BlackAngel's Blog #1: Is Lady Luck on your Side

Is Lady Luck on your Side?
By: BlackAngel (panD3MONium)

No doubt luck is a big part of Shadow Era. A single draw in a close competitive match can ultimately be the difference between a win or a loss. Is this an uncontrollable factor built into the game or is there a way for us to control how much luck we have? Well if you take probability of draw into consideration when building your deck you actually can!

Probability of draw simply means drawing the right cards at the right time. The higher probability of draw you have the easier it will be to execute your deck’s strategy, or win condition, as quickly as possible. Fortunately for us there are several strategies at our disposal to increase our probability of draw.

One of these strategies are identifying key cards in your deck. An easy trick most players do is lay out their ideal first five to six turns. Cards that are needed early are very important for your deck’s momentum and should be maxed (4 copies). Cards that are important but not needed until later should be limited to 2-3 copies. Using this trick will increase your early game performance and prevent bad starting hands happening as often.

Another great strategy is simply increasing your drawing power. Your deck should include both primary, long lasting, and secondary, short burst, draw engines. Establishing draw engines early can build momentum throughout the game and give you more options to play.

Our final strategy is do not try to counter everything when building a deck. This ruins your probability of draw because you are too focus on countering rather than pulling off your own deck strategy, or win condition. This can also lead to dead draws if you are drawing counters at the wrong time or against the wrong opponent entirely. Although counters are a crucial part of deck building they should be broad counters limited to 2-4 cards (or roughly 5% of your deck if larger than 40 cards).

Lady luck can be a cruel mistress but she loves a man who can calculate probability of draw. Keeping these strategies in mind when constructing your decks will help you execute your win condition as quickly as possible.

Start making your own luck and get out there and win!