With Codex, there’s such little impactful variance that when it does affect the game, it feels like it’s a huge tempo swing for/against you. The biggest one I notice is not drawing any of the cards you’ve teched after your first reshuffle, while your opponent does. The same could be said for tech 2, but I find the impact more extreme at tech 1.
What are some of the ways you minimize the impact of this? It’s not super common (it’s like a 7% chance you won’t draw one if you’re drawing five cards), but it does happen.
Not wanting to go too far off-topic, I’m not sure where this figure comes from. It’s not something you can even calculate, because it depends on how many of your Tech 0 units are on the board when you reshuffle at the end of T2. The more you have on the board, the bigger chance you have of drawing your just-teched cards.
The standard for player 1 is to reshuffle an 8 card deck with 2 tech cards, and draw 5. Chance of not getting any is 3/8 * 2/7 = 6/56 which is about 10.5%.
That’s the first thing then. Play units turn 1 (and keep it on the board!) and 2. If you go to a 9 card deck there is a 16.67% chance of not drawing either of your first techs. If you go to 10, the chance jumps to 22.22%.
ETA: I said units, but I guess I really mean non-spells…
It only now occurs to me that this is another part of P1’s advantage (or at least his counter to P2’s clear economic advantage, which gets bigger the longer the game goes on). Because whatever P1 plays on T1 will be out of his deck on the first reshuffle - unless P2 has either haste or removal spells/abilities (which are hard to play on T1 anyway).
Whereas P2 might have whateverhe plays on T1 removed “naturally” by P1 on his T2. So P1 has in general a better chance of drawing their T2 techs on T3.
To return to the topic in the OP, I can think of two other interesting aspects of this question. One is that, while you would think of it as a big advantage to draw both of your initial techs on T3 - and very often it is - it can happen that you can’t afford to play both (while also doing other things you may need to do). How much should this impact your decision on what to tech on T2 (should you avoid teching 2 Argonauts/Centaurs because they’re expensive and you don’w want them in the same hand?).
The other one that particularly interest me is that sometimes you have more important things to do on T2 than build Tech 1 - but still usually want to tech at least one Tech 1 unit. If you tech a unit and a spell in this situation, and draw that unit on T3 when you can’t play it, it can kind of hose you (particularly if that unit is important). It will do so even more if you tech 2 units and draw them both, but that’s of course rarer. So it would appear safer in this situation to tech 2 units - but what are the odds?
If you don’t draw your teched cards you can always invest in a hero, if you’re player 2 you can build tech2, you can float some gold, maybe build a tower or a heroes hall.
I think we’re starting to get to the point that we can identify a few good combinations of starting hand + heroes x opponent heroes that can guide an overall gameplan (at least for monocolor). So far I think the only one anyone wrote up was the monogreen maxband argagarg opening though.
Sometimes those aren’t good options.
For instance, you and your opponent on the first two turns play one hero, two units and tech 1.
Player 1 kills one unit on turn two.
On turn three, with their advantage, they kill the other unit, and play a tech one.
Player two now has to defend against a hero, a tech 1 unit, a tech 0 unit and a possible aggressive spell, with just a hero and whatever tech 0s they have; which are expensive in comparison to tech 1s and often force them to go down on cards to get a real defence.
This can easily snowball into an insurmountable lead.
Still need to test the options available but I think the best thing to do is tower up, and put up patrollers, making sure one is in the tech slot so you can play both of your teched cards the next turn.
You put up a tower, play two tech 0s, and you have your hero.
Your opponent clears your board with combat tricks, levels up their hero, and plays another Tech 1, with none of their units dying.
Your next turn, you play two Tech 1s. They also have two Tech 1s, but you spent your entire turn playing yours.
They decide it’s too risky to attack, so they simply build Tech 2, another unit, and defend.
Now you’re behind on both board and on Tech.