks between the two games), and still fend me off. In the same way, defensive-heavy can hard counter both offensive-heavy and balanced decks. However, despite offensive-heavy’s disadvantage, they always have a better shot at winning because it’s more focused on winning. Defensive-heavy struggles to fend off offensive heavy early game, and often times you can outspeed a balanced deck. After all, most games you only need to rescue 3 lost souls (plus Son of God and New Jerualem).
I do want to say that this is not a “rock, paper, scissors” type thing. Balanced doesn’t necessarily beat offensive-heavy, offensive-heavy doesn’t necessarily beat defensive-heavy, etc. It’s very dependent on what type of good/evil is being played in the decks. Matchups play a big part, but so does drawing. A well built offensive-heavy is the only deck that can reliably make rescue attempts even if it draws poorly.
Now, armed with this knowledge, you can study your local metagame and decide what kind of deck you want to play. There is no right choice, but if you’re unsure, I will always recommend offensive-heavy. It is, after all, the best.
-Westy
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Deck Math
It’s been awhile since I've written an article! Sorry guys. I took a nice holiday vacation to the beach, and it was fabulous. But I’m back now, and ready to go. This article is going to be a bit more calculus than most, so be warned. There may be some math errors, but the information will be generally accurate, I promise!
One of the biggest choices made in Redemption deck building is the size of the deck you use. For years, small decks (53 or less cards) have been considered the best (with some people strongly holding that 56 is the way to go). Today I am going to show you the math behind why I always try to play at 50 or 51 cards (if I am using Haman’s Plot) if I am playing a conventional offense heavy or balanced deck.
Let’s examine some proportions in a 50 card deck. Since almost every deck should be playing the Hopper lost soul, that means there are 8 lost souls in this 50 card deck. They don’t really count for deck size, because if you draw them, they get replaced. While I should technically account for the chance of drawing a soul and distribute that across and proportional math I do, I’m lazy, and it’s much easier to simply ignore lost souls and treat this deck as 42 card deck, so that’s what I am going to do.
With the 42 card deck, your chance of drawing any one card in your opening hand looks like this:
1/42 + 1/41 + 1/40 + 1/39 + 1/38 + 1/37 + 1/36 + 1/35 = .2085328
That means that any one card has a chance of appearing in your hand about 20.85% of the time, or slightly more than 1 in 5 games. Let’s look at the same math for anyone card in a 56 card deck, which would have 48 non-lost soul cards:
(1/41) + (1/42) + (1/43) + (1/44) + (1/45) + (1/46) + (1/47) + (1/48)=.18025413
In this 56 card deck, your odds of drawing any one card in your deck have dropped to 18.03%, or slightly less than 1 in 5 games. The change equates to a 2.82% greater chance of drawing a single card in a 50 card deck rather than a 56 card deck. While this might not seem like much, let’s look at this size difference in terms of turns to deck out.
Since Son of God is often a card needed to win the game, suppose it is on the bottom of both decks in this scenario. How many turns will be needed to draw it out? The equation to find out is ((X-(LS+8))/3) where X is size of the deck. I will be assuming no drawing occurs via abilities for the purpose of this math.
In a 50 card deck: ((50-16)/3)=11.3
In a 56 card deck: ((56-16/3)=13.3
That’s a two turn difference! That’s a huge deal. That means the 56 card deck is going to need to outdraw the 50 card deck by a full two turns via abilities on cards in order to get to Son of God.
While the odds are not incredibly high that Son of God will be your bottom card, the principle of it remains. All other things equal, a 50 card deck is 2 turns faster than a 56 card deck. Often 56 card decks are said to have more endurance than a 50 card deck – that they have an advantage simply by having more cards. In reality, this couldn't be further from the truth. I would estimate that the average Redemption game takes 10 turns or less, which means each player will have access to, at most (assuming no draw abilities), 38 cards (8 for opening hand, drawing 3 every turn if you went second). Both a 50 and 56 card deck have more than 38 non-LS cards in their deck – which means the 56 card deck has received no advantage of the 50 card deck in terms of number of cards played. The difference is that 50 card deck has between 4-12 cards left in deck, while the 56 card deck has between 10-18 cards in deck. The 56 card deck receives absolutely no advantage to playing with a bigger deck until he draws the 43rd through 48th playable card in his deck. While this seems good in theory, in practicality, most games are over by this point, and rather than reaping this advantage, you have spent all game lowering your odds of drawing that one card you need to counter a certain hero or win a rescue attempt.
Math is why I play with a 50 card deck. I realize this won’t be applicable for all decks – some defensive heavy decks need more space and want more resources. But I’d be willing to bet that 90%+ of the time, 50 is better.
-Olijar
EDIT: The draw math is wrong, but the percentages play out relatively similarly and I'm slightly lazy. Sorry guys!
One of the biggest choices made in Redemption deck building is the size of the deck you use. For years, small decks (53 or less cards) have been considered the best (with some people strongly holding that 56 is the way to go). Today I am going to show you the math behind why I always try to play at 50 or 51 cards (if I am using Haman’s Plot) if I am playing a conventional offense heavy or balanced deck.
Let’s examine some proportions in a 50 card deck. Since almost every deck should be playing the Hopper lost soul, that means there are 8 lost souls in this 50 card deck. They don’t really count for deck size, because if you draw them, they get replaced. While I should technically account for the chance of drawing a soul and distribute that across and proportional math I do, I’m lazy, and it’s much easier to simply ignore lost souls and treat this deck as 42 card deck, so that’s what I am going to do.
With the 42 card deck, your chance of drawing any one card in your opening hand looks like this:
1/42 + 1/41 + 1/40 + 1/39 + 1/38 + 1/37 + 1/36 + 1/35 = .2085328
That means that any one card has a chance of appearing in your hand about 20.85% of the time, or slightly more than 1 in 5 games. Let’s look at the same math for anyone card in a 56 card deck, which would have 48 non-lost soul cards:
(1/41) + (1/42) + (1/43) + (1/44) + (1/45) + (1/46) + (1/47) + (1/48)=.18025413
In this 56 card deck, your odds of drawing any one card in your deck have dropped to 18.03%, or slightly less than 1 in 5 games. The change equates to a 2.82% greater chance of drawing a single card in a 50 card deck rather than a 56 card deck. While this might not seem like much, let’s look at this size difference in terms of turns to deck out.
Since Son of God is often a card needed to win the game, suppose it is on the bottom of both decks in this scenario. How many turns will be needed to draw it out? The equation to find out is ((X-(LS+8))/3) where X is size of the deck. I will be assuming no drawing occurs via abilities for the purpose of this math.
In a 50 card deck: ((50-16)/3)=11.3
In a 56 card deck: ((56-16/3)=13.3
That’s a two turn difference! That’s a huge deal. That means the 56 card deck is going to need to outdraw the 50 card deck by a full two turns via abilities on cards in order to get to Son of God.
While the odds are not incredibly high that Son of God will be your bottom card, the principle of it remains. All other things equal, a 50 card deck is 2 turns faster than a 56 card deck. Often 56 card decks are said to have more endurance than a 50 card deck – that they have an advantage simply by having more cards. In reality, this couldn't be further from the truth. I would estimate that the average Redemption game takes 10 turns or less, which means each player will have access to, at most (assuming no draw abilities), 38 cards (8 for opening hand, drawing 3 every turn if you went second). Both a 50 and 56 card deck have more than 38 non-LS cards in their deck – which means the 56 card deck has received no advantage of the 50 card deck in terms of number of cards played. The difference is that 50 card deck has between 4-12 cards left in deck, while the 56 card deck has between 10-18 cards in deck. The 56 card deck receives absolutely no advantage to playing with a bigger deck until he draws the 43rd through 48th playable card in his deck. While this seems good in theory, in practicality, most games are over by this point, and rather than reaping this advantage, you have spent all game lowering your odds of drawing that one card you need to counter a certain hero or win a rescue attempt.
Math is why I play with a 50 card deck. I realize this won’t be applicable for all decks – some defensive heavy decks need more space and want more resources. But I’d be willing to bet that 90%+ of the time, 50 is better.
-Olijar
EDIT: The draw math is wrong, but the percentages play out relatively similarly and I'm slightly lazy. Sorry guys!
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