My apologies if this has already been posted, but I don't recall seeing it.
Daniel Lew has created an Android app that uses the expected win rates as part of a Randomizer. You are able to not only get a random set of decks to use for a game, but you can also pick what range of expected win rate you want, and get a set of decks geared towards that win rate.
He said it better in the description for the app:
"A simple Sentinels of the Multiverse setup randomizer application. Includes all sets, mini-expansions and promos.
It's integrated with a point system which estimates the chance of winning, giving you a way to determine (or randomly configure) the difficulty of your game!"
I'm still pretty wary about using the stats for anything but descriptive purposes, but it's a well-made app in any case. I just won't be using the difficulty selector.
I’ve used this randomize quite a bit so here’s my view.
Being able and only able to randomize by difficulty is both is pro and con. Pro being allowing the player to customize their game according to a desired difficulty based on the stats available.
The disadvantage is that once a difficulty is chosen, the user has to reset in order to change to another difficulty band, this is cumbersome to use in practice. Next, for some difficulty bands, there isn’t much of a choice. For instance, for hard difficulty, Rook City is always selected. From a stats perspective there’s nothing wrong, but from a gaming perspective playing Rook City all the time can be boring.
There's no reason I couldn't upload it to the Amazon store, so I have. I'll let you know if I make it past Amazon's submission approval process…
I've gone back and forth a lot on what actions are available in the action bar. First of all, at most I've got space for two actions; any more and I'll end up in the overflow menu (plus it may overwhelm the user). Second, I wanted the user to be able to lock in some cards while randomizing the rest repeatedly, in case they were disatisfied with one of the cards introduced by the randomizer. I decided that changing difficulties was probably not as common an activity as rerolling for the same difficulty, so I went with changing "Randomize" to "Reroll" instead of keeping "Randomize" and popping the dialog each time. I'm open to changing it though.
As for the Rook City problem, I hear you. It appears to be the only way to make the point system create a really hard game. Hopefully the GtG guys will make more difficult environments that can compete with Rook City for screwing the heroes over. Or you can pick easier games; in the 50-75% win rate range there's a huge variety of compositions available.
I rather hope not. Rook City is by far the least (if ever) played environment for my group. Difficulty is great and all when you need it, but I would rather have new environments that will actually have a chance at seeing table time.
Hahaha, I have to clarify, I was joking - my sarcasm doesn't translate well online. I generally detest Rook City because it's so harsh. The only semi-helpful cards in that environment are the ones that let you see what card is going to screw you next. :)
By the way, if you hate Rook City, you can always go into the app's overflow menu –> "Configure Cards" and turn it off.
One question, though. If you include the promo cards, how does it add them into the mix? If I include the promos, will Wraith show up three times as often as Scholar because she has three character cards and he only has one?
However, it still only supports newer devices. I think it'll work on a Kindle Fire HD but probably not an original Kindle Fire. I might someday work on backwards compatibility if there's demand but it's such busywork that I doubt I'll ever be motivated enough. :)
Strange, I know I thought about this problem but I'm not sure I actually got around to fixing it. Whoops. I 'll make sure to handle that properly in the next release.
The one thing I know it does handle is that it won't select multiple promos at once, aka you won't have both Wraith and Wraith: The Price of Freedom in the same random setup.
It's pretty good when you're Nightmist. Then you can make The Chairman punch himself in the face, and then punch himself again for daring to punch himself.
I've pushed an update to the app that adds automatic updating. It also addresses the problem of cards w/ promos being weighted disproportionally high. Now the Wraith should show up as often as the Scholar!
At this point I'm pretty much done with the basic feature set. The last idea I had was to add "random nemesis" to the mix, if having standoffs is your bag. Any other ideas?
Thanks - looking forward to it!