Sunday, November 5, 2017

this doesn't seem HARD but I don't want to do it.

I've been really enjoying playing with and against the Button "Stick" -- that null speed trip die causes all sorts of interesting decisions.

Here's one where I made what I'm pretty sure is a suboptimal decision just because it was too hard to quickly figure out all the possibilities. I've got to attack with the 12-sided die, but should I take the p(3) or the tzn(16)?

If I take the tzn(16), the calculation is pretty clear. I win if I roll higher than 3 (probability 3/4), OR if I roll lower than 3, but AD rerolls the p(3) to 3 after he captures with it, (probability 1/4*1/3 = 1/12). The sum of those is 10/12, i.e. 5/6.



But what happens if I instead capture the p(3) on my roll. I'm still up 3 sides, but if he nulls out my 12-sided die that will cost me 4 sides and I'll lose -- UNLESS he also nulls out my p(10) -- but he'll try hard not to do that, tripping me rather than being forced to power attack me.. So what happens?

So what happens? if I take the p(3) and reroll 1-5, he'll recapture me with a power attack and hope to roll a 1 or 2 and win for sure; but even if he rolls 3-16 and I have no legal attack, he'll trip attack the p(10), hoping to lose.

but if my reroll after capturing the p(3) is 6-12, he'll trip attack my 12-sided die, hoping to capture it and ALSO NOT have to also capture the p(10), which he'll trip attack if he must. lots of fiddly cases, here, depending on the outcome of the first trip attack.

At first I thought this couldn't work out as good for me as the other option, but as I thought about it, I was less sure. But not less sure enough to want to do the explicit math.