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What is Expected Value in Destiny?

I’ve been trying to write this article for months; since I started playing Destiny really. In every other CCG I’ve ever played it’s been really simple to determine the Expected Value of a card. In Magic, where your resources replenish every turn, a card is worth a card (1:1) and any card that lets you eliminate two of your opponent’s cards is positive Expected Value (EV). This is called a 2-for-1, and years ago a deck called JUND essentially played 25 spells that were all 2-for-1s. The positive EV in the deck made it incredibly difficult to defeat. Anytime you use two or more cards to destroy one card, that’s negative EV.

From Wikipedia: Expected Value (EV) intuitively, is the long-run average value of repetitions of the experiment it represents. For example, the expected value in rolling a six-sided die is 3.5, because the average of all the numbers that come up in an extremely large number of rolls is close to 3.5.

If it were only that easy! Because of Destiny’s unique gameplay style we have to balance dice in the pool, specific die-sides, finite resources, small hand size, and small deck size when trying to determine EV. There’s no clear cut answer that lets us evaluate the value of all of these things together.

1+1=2

One of the EV tenets I have found in destiny is that 1 card + 1 resource = 2 damage. This value is found in several cards throughout the game and it is about the same on offense or defense. Here are just a couple of examples:

The concept of 1+1=2 in Destiny isn’t just on cards, it’s scorched onto our mind-grapes! How often will you use an Isolation or an Electroshock on a die that is going to do less than 2 damage to you? Almost never unless it’s a single black damage side fueling a bunch of blue modifiers or a die that can be turned to a special with Emperor’s Throne Room or something. Mitigating a die for less than two damage never feels good, and that’s because we expect to use our 1-cost mitigation to save us at least two damage. That’s EV.

Most cards are just slight adjustments to the 1+1=2 tenet. People sometimes argue that He Doesn’t Like You is negative EV because you’re giving up a die to play it. That die is simply being switched out for the cost of one resource, and because using that resource could let you do about 2 damage, and the die you removed instead of the resource is usually one showing a blank or inherently weak, HDLY is actually positive EV most of the time.

Dug In and other cards that require you to control the battlefield to play them like High Ground do slightly more than the 1+1=2 at the cost of needing to control the battlefield. Dug In gets you that third shield and High Ground let’s you ping your opponent for one. Because of the slight additional “cost” there’s slightly additional “value.”

Supports and Upgrades Are Positive EV

Cards that stay on table in this game have inherently positive EV because you’re able to get more than one use out of them. Think of a card like Backup Muscle – it breaks the 1+1=2 rule because it stays on table. The additional cost is that it takes three turns to fully utilize. Backup Muscle used to be in every Villain Yellow deck because the Awakenings format was slow and nobody played cards that destroyed supports. It was an auto include because you knew you were going to do the full three damage, and three damage for 1 resource and 1 card is +EV. Now, the game is so fast, sometimes ending in just two rounds, that you might be dead before activating it thrice, so it oftentimes gets left in the binder or under a flavorful beverage. Anytime you can activate or trigger a non-die support more than twice in a game you are getting hugely positive EV, and some supports like Dark Presence and Imperial Inspection make their value back after a single activation.

I don’t have to tell you that rolling and resolving a weapon twice in one turn is +EV, FN-2199 has taught you that (and Bala-Tik did long before him), but so is simply activating and resolving a weapon twice in one game. For 2, 3, or sometimes 4 resources, we get a card that will get us value through resolving its die over the course of the game. And, at the very least, it’s a resource investment that we can overwrite later on. Many commonly played upgrades are on par with the 1+1=2 rule, we hope to get at least two damage out of their die per turn, but because we get to use them for an entire game, once we’ve activated them three or four times, they exceed their expected value. Of course, as I stated before, the game is a lot faster than it used to be, and we don’t often get more than two activations out of an upgrade. However, mechanics like Redeploy and latent abilities like DL-44’s remove a die, or Personal Shield’s activate to gain a shield give certain upgrades even more Expected Value.

Finding the 2-for-1 Events

Today, we’re pretty focused on damage, so we’re going to be looking at cards that either deal or mitigate damage at a better than 1+1=2 rate. When I revisit this topic I’ll outline events that generate or eliminate resources and events that draw you cards or discard your opponent’s cards.

What we need to find are cards that actually provide us positive EV from the 1+1=2 formula with the least significant additional “costs.” Based on the principals we’ve already outlined, we know that there is going to be some caveat for us to do more damage than at the 1+1=2 rate, finding the palatable ones is the key.

There aren’t a ton of ways to do damage with events, but there are a few. The first one I want to look at is It’s A Trap!

The caveat here is obviously that we need our opponent to be showing a damage side that matches the damage we have on our own dice, but there are only a few decks with absolutely zero ranged damage sides, and none of them are more than a fraction of a percent of the metagame as even mono blue decks sneak in some ranged sides through cards like Force Throw, Mind Probe, and One With The Force, which at least don’t make this card dead. Regardless, this card can do upwards of 12 damage when fully capitalized on, AND it has ambush. This is the most +EV damage event in the game at the cost of simply needing to find a matching die-side.

The next two cards I want to look at do damage by “throwing” things at your opponent:

Both of these cards can do three damage for 0 resources and the card in your hand. Discarding three upgrades can obviously be detrimental if not done at the right time, but if you’re going to win the game with the card you don’t need the upgrades! ATTT is also amazing to play when your character is about to die to get added value out of those upgrades you invested in. It being limited to yellow makes this card played very rarely right now, but it has won me about a bazillion games out of my Aurra/Bala deck, and is one of the reasons that deck can kill so quickly. As more yellow characters are brought into the game through future sets, this card will slide back out of the binder and into Facebook pictures of champions.

Riposte can also do three damage for a much “lower cost” but one that takes a bit more work to achieve. Not a lot of decks focus on shields, and because we’re almost always taking damage, keeping shields on our characters can be an arduous task. However, in decks like Han/Rey or ones that run Caution, we can easily get three shields on a character and then throw them for a big chunk of damage at a very small added cost, furthermore this card costs 0 so it completely breaks the 1+1=2 rule.

The last damage-dealing event I want to look at is one that sees almost no play right now, but could see added play in the future, and that’s Salvo:

As I said when we reviewed this card, it’s awesome, but it costs too much. This card could potentially represent more than 12 damage if we’re playing it on an AT-ST die. That clearly comes at a very high cost, but with the incoming General Hux in our deck, we could play this card for free, turning our dice into Super Thermal Detonators.

Switching gears to mitigation, what we want to find are events that get rid of more than one dice, or have an added effect when they do. Again, most of these cards come at a cost, and our job is to find added costs that are as digestible as possible.

The first card I want to talk about is criminally underplayed in my opinion, and that might just be because blue has a lot of good mitigation in its color, and that’s Overconfidence.

We have to spot blue, which can be tricky but with so many blue decks being mono blue, it often isn’t. The real thing here is that we get to re-roll two dice, which is already a strong defensive mechanic. Cards like Nightsister and Unpredictable have been re-rolling opponent’s dice since Awakenings, that we get to eliminate a die from the pool while re-rolling another die that could potentially harm us make this a +EV proposition.

Staying in Blue, Guard is another hugely +EV mitigation card. It costs 0, and for the cost of just one die you could get rid of up to three of your opponent’s dice. Guard is He Doesn’t Like You on Bath Salts in a mono blue deck centered around Melee damage. Cards like Rey, Makashi Training, and Lightsabers make this Guard one of the strongest removal cards in the game for Heroes.

Blue continues to prove it has +EV die-mitigation in cards like Feel Your Anger and Force Misdirection. Like the aforementioned It’s A Trap! it matters what is on certain dice for these to work, but when they work they’re able to get rid of more than one die. That they can simply get rid of one die when the situation calls for it in addition to their blowout potential gives them the +EV we are looking for.

Anger is another card with +EV potential as it doesn’t just remove a die for 0 cost and a card, but resolves it against themselves! The cost of this card is high, needing two blanks showing, but with double-blank cards like Sith Holcron and Datapad, this isn’t that difficult a proposition. However, if we’re running the “Blank Package” is utilizing Anger at the cost of so many deck slots and the alteration of a linear play-style still +EV?

Moving to Red, The Best Defense is perhaps the most +EV removal in the game. Sure it deals 3 damage to our character, but Damage Splitting is a very strong tactic, and moving what could’ve been 4-7 damage to a tertiary target while reducing said damage to only 3 is a +EV tactic almost every villain red deck would do well to utilize.

The other +EV Red Card I want to mention sees almost no play, but it is one of the only 0-cost mitigation cards in the game that doesn’t require you to give something up, and that’s Rebel Assault. For the low, low cost of 0 and needing to be showing Ranged Damage on any of your dice, you can remove an opponent’s die not showing damage. In the current Meta, many decks can simply turn dice to the side they want to resolve (which is usually damage), but most characters and weapons only roll damage at a 33% rate, meaning you have a 67% chance or removing a die that will eventually deal you damage, and sometimes a lot of damage. For being one of the most +EV mitigation cards, it’s sad that it’s mainly used as a coaster.

To sit here and go over every +EV event that does or mitigates damage might take all day, but 2000 words is certainly enough for now. There aren’t too many more cards I would even consider mentioning, as most of the other cards are only slightly +EV or not really at all (like Negotiate). However, if you think a card should’ve been mentioned here or you disagree with something I’ve outlined, I’d love to hear it and you should comment below or on Facebook. I love talking about Expected Value, but I love talking about when to eschew EV even more! I love the topic so much I even named my daughter Evie (Jolteon is also my favorite Pokemon), but my wife said NO COMIC BOOK NAMES and I promised to adhere.

Thanks for reading!

-BobbySapphire

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