Introduction
Time to continue simulation journey from The Final Round Weight Of Gwent Cards article. We would go straight to the graphs with no longer explanations – check out preceeding article for all details. The only difference would be that now 3 weakest cards from hand are played in Round 2 instead of keeping all cards in hand and getting 3 extra mulligans. Such approach is closer to what happens in most Gwent games.
Round 1
Blunder check graphs: probability of finding cards in hand before R1 mulligans and probability of them being left in deck. Obviously, no matter the coin, we draw 10/25 = 40% and 15/25 = 60% is left in deck.
The simulation was performed for red coin and we could see that only two weakest cards are very unlikely to be in the starting hand (4%), while each next one from 23-20 region is about 8% more probable in initial hand. 19th card is already present in 40% of games.
That demonstrates one of the common mistakes in beginner’s deckbuilding. Putting 6 or more conditional cards in the deck (Spores, Squirrel, Pellar…) would result in unplayable Round 1 hands in more than 35% of cases, which often could prove disastrous.
The negative of R1 hand is the deck at this stage of the game. Later on it would diverge due to some cards getting played from hand. The weakest card played by opponent in the given matchup would be only in 4% of cases in their hand.
In Round 1, cards from 14-22 region would most often be played in natural algorithm. Let’s note one more time, that in reality other strategies may be more optimal. Playing weakest cards maximizes average quality for further rounds at expense of current round tempo.
Pursuing algorithm of playing 3 weakest cards in R1, our hand after R1 would effectively never inlcude 7 weakest cards from deck (2.3% for 7th). Then we go to card drawing phase in R2, when they could arise back from the deck…
Round 2
Random draws flatten distribution of cards in hand and deck. Look that at this stage the chances to see a single crucial card are still only 58.5%. Don’t get depressed though – there are mulligans to follow now…
After mulligans, the chance to find a single crucial card in hand in R2 grows to roughly 2/3. Compared with respective R1 graph, 15-23 region got depleted, while in fact chances of 24-25 bricking are higher in R2 than in R1. These cards are likely left in deck for whole game, which means higher risk during last mulligan in each round.
More than 3 cards from perfect R3 set (1-10) would be left in the deck in R2.
In R1 14-22 cards were played, while in R2 we should expect 10-18 for early skirmish. In reality of course R2 strategy is more complex and 10th or similar power cards would probably never get commited without follow-up.
Round 3
More than in (1/5) of Gwent games we would see the weakest card in hand before R3 mulligan phase. In about 1-(4/5)^3 ~= 50% of games we would have at least one of 3 weakest cards in hand.
1/4 of targets is still left in deck before mulligan phase in R3.
No surprise when it comes to top end – the fact that there is about 4/5 chance of finding a single card in Gwent without tutor got confirmed again. In ‘8’ – ’10’ region the value is not exactly 80% because sometimes we were forced to commit one of those cards in R2/R1 (too good hand).
Playing 3 cards in R2 brings a bit different (more smooth, no growth in % towards weakest bricks) graph than the instructive one from The Final Round Weight Of Gwent Cards. The main message though remains the same: cards from slots ‘1’ to ’12’ have significantly higher weight than the rest of the deck!
The negative is perhaps more important here. There is 100-82 = 18% chance that the weakest card appeared in hand at least in one round during a game of Gwent. Brick life matters. While two tech cards missing target (’24’-’25’) have roughly same % and obey simple product rule, each next one would have non-linear impact. There is 0.82^2 = 67% chance a pair of techs would have no negative impact during a game Gwent, but only 0.82^2 * 0.74 = 50% for a trio.
Of course, not only ‘techs’, but also generically weak fillers in various builds belong here.
Closure
We followed on how hand and deck evolves during a game of Gwent: The Witcher Card Game with respect to cards power hierarchy and assuming passive play. Some conclusion and remarks were made below graphs, the rest is up to you. Hope it would bring more insight into your Gwent deckbuilding decisions.
If you would like to play around more with numbers, here is the source simulation data used for all plots.