I’d be up for Green against Red!
you got it! ill set it up and tag you
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anyone down for a monocolor match here? i want to play as red vs purple, but i’m open for any other ideas
@bolyarich I’ll take you up on that, but I do want a few warmup matches pls…
you can go first, I’m fairly sure that you mean [you as red] vs [someone else as purple] but if not just do your first turn as purple as i dont mind either way.
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I’m available if anyone wants to get in on this! Red v White and Black v Purple are still open, I’ll take either side of either of those, whatever your preference
Not at all, I’ll start us a warm-up thread!
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Bolyarich please don’t read this until we have finished our series
secret stuff
What’s the aim of playing 10 games? Is it purely to average out random elements or actually to simulate a series of 10 games? Let me explain why I’m asking (and what I’m really asking):
P1 as Purple against Red there is (imo) a clear best tech 2 choice of Present. (Sure if they are playing passively the flyers in Future are pretty mean but cmon we’re playing against Red they are not passive… anyway i know other things work that’s not the point here).
In any one-off encounter between P1 Purple and P2 Red I think Purple has a decent chance of winning using Present. But if those two people play again I think a lot of players would try something different even if Present worked the first time. Should I play my 5 P1 games as if they are the first game I’m playing or as a collection of 5 games? (edit: wrong question, of course Bolyarich will adjust to my strategy so doing the same each time would be dumb, please read next question:)
Take it even further, say you solved P1 Green vs Blue - you had a pattern of play that will always win (or even if you just reached an equilibrium where you maximise your chance of winning and doing anything else, even th). In this series would you spam that 5 times or try different things?
Having thought about this it’s quite easy to make it non-match-specific: "if i think I’ve found a play / equilibrium that gives me the best chance of winning, should I spam it for the whole series or try different things?”
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Personally, I would say to spam it. The intent of MMM1 is to find out how balanced the monocolour matchups are, so you should play to win. If you think a strategy’s dominant, or even unbeatable, it’s up to your opponent to find a response. If they find one, you’re back to trying different things, or at least iterating on your original plan, which is fine.
For the purposes of working out the matchup balance, I think it’s in the spirit of things to discuss counterplay with your opponent between matches, if you’d like to.
Finding an optimal equilibrium is more subtle, since I don’t think you could thoroughly explore that over 5 matches per side. However, if you did find one, this needn’t make the ensuing spam mindless. What hopefully happens, at least for monocolour, is that the optimal strategy is a mixed strategy, not a pure one: both players have a few different plays, and their optimal strategy is to randomly pick one of them for each game.
This would still result in a healthy matchup, since the nature of Codex means that there’s plenty of opportunity in-game for guessing what the opponent’s doing, based on what’s happened in the match so far and what you know of them as a player, and modifying your own strategy accordingly. It’s only a problem – for the game, not your own play – if said equilibrium is highly lopsided.
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I agree with charnel_mouse. In green v white, white p1 seemed unbeatable, so we tried a few things and discussed options to try and find counterplay. We didnt, but the spirit of the matchups is to try to win and try to find counterplay to those winning strategies.
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I’m in agreement w/ charnel and Zhav here; the idea is to play to win and figure out what the matchup balance and characteristics are through concrete examples.
I’ll elaborate a little further, though, that the WARM-UP is meant to be the collaborative and exploratory phase. It has no game amount recommendation on purpose, b/c it’s only meant to stop when the two players think they have a good handle on what the primary win conditions and counterplay options are.
That way, the ten game series is meant to reduce draw variance and represent as best it can what the true matchup characteristics are.
This is all obviously dependent on players being roughly equal skill and really doing a good job in the warmup experimenting with things to the point where they feel they have a good handle on things. So it won’t end up being perfect, but I wanted there to be some well-gathered examples for every matchup for new players and veterans to see and be able to discuss as a jumping off point.
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Thanks to you all for such full answers! I’ve never personally focused on one particular matchup so much before I took part in this series - mostly taking each game of codex as it comes - so it’s an interesting new perspective to me. Where normally i often turn to squishy intuition when trying to predict what’s going to happen more than a turn or two ahead, now it’s easier to try to forecast the game when the main unknowns are only card draw and whatever goes on inside Bolyarich’s head.
I think me and Bolyarich have a good handle on the best plays for our decks and how to counter them so we’ll continue with our “for-real” series.
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Hey everyone!
Love to see the progress on games 
It looks like the Zhav/Urban Green v Blue matchup stalled out in the winter, so here is where we stand on games to be played:
- Green v Blue
- Red v Black
Red v Purple- Black v Purple
I am up for a new series after finishing my pretty damn fun Red v White series; anybody interested in going for any of these remaining matchups with me?
I’m up for any of these. Lmk if you have a preference.
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I could use a break from red and black XD how about the Green v Blue? I’ll take either side
sounds good. ill take green since im currently playing against green in another set.
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Fair warning, green is very frustrating to play when blue is locking down everything.
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well, i already know how frustrating it can be to play against green, so i hope the grass is greener with against blue. thanks for the heads up though.
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Sorry, meaning?