Burr0_hs

Burr0 · @Burr0_hs

22nd Aug 2019 from TwitLonger

The Monty Hall Problem of Hearthstone


So recently some internet troll (I'm not gonna call him because I don't wanna give douchebags attention) came up with a theory that sounds absolutely ridiculous at first and after analysing it, it still is stupid.I just talked to the only other person who believes in the theory (who is actually nice) for almost 2 hours which made me realise that there actually is a small portion of sense in it.

Here's the theory:
"You play Quests in your Hearthstone decks and mulligan them to tighten your deck and increasing the chance of drawing the right cards"

This ONLY applies to decks though which want to cycle through their deck for a specific combination of cards (Combo decks). Combo decks often tend to run multiple versions of cycle (card draw) best example is playing a Novice Engineer. If your Combo deck has 29 good cards (the combo cards and good card draw options/removal) and would THEORATICALLY run Novice Engineer as the 30th card as extra cycle,you can replace that with the quest. By doing that in theory you thin your deck from the mulligan on down to 29 cards,the same exact effect you aim to achieve with Novice Engineer without paying the Mana. Now while it looks like you saved 2 Mana for thinning your deck at the same time you then shuffle a 1 mana do nothing card into your deck, while Novice Engineer gives you a 2 mana 1/1 body for the exact same "thinning-effect". So you can narrow the problem down to whether you want to run a 1 Mana "do nothing" spell or a 2 mana 1/1 minion.

Now according to the "Quest-Mulligan-People" (the flat-earthers of Hearthstone) having a 1 mana Spell that does nothing is more valuable than a 2 mana 1/1 because it can be used to "get an extra spell from Mana cyclone" or "trigger the opponents' Counterspell" (actual arguments from them). I guess it doesn't even take a Hearthstone Expert to realise that a 2 mana 1/1 is better in 90% of the cases (compare it to pressing the Paladin Hero Power).

Now the second downside of mulliganing the Quest is that you give up exactly 1 card in your mulligan (the 1 cardslot of the quest).This decreases your chance of finding 1 exact combo piece by 1/30. According to the "Quest -Mulligan-People" the fact that you're theoratically playing with a 29 card deck outweighs this 1/30 chance you give up in your mulligan.

Now we can narrow the problem down to the ups and downs:

+ you're THEORATICALLY playing with a 29 card deck assuming your initial deck runs cycle cards (e.g.Novice Engineer)

- you shuffle a 1 mana "do nothing" Spell into your deck
- you give up a 1/30 chance of finding a combo piece in your pre-mulligan phase

This is the best compromise I could come up with and I still think it sounds terrible. Hopefully someone can come up with a better compromise to it. I'm super tired and don't want to waste any more thought on this stupid theory. I just wanted to let people know that there actually is a small upside in running quests and throwing them away.

tl;dr
don't play any quest in your deck unless it's called "The caverns below" and it's the year 2017

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