Board Game Arena

Is there any way on BGA to see the stats on who wins Gizmos by starting position?

I.e., what is the percentage of times that the 1st player is the winner?
What is the percentage of times that the last player is the winner? (or 2nd, or 3rd, etc)

Another indicator of balance would be percentage of times that the last player concedes, or first player concedes, etc.

I am just curious at looking at it from a game design / game balance perspective. Even if it is a luck game, a balanced game design should have each position winning roughly the same amount of times.

I am NOT looking for your anecdotes and your guesstimates, I am looking for actual hard stats since BGA tracks thousands of repetitions of this game. (but I'm sure I'll get some of you's guesstimates anyways, lol)

Cheers

Shame you didn’t get an answer to this. I was curious myself.

There is a pretty strong first player advantage in this game. The first player potentially sees 10 cards, 4 in the level 1 display, 3 in the level 2 display, and 3 more if they research. Since the first player will file the best available card, the other players only get to see 3-4 cards. They get to see a single new card in the market, plus 3 if they research.

The problem comes from the deck. The build-pick cards are just too important. These are the cards that let you pick a marble when you build. You need to get a build-pick card early on your first 2-3 builds, or you just fall too far behind.

The only advantage for the last player is at the end of the game. If you see you're behind, you can gamble researching the level 3 deck to hopefully find a 7-8 point 4 cost card. If you're ahead, you can do a safe build of a 3 point card.