There are cases in which playing the od card is relatively forced at first appearance. However, more often than not, you can reasonably predict in those that your opponent will play theirs and apply a strategy that avoids investing yours (as what CraZy said). It is neither always possible nor always appropriate, but my overall impression is that when you are relatively sure your opponent will play their od card this turn, playing yours in response is seldomly the ideal play/better than keeping your card.

od card is a bit nuanced, but I rarely use it the first turn. it's good to use it asap, but the opportunity does not always arise (or I didn't see it)... games where I gather 2 od cards I feel very inefficient

edit: I'm guessing we're talking about strat 1v1

Edited 12/17/2024 15:33:56

I do not expect it to make a big difference which strategic template we are talking about. I would prefer testing it e. g. in the MTL database than in the 1 v 1 Ladder database, because it would massively increase the meaningfulness of the result.

Otherwise you simply couldn't rule out that there is something particular to the MME template causing this (I read your global chat message, I know how cool I am when I double post).

Your point is very clear to me. But for me it falls down to the same category as picking ftb is the better strategy on average. Not sure how useful is this made-up conclusion.

Edited 12/17/2024 15:44:16

the coolest, indubitably

That would be more difficult to test statistically as you'd have to define a ftb for the algorithm, but it would not be surprising if that was "true" in the sense that a player taking a ftb would win more than 50% of the corresponding games. However, that particular example is not very interesting indeed, as that is likely to be caused already by the fact that players able to identify a ftb and know how to use it are better than average. This is also why I believe the od card example is very different; players keeping od cards longer are not obviously better on average than those who dont.

I haven't seen any evidence of them being better, especially considering that the best player just said that he doesn't follow such a pattern. That would only make a potentially confirming result even more meaningful, according to me.

Many years ago I think someone posted stats, on the income each turn correlated to win % if I'm not mistaken? Any income more than 5 turn 2 would be ftb one.

That would be a much better approach to confirm that than what I suggested indeed. Though, that doesn't change that ftb holders winning >50% of games is very likely true and even more likely to be caused by superior general skill of anyone ending up with a ftb. We might find very different results if we analysed the same statistic only among 2000+ MTL players. They would have good reasons in every individual case in which they opt against picking a ftb. If ftbs win out in that group as well, that would be interesting.

That would be a much better approach to confirm that than what I suggested indeed. Though, that doesn't change that ftb holders winning >50% of games is very likely true and even more likely to be caused by superior general skill of anyone ending up with a ftb. We might find very different results if we analysed the same statistic only among 2000+ MTL players. They would have good reasons in every individual case in which they opt against picking a ftb. If ftbs win out in that group as well, that would be interesting.

The skill of both players is most likely equal, else they wouldn't be matched.

Plus low ranked players love their FTB clusterpicks ;)

Edited 12/17/2024 18:26:39

My answer is a boring one, you have to play it at the right moment. If you hold and they play theirs you can potentially get crushed. If you want to hold and plan for getting out delayed by delay card every turn, you are potentially leaving value on the table. If you play too early and are down a delay card you end up in the same situation. I find most of the time against strong players we often play our delay cards on the same turn, because we both recognize it as a critical time to delay. Against weaker players I usually am in a strong enough position to not care so much, or deploy it better than them.

I think the Bomb card on the CW template might be an even better example of this. Many, perhaps even most games come down to who flinches first. That’s the best example of “the threat is stronger than its execution” in WL.

Hey, fellow chess player here. Well, before mentioning the topic at hand, I should start with chess example of alex's, because it is partially the truth. I will try to explain as wide as possible, and try to keep my language as clean as possible, sorry for any inconveniance.
Well, first let's look at that simple fact, in warzone there are 2 possible results for the 1v1 game, either you win or your opponent win. In chess, there is 3 results (and a perfectly played game is draw), win, lose, draw.
That is where the idea of holding before executing the threat comes from, if you can execute it and win the game afterwards, you obviously dont wait it, or even if you are unsure whether your threat would give you the win, but you know it would give you advantage and it is the best path you have, you still go for it.
You can summarise that as following, if the dynamical benefit you would gather from executing the threat is greater (or equal) than statical benefit of keeping the threat on board and playing else where, then you should play it, else play something else.

When we come at warzone, things are more complicated. It is a good idea to value dynamic effect and consider its possible/expected benefit before using a card, rather than play it as early as possible.

It is also why I think the hypothesis would be partially correct, mainly because order delay's dynamic effect is hard to prove. For comparison, order priority and reinforcement cards are much more dynamic cards, so I wouldnt expect same to hold true for either.
The partially is because I dont agree its benefit will rise until a point, or its value increases every turn. One approach (which is especially applicable if you are thinking you are going to lose if both sides just hold their cards) is trying to understand the expected value from how the game is going (rather than playing around potential value, which, can be huge for OD but does not happen often) and playing it when you expect you will get a benefit above or close to that threshold. Can you then lose to a dream use of OD because you don't have it? yes. Does it really matter if you lose slowly with less army difference, or with a huge army difference against a dream OD use? No, it's the same score afterwards.
That also points us the scenario which a player who's ahead using OD, to prevent enemy with OD's possible counterplay.
Overall, I can even see some scenarios/games in my mind which both sides do not use OD whole game, and it is fine. Its dynamic effect is hard to prove as I said earlier, so it is certainly possible to have it which the card's existence does not matter.
(I think if I'd order in my head, it would go sth like dynamic- Reinforcement-EB-B-OP-OD-static)

You don't plan on winning by playing the perfect card but by forcing the opponent to play around the card in your hand.

I think the Bomb card on the CW template might be an even better example of this. Many, perhaps even most games come down to who flinches first. That’s the best example of “the threat is stronger than its execution” in WL.

Yeah, definitely. Forcing the opponent to bomb you while you keep your bomb is a victory condition.

Generally speaking, you want to maximize your assets, whether those are armies, bonuses or cards. So the obvious point is, that having a card is better than not having a card.
I think this analysis is interesting but it suffers from inherent bias. The reason for this is, that the better your position, the less you are in need of using cards, and the weaker your position, the more you are inclined to use your cards to make a prediction or catch up with an OP, or an OD or a blockade. With the blockade this is probably the most intuitively obvious to understand, think about when you would use blockade cards in your games? That's right, you would use it when you are in trouble and when you are clearly winning, you have no need to use a blockade card.
So while I think that the result of such an analysis would clearly show that winning cards wins more games, I don't think it would be very insightful. Technically, if you want to have a meaningful analysis done, you would have to filter for games where the position was equal at the time of receiving the card, which is of course not easy to do.

Edited 12/18/2024 18:14:32