Part I: Luck Of The Draw

"All human things are subject to decay, And when fate summons, monarchs must obey." - John Dryden (1631-1700), poet and dramatist

No one is master of their own destiny, completely. Life happens, or that other four letter word, and you are compelled seemingly by some otherworldy force. This isn't about religion, or any thing of supernatural belief, merely ruminations on the nature of fate. Ryan Riley (HavocRmR on the forums) came down to visit us for the weekend, along with some of the Fort Lauderdale crew, and after spending the whole day with him Saturday and also Sunday, something idiotic and stupid and pointless happened that prevented him from leaving for a while. He's fine, don't worry, and nothing happened to him directly, but it still sucks. I don't want to advertise it anymore because it's not my right to talk about it, I only bring it up because the situation got me thinking a bit about the nature of fate and how it can apply to card games in general.

Anyway, the point is simple - fate is a very nebulous and not altogether credible concept yet what we attribute to bad draws or lousy opening hands or such is really dependent on our own perception, isn't it? It's not fate, but randomness, which is either more or less disturbing based on how you look at it. Nearly every card game that involves processing information, decision making, and psychology and is played on a competitive level has some element of luck or chance built into the game system, what some of us tend to attribute to fate or the gods of cards games or whatever. Skill within those games largely involves how we go about mitigating those factors.

There are many strategies out there to deal with the cruel claws of random-osity (not a word, sorry), but before I get into those I want to give you two examples from this weekend alone. First was Jonny0211's crazy Order Donovan deck, the new one. I had never lost against this deck with Cody, including in the first tourney, yet all of a sudden I started my second turn at 4 vitality! Failing to draw Happy Holidays - but getting MACs and such that were critical - with no Cutting Edge on the board I thought I was dead. Yet I lived! Somehow, I deck with 30 6CCs in it FINALLY managed to fail some checks and I drew CSS with 2 Absurds, A KFT and Cody stacked - drop your hand and die. I managed to win Game 2 as well in similar recovery mode. This has happened to me and I'm sure all of you before, no doubt - you think like your done for and suddenly the tide turns. The only real importance here is that thinking about it afterwards, it reinforced the idea that you can never ever quit on a game; it's my one biggest pet peeve - people to admit defeat before it occurs. The other significant about this game is it made me question, what actually turns the tide? Random luck of the cards? The effort I put into deck contruction to mitigate that? Or anything I did in-game? For that match, I honestly didn't know the answer.

Scubadude and I have had some amazingly difficult matches of late, mostly because our two main decks were both constructed by me and therefore I know them both inside and out, and because scuba is such a good pilot that I have to work to press any remote advantage in a HEAVY control matchup. This weekend, we had two exceedingly anti-climatic matches - he won 2-0 in the first tournament and I returned the favor in the second one - and both really stumped me as to the nature of luck. In the first match, I drew no Syndicates in either game, I couldn't compete with his board domination, and succumbed to fatal Shallow Swipes. Ironically, the exact opposite thing happened in the second match! What are the odds? Probably pretty low. The importance of Addes Syndicate and the very few (but very good) answers to it in the current meta are the key to dealing with these kind of matches nowadays, it seems. I don't necessarily think it is a good thing, naturally, but I am very glad that response negation has become such and important and relevent part of the game. For the record, we each ran 3 Addes in the maindeck and both decks were above 60 cards, so it's not like the odds were astronomically against this occuring, but I just find it odd that it happened the way it did.

Part II: Charms Against Fate

In Poker, which is often noted as a skill game, luck plays much more of a factor than in UFS. This especially true for Texas Hold 'em, the most common variant of the game played today. Additionally, the number of players dilutes the card pool on top of the usual methods of randomization such as shuffling. Yet if you've ever seen Poker at the professional level, the same 15-25 players routinely win big money tournamens or World Series Of Poker main events and side event bracelets. Everyone I know who's played Poker will swear up and down that it's a skill game. The skill part involves psychology to a large degree, and this is one of the ways that you can guard against random bad luck. Not getting involved in hands that have a poor strat helps a lot.

In UFS, there are a large number of ways you can avoid the hands of fate. When you construct your deck, you usually want to stay as close to the minimum 59 + 1 cards as possible. This isn't always true; a lot of the time, it's hard to stay to that limit especially now that Set 9 has brought such a large number of elite and playable cards to the forefront. However, even if your deck is not exactly what it needs to be in terms of deck size, there are ways to work around this problem. Because of the nature of using your deck to roll checks and such, many decks also stick to the maximum number of copies for their key cards. Decks that can run cheap and efficient recursion - particularly Military Rank - often do not have to run the max. Keeping all this in mind when you construct a deck is often automatic, but it's a good tip that always helps with consistency.

Another way to avoid getting stiffed out of what you need is to aggresively mulligan for key cards depending on your matchups. I know some players that fear the mulligan, or will not mulligan a good opening hand even if it does not contain anything relevant to the opponent. I have always believed in the aggressive mulligans since back in my Magic days. I remember a Pro Tour Qualifier that I played in, back in the day (wow I suddenly feel old), in which I mulliganed down to 5 cards in the third game of the final round and still managed to win the game despite the serious lack of card advantage. It was risky but the 5 cards that I kept were almost exactly what I needed to control the game from the start and I was able to recover on card count through draw effects. UFS doesn't directly correlate to the same principle because the cards you mulligan are removed from the game, however the difference is that you do not have to lose cards to start out the game with a possible advantage. So use it!

Finally, perhaps the best way to help with consistency is to make sure your ratios are strong and allow you to spam a fair amount of foundations and assets earlier. The more you can play, the more you can thin out your deck and all but assure yourself a chance to get your kill conditions online and active as soon as possible. The tradeoff is of course your opponent will seek to capitalize on the low number of cards in your hand and probably attack the heck out of you, then again this is the give and take nature of the game that makes it so appealing. That's where the damage mitigation effects and hand refillers start to come into the picture...and we know the rest. It's a fierce battle always, right?

Maybe this piece isn't the most helpful thing you've ever read, but I just wanted to take the time to ruminate a bit on the nebulous nature of fate/luck/randomness and I hope you've found it somewhat interesting. Since I just finished reading all volumes in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, the quixotic nature of the Universe has been a major theme in my head for weeks and this series of events on the weekend sparked my introspection a bit more. I leave you all with a couple of questions - how do you handle "bad beats"? Do you chock them up to luck or do you honestly evaluate the game state and see what you could have done to prevent the loss? What are some of the ways that you use to avoid getting screwed by your own deck? I'm curious to hear your answers on this one. Till next time...

-Vik