annoying bad luck

[relaxed-llama112]

Every once in a while, near the end of the game, your opponent will draw some of the most favorable and deadly cards (sometimes the opponent will draw blind and get a great card, for example, if he is holding 6 greens aimlessly, and succeeds to draw 6 greens 3 points card blind on the last turn, and wins the game!) Naturally this should be attributed to luck, but I have rarely encountered similar situations in offline splendor.

I don't know if other players have encountered similar situations, but this kind of bad luck can seriously affect the game experience if you have this kind of luck too many times. This has caused me to lose at regular intervals to players who are much less experienced than I am, and also to players who often lose to me.

[Ceaseless]

Likely a game quantity thing. The more games you play the more opportunity for unlikely things to happen. The sorts of things you describe occur plenty of times, I've seen it pop up IRL on several occasions.

[relaxed-llama112]

Likely a game quantity thing. The more games you play the more opportunity for unlikely things to happen. The sorts of things you describe occur plenty of times, I've seen it pop up IRL on several occasions.

Rationally, I agree with you that playing more games makes it easier to see extreme distributions in statistics, but I've been dealing with this a lot lately (about 15 games and then 1 game like this way I lose), which is really annoying. Sometimes it makes me wonder if the system's random shuffling is really random. haha.

[Skrybowiedzma]

Bad randomness can happen in games. Typically it happens in real life card games - hand shuffling doesn't provide true randomness unless you do it for very, very long. It's noticeable in games where you collect sets, for example of the same colour, as the sets tend to stick together during shuffling after they've been put together during the previous game.

In an online game, I guess a bad randomness could happen due to programmers error, for example if some cards are arranged together in a table for some reason and then the programist forgets to shuffle this particular set of cards. Though I think this would be easily caught during debugging.

But what you are describing would mean that the "bad randomness" makes decision based on your opponent's hand - it would require deliberate programming to do that, meaning the bad will of the programmer. Why would a volunteer who makes games for BGA do a thing like that? And why doesn't it ever happen to you, only your opponents? It makes no sense.

[Not that good]

Just write "GG" and move on. Maybe good karma and luck will be on your side next time. Carry on.

[FrankJones]

Likely a game quantity thing. The more games you play the more opportunity for unlikely things to happen. The sorts of things you describe occur plenty of times, I've seen it pop up IRL on several occasions.

This.

Unlucky things will seem to occur more often when playing online.

[relaxed-llama112]

https://boardgamearena.com/gamereview?table=737246414

It happened again. The 5points black card is extremely deadly, and it makes no sense whatsoever.

[FrankJones]

https://boardgamearena.com/gamereview?table=737246414

It happened again. The 5points black card is extremely deadly, and it makes no sense whatsoever.

Makes sense to me. When tens of thousands of players play millions of games, improbable things happen sometimes.

[relaxed-llama112]

https://boardgamearena.com/gamereview?table=737246414

It happened again. The 5points black card is extremely deadly, and it makes no sense whatsoever.

Makes sense to me. When tens of thousands of players play millions of games, improbable things happen sometimes.

You don't get my point. A good board game that challenges players' intelligence can certainly allow for luck, but it shouldn't introduce completely unreasonable, thoughtless, and sudden game-changing situations at the very end. Such moments render all the players' previous planning and strategic efforts meaningless. Games should be designed so that luck provides players with a certain advantage, requiring them to still think strategically even when fortunate. However, it should not grant absolute, irreversible, effortlessly obtained advantages, especially in the final stages.

[Ceaseless]

https://boardgamearena.com/gamereview?table=737246414

It happened again. The 5points black card is extremely deadly, and it makes no sense whatsoever.

Makes sense to me. When tens of thousands of players play millions of games, improbable things happen sometimes.

You don't get my point. A good board game that challenges players' intelligence can certainly allow for luck, but it shouldn't introduce completely unreasonable, thoughtless, and sudden game-changing situations at the very end. Such moments render all the players' previous planning and strategic efforts meaningless. Games should be designed so that luck provides players with a certain advantage, requiring them to still think strategically even when fortunate. However, it should not grant absolute, irreversible, effortlessly obtained advantages, especially in the final stages.

When you add luck to a game, you run the risk of nonsense happening. Better games reduce that risk, but eliminating it entirely tends to be impractical, there's too many ways things can line up where things are in the air and the wrong flip seals the deal. That said, you're underselling your influence in that game. You had a time to counterreserve their finishing 3 point white, while meeting the token requirement to buy the 2 point red for 5 black next turn, (edit, they now need to realize they have to push for the 5/3 green 2 pointer to go for the tiebreaker win.) There was still more to squeeze out of them to make that finish harder. They also should not have been able to get that close. You had defensive options to keep them pinned down given their linear attack. One notable example was move 25, where you failed to pick up tokens to defensively block red/black at minimum while acquiring pressure for your multiple black threats. That 5 pointer only is a brutal finish for a player with overwhelming strong red and passable enough black that even has enough points for 5 to be enough to get them there. They have to set the card up for it to work. What was lucky was that the card matched the set-up they used for previous cards. They were quite lucky to get the win, but they still had no business winning that game even with that favorable flip.