"Random" Isn't So Random

[Welsper59]

Honestly, the only rule that's of any fun with the current NPC setup (with them having typically only good cards with 1 or 2 extra good cards to play), is Plus and MAYBE Ascension or Sudden Death. Without those rules, you pretty much stand no chance unless the NPC does something stupid in your quest to obtain 30 cards (and then 60+). Thankfully, they do stupid things from time to time. Random generally involves loss after loss, until the NPC does something stupid (again). Ditto for Chaos or any of those other irrelevant to 4-5 star deck rules.

[Nyalia]

There are actually five rules where the strength of your deck doesn't really matter as much, giving you a huge edge over NPCs: Same, Plus, Swap, Sudden Death, and Reverse. Same and Plus are just easy modes and so easy to exploit. Swap requires luck, but if your * card is swapped for your opponent's ***** card, it really makes the match pretty easy. With Sudden Death, you just need to steal one of your opponent's good cards without losing your good one, and then you just have to tie. Repeat until your deck is all 3-5* cards and your opponent's consists of the worst cards between the two of you. Then, win. Or tie and try again. Reverse means your crappy cards are now amazing - those 13-point * cards are now 31-point cards, and their 28-point ***** cards are now 16-point cards. Yours went from being half as good as theirs to twice as good. It's so easy to beat NPCs with this rule that there are ZERO NPCs that have it as a fixed rule.

Ascension can be easy too - just fill your deck with Beasttribe cards. Early on, four of the * ones plus a mutamix/memroon/frixio/Scarface is really nice. Later, just put all four of the ** beast cards in your deck along with a random 5*. If you have all the cards, switch to using an all scion deck - 4 *** scions and 1 **** scion.

All-Open and Three-Open rules make the game solvable by applying some simple Game Theory (I think there are online apps to do that already?).

The rest of the rules are pointless or irritating. Fallen Ace rarely has an impact. Descension has no impact if no one is using typed cards, and who would if that's the rule, unless you did a Roulette? Order/Chaos are a pain, as is Random as stated above.

[JayCommon]

Ascension can be easy too - just fill your deck with Beasttribe cards. Early on, four of the * ones plus a mutamix/memroon/frixio/Scarface is really nice. Later, just put all four of the ** beast cards in your deck along with a random 5*. If you have all the cards, switch to using an all scion deck - 4 *** scions and 1 **** scion.

bold and italicized - I did this until I noticed that every single time I lost to one of the Ascension NPC's, it was literally because I was playing Squall when I didn't want to. I switched Squall out for a full 2* beast tribe deck and I rarely ever lose anymore. My personal experience has been about a 95% win/draw rate (with a much higher % of that being actual wins and not draws)

I did a brief outline of what I do in this thread: Ascension Deck Strat

[Kenji1134]

I've gotten to the point where I am grinding against Landenel... and good god this is an awful, AWFUL MGP sponge.
Random, but he always has Odin... which is an excellent card against random because it has an 8 on 3 sides, making it extremely versatile, which is king in a random match.
On top of Odin, he always has Ifrit or Titan and usually has Bahamut. So multiple 7 sided cards, Bahamut w/ 2 9's, and Odin w/ 3 8's...
Honestly his deck would be bad enough without a random rule. He's about as strong as King and Rowena, but makes you suck.

[Nyalia]

bold and italicized - I did this until I noticed that every single time I lost to one of the Ascension NPC's, it was literally because I was playing Squall when I didn't want to. I switched Squall out for a full 2* beast tribe deck and I rarely ever lose anymore. My personal experience has been about a 95% win/draw rate (with a much higher % of that being actual wins and not draws)

I did a brief outline of what I do in this thread: Ascension Deck Strat

Good advice, thanks!

[Havenchild]

Scion Deck is ridiculous. 100% win ratio on the Imperial. Definitely the go to GMP farm team. Primals are good also but they have very moderate stats and can't easily beat themselves.

As to someone's comment earlier, I'm believe they're is some AI learning. Several strategies on many difference NPCs that would give me a solid 20+ win streak will randomly get shut down (by nearly the same card every single time) and never work again until different cards are used. Least this is what I noticed on the Imperial, Rhiki, and the Hearts NPC in Golden Saucer.

[nbiscuitz]

random is so unfair considering how many cards we have...but i managed to beat Rowena and land (odin guy)..and got all their cards.

[BlueThunder]

As stated above, Random needs a good fixing if they pretend us to have a decent chance against NPCs like Rowena and Landanel. By all the gods of RNG, I was blessed that by winning Rowena like a total of 6 times out of... 80 matches or so... I got 2 Gerolts and 1 Luis. I only got Titan from Landanel so far out of the wins I got to him. His deck is just enfuriating unless you have probably already 60 cards, but if you're trying to get the brothers and Odin/Titan from him, chances is you have not that many, and all his cards will just flip your deck, no matter what you play, unless he goes batshit stupid in 1 match out of 50 and you had the luck of your life with your own cards.

[Quesse]

Its not Random at all.

For the NPC its not Random

For the player its not random as it only picks amoung your crappiest cards.

It should be renamed to "Seemingly Random"