Campaign Manager 2008: Infinite Decks

I've completed 11 games of Campaign Manager 2008 on Yucata with two more in progress with what seems to be an insurmountable lead. Assuming I do win those games my record will be 9-2-2. I'd say one of those games was close and that was the game I played with the default decks. Every other game was either a dominating blowout or ended in a draw. It has me really wondering about the balance of the game and if it's actually worth playing. There are a few questions that need to be answered to work that out...

• What is an 'infinite' deck?
• How hard is it to assemble one?
• Is there anything at all a 'fair' deck could do to compete?
• In the infinite on infinite match is there any way to get an edge and break a stalemate?

I'm going to define an infinite deck as one that reaches a point where it can take the same basic action every turn for the rest of the game. It should be able to use any of the three core actions (gain an economy, gain a defense, shift the issue track) on any turn. In order to set this up you need to have two copies of the economy cantrip (cantrip meaning it also draws a card in addition to the first effect), two copies of the defense cantrip, and two copies of the shift cantrip. Then you get up to n-1 cards in your hand. It then doesn't matter what card is in your graveyard as you'll always have at least one of the core cantrip cards in your hand. When you play one of them you get to draw the card in your graveyard putting you in essentially the same game state. You may have a different card in the graveyard but you still have at least one of the core cantrips in your hand.

How hard is it to set up? Well, it turns out that it's pretty trivial if you focus entirely on doing it in the draft and practically impossible otherwise. The key lies in the fact you can't take the default 'draw 1 card' action when you have 5 or more cards in your hand. This means that most people with a fair deck have a maximum hand size of 5. Then you have to play a card which will reduce your hand size down to 4. There are a bunch of cards which are cantrips which maintain your current hand size and 2 cards which might increase it beyond 5. The first is the ancestral type card which lets you draw 3 cards. This takes you from 5 cards in hand to 7 cards in hand. The second is the Oprah type card which lets you draw 2 cards and play one of them. This keeps your hand size even unless the card you play is a cantrip which puts you at +1 hand size. 

Assume you drafted both ancestral and Oprah. You can, with a little effort, build a 5 card hand containing both of them. (Just keep playing anything and taking the basic draw a card action until you reach 5 cards with both of them.) Play ancestral putting you up to 7 cards including Oprah. At this point your goal is to chain cantrips back to back to back until you reshuffle and draw your ancestral. If you could run that cycle with a 7 card hand you can definitely run it with your new 9 card hand! 

How do you guarantee that you can cycle to the ancestral? By having at most 7 cards in your deck that aren't cantrips. When your hand is 6 cards and Oprah you play a cantrip if you have one. Otherwise Oprah is guaranteed to hit a cantrip putting you up to 8 cards in hand. With at most 7 non-cantrips in your deck you're now guaranteed to always be able to at least maintain your hand size. And each time you draw ancestral or Oprah it gets bigger! You'll get to an infinite size in no time at all...

On top of those both McCain and Obama have an additional card which can work to draw ancestral more often. McCain's guarantees the ancestral at the cost of 2 cards (so if you pick up ancestral you spend 2 actions to gain a maximum hand size). Obama's is a discard X cards to draw X cards. It's much riskier but if you've already managed a reshuffle you can cycle into it for plus one card as well.

So how hard is it to draft ancestral, Oprah, and at least 6 cantrips/regrowths? Well, both decks have 10 cantrips in them. So you essentially need to be able to grab 8 of 13 cards. Even with the worst luck possible you're guaranteed 5 of them. I don't know the exact odds but in my experience it's not hard at all. In the two games I have running at the moment I have 10 and 8. In the finished games I won I had 10, 9, 8, 11, 11, and 10. 

8 isn't actually a full requirement either. One of the players gets to keep a card in play permanently. If you're that person your deck is only 14 cards so you only need 7 (and to not have your permanent removed) to pull it off. Obama also has the ability to remove one card from each player's deck. If he plays that card he then only needs 7 to eventually guarantee an infinite deck. 6 with a permanent in play!

It feels like the real danger is to have both ancestral and Oprah in the same draft pack. In that case you should take ancestral and just hope you can pound enough cantrips. (At this point you need 8 cantrips on top of ancestral.)

I'll try to answer the remaining two questions in a future post.