WaterD's Guide to Grave & Luck and Variance in Yomi
Sept 6, 2016 3:06:15 GMT 1
utralaw, thehug0naut, and 1 more like this
Post by hamvvar on Sept 6, 2016 3:06:15 GMT 1
This is not content from me but was written by WaterD several years ago. It might be for 1st Edition, but the core of it should hold up.
I have found both of these articles very helpful as a beginning player. This is presented as written with only some minor formatting tweaks for readability.
Guide to Grave
0. Introduction.
The reason I made this guide is actually to annoy Grave people!.
The guide, while written as ¨how to play grave¨, its written with the intention of other people figuring out how to increase their winning ratio against him.
The reason is that I think is Grave is the char that stands out of the rest in terms of power, and while he is not broken or anything (is not like he goes around beating people 7-3, or something), its ridiculously solid compared to the rest of the cast. So, the hope is that people will use this guide against Grave. Having said that I also expect it to be a guide that helps new players that want to improve their strats and want to play Grave.
Disclaimer: This is my vision of Grave, and how to play him at his best, feel free to disagree saying Grave is about throwing people, have in mind this is My vision about Grave strengths, weakness and how to play him and against him.
1. The basics:
The most powerful move of Grave is Block, lets start with that. Grave early game block is really scary. Not only because its innate, but because if Grave builds a hand, it can become a lot of damage very fast. Grave is very card efficient, with many cards with 6,7,8 and 10 damage. More importantly, any pair can become a 12 damage ACE that is very easy to ditch, or all become the AAA for 45 which is 15 damage per card, which for a 45 damage hit, its fairly easy to ditch too.
The weakness of Grave is in certain way the Block too!. While Block starts the game very powerful, very fast it starts to lose Value. Grave is very card efficient but is not as efficient translating that hand into damage. So You are going to find yourself with a full hand, but not really able to translate that into damage. So blocking more its not going to be exactly great. It will increase your hand versatility with more dodges, counter, martial masteries and faster attacks/throws in general. But in the overall picture is not gonna be that amazing.
But the real major weakness of Grave are that his throws are not great. He has few of them, half of them with abilities he needs, and they arent specially fast. Also while he has some decent ¨ditches¨ for throws, like KK, 6J and A, its not as great as other throws in the game, and if Grave uses his abilities, and misses some throws, will find himself out of throws very often, nd its not hard to lose throws when they are 9.6 speed
The plan with Grave is to use his amazing blocks early on to get a hand and protect it with J and Q, the occasional A or joker depending on the matchup. A great defense too is 7 throw (8 throw too in matchups like Deegrey and arg).
Then build a hand that is gonna be generally AAA based, and then proceed to hit confirm/Dodge into AAA or throw for KD or Throw for damage.
Thats the basic plan, but some matchups and players are going to demand deviations of it, but will talk about later. I think the
important thing is to know what I consider the basic plan.
2. The cards:
2 A/D, 3 A/D, 4 A/D:
These are Grave dodges, and dodges are important to grave because of AAA mostly. So the main use of this cards are as dodges, but if you feel you have more dodges than you need they have other basic uses. the 2 and the 3 can be used as straight starters. But i wouldn't really go for straights with Grave unless you are against throw heavy char like Rook.
As I said Grave do not have real problems to build a hand, so If you block with an 8, instead of a 5, because you have 356, and you are waiting for the 4, i think its a lot of the times a mistake.
My point is that straights is not a big part of Grave repertory against most chars, nonetheless if you start with 3456, yeah sure, try to land it. My point is, do not play really different cards because you want to build up that straight, you will find a lot by the time you do, you already have a decently sized hand.
As Hit confirm cards, I prefer 5 and 6. They are gonna beat everything 3, 4 beat anyway. The 3 is particularly nice, because in KD situations people tend to block with pairs. So there is merit to use 3 over 6. Yeah 2 is gonna beat some stuff, and is specially good against people that like to counter KD with their own straights.
But for the most parts 234 are dodges so the most important decision is generally if you have enough dodges that you can convert them into Aces.
5 A/B, 6 A/B:
The blocks: Basically they are the blocks you are gonna use, if you have them, you block with them.
A good thing about these is that they dont put a pressure on your hand. They are good damage on its own, very easy to to put into throws (I like to Throw into J6/5. ) I like them to Hit confirm into aces too, so i dont have to waste ¨dodge¨cards into it.
7 T/B:
One of the hardest cards to play. Martial mastery is very powerfull ability. But throws are scarce, and this is the fastest. Against some chars is actually easy, Sets, Rook or Midori, just use as martial mastery most of the time, its not like the speed of the throw is gonna do any good. Against setsuki its good, but I find Martial mastery very good against sets, since she do not have many real options in hand in general.
Against the rest its gonna be hard. My Standard Rule is, I use them early on as throws, and later as Martial mastery.
I heard you can block with this one, but i never tried.
8 T/B, 9 T/B:
The Grave throws, They are kind of slow, specially the 9, but hey, you need throws. Dont block with them if you can avoid it, and be really really really wary of changing them for Aces. You really dont want to get out of throws(you probably will anyway :/)
10 T/B:
The most boring card of yomi, if he does something just counter. It can be a reallllllly desesperate throw. And a somewhat desesperate block. But its mostly a ¨discard if your opponent did something¨
J:
One of the best things in Grave arsenal. J is unfair and actually imo, pretty braindead. I know some people are gonna answer to this but, its just a pretty brainless card imo, you have it? play it. Thats how it works early on, later on you just change it for Aces if you really need to but mostly just add it to throws or some weird KK6J combo, etc.
This is very important, if you have a J early on, while your opponent is still likely to play block over dodge, just play it. Dont think what the opponent will do, just J.
¨But my opponent knows im gonna play J¨ If you have it!. The point is that you wont get in inital hand J enough to your opponent to make anything of it. What he is gonna do? play faster attack early on? dodge?, Ok welcome, you are grave so you are gonna block a lot early on, like every time you dont have J (ok sometimes you are gonna pull a fast throw).
So, your opponent cant do much about you just playing J early on, he has just to accept it and move on.
¨Ok I J, he blocked , now he knows i have J¨ Ok this is a little more interesting, still just Block/J. Nothing your opponent can do, just mix it up.
Q:
There isnt much to say, super efficient card that happens to be 0.0. If you want an attack this is your guy. Also its one of the main ways to beat other people attacks late on. When you dont have dodges or actually instead of dodges. Try to pack them for late, when Attack wars are more common.
K:
This is a weakness on Grave arsenal (thank God!), its still not bad at all!. Its 7 damage the card, and when you have 2, you can do decent throws and less than horrible dodges. Its actually pretty fair when you need a fast attack, and Q and A are on shortage. It actually beats or trades on speed many many things. I still throw it a away a lot for martial mastery or KKK for AA if it seems better. Have in mind KK for A in a vaccum its wrong unless you want to complete your AAA set. KK is 14 damage against A 12. Both can be combed into as easy. A is faster so it will win more as naked attack, but KK is two cards so if you lose combat you only lose half the damage.
A:
One of the best Aces in the game, despite A for 12 damage and AAA 45 (15 damage a piece) is not that impressive compared to other effects of Aces (Blackjack, Bubble shield, Chromatic Orb). The versatility makes out for it. The A can be slipped in very easily unlike the named cards. even AAA can be slipped in pretty easily. Also their speed its pretty decent too. Dont overdo AAA though. If you try to much to save Aces to do AAA it can backfire pretty quick. If he is good at bluffing jokers, it can put you in more troubles than just Throwing into A etc.
If you stick to AAA or go to single aces its one of the main valuation decisions for Grave. If the opponents makes your life easy throwing around jokers, good for you, but against a lot of players its better to save the headaches after a few turns of AAA not finding its way and just start slipping in Aces in simpler ways.
Jokers:
Everybody have these!. Its pretty close between Golden burst and Combo escape here. Since his Aces are pretty strong. I think this is very match up dependent.
3) How to beat grave: Well its hard to say because its very char dependent.
But I will start with what I think its the biggest tip. Combo escape against him. Grave have troubles to translate hand into damage.
IF you have a decently sized hand and combo scape, make his life miserable in the late game. If you know AAA is coming, Bluff or joker. I Dont have the answer, but bluff him a lot, specially after dodges. And of course joker if you think he wont stop there.
I think the main weapon to stopping grave is Joker bluffs. They are a real real pain.
Outside of jokers, Grave have probelms early on against fast throws and blocks. So do that. If you want you can open first with somethign that beats J or maybe second turn if you think he is capable of avoiding your first turn anti J. Some chars its not worth it though. Just block. But Geiger can open J, Deegrey can open A dodge, Arg can bubble.
Outside of that Block/Fast throws combo are hard for Grave to deal with early on. Later on, replace Block for dodges/Throws. Attacks that only lose against Q are ok too.
But really all this depends a lot on matchups.
Luck and Variance in Yomi
1) Is there variance in yomi?
Yes
2) Is ¨guessing¨ a matter of luck.
No. But there is variance to it. A player may know in X situation Y player will tend to ¨Throw¨ a lot, it doesnt mean that he will
throw 100% of the time. It may mean he will throw 80% of the time, or any other higher number than average.
2.1) What about the other 20% of the time?
Those you will lose. And there is where the guessing variance appear.
2.2) Do you have proof this is true?
No, I do not. But Im a professional poker player, and most my closest friends are professional poker players too, I read as much as you can imagine about poker theory.
In poker, no pro poker player I know, will ever claim ¨I know he is bluffing on this spot¨, or ¨I know he has it now¨
Poker players think in terms of chance regarding that ¨I know he is bluffing around 25% of the time here¨ or ¨He wouldnt do a move without a hand here more than 10% of the time¨
Poker is a lot about reading the opponent too,as many other games, and even the best players on the field acknowledge, there is some variance to ¨predicting the opponents¨ It doesnt mean that there is no prediction or is impossible to predict.
If you predict your opponent is bluffing 25% in a spot or just in Yomi, attacking 60% of the time in that spot, if that is true, and then it turns out that he throws or he is actually bluffing, it doesnt mean you didnt predict your opponent, if he does in fact have those frequencies, you did predict the opponent!
In the long term, those predictions will lead you, both in poker and yomi to more winnings than someone that do not predict its opponent at all or just predict him less accurately thn you.
3) Thats the only variance there is in yomi?
No.
Yomi Has variance in other ways, here are the otherways Yomi has variance.
a) Card power: Some cards are better than others in yomi, and drawing more powerful cards is better than drawing weaker cards. Drawing more powerful cards will increase your odds of winning.
b) State of the game: The game state is not entirely known to both players, and while you can do predictions based on past plays, the hands change every turn (by the luck of the draw).
This affect the impact your ability to predict your opponent has.
Example: You may realize your opponent did run out of fast attacks, and he is a player that dislike attacking unless his attacks are fast. So you conclude he wont attack, so you do fast throw, but as it turned out, your opponent did draw a fast attack last turn, and he ends attacking.
This is a common situation. It doesnt mean that it was 100% luck, there was luck, he may or may not drawthe fast attack, but the most likely thing is that he do not draw a fast attack and thus you will win that combat the majority of the time.
c) Lum effects (blackjack, roll the dice)
Mot much to say here.
4) Some numbers would give me a better idea of how much variance is there in yomi, can you give me some?
I will quote myself a post that I did on Sirlin.net:
These are my thoughts so far, and I think its important because, some people specially inexperienced, are surprised, they beat me. Ive taught the game after a few games they take one or two games from me and show reasonable disappointment. So I got the habit of explain beforehand the expectations of win ratio that the players should expect.
I know to some may be surprising, because yes, Ive met the kind of people too that after taking one game from ¨the most experienced player¨ instead of being disappointed with the game they are happy that they won and thinking the are the best for winning so soon.
There are the two kind of people in that regard. And if you meet the first type, you may want to prepare them beforehand of what they should expect.
Against Beginners- People that Understand the rules. But they yet dont have any sense of strategy about the game.
I can beat this group 85%-90% of the time.
Intermediate- People that understand basic strategy and value of the cards (They wont go doing ineffective combos, dodging into a 5 attack, understand the standard flow of a match, like Arg vs grave lots of throws etc) But arent really good at valuation yet and do a lot of not very effective stuff.
(Golden burst against grave, Use unstable power in not optimal situations,dont try minimize the amount of needed combat needed to win, etc etc)
I can Beat these group 65-75% of the time.
Advanced- Me. People at my level that understand chars and matchups very well. As I said, I dont think anyone can win more than 65% of the time against me, no matter how good they become. or against people of this level.
And at this moment I dont even think there is someone that can even have that winning ratio against me. I accept that there may be 2 levels above me, but even at major expected level, I mean people that spent 10.000 studying and perfecting the game, and they are good at that, I dont think even those can achieve better than 65% at people of my level.
So that data may help you to explain the situation to people of the former group about expectations of winning ratio in the game.
Have in mind that I gave ranges, the range is based not only on ¨variance¨ on my capability to assess possible winning ratios or how good they are but also , and more importantly, in history. The more A player plays with the same player, the more the better player can develop reads.
For example, My first game against an intermediate player, I may only have 65% chances of beating him, but every other game we play. My chances Increase because I start to notice more patterns, etc.If the player change char it drop some of that winrate again, since a lot of the reads I got , become nullified.
(For example I can notice that he ALWAYS do 7 with deegrey after using a 4 but that read is gonna be ALMOST useless if he changes to Setsuki.)
In fact If I play many many games of the same char I think I can beat intermediate players up to 80-85% of the time. (to give an example on how much reads I think impact game, the other day I played an intermediate player on the dev server. He won the first game, I won the second, he won the third, after that I did got a lot of reads that lead me to win the following 6 games ending the series 7-2).
I know to some may be surprising, because yes, Ive met the kind of people too that after taking one game from ¨the most experienced player¨ instead of being disappointed with the game they are happy that they won and thinking the are the best for winning so soon.
There are the two kind of people in that regard. And if you meet the first type, you may want to prepare them beforehand of what they should expect.
Against Beginners- People that Understand the rules. But they yet dont have any sense of strategy about the game.
I can beat this group 85%-90% of the time.
Intermediate- People that understand basic strategy and value of the cards (They wont go doing ineffective combos, dodging into a 5 attack, understand the standard flow of a match, like Arg vs grave lots of throws etc) But arent really good at valuation yet and do a lot of not very effective stuff.
(Golden burst against grave, Use unstable power in not optimal situations,dont try minimize the amount of needed combat needed to win, etc etc)
I can Beat these group 65-75% of the time.
Advanced- Me. People at my level that understand chars and matchups very well. As I said, I dont think anyone can win more than 65% of the time against me, no matter how good they become. or against people of this level.
And at this moment I dont even think there is someone that can even have that winning ratio against me. I accept that there may be 2 levels above me, but even at major expected level, I mean people that spent 10.000 studying and perfecting the game, and they are good at that, I dont think even those can achieve better than 65% at people of my level.
So that data may help you to explain the situation to people of the former group about expectations of winning ratio in the game.
Have in mind that I gave ranges, the range is based not only on ¨variance¨ on my capability to assess possible winning ratios or how good they are but also , and more importantly, in history. The more A player plays with the same player, the more the better player can develop reads.
For example, My first game against an intermediate player, I may only have 65% chances of beating him, but every other game we play. My chances Increase because I start to notice more patterns, etc.If the player change char it drop some of that winrate again, since a lot of the reads I got , become nullified.
(For example I can notice that he ALWAYS do 7 with deegrey after using a 4 but that read is gonna be ALMOST useless if he changes to Setsuki.)
In fact If I play many many games of the same char I think I can beat intermediate players up to 80-85% of the time. (to give an example on how much reads I think impact game, the other day I played an intermediate player on the dev server. He won the first game, I won the second, he won the third, after that I did got a lot of reads that lead me to win the following 6 games ending the series 7-2).
Also in this thread [dead link] You can see how the highest elo players of each character have a winning ratio that varies from 65% to 73% (at the moment of this post)
You should have in mind a few things about it. Most of the games of the dev server are against intermediate people that play 1 or 2 games and have to leave. Proving that even if its an unknown you can play in ways that achieve higher winning ratios.
Have in mind these are GAMES. Not sets of 3 or 5 (like its in a fighting game). I dont want to do the math, but is obvious if this would be true, that would be even higher number. Also if it were sets of 3, or even better 5, It would give more room to the better player to generate reads and so the numbers would be even higher.
So if you want to make predictions on who of the two players is better, play best of 3, 5 or 7, or even more for more accuracy. Not changing chars helps because it means the dynamic of the matchup keeps growing and the better player can use those reads to his advantage.
5) Isnt that still too much luck?
It is for you? I think this is subjective. But lets go to some more objective facts.
Lets compare Yomi to popular games, Yomi definily has less variance than games like Poker (where a better player can play all day against an inferior player and still end losing), Magic, mahjong, backgammon. Those are games with high variance, but where tournaments, in some cases with huge amount of money and spectators, have been held, are recognized by many as games of skill, their pros respected and people all over the world invest time to become better and trying to win more.
Now you can go to the other side of the coin, games of ¨Skill¨
Like chess, Go, or sports like Tennis or soccer.
Yes, yomi has more luck than those games.
But here is a fun fact for you.
In some of the games like this, namely Chess and tennis. The game is rarely played at the highset level best of 1, or even 3.
Even chess titles contest are played to ¨best of¨ really high numbers.
Why is that games of ¨pure skill¨ are played with such high numbers of ¨best of¨? Wouldnt just one game determine who is the best? No, because even the better players do not win against inferior players 95% of the games, Look at Federer in tennis and he is a monster, but he does not win 100% of the points, not even close to it, even if its not a game of chance. Thats not much differnet in chess.
The point is, if we use popular competitive games as pivots, there is no reason to disregard yomi as a game of too much luck.
If we go to popular games around here, I seriously doubt yomi has more variance than games like Summoner wars, Tigris and euphrates or Dominion, that seem popular around.
But what about you or me?
Im going to give you my answer. I hate luck in games
And I wished Yomi had less variance.
But I wish all games that have the sightless variance, would have even less variance.
Yomi, imo has much more variance than I wished. But I keep playing the game because thats the only of the few flaws I find, and I got used to variance,and even im good at the skills required that variance add to the games, like risk managment, odd calculations, etc.
The point is, in the end is personal preference. But I think when you have to value a game, this comparison to other games, and understanding of the values of winning ratio that can be achieved should help you to make a more accurate judgment. In the end its gonna be a matter of taste. But just make sure that you dont like what Yomi really is, and not some wrong idea of what it is.
In fact this thread comes inspired from another thread where someone says Yomi variance is decreasing his enjoyment of the game (and I understand you because it happens to me to) But then claims he doesnt seem to have that problem to summoner wars (a game that imo clearly has more variance). I think if you can enjoy summoner wars (and I enjoy it too!), despite its high variance, it would be a shame you cant enjoy Yomi because its variance.
Also Variance have some advantages. For example it allows people to have an easier time to play better people, because their wins, even if sporadic, keeps their interest in the game. Thats one of the main reason many games with high variance have remained very popular.
source:
boardgamegeek.com/thread/605318/waterds-guide-grave
boardgamegeek.com/thread/612292/varianceluck-yomi