Board Game Arena

Has anyone done any analysis on how much of an advantage first player has?

Of course it's obvious when the game starts with a couple 5s out, but it also seems likely that first player would be ahead throughout the game and be able to control the timing of the last round (and thus have good control over getting the scissors).

Happy to get insight from others, especially if you have some numbers behind your hunches. Thanks.

I went digging into the available stats, and here's what I found:
- average number of turns per player: 19.82
- average number of turns per winner: 20.02
Unless I'm missing something, it seems to indicate that there is, indeed, a first player advantage.

Sure starting can be nice if you have good cards to pick. 5s or 1s or anything that helps getting objectives first is helping.
In 2p games reaching first objectives is only +1 star compared to being second, so not a big deal though.

But i would say that triggering last turn at the right momement
and controlling the cissors and especially last turn cissors are more important.

Grabbing last turn cissors is +2 for you and -2 for opponent, so a net +4 stars. This is huge.