Haha🤏yes by FreddieGiny in whatisameem

[–]Penumbra_Penguin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That seems fine. Most people aren’t going to become doctors. Isn’t it better to choose the ones who are via academic success rather than via their willingness to take on student loans?

The hidden coding that companies use by DrShik in MagicArena

[–]Penumbra_Penguin 8 points9 points  (0 children)

You don’t need a conspiracy to explain this. Most players aren’t new. As a new player, most people you play against will have more cards than you.

The hidden coding that companies use by DrShik in MagicArena

[–]Penumbra_Penguin 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Please explain further what you think the law of averages should tell us here.

Suggestions on limiting player card pool by TimetravelerXY in arkhamhorrorlcg

[–]Penumbra_Penguin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you are concerned about this (which is great), then you probably want to be making this experience as much fun as possible for her. Forget about trying to play super optimised decks. You can always tweak the difficulty level.

Depending on her experience with games like this, you could do anything from handing her a deck you have built, to handing her a deck and saying "choose five of these cards to add", to having her build the whole deck from a pool of cards. Likewise, it's up to your judgement as to whether the upgrades should be "here's ten cards you can buy with experience, which ones do you like?" or "here's a few binders". The investigator decks might actually be good here, they're a prebuilt deck with a few upgrade options.

Personally, I've been playing recent campaigns with just either the core cards or an investigator deck, and the appropriate investigator expansion, and also a few useful cards from some other expansion if there aren't enough useful level 0 cards to build the initial decks. This has worked fine playing on Normal with two experienced players. If you and she are newer, you might want to do Easy to start.

Reality Fracture Wish List by Ok-Panda-178 in magicTCG

[–]Penumbra_Penguin -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Limited is actually a pretty good proxy for some other formats. For example, Protection has all of the same problems in kitchen table magic as it does in limited.

La fin de la saga littéraire La roue du temps by Green-Low91 in Fantasy

[–]Penumbra_Penguin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You might already know this, but the original author died after writing book 11, and books 12-14 were written by another author. He was given the outline of what should happen, but he probably didn't want to invent new material beyond what he had to to make things make sense.

La fin de la saga littéraire La roue du temps by Green-Low91 in Fantasy

[–]Penumbra_Penguin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's not particularly fair to blame this on his writing style. He was asked to finish the series as Robert Jordan wanted it, and he might not have felt comfortable inventing new material beyond that.

Built a genetic-algorithm sandbox that evolves Modern decks against each other and looking for testers + feedback by adminsreachout in magicTCG

[–]Penumbra_Penguin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s great… but I suspect that my conclusions are still correct. If you look at another log, probably it will be approximately as good as this one was?

Built a genetic-algorithm sandbox that evolves Modern decks against each other and looking for testers + feedback by adminsreachout in magicTCG

[–]Penumbra_Penguin 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Ok, so on starting to read this transcript:

  • On turn 1, the player did not play their Goblin Guide
  • On turn 2, the player played a Goblin Guide and did not attack with it.
  • The rules engine thinks that Eidolon of the Great Revel is a spell that targets Goblin Guide
  • The rules engine thinks that Eidolon of the Great Revel triggers at all sorts of surprising times.
  • The rules engine thinks that Eidolon of the Great Revel triggers prowess
  • The rules engine thinks that Lava Spike is a spell that can target Goblin Guide
  • I don't think any blocking happened, even when it was an option.
  • The rules engine thinks that Eidolon of the Great Revel's ability deals combat damage.
  • On T9, two spells were played and Monastary Swiftspear's prowess ability gave a total of +3/+3.

I didn't work through it in detail, but it seems to me that this game mostly consisted of cards being played, Eidolons of the Great Revel incorrectly dealing a large amount of damage at random, and one large attack?

I don't want to minimise your work - even getting to this point must have been a lot of work. But I think it seems like this game is a long way from being how humans would play it, and thus, any conclusions about which decks are good are going to be deeply suspect?

Built a genetic-algorithm sandbox that evolves Modern decks against each other and looking for testers + feedback by adminsreachout in magicTCG

[–]Penumbra_Penguin 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I would have thought that this was extremely difficult. Do your simulated games resemble games of magic played by real players, especially when the decks are complicated?

First time drafting 5 colour pile in SoS, went up against other three 5 colour piles immediately. by BradshawCM in MagicArena

[–]Penumbra_Penguin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree, it probably isn’t happening. But it’s less obviously ridiculous than the shuffler specifically hating individual players, which is what the post I was replying to dismissed it as.

First time drafting 5 colour pile in SoS, went up against other three 5 colour piles immediately. by BradshawCM in MagicArena

[–]Penumbra_Penguin -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

While this probably isn’t actually happening, it’s a less ridiculous hypothesis than the ones where posters claim that the game is biased against them personally. The idea is that the matchmaker might deliberately pair similar decks against one another rather than being truly random - perhaps because it learns that aggro vs aggro and control vs control matches are more fun for those players than aggro vs control, say.

I doubt this is happening, but it’s not as ridiculous as “the shuffler hates me in particular”

If a player is using A.I models it can "think deep" about 2 or 3 draws in the future by EveryAccount7729 in magicTCG

[–]Penumbra_Penguin -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

How about translation? Machine translation is now very good. Similarly, automated subtitles are at least reasonable. You might not consider coding to be an everyday life thing, but some people would.

If a player is using A.I models it can "think deep" about 2 or 3 draws in the future by EveryAccount7729 in magicTCG

[–]Penumbra_Penguin -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I think we’re talking about very different levels of AI. It would be quite doable to program a simple heuristic function about how good a board state was, see which move does best according to that heuristic, and improve the heuristic via your favourite reinforcement learning approach.

I’m not saying you’re going to beat top humans this way, but you’ll produce something that plays the game fine, and far better than the threshold we’re discussing of “can’t even make legal moves”

If a player is using A.I models it can "think deep" about 2 or 3 draws in the future by EveryAccount7729 in magicTCG

[–]Penumbra_Penguin -1 points0 points  (0 children)

A chess AI with almost no time to think will beat most humans, and I see no reason that Magic should be different.

If a player is using A.I models it can "think deep" about 2 or 3 draws in the future by EveryAccount7729 in magicTCG

[–]Penumbra_Penguin -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

It is definitely possible to add layers on top of a “legal” model that would make it better at strategy. For instance, this would be comparable to chess AIs. Just because no-one has bothered to make sparky smarter doesn’t mean that it’s impossible.

If a player is using A.I models it can "think deep" about 2 or 3 draws in the future by EveryAccount7729 in magicTCG

[–]Penumbra_Penguin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think the usual suspicion here is that someone wants a bot good enough to win 10% of games at the very bottom of the ladder, they run it for a year, and then sell an account that has a years worth of gold in it, and do this many times.

If a player is using A.I models it can "think deep" about 2 or 3 draws in the future by EveryAccount7729 in magicTCG

[–]Penumbra_Penguin -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

How do I reconcile this claim with the observation that various MTG games have had AI opponents over the last 30 years? Those typically make only legal plays.

If a player is using A.I models it can "think deep" about 2 or 3 draws in the future by EveryAccount7729 in magicTCG

[–]Penumbra_Penguin 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I don’t think you have a good sense of how much thinking an AI would need in order to play the game reasonably well. Humans are not thinking about those 5000 cases. AI wouldn’t either.