You might remember that I decided to play all 57 of my KeyForge decks online during the lockdown to determine which one is the best deck of them all. Well just over 3 weeks later, Round 1 is finally over!
You can read more about the rules of the experiment itself here but for Round 1, I played all 57 decks up to three times each. To qualify for Round 2, a deck had to get two wins. And, after 139 games played, here are the chosen few that got two wins in Round 1.
| Deck | Set | Wins | Loses |
| Rashly Crawling Avalon | COTA | 2 | 1 |
| Wretch Riddlesby | COTA | 2 | 0 |
| Ameer, the She-wolf of Nandeane | AOA | 2 | 1 |
| Arya, the Hammer of The Arena | AOA | 2 | 1 |
| Voidlord Zerojack, the Clever Symbiote | AOA | 2 | 0 |
| The Fossil that Absurdly Growls at Ash | AOA | 2 | 1 |
| Hydrouda, the Mapmaker Moneylender | WC | 2 | 0 |
| Zelium, the Queen of Sudbury | WC | 2 | 1 |
| Eternal Y. Saramix | WC | 2 | 1 |
| The Tailor that Beats Down Orcas | WC | 2 | 1 |
| Licinius of Kinmont Room | WC | 2 | 0 |
| Citiaby, the Unclean Colosseum Announcer | WC | 2 | 0 |
| Awe-Inspiring “Bullet” Coe | WC | 2 | 0 |
| Tsukace of the Mayor’s Catacombs | WC | 2 | 1 |
| H. Kudravi, Regicadia’s Stately Scrivener | WC | 2 | 0 |
| Taldiir, Moonham’s Stalker | AOA | 2 | 0 |
| Questor Florus | WC | 2 | 0 |
| The Competitive Mortician | WC | 2 | 0 |
| Grande A. Osteopuddle, the Mad | WC | 2 | 1 |
| Quillon Volfall from the Chieftain’s Fleet | WC | 2 | 1 |
That’s right, only 20 of the 57 decks made it through (35% if your brain prefers to think about it that way). There are significantly more decks from the Worlds Collide set. What does this mean?! Is it because I own and have probably played more Worlds Collide decks in general and have a better feel for how that set plays? Maybe. Is it because dinosaurs are overpowered? I should probably pull some stats together on which houses won games, but that sounds like a lot of effort. Maybe for the Round 2 round up.
Like I’ve said before, this definitely is not a scientific experiment. There were some surprises – some of my favourite decks didn’t make it through. Some that I had previously written off as average or have performed poorly in sealed tournaments (I’m looking at you, The Competitive Mortcian) did make it through. I’d like to think that’s because I’ve improved as a player and can see good combos in them, but who knows?
How about some stats from Round 1? Have a nag on this:
| Set | No. of Decks | Games Played | Wins | Loses | Win % |
| COTA | 7 | 18 | 7 | 11 | 39% |
| AOA | 21 | 49 | 14 | 35 | 29% |
| WC | 29 | 72 | 34 | 38 | 47% |
| Total | 57 | 139 | 55 | 84 | 40% |
Well, I only won 40% of my games. And to be honest it felt worse than that at times – there were some big stretches without a single win. But my World Collide suspicions have been confirmed – I was definitely performing better with decks from that set. If you want to look at the results in more detail you can see them here.
Confession time: all of the Round 1 games were played in casual mode to give some of the crapper decks a slight fighting chance, but in Round 2 all games will be played in competitive mode, so I am upping the ante. And if you did look at the spreadsheet you will have noticed that, of course, Round 2 is already underway! At the time of writing my two reminding COTA decks have been wiped out, but there are at least 36 more games to play so come back in a few weeks to see which decks make it through (if any).
Christmas Sandwich Reviews 