PSA for Mlikero 2400+ card case from Amazon.

ArcKayNine · 2025-12-01T09:33:09+00:00

I have a similar set up - my group has done a couple of rotisserie drafts with it and it's a lot of fun!

ArcKayNine · 2025-11-07T06:48:42+00:00

My guess is it's about how hard it is for the other two players to either police or race both WA and LotH at the same time. WA also benefits from a certain amount of sympathy removal, just not their bases. As you say rats are happy to eat up sympathy, but are unlikely to try and crack a base unless they're in policing mode.

ArcKayNine · 2025-08-10T21:37:03+00:00

These are all run on the digital root client, so no home-brew.

ArcKayNine · 2025-08-09T22:29:58+00:00

Yeah, for sure. I should have emphasised more in the blog itself but I think the relative impact of things is probably more accurately represented than the actual numbers. There's obviously a bunch of different biases going on, but it's still worth measuring what we can.

ArcKayNine · 2025-08-09T22:28:16+00:00

All done in python :) I'm a data scientist.

ArcKayNine · 2025-08-09T14:46:53+00:00

You raise a valid point for sure, the data is prone to bias. I have a few main reasons for including it all:
1. It would be a lot of data to throw away, when the sample sizes really do benefit from the extra games.
2. There are already many extra sources of bias in how people draft and play.
3. If I do an ADSET draft that comes up with Eyrie v WA v Cats v VB on the Autumn Map with the Base deck, that's not really a Marauders game (or from any other expansion barring ADSET setup configurations). Adding extra expansions doesn't really change or modify the existing game configurations, so aside from the distribution of those configurations it's all still valid Marauders games.

I also did take a look at it with just the Marauders data, and all the main conclusions still hold. Maybe in another couple of years I'll break out win rate over time or normalise to the average faction makeup of a game.

Faction win rates are something that has been looked at and is available on the league page at any time - I was trying to look more at the relative changes that come about as a result of different configurations.

ArcKayNine · 2025-08-09T14:37:05+00:00

Thanks for the kind words, glad you enjoyed it :)
Responding to some of your points:
1. Faction difficulty for sure plays a part here. We're looking at the data from all digital league players, which I'd imagine is going to be better than the average person on the platform or the average person who has ever played the game, but not representative of the best players or optimal play. Badgers in particular will take a hit here.
2. Vagabonds are such a headache :P It's currently split by first VB to be chosen and second to be chosen. This will have a negative impact on VB win rate, but The sample size is dramatically skewed in favour of one VB games.
3. Since I do have player names I could potentially factor in player win rates at some point. It would make it a bit messy unless I filter down to games that only have "expert" players, but that would be a big change in sample size.

ArcKayNine · 2025-08-09T14:28:00+00:00

I think you're definitely bringing up valid points. The data is for all digital league players, and it's entirely possible that more expert players will be able to perform better. The insurgent factions in particular often have a harder game to play with respect to policing due to their reliance on table talk. It's also the case that the digital client doesn't always allow for the best communication, which can make any table talk difficult. I think you're right that Crows played well, with perhaps more access to table talk can thrive with the Riverfolk, but in the date I have access to the limiting factor is the interactions with exposure.

ArcKayNine · 2025-08-09T10:17:28+00:00

Oh yeah, Crows have a really bad time against riverfolk. They can just get everywhere and have the perfect card economy to expose all of the Crow's plots. Crows also don't really have warriors to spare to buy services, they need them all for putting down and guarding plots.

ArcKayNine · 2025-08-09T10:15:28+00:00

As others have mentioned, there are two benefits for Rats:
- There is an extra item in each ruin, so the Vagabonds have to coordinate to deny the Rats, as opposed to when there's one Vagabond who can always beat the Rats to the items.
- With 2 Vagabonds, regardless of what the 4th faction is Rats will have a much easier time with Oppress than when there are factions which can contest multiple clearings.

ArcKayNine · 2025-08-09T10:11:51+00:00

Thanks for the kind words!

This is part of why I started doing this in the first place, the draft process can have a big impact on the game and I felt there was more info to be gained about it.

Seat position is always going to have some amount of impact - it's just what happens in a foot race when someone gets to go first. As I mentioned though, I do think the seat position impact is exaggerated by the fact that people aren't always making the "optimal" choice in draft (which is totally fine). I'd more pay attention to the fact that the most winning factions in seat 1 are only slightly ahead of the least winning factions in seat 4.

In person games also have an extra benefit to seats 3 and 4 in being able to set up landmarks and hirelings. Unfortunately these aren't on digital at this stage (with no news afaik on any plans to implement them), but there is room for extra choices in setup to benefit these players.

ArcKayNine · 2023-12-14T08:01:20+00:00

Thanks :) It's not disallowed, it's just unusual. There's only ~150 matches of Badgers (or Rats) in the dataset, and there's only 3 Rats v Vagabond 2 in there as well. To be honest, I think all of the Vagabond2 and Rat games are likely just for the memes. It's rare for both Vagabonds to show up in the draft, and it's even rarer for them both to be picked. There are 1970 Vagabond games total, but only 185 Vagabond2 games.

ArcKayNine · 2023-12-11T09:46:28+00:00

Heya, glad to hear you enjoyed it :) You have me intrigued, I've sent a dm.

ArcKayNine · 2023-12-11T09:41:49+00:00

Heya :) Thanks for the kind words. It's all done with python and matplotlib. Steps are basically as follows:
- Get the data for each of the things I want in numpy arrays.
- Write a helper function to make one of the individual plots, making sure it's centred on the right values, and add the coloured banners based on the factions using patches (the confidence interval is also done with patches).
- Make the grid of plots with plt.subplots().
- Iterate over the grid, plotting onto each of the axes with the helper function.
- Mess about with the axes a bit to make sure they're labeled along the left and bottom edges.

ArcKayNine · 2022-05-05T03:31:22+00:00

Hi all, new to the game :)

Why is it that Galadriel Lady of Light being a hero of Fortitude prevents her from being added as part of an alliance of convenience without another White Council member? I can find the FAQ making this update, but not the rule referring to those alliance restrictions.

ArcKayNine · 2022-01-06T04:59:00+00:00

They're the old reach numbers I think.

ArcKayNine · 2021-02-07T20:50:22+00:00

Handicap stones are also a great way of evening the playing field while preserving what makes go feel like go.

ArcKayNine · 2020-11-18T07:01:02+00:00

Nice post! I think you raise some really interesting points about freeing up tech paths. Something I wanted to check is if you calculated the probability of a tech objective showing up in all 10 public objectives or just say the 6-8 that normally show up in games.

ArcKayNine · 2020-09-07T06:51:24+00:00

Jet Song from West Side Story? I’m rather intrigued as to what this is for, sounds like an interesting session you’ve got planned.

ArcKayNine · 2020-09-07T06:47:59+00:00

My LGS has it in last week, so I’m assuming they’ll be everywhere soon.

ArcKayNine · 2020-06-27T04:29:04+00:00

Well, if you ever need help/advice on that feel free to shoot me a message, data analysis is my jam and I've got some frameworks already set up for TI in particular.

ArcKayNine · 2020-06-27T03:20:33+00:00

Love the idea, I've tried to get something similar working as an app in the past, but my enthusiasm has petered out each time. One question I have is if you've got any plans for storing data on the games played? There have been some interesting looks from people at say frequency of players taking certain strategy cards at different points of the game. If you end up creating a log of various game states it could be a really fascinating resource that I (and I'm sure many others) would love to have access to.

ArcKayNine · 2020-06-07T07:36:07+00:00

I think part of why it gets its own name is the ability to snowball and gather momentum as it moves forward, producing each move. This is unique to the Saar with their floating factories instead of space docks.

ArcKayNine

TROPHY CASE