It was, but it should be a 5/3. In fact, it’s much, much stronger as a 5/2 because you would be able to play it alongside other small agendas.
But that’s beyond the scope of my post =P
Anyone running Government Takeover automatically forfeits their right to complain about luck. 
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I think it’s also worth noting that our attention to “luck” is heightened relative to how unlikely an event is and it’s visible impact on the game (not just how much in our favor it is). E.g. if I win off a 1/20 chance, I’m pretty keen to the idea that variance was on my side here, even though I was winning. On the other hand, we don’t point out “luck” as often when the runner hits (or whiffs, for that matter) on a single access against a 2-agenda hand on turn 2 or 3. This kind of variance often has a huge impact on the outcome, but because a) either outcome isn’t terribly unlikely, and b) it is temporally distant from the conclusion of the game, it receives a lot less attention/criticism/whining.
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People tend to look at bad luck, face it we mostly focus of the bad side of it if we are talking about it, in isolation. But through a tournament we have a whole series of independent random events and we expect some rare ones to happen. Lets take a simple example. Lets say you have a deck that has a 1 in 20 chance of drawing a craptacular hand that you will probably loose with (including mulligans for math simplicity). Then over the course of a 5 round swiss tournament you have a 23% of getting that crappy start (1-0.95^5) and if it’s more like a 1 in 10 chance then you have a 41% chance of getting that crappy start. Sure you’d be unlucky to get that bad hand, but not really that unlucky when you look at how many times you’ve chanced it.
You need to adjust your expectations to accept that there will be some bad luck over and longer stretch of playing netrunner. That’s normal and expected. If you were playing poker and you get all your money in preflop with aces vs kings you’d be doing awesome. If it was your whole bankroll you’d be stupid because you will lose that bet sometimes and then you’d be broke.
In the short run variance dominates/dictates what happens. In the long run things even out but you expect more rare events to have happened. So plan accordingly.
TL;DR, over the course of a tournament expect some rare unlucky things to happen.
I wish there were 5/3’s I wanted to score. Then they might be worth playing. The current trend of anarchs using turntable makes it harder to have a spread of agendas and there just aren’t enough 5/3’s worth scoring.
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Definitely had one of these moments last night. Winning agenda is in the server, runner runs at R&D on last click, no money left after getting through the ice. There’s a single agenda in R&D that he could win on - the others would psi-game protect themselves. There’s ~20 cards left in the deck, and he’s seeing 2 of them. Naturally, the card he needs is on top and he wins.
So he’s lucky, sure, got that ~1/10 chance. But it made me think, were there any plays I could have made to increase my probability of winning? Instead of playing Hedge Fund, I could have put a third ice on top, and he may not have been able to break it. But at the same time, I’ve got a 3-ice remote, none rezzed, of Inazuma/Ichi/Ashigaru, and only ~15 credits, with a single advanced card and no protection. If I play the ice to R&D and rez it, that’s 5 credits, so I might not have enough to protect the obvious play, or if I did I might not be able to advance to win the next turn.
Players get lucky, sure. And sometimes, you play to maximize your odds of winning and it doesn’t matter. But it’s definitely something that you can always consider - did I/my opponent just get really lucky, or was there something else I could have done?
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I spend a lot of time mathing out those situations after close Jinteki.net matches and I have found that it has really improved my game. I’m slowly getting better at doing so real-time, and I really think that doing so is critical to improvement.
Losing on a RNG is much more tolerable if you know exactly the odds and you know that you made them the best you could. I also get a weird sort of pleasure from explaining a counterintuitive play that, while it blew up in my face, was the right call.
Learning the odds in the game is super important, and will help understand just what role luck has in netrunner. It helps influence your play if you’re agenda flooded, you protect R&D less, you protect HQ more and start thinking about scoring some agendas. In some way, you’re more in control of what happens, because you have a clearer understanding of where the win for the runner most likely is. You’re also agenda flooded and could be totally screwed. The experience each player has shapes this feeling, there are lots of games where I end up having Government Takeover and 4 other 3 pointers in my hand, and I couldn’t be happier, other time I have 3 2 pointers and feel like the game is complete crap and worthless other than as an exercise in futility.
Luck is important in the game, otherwise everything would be pre destined, and the game would be no better than Magic the Gathering.
This. My anti-Faust RP deck dropped 1 game in my local Store Champs yesterday because I didn’t react harder when RnD became cheap for my opponent to check. Instead I got too focused on the win (which I had in-hand).
For me it’s always “what could I have done differently?” long before I “blame” luck.
I reckon in any game where luck is present you’re obligated to acknowledge it, adjust for it as best you can and accept that sometimes it’ll help, sometimes hinder. Claiming otherwise just highlights an inadequacy.
and sometimes you’re facing noise and faust with hades shard and you’re just waiting to lose barring a stroke by the runner.
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I play that deck! It sometimes feels like easy mode when you mill lots of agendas, but some games it just doesn’t get it done…
The Shard is nice for IG though, when the corp ICE’s archives so hard that it’s too expensive to get it, I’ll just use the shard to keep trash costs under control. I’ve installed one off of the Street Peddler just before accessing on a Medium dig to make sure I could clear as much crap out as possible.
People blame high variance corp decks.
It’s the opposite of this. Just saying.
For the same agenda density, with a multi-access run, getting more than 1 agenda at once on R&D is actually harder with a high number of card than with a low.
ie getting 2 agendas in a 100 cards deck with 20 agendas is harder than getting 2 agendas in a 50 deck with 10 agendas, unless you multiply your numbers of access by a number I did not calculated.
Hi Stimhack, wave hi to 54 deck theory 
Actually it’s the opposite:
First access: 20/100 = 10/50
Second access: 19/99 > 9/49
@Minotower Sure but no, not exactly like this.
A 4 card multiacess see 4% of the 100 deck and 8% of the 50 deck.
Odds for stacked cards are higher in a small deck, having less distance between stacks than in big decks.
Max distance in that 50 is 40. Max distance in that 100 is 80.
Mean distance in a typical distribution is doubled (or something like +50%, did not calculated this).
Since you have more agendas in 100 than in 50, it mean series of 2, 3 etc are lower occurence in 100 to the profit of odd to have series of 10, 11, etc.
If you can have a serie of 11+ in the 100 deck, then mean distance grow aswell.
So, if you have bigger stacks, then odds to draw multiple agenda at a time = t are lower.
=> playing a regular 2 pointer 54 will always be longer than playing a 2pointer 49 due to mean distances : 11 agendas are safer in 55 than 10 in 50 (let’s extrapolate : and safer than 1 in 5) because stacks can be buried deeper.
If a runner comes with multiaccess in a 3 agendas left for 15 cards, you allready have more fears than if he comes in a 8 agendas left for 40 cards, it’s a reflex most players have, no ? Agenda dilution is the same 20% though
There will be more stacks in the 40 long R&D (28 couples of 2 cards possible + triples etc), and less in the 15 long R&D (only 3 couple possible, and one triple), that’s it. Meaning you will steal less points in the 15 deck, but more currently than in the 40 decks (mean points stay the same).
So if your runner comes only once, he would steal less times (but more points) in a big deck than in a small one.
Long corpo decks are valid, as long as you draw and consider/study eco and ice stacks aswell (meaning these are ok for glacier because those are strong to prevent a big number of successful runs), but not much for anything else).
Those HB 54 glaciers playing 2x3 pointers and then 2 pointers were winning tournaments and tournaments in Paris in 2013-2014 (the excellent players abusing this theory, with that very smart distribution, somehow play a lot less).
I love your creative interpretation of mathematics, too bad you’re still wrong. As you point out, there’s more variance in the series, basically this means that the odds of something ‘improbable’ are higher. Getting 2 agendas out of 2 accesses is improbable, these odds improve the bigger your deck gets.
In your example you have 1 on 5 agendas. From a 5 card deck you could never get 2 agendas, from a 10 card deck your odds would be very small, they slowly improve the bigger your deck gets, simple as that.
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@Minotower, then I can’t explain in English, and math is forbidden here.
What I mean is low standard deviation (aka low var) don’t make groups of cards.
But mean accessed agenda points always stay the same due to dilution : if there’s “higher chance of stealing groups”, there’s “higher chance of miss a group” aswell (that’s due to high standard dev) and that is actually perfectly compensate the low var deck chances.
I’m creative, granted, nothing wrong if you know a few rules, especially if you like card combos.
Drunken boxing, ya know.
Math is not forbidden here, only the faulty application of it
Regarding your groups,
-the higher variance (the bigger the stack), the higher your odds get to steal 2 agendas
-the higher variance (the bigger the stack), the higher your odds get to steal 0 agendas
These two compensate each other for the calculation of the average. That’s what you’re trying to say I think.
And also
-the lower variance (the smaller the stack), the higher your odds get to steal exactly 1 agenda
Feel free to write or pm me in French, but I don’t know what I can say more to convince you. Like I said, I don’t want to put you down and I think it’s good to be creative with numbers, but of course your final conclusion still has to be correct.
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@Minotower That’s more or less it ? I don’t understand why you say it’s not correct ?
Luck is a tactic that can be used to close a skill gap : a lucky noob can win vs a skillfull vet. An unlucky noob will lose to a skillfull vet, but he would be losing under normal circonstancies anyway. Also, vets can mitigate luck using bluff and piloting skills.
This is a valid strategy, to me. “Toss a coin to beat @mediohxcore” is surely way better chances for me than trying to beat him using a regular competitive deck that he happen to know every moves, no ?
Ah! I get what he’s saying, everyone. @anon34370798, I’ll put it in English terms for you. I don’t dare try to question your math, though
What he’s saying is that, if you go into a match expecting to be an underdog, what you want to do is increase the randomness of the game to reduce to relevance of the skill levels. This is a pretty common and well known thing. The basic idea is that the bigger deck will give you more variance - in this way, if you expect to be more likely to lose, reducing the effect skill has on the game will bring the odds closer to 50-50, giving you a better chance overall, despite what might be considered an inferior deck.
So, as opposed to having 30-70 chances playing a solid tier 1 deck, by introducing randomness and reducing the relevance of the skill levels, you might get the odds closer to 40-60 or so. I believe this is the concept he’s trying to express.
Like I said, I plead ignorance on the math, so you guys can argue about that. 
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