To Prelude or Not to Prelude

[bwalsh96]

Any thoughts on if Prelude adds to the skill gap or is it simply for variety and entertainment?

I find that my win rate in base + corporate era without Preludes is much higher than my win rate with Preludes. It makes me wonder if it’s just a matter of myself not adapting to the shorter game or if my opponents are just getting wildly stronger starts. There are 35 preludes. 6 are really strong, 6 are very solid, 6-8 are pretty bad, and the rest are average. If you put two players with a 100 elo gap in the same game, I’d wager the lower elo player wins 7/10 if they have significantly better Preludes for their game and a competent / similar start in terms of corps and cards. This of course assumes some type of basic skill (above elo 500 for example). So in my example, a 630 vs 530.

Perhaps this is just a rant and it’s all just my lack of adapting to preludes, but I’m curious what others at the top of the elo board think. Cheers!

[Yahyra]

Thanks for posting this topic; love the discussion.

I would lean to think that quantitatively determining whether Preludes, or any other expansions, adds or subtracts is hard if not impossible. Perhaps a better stated / more easily quantifiable topic for discussion is 'how correlated are Elo rankings for corp era no prelude versus Elo rankings corp era with prelude?'.

Aside from bringing that up, I would just share my opinion (or thoughts, as requested in the original post (OP)), T Mars is best, and most fun, at two players. 2 players corp era can be a loooong game though. So long that you see some folks come here on the forums and rage about 'two actions all the time playyyy!'.

Since I find 2p corp era games a tad too long, I really enjoy the prelude expansion. I do wish the preludes were better balanced so that the weaker ones could be closer to the stronger ones (which seems possible with small tweaks... like remove the -1 MC from bio support (the one with one plant, one electricity and one heat? I don't know I never pick it, it's never worth it with minus one MC income).

Best wishes.

[charliec247]

This was basically me a while back. I had a string of losses because Prelude does enable players to play cards that they normally would not be able to play (or at least, at the cost of tempo) without Prelude. However, I've also noticed that the general card quality in those games favoured the opponent. I've since learned to adapt and to be better at selecting Preludes. Ultimately TfM is a card-building game and all else being equal the player with the better set of cards will most likely win. Sometimes the opponent gets a busted draw and there's nothing you can do about it.

I had a whole thread dedicated to this topic too, but I've since said screw this, Preludes is fun, and it does what it was supposed to do, just figure out the game. Perhaps like me you were just going through a rough patch of poor draws/not yet having adapted yet. It's normal to lose a bunch when you're just figuring out a new format and trying to figure things out.

[Glados93]

Any thoughts on if Prelude adds to the skill gap or is it simply for variety and entertainment?

Interesting discussion! I have felt the exact same thing. I ended the previous corp era Arena around 530 ELO (exclusively 3p) and dropped straight to 450 ELO in the new prelude format. My initial thought was that prelude felt much more luck based. I have since tried to better evaluate the prelude cards, and to reevalute the value of basic cards in prelude format. This has helped a lot and im back over 500 ELO. I think prelude might be a bit higher variance, but even more so it just a very different beast from base+corp era and we have to learn to adapt. Tempo control is super important, and early production cards are less powerful. Terraforming cards are shooting up in my card winrate list. A 3p prelude game is very commonly over in 9 generations, whereas the norm for base+corp era was 11 generations.

You mention that there are about 6 good preludes and 6 bad preludes. I am very curious what you guys think are the "good" and "bad" preludes? Im pretty sure the current #1 winrate prelude in about 800 top level 3p Arena games will surprise you

[Glados93]

Oh and by the way we could try to measure if prelude format is in fact more luckbased by evaluating how well elo scores predicts true wins in the different formats. We could compare this between base+corp era and the current prelude format arena setting.

[bwalsh96]

Glados, I would say the conversation is mostly on 2p. 3p+ is not the most competitive format. With that being said, if we had a way to compare 2p stats for Base+Corp vs Base+Corp+Prelude and the frequency (% the lower elo wins) / severity (elo differential) of a lower elo person winning… that would be cool.

[Earthboundia]

Most of the arguments I have heard in favour of the prelude are the along of the lines of it shortening the game, rather than anything to do with making the game more competitive. Since turns are timed and all of the micromanaging stuff is done by BGA, I'd argue that the preludes offer little more than personal entertainment here. All that being said preludes can be very swingy, partly because of what you said, but also because some preludes simply synergise much better with certain corporations and having those situations can tip the balance a little.

[Yahyra]

@ Glados,

You mentioned (yes I know I can quote, but I am also lazy):

Im pretty sure the current #1 winrate prelude in about 800 top level 3p Arena games will surprise you

You want to tell us what it is? Society support? (not!?).

Best wishes.

[Glados93]

Its Aquifer Turbines at 42.25 % winrate (79/187 wins/plays)

Its closely followed by the expected Experimental Forest at 41.40 % winrate (65/157 wins/plays)

[charliec247]

Its Aquifer Turbines at 42.25 % winrate (79/187 wins/plays)

Its closely followed by the expected Experimental Forest at 41.40 % winrate (65/157 wins/plays)

Where can I find the full list of this statistic?