Hey everyone, Corey Burkhart back for another rules update. We are very sparing about overarching rules updates in general. We believe that HEX is something special and that changes to the core HEX experience should be approached slowly and carefully.
For the past year we have been watching everyone’s experiences in HEX, and based on that data have decided to make a change to our shuffling algorithm. “Opening Hand” changes will be coming with our Chapter II update!
What’s actually Changing?
Currently, when you sit down to play a game of HEX, we randomize your entire deck. You then draw a hand equal to your starting hand size (usually 7 cards). This system is exciting because it forces players to overcome variance every game, but it also leads to an exceptionally wide range of hands. The mulligan system (which lets players redraw a new hand with one fewer card) helps get rid of hands that are on the unacceptable end of that variance, either because of too many resources, too few resources, an unacceptable curve, wrong threshold, or any number of deckbuilding considerations. However, that variance mitigation comes at a price. Mulligans can be punishing through the loss of one or more starting cards and so act as a double-edged sword.
While we like the risk-reward and skill testing nature mulligans offer, we felt that players were forced to redraw hands too often when they had too few resources or too many resources in our current system. A mulligan is interesting when it adds to the overall strategy of the game by presenting interesting choices. A zero shard hand, typically speaking, is not a choice. As such, we are changing the opening hand algorithm so it will remove the most resource dense and least resource dense hands from your possible range of draws. This is accomplished by taking a hypergeometric distribution of your deck and eliminating a percentage of your hands that include the greatest and fewest number of resources.
Note, this change doesn’t completely eliminate the possibilities to draw a hand with too few resources or too many. We are not guaranteeing players will have 2-5 resources in their opening hand, nor are we guaranteeing you will draw an opening hand with fewer than 7 resources if you still put 50 resources in your 60 card deck. Conversely, if you put 5 resources in your 60 deck, we won’t guarantee that you won’t draw an opening hand with 0 resources. The algorithm would actually bias to making this more likely because drawing a shard in that scenario would be an outlier. If you’re looking for more information, Chris Woods, our Lead Engineer, will be posting the exact algorithm in the forums for those looking for the nitty-gritty on how hands are altered.
You should note that our algorithm doesn’t look at the threshold requirements of your cards or their cost. It only looks at the number of resources in your deck and the number you draw. The algorithm does not change the context of your deck either. While your opening hand is less random now with regards to resources, the order of the remaining cards in your deck is still the same. Each card has an equal likelihood of being the top card of your deck as well as any other spot in your deck, and resources still clump naturally over the course of the game.
Why this change?
It took us a while to determine the best output to reduce the number of times players were experiencing a frustrating redraw moment while still preserving the tactical redraw. HEX is all about playing skillfully through variance. We wanted to preserve the option for players who drew sub-optimal hands for their strategy or matchup to still play the odds and make use of a mulligan.
At the same time, we didn’t want to drastically change how people build their decks. We didn’t want a situation where putting 2 or 3 resources in a 60 card deck was optimal because some percentage of those were guaranteed. We still want to preserve the tension and excitement of not knowing if you will hit your resource drops every turn.
There were a number of different systems that we tried before deciding on this one. We tried the campaign free mulligan system. We tried selecting a number of cards in your hand to toss back and redrawing that same amount. We tried a mulligan where you could redraw your hand once but also keep any resources that were in your opening hand. We even tried guaranteeing a resource in your hand regardless of your deck. At the end of the day, we decided that an algorithm which adjusts based on your resource count is the best solution because it checked a few key boxes for us.
- This change addresses the concern at hand, namely that players are redrawing hands slightly more often than we’d like to the point where their win rates suffer.
- This change addresses the concern that players could game a resource fixing system and guarantee opening hands for specific decks. With this solution they cannot.
- It’s a digital change that doesn’t require players to work with an extra burden of knowledge. HEX wants to be on the forefront of knocking down doors and innovating new ways to solve difficult problems. This change adds no extra rules or steps for a player to learn before they play a game of HEX, and it provides a much better experience.
At the end of the day, we found an approach that didn’t require players be concerned that something changed. If you have no idea that we’ve improved the system and you’ve been out of HEX for months, everything will seem completely normal to you. We didn’t want to make it something in your face, and we didn’t want something that completely changed the game engine. That was one of the problems with using the campaign redraw rule - it required players learn a new ruleset and also privileged combo decks over other archetypes. In campaign, it’s alright to have a bunch of wacky, less interactive combo decks running around. The AI won’t mind. However, this is less acceptable in a PvP environment, so we went with a solution that preserved the balance between deck archetypes.
Some Extra Specifics
This change goes across all formats. Draft, Sealed, Campaign, Constructed, you name it. We’re confident this change will greatly improve HEX and we don’t want to silo this rule off for only one segment of the community. We want to make sure everyone gets to experience the future where there’s less need to redraw so many hands and more awesome games of HEX.
These changes will be going live on launch day of Chronicles of Entrath: Chapter II. If you want to try and feel them out a bit before you get directly into a match, the “Test Draw” feature in collection manager will also be following these rules. You can take your new opening hands for a test drive with this feature.
We hope you’re as excited about this as we are. I’m really looking forward to more awesome games of HEX. Until next time, have a wonderful time exploring the Alachian Sea!
-Corey Burkhart