Rune burned. Over to the Cetra-takers.
I don’t want Ascension games to hinge on such things. The first 4 moves determine the outcome? SAD! :(
I played the Shadow Stalker and banished an apprentice from the discard pile. (There were no militia in it.)
Our current situation:
Draw pile: Apprentice
Discard pile: Canon Templar, 4 Apprentices
Hive Mind situation:
Draw pile and hand: 5 Apprentices, Militia, Scryer
Discard pile: 3 Apprentices, Mystic, Militia, Nightmare Delver
Max buying power for Hive Mind next turn is 5 runes.
The newly-revealed Disciple of Oziah poses a curious problem. It’s an Enlightened card, so it would help the Hive Mind by assisting the Scryer. There’s also a 3 power monster to kill. We have an enlightened card (the Templar) ourselves. I imagine that it wouldn’t be terribly long before the owner of the Disciple could transform it to a 5 power killer.
Taking it, however, would hamper either team’s ability to reach for a high cost hero like Cetra.
I should probably create a Davey’s Brain to help puzzle through this!
Props from ironcub decay slowly over time when the game is going well. The sharp drop in banish starter cards came when we acquired the Shadow Stalker, giving us a one-banish-card advantage over the Hive Mind. I’m trying to learn a lesson from last game, where the Hive Mind played conservatively when they knew they had the advantage. I think that’s a great lesson!
So there’s no compelling reason to desperately seek more banishing cards at this point. Constructs will be more important because of our Canon Templar. And taking Cetra is the main attraction right now.
I think we should take a Mystic and boost our maximum buying power to the 8 range, rather than risk the Disciple. But I want to run some simulations through my Annie Peeps Brain Augmentation first.
Max buying for us stands at 8 if we draw 3 Apprentices, Matron, and Templar. More likely is 6-7 range.
Hive Mind max buying stands at 6, and 5 for upcoming hand.
This is the main reason I’d take a Mystic – makes a 6-8 buying draw more likely going into the next shuffle.
I’ve read somewhere that props from iron is HIGHLY correlated with pulling out a victory! Though of course this interesting observation becomes less and less important with a greater obviousness of the likelihood of triumph!
Exactly, ironcub!
Update: The Annie Peeps Brain Augmentation (APBA) is indicating in most of its runs that it’s a tough call between Mystic and Disciple. Hold on for further data analysis.
OMG the APBA seemed to be down so I took just a Mystic and RIGHT as I hit End Turn, she came online with a “hoas” – too late!
Over to the Hive Mind.
If that Disciple turns out to be key, I’m going down to the server room and kicking some new assholes into some techs.
Anniebananie took a Mystic.
Discard militia, obviously. We’re shuffling our deck and want to maximize our chance of 7 runes. That means mystic, obviously. If we take mystic, our deck will be:
Scryer
Delver
2 Mystics
8 apps
2 militia
We have a 7% chance of drawing the Scryer, so let’s assume we don’t. That leaves 14 runes distributed across 13 cards, so it looks bleak - the average hand will be just over 5 runes. Odds of a 7-rune hand are quite bleak for the next two hands, no matter what we do now.
I think we have to assume Dave will get Cetra, and respond accordingly. We don’t want him to have the Everbloom or Disciple of Cetra, so those are both options. Alternatively, we could hope to combine Disciple of Oziah with Scryer. Hard choices!
- Mystic
- Mystic + Everbloom
- Mystic + D of C
- Mystic + D of O
- Everbloom + both D’s
- Forfeit
I would probably take the Disciple of Cetra, see what it reveals, then probably take Everbloom. I don’t really want anymore Mystics especially since we probably lose the Cetra race. It would be pretty bad if Dave gets both Cetra and those green cards. Losing Cetra isn’t the end of the world with this board, but we need to limit that synergy as best we can.
Kl3mnop
1674
Agree with delirium. We’re in the anti-Miles strategy mode. We’ve got to do whatever possible to keep green out of his hands We get the added bonus that accumulating green helps run the clock out faster.
Agree with Delirium’s proposal.
Delirium, what I meant was that on turn 2, Dave had a higher chance of winning the game by taking the Templar rather than the Stalker. I’m just going to make up some numbers here to try and illustrate (again, I don’t have anything to back these numbers up, but I think we can all agree that the Templar is a more valuable card than the Stalker).
Let’s assume we both have a 50% chance of winning the game from the outset. Let’s also say the stalker increases one’s chances of winning the game by 10%, and the templar 20%, and since Dave already has a mech hero, let’s say for him, that number is 25%. If Dave gets the Templar on turn 2, his chances of winning go up to 75%, and if he gets the Stalker turn 2 and Templar turn 3, it goes to 85%, or a 10% increase (which is the value of the Stalker). However, if he doesn’t get the Templar on turn 3 and we get it, our chances of winning go from 40% (ours went from 50 to 40 when Dave got the Stalker) to 60% while Dave’s goes down to 40%, so a relative decrease of 35% for him when compared to getting the Templar on his second turn.
Again, the example is overly simplistic with a bunch of % numbers that can be argued forever, but in my humble opinion, the incremental gain of getting the stalker second turn is not worth the more significant loss of not taking the templar second turn, even if the chances of you getting both are marginally higher than 50%. If you’re dead set on getting the stalker, then getting it the second turn is the correct move as you have it ready for the next cycle, but I think if this situation presented itself 100 times, Dave would lose more games getting the stalker second turn than he would if he got the templar instead (although his margin of victory in the games he does win should be higher).
MicroAdayu, do you want to cast a vote on the current turn? There are 3 votes to take D of Cetra and see what we expose.
It’s funny since I mentioned the lifebound chain earlier, but I’m not sure that’s the route we want to take now. I know we took the Delver for defense as well, but it was also to make a play on Cetra. Getting the Disciple actually hurts that cause for the next cycle since she’ll be worth one rune max on average with the current board (if we get the everbloom and get lucky enough to draw it with the disciple, the disciple is worth two runes, but the everbloom is worth 0 for an average of 1 rune). If our goal is Cetra, then maybe we punt our hand (or a 3rd mystic, but that would give us 4 cards that give us 2 runes and might make our deck a bit imbalanced).
However, if we wave the white flag on Cetra, then yes, I agree with what Delirium has to say. The chances of us getting Cetra ahead of Dave aren’t that great, so it might be a good idea to switch gears now. What I mentioned above could apply here too - are we better off gambling for Cetra, since we’re likely to lose regardless? Or are our chances high enough even without Cetra and Templar that it’s worth switching gears? These decision trees are what make Ascension great!
I’d like to know what the hive thinks about our chances if Dave gets Cetra - do you guys think we still have a decent chance to pull it off? If you guys do, then I’ll vote for the disciple. If you don’t, then I say we gamble on optimizing for Cetra.
Also Scott, if we do nothing this turn, I think we have a 36% chance of drawing the scryer next turn. We have 14 cards, 13 of which are not the scryer, so the chances of not drawing the scryer can be calculated by 13/14 * 12/13 * 11/12 * 10/11 * 9/10 which is about 64%. That said, our chances of drawing the scryer = 100%-64%, which is 36%
