4 ms·

Here's a plausible explanation for making screw worse on 2 landers and flood worse on 5 landers: Wizards has data showing that keeping a 2 or 5 lander is bad fo

Here's a plausible explanation for making screw worse on 2 landers and flood worse on 5 landers: Wizards has data showing that keeping a 2 or 5 lander is bad for their metrics but players still tend to do it often, and they wish to artificially deflate results with such hands to disincentivize people keeping them. Let's say naturally your deck will have a 30% win rate keeping a 2 lander but the shuffler enforces screw and your actual win rate is 20%. You remember keeping as worse than it really is and you mull more often on 2 lands, leading to longer and more engaging games. Of course, no evidence for this at all, but it seems like a plausible reason to me why they might do something like what's described.

usea 4y ago
So in this hypothetical, the reason they want to push players into accepting better opening hands is because losing in such a way is no fun. So their strategy to teach players better behavior is to make them experience it more often and to a worse degree? Like a parent who makes their child smoke a whole carton of cigarettes because smoking is bad for you?
- cool_dude85 4y ago
  The idea would be to make it artifically worse (in terms of win rate) so it becomes less common.
YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
There are three kinds of "possible worlds" with respect to shuffling, in M:tG. Let's call them "shuffle-worlds". We have a) a Balanced World, where land and non-land are well-mixed and you can expect to draw them in a way that represents their distribution in your deck; b) a Glut World where there's a big bunch of land stacked close to your opening hand; and c) a Screw World where there's a big bunch of land stacked far from your opening hand. Now, your opening hand can give you no more than a hint of which world you're in, but it's the best you can get, short of library manipulation, including reshuffling and land-thinning effects (which are not available to all decks). What's more, Screw World and Glut World are bad, and there's two of them, whereas Balanced World is good but there's only one of it. So you're more likely to be in the Screw or Glut World, than the Balanced World, in any game you play. So if you get a 2-land opening hand, you can expect to be in a Screw World, and if not, then you can expect to be in a Glut World (with the glut of land lurking just beyond the first 7 cards). If you see a 5-land opening hand, the same but for a Glut World. And if you get a balanced opening hand, well, you may not be in a balanced world but, at least, if you've built your deck right, you can play your game for a few turns, and that should really be enough. Note that all that happens in the physical game, as well as the online games. The only difference is that in the online games the shuffling is done automatically, but whether this means it's a shuffle more or less likely to bring up Balanced World draws, that's up for research. The solution is to always try to play degenerate decks: decks that need only very little land (Good, old, Senor Stompy being the exemplar- I'm talking about the 18-land Ice Age archetype) or decks that need a lot of land, like decks with big, splashy, expensive spells that need to be stuffed with 25-26 land (in 60-card formats that is). That way, you're artificially tipping the scales towards either a Glut World or a Screw World, but you've actually built your deck around it. And now you have two good worlds to look forward to (because the Balanced World is not going to hurt you if, again, you've designed your deck right) so luck's on your side. You gotta make your own luck. The rest is self-deception. And people who play games of chance always have their little superstitions.

usea 4y ago

So in this hypothetical, the reason they want to push players into accepting better opening hands is because losing in such a way is no fun. So their strategy to teach players better behavior is to make them experience it more often and to a worse degree? Like a parent who makes their child smoke a whole carton of cigarettes because smoking is bad for you?

cool_dude85 4y ago
The idea would be to make it artifically worse (in terms of win rate) so it becomes less common.

YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago

There are three kinds of "possible worlds" with respect to shuffling, in M:tG. Let's call them "shuffle-worlds". We have a) a Balanced World, where land and non-land are well-mixed and you can expect to draw them in a way that represents their distribution in your deck; b) a Glut World where there's a big bunch of land stacked close to your opening hand; and c) a Screw World where there's a big bunch of land stacked far from your opening hand. Now, your opening hand can give you no more than a hint of which world you're in, but it's the best you can get, short of library manipulation, including reshuffling and land-thinning effects (which are not available to all decks). What's more, Screw World and Glut World are bad, and there's two of them, whereas Balanced World is good but there's only one of it. So you're more likely to be in the Screw or Glut World, than the Balanced World, in any game you play. So if you get a 2-land opening hand, you can expect to be in a Screw World, and if not, then you can expect to be in a Glut World (with the glut of land lurking just beyond the first 7 cards). If you see a 5-land opening hand, the same but for a Glut World. And if you get a balanced opening hand, well, you may not be in a balanced world but, at least, if you've built your deck right, you can play your game for a few turns, and that should really be enough. Note that all that happens in the physical game, as well as the online games. The only difference is that in the online games the shuffling is done automatically, but whether this means it's a shuffle more or less likely to bring up Balanced World draws, that's up for research. The solution is to always try to play degenerate decks: decks that need only very little land (Good, old, Senor Stompy being the exemplar- I'm talking about the 18-land Ice Age archetype) or decks that need a lot of land, like decks with big, splashy, expensive spells that need to be stuffed with 25-26 land (in 60-card formats that is). That way, you're artificially tipping the scales towards either a Glut World or a Screw World, but you've actually built your deck around it. And now you have two good worlds to look forward to (because the Balanced World is not going to hurt you if, again, you've designed your deck right) so luck's on your side. You gotta make your own luck. The rest is self-deception. And people who play games of chance always have their little superstitions.