April Stats Analysis

I'm sure I'm not the only one who is always tempted to go on long tangents in other threads, and I almost did it just now in the TLT thread. So instead, I'll make a generic discussion post for analyzing lynkfox's stats compilation. Did anything strike you as odd or surprise you? We're starting to get into reliable numbers of data points (I hardly have a head for stats, but I remember the basics from high school and college), so conclusions are becoming safer to draw.

The tangent I was going to go on elsewhere was regarding Wraith: her base version numbers are surprisingly low to me (<75%). Since she has almost 350 games, it's hard to believe that her stats are swayed too much by the random card-starved, "who shuffled this deck???" hand. One guess is that, since she's on the strong end, people play her a lot against strong villains (she's face Matriarch more than any other hero, but not by much).

Her one real weakness is that she can get squishy, and I guess she's susceptible to equipment destruction, but she's so dang versatile, and she has the best search in the game to get you going however you want to play her (she was just my MVP of a Citizen Dawn stomping for using Infared Eyepiece almost every turn, despite doing almost no damage).

Golem Unity being higher than Normal Unity surprises me a bit. I haven't played as her yet, but four damage a pop always triggered my "yikes" reaction when I saw it. Evidently saving all that equipment is worth it, though?

For me, Golem Unity isn't exactly about saving the cards, it's that she's FAST. I mean, she murders herself doing it, but you can get a lot more done those first couple turns than you can with Regular Unity. Until you get one of the cards that speeds up her golem plays, she's spending her whole turn getting a golem onto the table in addition to the card disadvantage. Golem Unity can be playing cards for effect AND dropping a golem from turn 1. That's what I like about her.

Then again, I also play aggro AZ and suicide bomber Fanatic so I might just be a reckless player. But FWIW, I enjoyed her the times I played her golem version.

I'm totally the opposite player and always start conservative. But the more I play the game, the more I get a feel for what damage I can take… and I do love tanking with AZ.

I don't think it made it into the last stats comiplation since I didn't post it until the morning of Apr 1st, but my group just tried a 3 Legacies vs Iron Legacy game and lost, then tried 3 Wraiths against Iron Legacy and won.  The only point being, that counts as one loss for every Legacy (not three losses for Legacy) and a win for every Wraith (not three wins for Wraith in general).  It might be interesting to look at heros with multiple versions combined, but some of them play so differently I do think it is more accurate to look at each version separately.

Some genral stats:

Win percentage (errors are standard deviations)

All Games:  73.6% +/- 1.0%

Advanced:   67.4% +/- 2.5%

Basic:          75.1% +/- 1.1%

3-Player:      63.2% +/- 1.7%

4-Player:      85.5% +/- 1.2%

5-Player:      77.0% +/- 3.6%

Bullets:

The H mechanic seems to make 4-player games the easiest, with 5- player in the middle, and 3-player the hardest. (edit:typo)

I suspect that the small gap between advanced and basic is due to play skill.

I would be interested in the win percentage of 4-player basic and 3-player advanced.

I did look at that; Wraith Price of Freedom is ~80%, base is just under 75%, with Rook City Wraith well below them around 65% (both promos have the same amount of games, so it might pull the overall number to 73-74%, but base has so many it doesn't affect them too much). I haven't played RCW personally, but I feel like her power is tailored to the particularly difficult environments (like Rook City, go figure). I wouldn't be surprised if the two promo Wraiths trend towards base Wraith the more samples we get, as I don't see her base powers as all that game changing, considering the rest of her deck. Depending on the group, I feel like base Wraith is strongest for the extra situational survivability, since she has so much damage in her deck.

When I was showing my brother the game, he was speculating on this too. By the time people get plugged into the community, they're probably more familiar (and proficient) with the game, and once they're plugged in enough to report every game, they're probably well above the novice players, especially those who bought the game on a recommendation and don't have an experienced teammate to play with.

So then the people playing advanced regularly are the much more advanced players (who probably also cheat by using heroes like Legacy, Team Leader Tachyon, Dark Visionary, or Wraith ), while if beginner players tried more advanced, they'd be well below the observed 67% success.

I do t know that skill is much of a factor as seemed - after all for a while Baron blade was the most dangerous villain and wd chalked it up to New players. but he’s now down bit with less odd loss rate against, showing that even if skill was a reason, its evening out.

Also, how many running games at cons are recording any of them?

as for the three wraith 3 legacy games, I may take those out… because are those a legit, proper way to o play or a house rule?

(and if your game was in before 530pm est April 1st when I disabled the entry form for 4 hrs, it was counted)

I can add 3 player 4 player and 5 player advanced wins. losses no problem.

I /could/ add individual normal vrs advanced stats but that is a lot more work.

tho thinking about it I may have just found a way tondo all the updating in 10mins or less…

Lynkfox,

   Thanks for all you do. I find the stat page informative and fun!

  Youperguy

For me, Golem Unity isn't exactly about saving the cards, it's that she's FAST. I mean, she murders herself doing it, but you can get a lot more done those first couple turns than you can with Regular Unity.

This. And this is why the damage from that power couldn't be lower - if it were, she'd be ridiculous cheats.

Agreed! Lynkfox, this is pretty excellent.

Considering the Shattered Timelines motif, I think 3 Legacies or 3 Wraiths fighting together works.

I do think that player skill can be considered when analyzing the numbers, because people do get better at the game. And it makes sense that the better players take on more advanced modes (I see people talking about how X or Y advanced mode is easy, while I'm still nervous taking on Citizen Dawn basic, because I'm still learning all the nuance of the various decks).

Side note: I really like your thought of taking a snapshot of each month and saving it, for historical purposes.

My advanced rate is bafflingly better than my basic rate.  That's because I've played three games now against the Dreamer where she flips multiple Dark Heroes, I panic, declare I'm actually playing basic, then get slaughtered anyway.

I don't blink against Ennead, Chairman, Matriarch, Iron Legacy on advanced.  The Dreamer just terrifies me.

It's the creepy little kid thing, isn't it? *shudder*

Thanks for your support guys. I very much enjoy doing this and seeing what happens, and the discussion that comes out of them.

Just had a game last night against basic The Dreamer. I don't remember her being that hard during playtesting, but damn does she just like to bend you over. It was pretty brutal once we flipped her. I think we flipped her turn 3? then were dead by turn 5.

I've instituted a new strategy/rule against the Dreamer. If you are not killing at least half of the projections before the end of the hero turns.... (or... well, if you rely on the Agents to do it for you like we did)... Okay, if you are not killing at least half of the projections before the end of the ENVIRONMENT turn, you will not stay ahead of the game. Seems obvious, but I've killed Voss despite having I think all his minions and Thorathians out (wasn't fun). The Dreamer will punish you if you let her get away with it.

One thing to note: the most common Villain/Environment combo is Baron Blade in Metropolis, 44 times. 

Interestingly the win% is 93%.

Since this is recommended starting setup for Baron Blade, many of these games will include new players. Perhaps the argument that he is tougher then expected being due to new players messing up is incorrect? 

As perhaps you might expect the Baron does better in the harder environments like Rook City or Ruins of Atlantis. 

Combos with no stats yet (Non-Villain promos):

Omnitron in the Block

Akash'Bhuta in the Block

Kismet in Rook City

Spite in Silver Gulch

Miss Information in Silver Gultch

Iron Legacy in the Ruins of Atlantis

The Chairman in The Block

The Chairman in Time Cataclysim 

The Chairman in the Final Wasteland

Combos with game but no Hero Victories yet:

Iron Legacy in Insula Primus

The Dreamer in the Ruins of Atlantis

La Capitan in Rook City

Kismet in Wagner Mars Base

Go on I know you all want to be the first to input wins in these combos! :)

Note:  Lynkfox, Gloomweaver's environment stats look messed up. 

I think the idea that he's tougher than expected is getting dispelled the more data points we get. Miss Information and Kismet will get more wins to push them closer to the middle, leaving Baron, Ambuscade, and the Island (sorry, I'm a Lost fan, so I can't call it anything else) as the weakest three.

EEEEEEEEEEE! You just made my day.

I actually didn't find this to be the case.  All of my games have been on advanced since I've first cracked the box.  All of my friends who i played with were novices as well and we always played on Advanced.   The game scales very well with any understanding of game theory, no needing to stack the deck at all

I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you saying that the basic versions are equally as easy as advanced? If you only ever play advanced, you have no measure of how much more difficult advanced is than easy. Do you and your friends see the observed 2/3 win rate on advanced? Did you when you first cracked the box? (For the record, I was joking that using strong heroes is cheating.)

Out of curiosity, since the survey says Side A only and Side B only. I am wondering which Villans do people only play half of the Advanced rules most on?

Finally got my first Advanced game last night. Would say choosing Spite, with Nightmist, Omnitron, Eternal Haka and AZ. Was not the best choice to experience Advance for the first time. That extra 1 reduce was harsh with no damage buff and luck got worse when his first card was bounce 2 ongoing/equipment. Eventually won when we got Omnitron self-sustained to not taking more than 2 damage a turn and able to heal himself 2 HP.

very few games have only one side advanced - but if you look on the individual villain page at the top of each villain has their plays on advanced side a and advanced side b only.

I like tracking the incapacitated wins but I feel like they might not really say what we think.  For example it looks like Haka has a terrible incapacitated side, because when he goes down the team looses the vast majority of the time.  However, Haka has damage reduction and healing so he can live through a lot, its quite possible that he is the last one to be incapcitated in many of his games.  Maybe its not that his incapacitated side is weak, so much as he doesn't get incapacitated easily so If he does get incapacitated the whole team is in a ton of trouble.

Voss and the Ennead are the ones that I play advanced and basic on different sides.

For Voss I like to play his side A on basic and side B on advanced. It makes it more important to decide when to let him flip.

For the Ennead, basic on side A means you will rarely see a flip. But the difference between basic and advanced is so much that I will sometimes play side A on advanced and side B on normal.

I noticed that when I played the Ennead for the first time yesterday, I played the first three and then never saw another one of them. The environment ended up finishing the fight because I was delaying to see if I could get any of the other villains to come out and fight me. However, Set was murdering me fairly quickly in the mid-game (hitting every hero multiple times with the elements card which does 1,1,1 and then his power which did 1,1… Ra took 10 damage in that one attack, made him deadly for my team and then when flipped you basically get an uncontrolled round before the villain turn), and I can imagine getting a lot of these guys out on the field at the same time gets incredibly difficult very quickly

only 5 games not advanced has the ennead flipped. Out of i think its 78. That is a stat I track :P

It /is/ possible for the Ennead to flip on not advanced (there are cards that play another obviously) but its just a rare occurance.

Especially on a 3 player game, as the deck would have to be completely reshuffled for that to occur. Since only playing the four copies would result in 7 in play. Unless Atum is incapacitated, then that could make it happen if somone is very unlucky at shuffling. In a five player game I could see it happening, especially if it takes play in Rook City.

I’m saying advanced isn’t that hard, with very few exceptions. We have about a 75% win percentage. Keep in mind that the advanced rules are known quantities, not mystery variables. If you know the big bad has damage resistance, you change your plays to account for that (or in a worse case scenario have the game run a little longer)

Now that being said, it could be that our play group is really good at finding synergy, and our experience isn’t the norm…but I kind of doubt it. The game has a very elegant and simple design. In a lot of ways it’s more of a puzzle/strategy game than it is about dumb luck. And as a result of that normal/ advanced is less of a factor than understanding game theory.