Card Distributions and Shuffling

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Watno
Posts: 13
Joined: 07 November 2013, 01:05

Re: Card Distributions and Shuffling

Post by Watno »

GTSchemer wrote: 29 June 2023, 19:31
Watno wrote: 29 June 2023, 18:35
GTSchemer wrote: 29 June 2023, 16:01
I'm no expert statistician, but I wouldn't make an assumption about the deck quality. There is no guarantee the good cards are at the top. Maybe the good cards were at the bottom, and waiting to draw helped me one game! In theory it shouldn't matter.
The good cards are more likely to have been picked up by others before the reshuffle.
If they were at the bottom of the deck, other players cannot do this -- they would just see 5-10 cards from the top, and pick the best from those. Discarded cards are placed in a discard pile, so before reshuffle, they will not be affecting anything.
Other players can not do what?
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Guudys
Posts: 88
Joined: 30 September 2021, 12:10

Re: Card Distributions and Shuffling

Post by Guudys »

GTSchemer wrote: 29 June 2023, 15:59
No, Robot cards are divided into starter (S), harder (R), and hardest (SOLO, 1-player only games). The rules talk about how they are mixed into the options based on difficulty.

Note that Robogram is potentially meaner than Hologram, since it gives you a card from Level A.
Okay so irl how do I prepare a deck. I understand adding/replacing certain R cards with the starter cards (according to the rulebook and based on levels 2-5) but when are Robogram or Autocorrect added to the deck? Like they are just added and that's it, or they act like an R card where you replace a specific card from the starter deck with it (based on difficulty).

I've now had a level 5 game with both Autocorrect and Robogram in it and won! It was very fun. Robogram actually added sometimes useful cards (not that I kept them afterwards) to temporise and win the matches. Autocorrect was really really tough to beat in the early game cause it kept drawing it first or second card of the game meaning I milked my cards lol.
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GTSchemer
Posts: 1130
Joined: 09 August 2013, 03:26

Re: Card Distributions and Shuffling

Post by GTSchemer »

Watno wrote: 29 June 2023, 21:52
GTSchemer wrote: 29 June 2023, 19:31
Watno wrote: 29 June 2023, 18:35
The good cards are more likely to have been picked up by others before the reshuffle.
If they were at the bottom of the deck, other players cannot do this -- they would just see 5-10 cards from the top, and pick the best from those. Discarded cards are placed in a discard pile, so before reshuffle, they will not be affecting anything.
Other players can not do what?
Other players cannot somehow dilute the deck. Let me try to explain.

Imagine there are 40 cards in a deck. This time, the bottom 10 cards happen to contain "the good cards", whatever those may be (maybe 4 copies of Vendor!).

If 3 other players all redraw their whole hand, they would only see the top 30 of those cards. Then I redraw my hand, and I get the good cards! Yay!

Or it could work the opposite way. Maybe some good cards were at the top. Maybe they were mixed through the deck. It's shuffled so you never know! The point is that it mostly doesn't matter who draws when, because the order is random. The discarded cards get put in a separate area unless the deck fully runs out.
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GTSchemer
Posts: 1130
Joined: 09 August 2013, 03:26

Re: Card Distributions and Shuffling

Post by GTSchemer »

Guudys wrote: 30 June 2023, 01:37
GTSchemer wrote: 29 June 2023, 15:59
No, Robot cards are divided into starter (S), harder (R), and hardest (SOLO, 1-player only games). The rules talk about how they are mixed into the options based on difficulty.

Note that Robogram is potentially meaner than Hologram, since it gives you a card from Level A.
Okay so irl how do I prepare a deck. I understand adding/replacing certain R cards with the starter cards (according to the rulebook and based on levels 2-5) but when are Robogram or Autocorrect added to the deck? Like they are just added and that's it, or they act like an R card where you replace a specific card from the starter deck with it (based on difficulty).

I've now had a level 5 game with both Autocorrect and Robogram in it and won! It was very fun. Robogram actually added sometimes useful cards (not that I kept them afterwards) to temporise and win the matches. Autocorrect was really really tough to beat in the early game cause it kept drawing it first or second card of the game meaning I milked my cards lol.
If you have the game in real life, page 3 of the rules explains it. The higher the difficulty level, the more of the Robot's cards get replaced by advanced R cards.

If you use the solo challenge, then you mix together all the R cards with the SOLO cards, and use that random stack of cards to replace the robot's starter stuff.

At level 5, SOLO mode difficulty:

* The robot's Alpha card is replaced with a random card from the shuffled R / SOLO stack.
* The robot's Beta card is replaced with a random card from the shuffled R / SOLO stack.
* The robot's Good Bot card is replaced with a random card from the shuffled R / SOLO stack.
* The robot's C.H.A.M.P. card is replaced with TWO cards from the shuffled R / SOLO stack.


Once this process finishes, you have formed a deck of cards that the robot uses for the rest of the game. The cool thing is, you can build to counter the robot to an extent.
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Guudys
Posts: 88
Joined: 30 September 2021, 12:10

Re: Card Distributions and Shuffling

Post by Guudys »

I understand how R cards work and are added to deck. Basically, I just missed the one sentence where it said to shuffle the R and SOLO cards together. 🤦‍♀️
Anyway, to me, it means they are technically just like R cards.
Thanks.

Also you're welcome to all the people that thanked me.
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Watno
Posts: 13
Joined: 07 November 2013, 01:05

Re: Card Distributions and Shuffling

Post by Watno »

GTSchemer wrote: 30 June 2023, 02:47
Watno wrote: 29 June 2023, 21:52
GTSchemer wrote: 29 June 2023, 19:31
If they were at the bottom of the deck, other players cannot do this -- they would just see 5-10 cards from the top, and pick the best from those. Discarded cards are placed in a discard pile, so before reshuffle, they will not be affecting anything.
Other players can not do what?
Other players cannot somehow dilute the deck. Let me try to explain.

Imagine there are 40 cards in a deck. This time, the bottom 10 cards happen to contain "the good cards", whatever those may be (maybe 4 copies of Vendor!).

If 3 other players all redraw their whole hand, they would only see the top 30 of those cards. Then I redraw my hand, and I get the good cards! Yay!

Or it could work the opposite way. Maybe some good cards were at the top. Maybe they were mixed through the deck. It's shuffled so you never know! The point is that it mostly doesn't matter who draws when, because the order is random. The discarded cards get put in a separate area unless the deck fully runs out.
simple example: everyone agrees vendors are good and will always take them. Therefore, after the first reshuffle, it is very unlikely to see any vendors. So, if the deck is running out, I want to redraw before the shuffle to see more cards that could still be vendors. Since I don't know when the reshuffle happens, I always want to redraw as quickly as possible
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Wonderful Plays
Posts: 247
Joined: 20 September 2018, 13:06

Re: Card Distributions and Shuffling

Post by Wonderful Plays »

Watno wrote: 30 June 2023, 09:04
GTSchemer wrote: 30 June 2023, 02:47
Watno wrote: 29 June 2023, 21:52
Other players can not do what?
Other players cannot somehow dilute the deck. Let me try to explain.

Imagine there are 40 cards in a deck. This time, the bottom 10 cards happen to contain "the good cards", whatever those may be (maybe 4 copies of Vendor!).

If 3 other players all redraw their whole hand, they would only see the top 30 of those cards. Then I redraw my hand, and I get the good cards! Yay!

Or it could work the opposite way. Maybe some good cards were at the top. Maybe they were mixed through the deck. It's shuffled so you never know! The point is that it mostly doesn't matter who draws when, because the order is random. The discarded cards get put in a separate area unless the deck fully runs out.
simple example: everyone agrees vendors are good and will always take them. Therefore, after the first reshuffle, it is very unlikely to see any vendors. So, if the deck is running out, I want to redraw before the shuffle to see more cards that could still be vendors. Since I don't know when the reshuffle happens, I always want to redraw as quickly as possible
In that example wouldn't taking something that people don't really use but is still good and waiting for their reshuffles be better? ;)
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Fletcheese
Posts: 164
Joined: 21 March 2022, 03:16

Re: Card Distributions and Shuffling

Post by Fletcheese »

Wonderful Plays wrote: 30 June 2023, 10:19
Watno wrote: 30 June 2023, 09:04
GTSchemer wrote: 30 June 2023, 02:47
Other players cannot somehow dilute the deck. Let me try to explain.

Imagine there are 40 cards in a deck. This time, the bottom 10 cards happen to contain "the good cards", whatever those may be (maybe 4 copies of Vendor!).

If 3 other players all redraw their whole hand, they would only see the top 30 of those cards. Then I redraw my hand, and I get the good cards! Yay!

Or it could work the opposite way. Maybe some good cards were at the top. Maybe they were mixed through the deck. It's shuffled so you never know! The point is that it mostly doesn't matter who draws when, because the order is random. The discarded cards get put in a separate area unless the deck fully runs out.
simple example: everyone agrees vendors are good and will always take them. Therefore, after the first reshuffle, it is very unlikely to see any vendors. So, if the deck is running out, I want to redraw before the shuffle to see more cards that could still be vendors. Since I don't know when the reshuffle happens, I always want to redraw as quickly as possible
In that example wouldn't taking something that people don't really use but is still good and waiting for their reshuffles be better? ;)
There is some truth to both sides here, but you have to consider whether the increased likelihood of finding multiples outweighs the "absolute power level" of the card. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't and it's very situationally dependent which is part of why this game is fun and interesting :)
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