[Dukat]

Dear community, dear players,

due to a LOT of response to my first article about the Dominion, I hereby use this thread for anything that concerns my article series on the Dominion.
A link to this thread will from now on be found in my signature.

Here is the list:
Article 1 of 5 of the Beginner Series: Affiliation Introduction
Article 2 of 5 of the Beginner Series: Play and Draw Engines
Article 3 of 5 of the Beginner Series: Dominion Deck Types
Article 4 of 5 of the Beginner Series: Son'a, Breen, and Dominion Holograms
Article 5 of 5 of the Beginner Series: Mission Solving and Multi Quadrant Expansion

Dominion Advanced Gameplay Series (Part 1 of 3): Dominion Strategy

You can also find all articles at the Dominion HQ page.

Any news will be posted here as well as the topic of the next article.
The following lines will be updated as soon as any development takes place.

Topic of the next article: Dominion Advanced Gameplay - Dominion Tactics

When to expect:
Around September.

Please feel free to use this thread to express any critique or ask any question.
As always, you may of course contact me via private message.

I hope you have as much fun reading them as I have writing them!

How it all began: it started in a thread about building a Dominion deck. After I took the time to write a long response, I was asked to write one article about the Dominion (thanks Dave!). Since I really love that affiliation, I made it an entire article series - otherwise, the article would have been way, WAY to long!
I try to put everything I know about this affiliation in that article series in the hope that others can have as much fun playing them as I had over the years.

[Zef'No]

Like many others, I am very interested to read the rest of the series.

I was wondering though, would it be possible for you to to produce them (separately or together) as a pdf file that can easily be downloaded and printed out?

[Iron Prime]

I was wondering though, would it be possible for you to to produce them (separately or together) as a pdf file that can easily be downloaded and printed out?

If this series plays out the way I expect I'm going to wait and purchase the leather bound collectors additions and pay the extra $12 to have it signed....

[Tobin Dax]

Like many others, I am very interested to read the rest of the series.

I was wondering though, would it be possible for you to to produce them (separately or together) as a pdf file that can easily be downloaded and printed out?

You can do that yourself, Zef'No. Copy the article and paste it into Word, then save as pdf if you want it in that format. Word keeps the formatting and links of the article, and the pdf will keep the formatting of the word document.

[nobthehobbit]

Ooh, a second series after this one!

Very nice article. One nitpick, though: in a 100-card deck (after seed-phase downloads, I assume) with 15 Young Jem'Hadar, the probability of not drawing a YJH in your opening hand is almost 31%.

(Assuming the same 15% YJH ratio for other deck sizes, you get a probability of almost 30% for a 60-card deck, of about 30.5% for an 80-card deck, and a hair over 31% for a 120-card deck.)

[Dukat]

Hm ...
help me a bit about statistics: why is the chance 31%?

Assuming an EQUAL distribution of the YJH over the deck itself (meaning it was well-shuffled), it means that when I have 15 YJH in a 100 card deck, every seventh card is a YJH (7 * 15 = 105).
That makes a 100% chance of getting one because I draw seven cards.

And yes ... there is a second "series" of 3 articles after this one.
The current one is the Basics series, the follow-up will be the Advanced Series - for special aspects of advanced game play mechanisms.

I updated the start post.
The 3rd article is at about 30% of its completion.
Number 2 dealt with deck building in general, the third one will deal with specific deck types.

About the pdf question: you can copy any one text in an Open Office document and chose "export to pdf". Works fine and you don't need Acrobat for it.

[nobthehobbit]

Hm ...
help me a bit about statistics: why is the chance 31%?

Assuming an EQUAL distribution of the YJH over the deck itself (meaning it was well-shuffled), it means that when I have 15 YJH in a 100 card deck, every seventh card is a YJH (7 * 15 = 105).
That makes a 100% chance of getting one because I draw seven cards.

If you have 15 YJH in a 100-card deck, then:

You draw one card. The probability that this card is not a YJH is 85/100.
You draw a second card. The probability that this card is not a YJH, given that the first card was not, is 84/99.
You draw a third card. The probability that this card is not a YJH, given that the first two cards were not, is 83/98.
Similarly for the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh cards we get 82/97, 81/96, 80/95 and 79/94.

Multiplying these together gives you the probability of not drawing a YJH in your opening hand.

A good shuffle would not place the YJH over the deck evenly. It would place the YJH (and every other card) in a completely random, unknown position. Every ordering is equally likely, and you have absolutely no information as to what the specific order is. In this case, a little more than 30.8% of the orderings do not have a YJH in the top seven cards.

Now, if we let X be the random variable representing the number of cards you need to draw to get one YJH, it can be approximated (or at least I'm pretty sure it can) by a geometric random variable with probability 3/20. This has expectation 20/3, which is less than seven. Further the median of this approximation is between 4 and 5. But none of this guarantees anything.

[Dukat]

It seems my statistics classes are way too long in the past.
You are right.

However, it is my experience (!) that in a well-shuffled deck (like magic players shuffle their decks: in blocks) you draw one of those 15 out of 100 YJH in your first turn most of the times.

Since my articles are about my experience, I think we can let it be that way.

Anyway: thanks for the correction.

[nobthehobbit]

It seems my statistics classes are way too long in the past.
You are right.

However, it is my experience (!) that in a well-shuffled deck (like magic players shuffle their decks: in blocks) you draw one of those 15 out of 100 YJH in your first turn most of the times.

Since my articles are about my experience, I think we can let it be that way.

Sure, because that sort of shuffle is decidedly imperfect. I would guess that if you were to put such a deck into Lackey and test-draw it repeatedly, you would over time see that ~30% trend emerging.

[time4achange]

I enjoy reading these articles. But as for a fan of OTF, 15 yjh or 15 of any card for 1E is a little bit to much. OTF should have a card limit.

[Latok]

I enjoy reading these articles. But as for a fan of OTF, 15 yjh or 15 of any card for 1E is a little bit to much. OTF should have a card limit.

Sorry this is off-topic.
So if you wanted to use a Q's Tent to get cards not normally downloadable you can't actually use all 13 slots?

A card limit in 1E is absurd, so many decks require multiples or they are next to useless.

[Dunnagh]

Just a few comments to the latest (gerat) article:

1) In the bag: Nice card, problem is, that you have to have enough In the Bags. Is it really worth it when every In the back could be a Jem'Hadar of some sort (interrupting your flow as you call it)?

2)Keevan (2E) I read him as you either have to have BOTH players draw a card or none. Thats why I didnt include him up to date. Plus (you mentioned it) he cannot be downloaded, unfortunately.

A deck that has (or is planned to have) about 100 cards should include about 15 Young Jem’Hadar. The reason is pure statistics: since a starting hand has 7 cards, a calculation of “deck size / 7 = Young Jem’Hadar” means a probability of 100% to have one Young Jem’Hadar in hand on turn 1.

The probability to draw a certain card NEVER is 100%. The only exception being of course when you only include 6 other cards in your deck and the rest is the one you want to draw.

The 15/100 (Young Jem´hadar) example leads to a probability of 22% not to draw a young JEm´hadar (100 cards in Deck, 15 are YJ, probability of the first card drawn to not be one: 84/100, next one 83/100 and so on. Multiplied, you get the 22%).

[nobthehobbit]

A deck that has (or is planned to have) about 100 cards should include about 15 Young Jem’Hadar. The reason is pure statistics: since a starting hand has 7 cards, a calculation of “deck size / 7 = Young Jem’Hadar” means a probability of 100% to have one Young Jem’Hadar in hand on turn 1.

The probability to draw a certain card NEVER is 100%. The only exception being of course when you only include 6 other cards in your deck and the rest is the one you want to draw.

The 15/100 (Young Jem´hadar) example leads to a probability of 22% not to draw a young JEm´hadar (100 cards in Deck, 15 are YJ, probability of the first card drawn to not be one: 84/100, next one 83/100 and so on. Multiplied, you get the 22%).

As I pointed out above, this is incorrect. The probability of the first card drawn not being a YJH is 85/100. The probability of the second card drawn not being a YJH, given that the first was not, is 84/99, and so on. This gives around* 30.8%. (If you drew 86 cards, you would indeed be guaranteed of drawing a YJH.)

*To be precise, the probability is 41132061/133396340.

EDIT: Footnote to where exactly?

[Dunnagh]

As I pointed out above, this is incorrect. The probability of the first card drawn not being a YJH is 85/100. The probability of the second card drawn not being a YJH, given that the first was not, is 84/99, and so on. This gives around* 30.8%. (If you drew 86 cards, you would indeed be guaranteed of drawing a YJH.)

To be precise, the probability is 41132061/133396340.

Well, you shouldnt do math not that early (and with you I mean me ) You are right: first YJ is 85/100, next is 84/99, 83/98, so you arrive at 30% chance of not drawing one.

And of course, I didnt read this thread properly and you already pointed that out.

So: is there anything else I could have done wrong when posting? )
More Coffee. Definately.

[Dukat]

As I said: it's kind of an "experience statistics". It might be that this won't work in Lackey, but it does when I have my deck in my hands.

Therefore I must apologize for declaring it a statistical value.

Nonetheless, it works.
If it were not working, I wouldn't have written it down with so much confidence.

About your other questions:

1) In the bag: Nice card, problem is, that you have to have enough In the Bags. Is it really worth it when every In the back could be a Jem'Hadar of some sort (interrupting your flow as you call it)?

The second article dealt with how to report personnel.
In The Bag is a great way to report Founders, so you will have to use that card mostly in Founder decks, not in Jem'Hadar only or Mixed Hierarchy decks.

You will read more about that in the next article.
Article numer 2 dealt with the "how", article number 3 will deal with the "when" (meaning: in which deck).

2)Keevan (2E) I read him as you either have to have BOTH players draw a card or none. Thats why I didnt include him up to date. Plus (you mentioned it) he cannot be downloaded, unfortunately.

Yes, he does.
That never stopped me from using him. I simply don't care.

If I am lucky, my opponent will draw a LOT of cards - and when he does, I reward him with a Scorched Hand .

Since I am the one who controls the draws (my opponent can't do anything about that - he MUST draw those cards!), I can make him worry that has to scorch his hand each turn, especially when he uses a good draw engine as well.



The Dominion is quite a good affiliation, but of course they have their drawbacks - more than others.
Therefore, you are right: my opponent will gain from me using Keevan, but it is worth it.
More on that in the next article.