How ressers turn the double dirty: Double +ve flips to hit and double –ve damage flips.

In my last game S&M managed to find the red Joker flipping to hit and then the black Joker flipping for damage. It was a critical point in the game, he was trying to take down Sybelle and get schemes spammed. Activations he had planned to use on spamming schemes and breaking through were spent making Sybelle go down, not winning the game.

To investigate this occult and strange event I lit the candle within the hand, dusted of the board and crushed a little stone into my tea and let my thoughts and the planchet wander wherever the spirits would take them….. 

“Tell my spirits and tell me true, what bringeth forth for my foes the worstest of fates????”

Much is made of the benefits of good players using models with double +ve flips on their to hit duels. There is also cheating in cards and focusing and all that other jazz that appears in the section of the rules I haven’t read properly yet. But the more cards you flip the better chance you have to get high numbers, succeed in duels and get bonus cards on damage flips, which means even more chance of high damage…. 

Rezzers have hard to wound. A zombie madame hiding in hard cover will be very heard to wound. Hard to wound is accepted as being annoying, but something that can be easily played around etc.  If Somebody hits, you will take damage, and probably lose two wounds. 

So the living, in theory, have the advantage over the undead. The consequence of this is that if you are a zombie Madame skulking in a graveyard, hiding from a crack shot showgirl assassin  you are going to get hurt, unless the safety word works (thesaurus, thesaurus, thesaurus!). Or unless the Black Joker appears. 

But what are the chances of that?

For starters, for the chance to be greater than zero, the black Joker needs to be in your opponent’s deck.

If that condition is met, then what is that chance? It can be found by calculating a hypergeometric distribution for the sequence of events. Hypergeometric distributions, unlike my imaginary hand of glory and the “Philosophy of Nothing”, are real if probably overrated (the universe runs on cause and effect and fuzziness, lots of fuzziness). They describe linked sequences of events, and the probable outcomes for those events; e.g. how long do you need to keep on trying chemotherapy, with a known efficiency, until it works? There is a function for it in Excel, so this is quite an easy calculation to make.

My memory of the game is hazy now, but BJ and S&M had both reshuffled decks during that round. I Think, that at that moment S&M’s deck was card-light, but not supper low. If it had 24 cards in it (half way through minus his hand), the odds of him finding the black joker on two successive double flips was about 20 %, slightly less than finding a face card on a single flip. If he was down to his last 20 cards then it was a 30 % chance. This isn’t inconsequential, it is the equivalent to Sybelle having an invulnerable save of 5+ in a game of Borehammer 40P/Age of Smegmar.

The numbers crunch as shown in the table below (invulnerable save equiv shown in italics): 

I think that the percentage chance of success expressed in the “Taste of Smegmar” or “PayHammer 40K” invulnerable-save equivalent” helps put a different perspective on the situation. Its a unit of currency many old hands will be more familiar with; a 5+ save is probably a worthwhile upgrade if you have the points spare.

What does this mean? It is widely acknowledged that double +ve flips are only marginally better than a single +ve. Less recognised is just how big a deal it is to have a double damage flip; this can really enhance the chance of the Black Joker saving you. 

This is because, as far as a hypergeometric distribution is concerned, and because of the way that black Jokers work, the “damage flip” is effectively part of the same sequence as the “to hit flip”. A black joker any time in this sequence is enough. I don’t remember exactly how many cards were in the S&M’s deck, but there was probably enough that Sybelle was in the 5++ to 4++ invulnerable save category.

What could BJ have done better? Loads in the game, but nothing in that situation. He was in the hands of fate and the dirty rezzer-punk just found himself in a situation where he got lucky with Sybelle. You take your luck where you can find it.

What were the chances for S&M with Casandra? Well the Face card on the hit was likely, but the Black Joker was statistically in the frame also.

Crews with lots of double flips might want to hold the black joker, if expecting to flip their way through a deck, and particularly if playing crews with hard to wound.

The other thing we could think of was to draw the deck on unimportant activities, find the Black Joker, then reshuffle and increase the number of cards in a deck. For example, are the activities of 5 mindless zombies going to be made worse by one of them finding a black joker? 

But all of this is situation dependent – the situation being a black joker in the bottom half of a deck. Which when the stars are right, and the deck is thin, those dirty rezzers with their Hard and Impossible to Wound, are likely to exploit to the disadvantage of those Double Flipping Dandies.

Thanks to S&M for checking this through for me.