Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Why you Shouldn't Run Four Perfect Guards

So let's break down some myths and facts about Perfect Guards, and why you shouldn't run four.

See, the thing about running any four units is that you have some ~35.9% chance of damage checking one of them if you were to take five damage. Nevermind taking six damage, or if your deck has any form of Soul Charging or milling, but imagine the effects on your deck when you lose a Perfect Guard to your damage zone. Instead of effectively having the probability of four Perfect Guards within your deck, your losing one means that you essentially only have three Perfect Guards in deck now. This subverts whatever superiority in consistency any of those religious zealots would say about having four Perfect Guards entirely, as it's essentially like running three Perfect Guards in the first place. In fact, if you had just ran three in the first place, the probability of damage checking your Perfect Guard (once again assuming five damage) drops down to ~28.1%. IT'S A WHOLE ~7.8% DIFFERENCE. Think of it like this, if you played ten games in a row, you're going to damage check a Perfect Guard once more out of the ten games than if you ran three in the first place. A game out of ten! Now people might tell you about having to consider the probability of misrides, probability of Trigger-screws, and something stupid like standard deviantartation or something, but ignore them. I'm obviously the math blogger of the Vanguard community and I obviously know more than them anyway. With that out of the way, I'm quite sure you can see why you might as well run three Perfect Guards instead of four, because probability just does not favor running for. In fact, if you don't run any Perfect Guards at all, this drops the probability of damage checking a Perfect Guard all the way down to zero. See, if you don't run any Perfect Guards at all, you can't lose any Perfect Guards to your damage checks, and then you'll have all the advantage over your opponent as you defend yourself properly.

Of course, there's another reason why you shouldn't run four Perfect Guards. See, if you only ran three Perfect Guards, math shows that:
(1-((46*45*44*43*42*44*43*42*41*40*39*38*37*36*35*34*33*32*31*30*29)/(49*48*47*46*45*47*46*45*44*43*42*41*40*39*38*37*36*35*34*33*32)))=80.1%
you will get a Perfect Guard by turn six in about eight out of ten games. A whole eight out of ten games! That is extremely consistent, in fact just as consistent as riding up to Grade 3 with most standard decks. In fact, because you ride your to Grade 3 right away in eight games out of ten, and that you can get at least one Perfect Guard from your deck eight games out of ten by turn six, this means you are guaranteed to get a Perfect Guard if you only run three. Once again though, there will probably be a few idiots in the crowd who are going to be like 'Oh, NACHO, the math doesn't work that way' or something stupid like that. Don't listen to them. Trust me, I'm an engineer, I know what I'm doing.

Still skeptical huh? I guess it is true that trying to get away with proving the use of only having three Perfect Guards is unfair without the use of four Perfect Guards to compare. See, if you run four Perfect Guards, math shows that:
(1-((45*44*43*42*41*43*42*41*40*39*38*37*36*35*34*33*32*31*30*29*28)/(49*48*47*46*45*47*46*45*44*43*42*41*40*39*38*37*36*35*34*33*32)))=88.6%
there isn't even a 10% difference between the two! Also, when you consider the probability of misreading, trigger-screw, and standard deviation, along with the fact that not all games last until turn six, the probability drops considerably. This means you're not even guaranteed to improve your chances at all. And that's already ignoring that if you damage check a Perfect Guard, it's like you're running three anyway. See? It's totally useless to have a fourth Perfect Guard.

As you can see, there is no point in running four Perfect Guards. You only should run three Perfect Guards, it's all you need. In fact, don't even get me started on how Perfect Guards clog your hand, so you shouldn't even run Perfect Guards at all! This is how you improve your games, by using strict logic and thinking these things out objectively and with math.

Now I just wanted to say

APRIL FOOLS

And that you are a tragically misinformed person if you believe or believed even a smidgen of the logic that you can find in this article.

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