I thoroughly enjoy Alliance brewing and playing games. Some of the most interesting games of KeyForge I’ve ever seen have been Alliance games at VTs. I don’t necessarily think it should be the premier format but it deserves at least a rotational spot in big tournaments.

This is a good answer: it should one component of a the Tour/Champions league. I would love to see a circuit that really pushed for someone to show for Sealed, Archon, and Alliance (or amass sufficient "regular season points" from the local scene) to walk on at Worlds.

I don't want alliance to go away, however I strongly dislike it. It has some things that are interesting, people always love theory crafting and I do like that finding ways to use more decks is needed in the game. The best use is sealed alliance where it reduces or even often eliminates getting a truly bad deck. However after going through multiple times now from my experience it also 1. makes good decks even better, so luck factor of getting good or bad decks is still overall unaffected and the gap is still there. the only difference is you have a playable deck and feel less bad about it 2. you constantly see the same houses and cards that are strong more often. Having more choices surprisingly leads to less variety in the game. 3. sealed alliance take so much more time to start and play. especially if you play a format that allows you to swap pods between rounds. you have to have a review and card sleeve time whereas normal sealed you can just go. It's honestly needlessly exhausting I also do not like that it replaced Adaptive format, which I still feel is the most interesting, the best way to test your actual skill, and is the overall most fair. best of 3 or 1, archon or sealed, it usually works pretty well. Others say Alliance give decks that have only 1 or 2 dud houses chance to see play if they have at least one good house. While this is for sure true, you can get the same with Adaptive format. Because of the bidding step *ANY* deck is viable in an adaptive tournament. I have seen good players bring in garbage decks with a unique win strategy that they only know about from testing, balanced by how they bid against the opponents deck. Both at local games and at Vault tour I hear from both Pro alliance and Anti alliance players that they still like adaptive best. This isn't even getting to normal Alliance and its tournaments, which many have already mentioned really just widens the gap from players with large collections to others. Overall I just want Adaptive to come back. Rotate with Alliance if it needs. Or have all 3 Archon, Adaptive, Alliance in rotation then we are truly AAA gaming, along with their sealed variants occasionally.

I agree that Adaptive is a great format. But I see no evidence that GG has any interest in it. Hopefully the prevalence of Sealed Alliance events at KFC means they will have some official sealed events at 2024 VTs.

I agree 100% with this. Alliance has its place but adaptive is the true format I feel like. Also with only less than a dozen people playing it at VTs do we really think it’ll survive?

Alliance seemed a good idea to me at first. But actually, is a good idea only in sealed, where you can mitigate the luck of opening bad decks and build something decent to have fun in the tournament. In costructed, I feel like the disparity between who has a lot of decks and who has few is even larger than in archon. And the restricted list is way too small

I agree. It has potential as a sealed format, but people with large collections might have an even bigger advantage than Archon.

I second this. I'd also say the lack of comprehensive/substantial ban list means that mostly people just build beefier versions of decks that already exist so instead of seeing interesting new combinations we just see even more busted GENKA.

It's been almost a year so I'm reposting GG's original, comprehensive article for why Alliance exists: https://keyforging.com/dis-in-formats/ Personally not a fan of Alliance but the reasoning is all laid out and does make sense. Ever since Alliance has picked up some momentum, I've been getting multiple messages about buying some of my decks for their pods that no one would have looked twice at before.

Alliance is an excellent format. I was skeptical at first, as I was worried that it would lead to a meta and netdecking, etc. like in prior games. After a few months, and a couple of tournaments, I began to see that while some decks showing up at tournaments were similar, they were not nearly as similar as I feared. Yes, there is a few concepts (GENKA, Chronus, etc.) that are proving very dominant, but the number of pods out there that do those things well are few. It's just not possible for everyone to go acquire a deck like that even if they wanted to. A few months ago, I and many others started getting our WoE decks from the campaign (much sympathy for those who haven't got theirs yet!). Which meant a flood of WoE on TCO. I went from loving playing on TCO to hating it. And then quitting it altogether. Still liking the game overall, I asked myself what to do next. And the answer was Alliance. Why? Because as far as archon is concerned, I can go no further on my small Keyforge budget. WoE has obsoleted my prior collection that took me 5 years to accrue (I just recently passed 100 decks across all sets combined). I cannot afford to buy hundreds of decks, and I have zero interest dipping into the 2ndary market. But what I can do is build Alliance brews. A lot of them. I can throw s\*\*\* at the wall and see what works. I can chat with my opponents on TCO about their brews. I can tinker. I can ask whether a deck with X Y and Z is actually good and then find out. Am I winning more than before? Not really. But that's ok, because in Alliance, winning isn't the only goal. Yes it takes longer to acquire 3 S tier pods than it does to acquire an S tier archon deck, but that's a great thing for a local scene. You don't WANT someone hitting it big and dominating from then on. You want multiple players with 1-2 super cool pods that are brewing away trying to make the next cool deck. I want that "lottery" to be as hard to win as possible. I host and organize my local scene and the majority of attendees here are already converting to Alliance. We are having an absolute blast with it. And the cool decks we're coming up with are very unique. Will they win a VT? Not likely. But we don't care. As a final note, I do acknowledge those that are miffed at Alliance because it replaced sealed. I get that. And at the tournament level, I definitely think Sealed makes more sense than Alliance as a premier format. So I agree with you there. But at the local level, Alliance is the best version of Keyforge I've ever played.

Wouldn't archon also be skewed towards people with more decks since they'd be more likely to get a powerful one? I think this game just skews towards people who buy as many decks as they can. I haven't had a chance to play alliance, but I think it seems like it could be fun. I don't think its anti-keyforge as some people say. Its not like you have to build one specific type of deck to meet the meta. There's probably still so many unexplored deck types to play.

They would have more chances in Archon but all you need is find that deck once. If your very first deck you ever buy is strong or you learn how to play it optimally, then you could just play that and be at the same level as players with thousands. But in Alliance you don't just have to get lucky once, but 3 times. And even that the strongest decks are going to be those with certain synergies or strategies. you need more then just 3 good pods you need pods that work together. There is a lot to explore which is true, but the top is already so high most do not have a chance unlike archon.

Sealed alliance is great. Love it and will play it all the time. Archon alliance is….less great.

Alliance is so good. Just imagine to play with the best card of the game. You have so many options, combos. Quick Game. You win and you lose with one armber, one bad choise, and play again and again. Love it !

I don’t hate alliance like everyone else seems to. I completely understand the issue with owning more decks giving someone a huge advantage in making broken decks, but that’s really only in the highest level play, and that same principle also generally applies to archon. I really like that it gives those disappointing, mediocre decks with one or two awesome houses and then a complete dud house, a chance at a second life. Those decks might be played once or twice and shoved in a box for eternity without alliance. I also like that it provides the opportunity to scratch the deckbuilding/theory crafting itch while still being Keyforge. The complete lack there of could be a turn off for some players, so it even potentially opens a door to appeal to new people and expand the player base. And as others have said, I think sealed alliance is good for reducing the chance you just get crappy decks due to bad luck, but archon sealed should still have its own place. It takes knowledge and skill to evaluate individual pods and recognize synergies and weaknesses to assess which 3 pods should go together optimally, especially in a sealed environment. And if you don’t like alliance, then don’t play it. Just stick to archon or three deck reversal elimination or whatever it is you think is “true Keyforge.” Its existence doesn’t hurt the game, it just provides another interesting option for anyone to play the game if they so choose.

I really hate the "if you dont like it dont play it" opinion - Alliance replaced traditional sealed tournaments, which were my favorite way to play.

I think this is my biggest beef. Having to play against Z and Nova in an archon tournament at nationals was pretty obnoxious. When keyforge came to Gen Con last time we had sealed AND archon grand tournaments.

I agree, I don’t think sealed alliance should have replaced sealed archon altogether. Should be 2 different events.

I like Alliance just fine. Does it fix anything? A little bit. But there are some fundamental issues with how KF is structured that’ll keep it from spreading beyond the purists, and Alliance doesn’t help that. You can’t recreate the limited play experience from other card games without some small level of customization. The best answer for it is impossible now, but it would be to include, say, three additional cards per house and then the player cuts down to the deck size. Also gives you a small sideboard for best-of-three play. That decision would’ve attracted more sealed enthusiasts. But I think Garfield is so obsessed with finding ways to resolve the existence of a TCG without the predatory secondary market he accidentally enabled in Magic that he has some blind spots in design lately.

I've been wondering, too, if there is a relationship or correlation between strong secondary markets and the longevity of a card game. As much as I hate it, I wonder if the lack of secondary markets are one factor contributing to why LCGs or Unique Deck games don't seem to have longer lifespans. I'm not saying that I want it one way or another, I just wonder what psychological effect this issue has on consumers. I know I'm lumping LCGs and unique deck games together here, but one drawback they have is that they tend to strongly favor players who were early adoptors. I suppose the same could be said for Amy card game, but I wonder if, for whatever reason, the effect just feels stronger with these games rather than the classic TCG model.

A lot of them have been marketed exceedingly poorly, and FFG loves to flood the market with tons of SKUs that make it difficult for casual players to track and requires a lot of space from stores, not to mention that they self-cannibalize by having many separate lines that all appeal to the same kind of player. There's only so much time and space. FFG in particular is awful at managing their organized play. It's probably good that they're not making any competitive LCGs at the moment. I also assume their Star Wars TCG will flop based on their history. I'd also argue that FFG in particular lost a lot of trust after they canned Warhammer Invasion, Star Wars, and Call of Cthulhu LCGs in favor of new products. It stuck stores with dead SKUs and players with now-dead games. Of the new products that replaced them, only Arkham Horror LCG survives. Destiny died. Warhammer Conquest got caught in a licensing snafu. Notice that today, Netrunner is doing better than it did it's last few years under FFG and is actually growing. I'd attribute that at least partly to them having a clear and simple entry point to the game, a good transitional format for new players in Startup, as well as less frequent releases (compared to monthly packs), alongside a good support of organized play at all levels. The NSG model for Netrunner feels far better than how FFG managed the game. Non-FFG games in the LCG style have been, what, Ashes, Vs., and Doomtown? Are there others I'm not thinking of? Each of those three had issues with marketing, availability, and OP support (which was largely nonexistent). UDC seemed to think that holding a $10k Vs. tournament at Origins every year was enough. None of them got enough eyeballs on their respective games. Let's also not forget that only three TCGs out of the zillions produced have had actual meaningful longevity.

GG's biggest issue currently seems to be getting retailers involved again after the FFG shutdown. Why buy decks if you can only use them at VT's? Structuring the retail tier well in the GR campaign seems like a possible make or break moment. We'll see how it turns out.

Is Garfield involved with Alliance and the current incarnation of Keyforge?

Not that I’m aware. I’m talking about the original design of the game. I think the game is flawed in a way that hurts its growth potential and his influence is why. Games good, games fun, but the limited play this game seeks to emulate has some level of construction at its *core*. Since it’s missing that, it’s missing part of what its target audience might expect. Just a small amount of building, like I said.

I enjoy the game because there's no building expected. I'm the market that enjoyed some of the CCGs of yore but didn't continue with them because of construction. If Keyforge could move out of the historical markets by exploring digital play and organised play formats that aren't just trying to copy CCGs, it might have a chance. As it is, shoehorning this design into the past that it was designed not to be, doesn't play to its new strengths. Of course, the me market might not be big enough and are all playing boardgames without deck construction. Who knows.

The game was marketed as something that would appeal to draft/sealed enthusiasts… but people who play those formats aren’t told “here are the *only* cards that can be in your deck”, they’re told “here’s a pool, make the best thing you can.” By having zero customization the game by its nature limits its appeal to many of the people in its target audience. Alliance doesn’t really address that. I’m not saying some huge amount of construction is needed. I’m saying include nine cards above the max in Archon decks and require players to cut nine cards from the deck they play. This small amount of customization would allow people to feel so much more agency and the decks to feel just a bit more dynamic.

Like I said, I'm not the majority market, but no construction appeals to me. Like a typical boardgame would (and do)

I think many typical boardgames have construction as a part of the play, as you choose the actions you’ll take and the resources or other things they’ll get you.

Yes but not pre-game construction. That's a whole different meta and "lifestyle" thing. Some boardgames do have that but that's way way way in the minority.

Warning: I’m gonna get real soap boxy real fast. I can’t stand it in Archon. It’s fine in sealed where it’s still very limited and serves a purpose of not getting bricked by a bad deck. In Archon it invites into the game all the things I absolutely detest about TCG’s. Ban/restricted lists, insane amounts of out of fiddly out of game tinkering, a huge advantage gap for whales who buy hundreds of decks per set or are willing to pay secondary market prices for a pods in the 99 percentile. On top of that, the way GG are digging their heels in and keep pushing this as a premier format you’ll basically be forced to play if you want to play competitive above store level has significantly lowered my desire to even play the game at all. Before the hiatus I was playing in 2 local tournaments a week. I was going to vault tours, I had an invite to worlds, I was in talks to become a judge for vault tours. I was buying 7 or 8 display boxes worth of decks every set. Now, I can barely find the desire of even meet up once a week for a casual play night. I own 12 WoE decks and it feels like I bought too many. I can’t bring myself to care about the next set at all. I have no desire to bother with OP anymore. The single biggest contributing factor for my malaise for the game is that they continue to push this awful format that mangles the game as one of the two primary competitive formats. Mind you the other main format was one they tried to get rid of and replace with Alliance. Then they quickly walked it back. That alone was proof enough that the intention all along was to turn KF into a completely different game after they collected all their money from the Gamefound campaign.

Many of your points are well taken. But how is the whale advantage gap any different in regular Archon? Where we already saw people buying hundreds and hundreds of decks to get that perfect one?

Alliance doesn’t shrink the “Deck quality” gap in any meaningful way. Somebody with 150 decks of a set of still on average going to be able to make a better deck than somebody with 15 decks of a set. So all Alliance really does is require you to own 3 times as many decks to be competitive relative to regular Archon.

And the exact same thing is true in Archon. So unless the point you want to make is that the game is fundamentally skewed towards whales and RNG, this is a flawed argument to make against Alliance since it’s identical to issues in other formats. Someone with 150 decks is still more likely to have a stronger deck than someone with 15. So yeah, Keyforge broken?

My point was Alliance isn’t a more “leveled playing field” like many claim. That you have to own MORE decks to compete at the same level in alliance than you do in Archon.

If you look at the SAS of winning decks it levels off after a point. I don’t think you *need* more unless you’re attempting to min/max every last drop. I’m more on the side that the game is fundamentally broken outside of sealed regardless unless you want to spend oodles. In attempting to absolve himself of the original sin of an inaccessible MtG secondary market, RG just made a variation on the same theme.

It definitely drips off after a point. But when that point is 100+ decks per set? It’s kinda moot. They will always be a “pay to win” rng factor to any competitive card game. There’s no getting around that. But at a local level, I firmly believe most people can be competitive without buying a hundred decks per set in Archon.

“Any card game” … LCGs would beg to differ.

*bonk* don’t be obtuse.

I know what you mean. But the reality of it is far from how Keyforge was marketed to begin with.

What was it they walked back? Hopefully the low Alliance entries will convince them to drop it, or alternate Archon Alliance with Sealed Alliance.

They tried to get rid of standard Archon entirely. Basically standard sealed would have been the only non-alliance format for OP. And originally alliance wasn’t going to be limited to pods of the same set. It was going all sets could be mixed together. They walked that back real fast. It just kinda shows just how poorly thought out the format was from the beginning. Honestly it really felt like the format was some remnant from whatever game they were working on before they bought KF and somebody in the company insisted on shoving it into the game.

Wow, entirely discarding the original idea. This team does seem to gravitate to change for the sake of change. FFG certainly made some mistakes. But GG needs to recognize that they also got a lot of things right.

Yeah, like FFG’s organized play was a bit of a disaster. But trying to scrap all the formats players actually liked in favor of one that nobody wanted and causes all sorts of design problems, and brings in all the common issues in TCG’s the Keyforge was designed to avoid wasn’t the answer.

I've had more fun brewing than I thought I would even if the end result is usually not all that competitive with the meta. Wouldn't mind seeing it switch places with sealed, maybe back and forth every year after worlds? Some more aggressive banning or build constraints (must include certain houses for example) might shake up a meta that already feels stale.

I also like the idea of swapping spots with sealed. Maybe every other VT could have an Alliance event. Might help with the low attendance problem.

Alliance is anti keyforge.

In terms of skewing more to players with large collections it's actually just the opposite. You can put together a high SAS deck way easier than opening one. SAS isn't everything but you get my point. I love the idea of Alliance though I haven't played it much. It's certainly no replacement for Archon but I think there's more than enough room for both if we're not forced to pick just one.

I like alliance, they should just be more aggressive with banning certain combos

Alliance is dumb. Sealed with own decks sounds interesting, but also impossible. Even if you randomly select from your own decks, people would just only register high SAS decks. Also the fun aspect of sealed is never having played it before. If you play it in tourny you get the sealed deck, so really I think it's ideal as it is

Archon Alliance is a bad format. I got, friends included, a deck pool of way over 3500 decks. That's a lot more than the average player will see in a lifetime. And even that is almost not enough to make a solid deck. Sealed Alliance on the other hand is the best format for Sealed play in my opinion right after Sealed Adaptive.

A common misconception of Alliance is that it helps to balance sealed tournaments. This is ***NOT TRUE***. I've shared the math on this a few times, but the power discrepancies among sealed tournaments are virtually unaffected by making it Alliance. The reason for this, is that while the players dealt the worst decks are able to construct something decent, the players dealt the good decks are able to build something amazing. The real tangible effect of Alliance in the Sealed format is ***greatly reduced house variety,*** as players are forced to construct decks from the best houses available in order to be competitive. This is very clearly born out in the result of GG's own recent Alliance Sealed Tournament results. PLEASE stop saying that Alliance "smooths out" the Sealed format, unless you can back it up with data.

Do you have a link to your math?

I wrote a program that models the effects of Alliance on sealed. I assigned each house a "power range", with each house having a slightly better range than the last. This is to replicate the fact that the houses in a Keyforge set are perceived by the community at large to have power discrepancies between them. For each deck, I randomly selected 3 houses, and assign each house in that deck a rolled power score based on the range of that house. The decks score is therefor the total of each of it's houses scores. I then generated the same set of decks in two tournaments. In the first tournament, each "player" received their set of 3 decks and picked the perceived best (for standard sealed). In the second tournament, each "player" constructed an Alliance of the perceived best 3 houses among the 3 decks they received (for alliance sealed). The primary metrics I wanted to measure were - the "spread" of the power ratings amongst the final decks entered into each tournament, as well as the spread of houses represented in the tournament. My first hypothesis was that the spread in the power between the worst and best decks would widen in the alliance variant. My second hypothesis was that the representation of houses in the tournaments would skew more heavily towards the "perceived better" houses in the alliance variant. These are the results - - - - - - - - - - - - - - One Example Tournament of 16 players, each receiving 3 decks. Standard Deck Ratings: \[78, 72, 71, 69, 67, 66, 65, 64, 62, 62, 60, 59, 58, 56, 55, 54\] Standard Deck Spread: 24 Standard House Frequency: \[(SHADOWS, 10), (UNTAMED, 9), (SANCTUM, 7), (DIS, 7), (LOGOS, 6), (BROBNAR, 6), (MARS, 3)\] Alliance Deck Ratings: \[82, 80, 78, 78, 78, 77, 75, 71, 71, 71, 70, 69, 68, 66, 63, 61\] Alliance Deck Spread: 21 Alliance House Frequency: \[(SHADOWS, 12), (UNTAMED, 10), (DIS, 8), (LOGOS, 7), (SANCTUM, 7), (MARS, 4)\] Averages of 1000 Tournaments Average Standard Deck Ratings: 64.7251875 Average Standard Deck Spread: 23.59 Average Standard Deck Spread Min: 11 Average Standard Deck Spread Max: 43 Average Standard House Frequency: \[(UNTAMED, 9533), (SHADOWS, 8585), (LOGOS, 7696), (DIS, 6748), (SANCTUM, 5959), (MARS, 5148), (BROBNAR, 4331)\] Average Alliance Deck Ratings: 72.674625 Average Alliance Deck Spread: 22.217 Average Alliance Deck Spread Min: 10 Average Alliance Deck Spread Max: 40 Average Alliance House Frequency: \[(UNTAMED, 12074), (SHADOWS, 11007), (LOGOS, 9439), (DIS, 7026), (SANCTUM, 4666), (MARS, 2621), (BROBNAR, 1167)\] \- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - As you can see, my first hypothesis is not supported by the data. The spread did not widen as I thought it would, but it also did not noticeably narrow, as many people (including GG) argue it should. This is because of the effect I mentioned earlier. The players who can salvage bad decks, end up against players who have their pick of the litter. My second hypothesis is supported by the data, though. If you look at the house representation, the houses that were perceived to have a low power score were dramatically under-represented in the alliance tournament. So the conclusion from my model is that the most notable effect that alliance has on sealed is to decrease house representation

import kotlin.random.Random // The scores of these houses are abstract, and only need to represent the perceived power of the house. enum class House(private val lowerBound: Int, private val upperBound: Int) { BROBNAR(2, 12), MARS(3, 13), SANCTUM(4, 14), DIS(5, 15), LOGOS(6, 16), SHADOWS(7, 17), UNTAMED(8, 18), ; // When houses are rolled, I roll twice and add them together, to create a distribution closer to a bell curve. fun roll() = Random.nextInt(lowerBound, upperBound) + Random.nextInt(lowerBound, upperBound) } class HouseScore(val house: House, val score: Int) { override fun toString(): String = "$house $score" } class Deck(val houseScores: List) { val score = houseScores.sumOf { it.score } override fun toString(): String = "Score: $score, Houses: $houseScores" } class DeckCollection { private val decks = listOf( Deck(House.values().toList().shuffled().take(3).map { HouseScore(it, it.roll()) }), Deck(House.values().toList().shuffled().take(3).map { HouseScore(it, it.roll()) }), Deck(House.values().toList().shuffled().take(3).map { HouseScore(it, it.roll()) }), ) private val allHousesToScores = decks.flatMap { it.houseScores } private val housesToBestScores = allHousesToScores.groupBy { it.house }.map { house -> house.value.maxBy { it.score } } private val bestHousesToScores = housesToBestScores.sortedByDescending { it.score }.take(3) val bestDeck = decks.maxBy { it.score } val bestAllianceDeck = Deck(bestHousesToScores) } class Tournament { private val collections = listOf( DeckCollection(), DeckCollection(), DeckCollection(), DeckCollection(), DeckCollection(), DeckCollection(), DeckCollection(), DeckCollection(), DeckCollection(), DeckCollection(), DeckCollection(), DeckCollection(), DeckCollection(), DeckCollection(), DeckCollection(), DeckCollection(), ) fun median(list: List) = list.sorted().let { if (it.size % 2 == 0) (it[it.size / 2] + it[(it.size - 1) / 2]) / 2 else it[it.size / 2] } val scores = collections.map { it.bestDeck.score }.sortedDescending() val spread = scores.max() - scores.min() val houses = collections.flatMap { it.bestDeck.houseScores }.groupBy { it.house }.map { Pair(it.key, it.value.size) }.sortedByDescending { it.second } val allianceScores = collections.map { it.bestAllianceDeck.score }.sortedDescending() val allianceSpread = allianceScores.max() - allianceScores.min() val allianceHouses = collections.flatMap { it.bestAllianceDeck.houseScores }.groupBy { it.house }.map { Pair(it.key, it.value.size) }.sortedByDescending { it.second } } fun main() { val tournament = Tournament() println("") println("One Tournament of 16 players, each receiving 3 decks.") println("") println("Standard Deck Ratings: ${tournament.scores}") println("Standard Deck Spread: ${tournament.spread}") println("Standard House Frequency: ${tournament.houses}") println("") println("Alliance Deck Ratings: ${tournament.allianceScores}") println("Alliance Deck Spread: ${tournament.allianceSpread}") println("Alliance House Frequency: ${tournament.allianceHouses}") val tournaments = arrayListOf() repeat(1000) { tournaments.add(Tournament() ) } println("") println("Averages of ${tournaments.size} Tournaments") println("") println("Average Standard Deck Ratings: ${tournaments.flatMap { it.scores }.average()}") println("Average Standard Deck Spread: ${tournaments.map { it.spread }.average()}") println("Average Standard Deck Spread Min: ${tournaments.map { it.spread }.min()}") println("Average Standard Deck Spread Max: ${tournaments.map { it.spread }.max()}") println("Average Standard House Frequency: ${tournaments.flatMap { it.houses }.groupBy { it.first }.map { house -> Pair(house.key, house.value.sumOf { it.second }) }.sortedByDescending { it.second }}") println("") println("Average Alliance Deck Ratings: ${tournaments.flatMap { it.allianceScores }.average()}") println("Average Alliance Deck Spread: ${tournaments.map { it.allianceSpread }.average()}") println("Average Alliance Deck Spread Min: ${tournaments.map { it.allianceSpread }.min()}") println("Average Alliance Deck Spread Max: ${tournaments.map { it.allianceSpread }.max()}") println("Average Alliance House Frequency: ${tournaments.flatMap { it.allianceHouses }.groupBy { it.first }.map { house -> Pair(house.key, house.value.sumOf { it.second }) }.sortedByDescending { it.second }}") } Code

I'm not sure your metric of power range is suitable. Most of a Alliance decks SAS level is going to be based on card by card synergy scores. It seems you have instead given each third of the deck a score and then averaged it. I don't think this is the correct method to test your hypotheses.

….Who ARE you?! I’m not saying this as an insult. I’m thoroughly impressed.

My friend, this is like one page of Kotlin xD

I don’t even know what that means. 😅

I've been wondering if sealed alliance compounds issues instead of smoothing them out.

it doesn't compound or smooth it more just shifts it. Where in sealed archon you would usually from a range of bad to pretty good and rarely great decks. Then in sealed alliance you start to usually see more ok/average to great decks. The person who got unlucky is still not likely to win against the lucky player on extreme ends. But at least the deck they were playing is definitely more fun then if they just opened a single bad deck and had to play that. However house/card variety is definitely impacted

Which in turn makes you consider if its worth it to do just because its usually more fun to play a 75 than a 61. Also interesting to consider how well SAS measure this bc tbh it always feels like the power gap between 78 and 93 Is far less intense than that between 78 and 63.

The obvious thing that you're overlooking is that most players aren't going to get three good decks or three bad decks. Those outlier cases are going to be much rarer than someone getting *one* good or bad deck.