Most people can agree that Meka Dragon is quite overpowered. This post is meant to help demonstrate how overpowered he is and illustrate how different power cards can help combat him (and to what extent). I've also included basic die roll data that can help with other heros as well. Feel free to let me know if there are more simulations I can run to improve this analysis.
The first thing I wanted to explore was how much damage Meka Dragon does on average if we just take every Attack and Exclam (!) die. I wrote some quick code (see here: https://pastebin.com/a5JvBkY5) to run 1M iterations with differing number of dice and rolls. Here are the results:
We can see that on a normal 6 die, 3 roll turn, Meka Dragon is doing ~4 damage per turn. Assuming the opponent doesn't heal or respond to this, the game will end in about 3.25 turns (assuming 13 health for the opponent).
Now let's say that the only strategy the opponent takes is to go for all the health dice that they can. Here is the same table as before but for this scenario. It's important to note that this applies to any face you want to go for, so it's a good resource to have in general:
The opponent going for only health dice will get ~2.5 per turn. This means that Meka Dragon will be out-damaging his opponent by 1.5 health (4 damage - 2.5 health) per turn! Even if the opponent happens to have 2 extra dice from something like Space Penguin, they still are behind by ~0.6 health. It's clear this is a losing battle and the opponent needs to do something else.
For how to combat this, there are a couple of options. One simple option is to win faster by pulling the Fame and Destruction tokens and claiming a Spotlight victory. Gigazaur is well suited for this. Let's assume Gigazaur only digs for the Exclam to win in this fashion. Below is a table showing what the distribution of results are for going for a single face (with 6 dice and 3 rolls):
So 0.6% of the time, we will get 6 Exclams (pull 3). 20.5% will be 4 or 5 (pull 2). And 58.9% will be 2 or 3 (pull 1). Of course I'm simplifying as you can have rolls that get the Fame or Destruction symbols and pull more, but we'll ignore that for now as it's more difficult than going for Exclams. Doing a weighted average of this yields that Gigazaur can do about 1 pull per turn (3*0.006 + 2*0.205 + 1*0.589 = 1.017). That means they would end the game after 6 turns. Now of course, Gigazaur will also be picking up health along the way so Meka Dragon will end the game at a higher number than 3.5 turns (for Gigazaur's 14 health). That being said, they are still at a disadvantage.
What else to do? Well there are power cards to be bought that can combat Meka Dragon's damage output. Of course anything that grants health is great (Moment of Respite, Snack Time, etc.), but anything that gives health on a per turn basis is better long-term. Here are those cards and a base level idea of how strong they are:
* Regeneration = +1 health per turn
* Armor Plating = +1 health per turn
* Trendsetter = +1 health per turn
* Camouflage = +0.66 health per turn (assuming Meka Dragon doing 4 damage per turn and you're at 1/6 to block each one)
You'll notice this starts to gain parity with Meka Dragon's attack. For 6 dice, 3 rolls, if Meka Dragon does 4 damage and we can heal for 2.5 health, getting something for +1 health per turn now cuts the damage output from Meka Dragon from 1.5 to 0.5.
The other thing to do is get cards that increase the number of dice or number of rolls like Extra Head or Giant Brain. If you look at the above table for "Digging for a Single Face", you can see how those card improve there. Here's the general pattern I've found:
For 6 dice, 3 rolls, we can find, on average, 2.5 faces per roll
* Extra Dice improve this by 1.15x
* Extra Roll improves this by 1.22x
* In The Shadows improves this by 1.15x
Unfortunately these are weaker in comparison to the +1 health per turn cards. For example, getting Extra Head allows you to only find about 0.5 more health per turn.
Now, if Meka Dragon finds any of these cards, their output improves at a much higher rate. Same idea but for Meka Dragon damage output:
For 6 dice, 3 rolls, we can find, on average, 4 damage per roll
* Extra Dice improves this by 1.33x
* Extra Roll improves this by 1.25x
* In The Shadows improves this by 1.2x
* Acid Attack improves this by 1.5x
So while these cards are not amazing for you trying to heal, you certainly want to deny them for Meka Dragon as he turns an already winning advantage into almost guaranteed victory with these cards. On the flip side, a card like Thunder Stomp that reduces Meka Dragons dice is very good. Going from 6 to 5 die reduces his damage output by 1.2 per turn which makes this a must pickup for Gigazaur especially.
One last thing to share is the distribution for Meka Dragon's output with the normal 6 dice, 3 rolls:
It should be apparent through intuition but this table makes it clear that if you are at 4 or 6 health and want to survive for one more turn, your best bet is to take a single health to go up to 5 or 7 which are near impossible and impossible for Meka Dragon to roll respectively. Going from 4 -> 5 health reduces the change of dying on the next turn from 56% to 32% and going from 6 -> 7 health reduces the chance of dying on the next turn from 28.9% to 9.5%.
In conclusion, Meka Dragon simply going for damage is incredibly strong. There are ways to help combat this, but all require quite a bit of luck. While I hope future Arena formats are always on automatic monster selection to improve the current situation, we are currently in the first Arena season of this game with players able to select their own monsters. The most competitive players will likely take Meka Dragon so hopefully this gives everyone some idea of what they're up against and also some proof as to why we should choose formats that avoid bringing him into the game as much as possible.
The first thing I wanted to explore was how much damage Meka Dragon does on average if we just take every Attack and Exclam (!) die. I wrote some quick code (see here: https://pastebin.com/a5JvBkY5) to run 1M iterations with differing number of dice and rolls. Here are the results:
We can see that on a normal 6 die, 3 roll turn, Meka Dragon is doing ~4 damage per turn. Assuming the opponent doesn't heal or respond to this, the game will end in about 3.25 turns (assuming 13 health for the opponent).
Now let's say that the only strategy the opponent takes is to go for all the health dice that they can. Here is the same table as before but for this scenario. It's important to note that this applies to any face you want to go for, so it's a good resource to have in general:
The opponent going for only health dice will get ~2.5 per turn. This means that Meka Dragon will be out-damaging his opponent by 1.5 health (4 damage - 2.5 health) per turn! Even if the opponent happens to have 2 extra dice from something like Space Penguin, they still are behind by ~0.6 health. It's clear this is a losing battle and the opponent needs to do something else.
For how to combat this, there are a couple of options. One simple option is to win faster by pulling the Fame and Destruction tokens and claiming a Spotlight victory. Gigazaur is well suited for this. Let's assume Gigazaur only digs for the Exclam to win in this fashion. Below is a table showing what the distribution of results are for going for a single face (with 6 dice and 3 rolls):
So 0.6% of the time, we will get 6 Exclams (pull 3). 20.5% will be 4 or 5 (pull 2). And 58.9% will be 2 or 3 (pull 1). Of course I'm simplifying as you can have rolls that get the Fame or Destruction symbols and pull more, but we'll ignore that for now as it's more difficult than going for Exclams. Doing a weighted average of this yields that Gigazaur can do about 1 pull per turn (3*0.006 + 2*0.205 + 1*0.589 = 1.017). That means they would end the game after 6 turns. Now of course, Gigazaur will also be picking up health along the way so Meka Dragon will end the game at a higher number than 3.5 turns (for Gigazaur's 14 health). That being said, they are still at a disadvantage.
What else to do? Well there are power cards to be bought that can combat Meka Dragon's damage output. Of course anything that grants health is great (Moment of Respite, Snack Time, etc.), but anything that gives health on a per turn basis is better long-term. Here are those cards and a base level idea of how strong they are:
* Regeneration = +1 health per turn
* Armor Plating = +1 health per turn
* Trendsetter = +1 health per turn
* Camouflage = +0.66 health per turn (assuming Meka Dragon doing 4 damage per turn and you're at 1/6 to block each one)
You'll notice this starts to gain parity with Meka Dragon's attack. For 6 dice, 3 rolls, if Meka Dragon does 4 damage and we can heal for 2.5 health, getting something for +1 health per turn now cuts the damage output from Meka Dragon from 1.5 to 0.5.
The other thing to do is get cards that increase the number of dice or number of rolls like Extra Head or Giant Brain. If you look at the above table for "Digging for a Single Face", you can see how those card improve there. Here's the general pattern I've found:
For 6 dice, 3 rolls, we can find, on average, 2.5 faces per roll
* Extra Dice improve this by 1.15x
* Extra Roll improves this by 1.22x
* In The Shadows improves this by 1.15x
Unfortunately these are weaker in comparison to the +1 health per turn cards. For example, getting Extra Head allows you to only find about 0.5 more health per turn.
Now, if Meka Dragon finds any of these cards, their output improves at a much higher rate. Same idea but for Meka Dragon damage output:
For 6 dice, 3 rolls, we can find, on average, 4 damage per roll
* Extra Dice improves this by 1.33x
* Extra Roll improves this by 1.25x
* In The Shadows improves this by 1.2x
* Acid Attack improves this by 1.5x
So while these cards are not amazing for you trying to heal, you certainly want to deny them for Meka Dragon as he turns an already winning advantage into almost guaranteed victory with these cards. On the flip side, a card like Thunder Stomp that reduces Meka Dragons dice is very good. Going from 6 to 5 die reduces his damage output by 1.2 per turn which makes this a must pickup for Gigazaur especially.
One last thing to share is the distribution for Meka Dragon's output with the normal 6 dice, 3 rolls:
It should be apparent through intuition but this table makes it clear that if you are at 4 or 6 health and want to survive for one more turn, your best bet is to take a single health to go up to 5 or 7 which are near impossible and impossible for Meka Dragon to roll respectively. Going from 4 -> 5 health reduces the change of dying on the next turn from 56% to 32% and going from 6 -> 7 health reduces the chance of dying on the next turn from 28.9% to 9.5%.
In conclusion, Meka Dragon simply going for damage is incredibly strong. There are ways to help combat this, but all require quite a bit of luck. While I hope future Arena formats are always on automatic monster selection to improve the current situation, we are currently in the first Arena season of this game with players able to select their own monsters. The most competitive players will likely take Meka Dragon so hopefully this gives everyone some idea of what they're up against and also some proof as to why we should choose formats that avoid bringing him into the game as much as possible.
