Is Every Run Winnable?

[speedingdeath]

Hi there,

As per the title, I'm curious of the opinion of experienced players around how possible it is to win every run.

I've enjoyed many roguelikes, and managed to achieve win streaks in a few, such as Binding of Isaac and Hades. In both of these games, there is of course RNG, but with enough skill, just about all runs are winnable, and we see this in the runs popularised by some streamers.

Now with Monster Train, being around Covenant 9, I had a string of losses with Melting/Umbra, because my starting cards, and those awarded after the first fight, didn't include options that resulted in winnable runs.

Now, I'm sure every path for Flicker has a possible win in it, but sometimes, in some particular runs, depending on what cards are given and champion paths are available, there are just no good decisions - if you have no reform or burnout extension cards, the burnout Flicker will die before he fights the boss. If you have no good creatures to resurrect, the reform Flicker will be reforming morsels, which can leave you without good units when the boss arrives - in fact, even in a run where I purged all but 2 good morsel cards, and had a massive array of copied multistrikers with 4 abilities due to events, I still randomly resurrected only morsels just by bad luck. Harvest Flicker is consistently mediocre, often getting me far in the run, but always failing to do enough damage by himself to stem the tide of big mobs before the boss, so he requires both all-in morsel feeding, and a second lucky break on a powerful carry to do damage.

Considering the number of runs where there was ostensibly no decision I could have made that would have allowed me to win, save for making an unusual choice and then getting lucky later, it raises the question of whether or not all runs even can be won? Even with perfect information about future draws, is it always possible to choose your cards and play them in a way that guarantees victory?

As a reasonably experienced Magic player, I'm well aware of the delusion that many players have of how skill influences their ability to win, but in reality, even that game is incredibly variable, and even the best players sometimes go 0-5. But that game has 2 human players, so someone has to lose. But this is a PvE game, so perhaps just being better will allow one to always see the best line?

My guess is no. I believe the randomness means unwinnable runs are possible, and so win streaks are bound above by one's luck.

[Foolswalkin]

Originally posted by Pu239:

Taking Burnout Flicker without getting a burnout increasing card or reform card in the starting 5 random cards is choosing an avoidable risk. I wouldn't take reform Flicker if I intended to use morsels. Though zombie morsels are more resistant to sweep and spikes and don't use up one of your draws.

You choose clans before cards before leaders. You can pick Melting/Umbra, not get a reform or burnout card, and be given only a choice between reform or burnout Flicker.

[Dlanor]

Originally posted by Foolswalkin:

Originally posted by Pu239:

Taking Burnout Flicker without getting a burnout increasing card or reform card in the starting 5 random cards is choosing an avoidable risk. I wouldn't take reform Flicker if I intended to use morsels. Though zombie morsels are more resistant to sweep and spikes and don't use up one of your draws.

You choose clans before cards before leaders. You can pick Melting/Umbra, not get a reform or burnout card, and be given only a choice between reform or burnout Flicker.

There are only 8 commons per clan, in Melting 3 give Burnout and 1 is the simple Reform spell. That's a 50/50 shot of a card that works with it. Of course you get an additional chance of burnout/reform support from the uncommon card too. That said, Melting/Umbra are both very specialized classes with lots of gimmicks, taking them both at once is just factually taking a risk you end up with a bad start, which is easy because neither of them has that much when it comes to direct damage. Compare that to Awoken, where The Sentient can basically win early fights by itself if you keep healing it and put even just Stewards behind it.

At the specific point you describe, you've taken the risk of picking a combo capable of having a rough start, and now it's up to you to pick the choice with the highest chance of recovering. You can take Reform Flicker and try to avoid Morsels as much as possible, maybe even using none of them and simply running a Melting Remnant deck with support cards giving capacity and ember once you remove the Shadesplitters. You can take Burnout Flicker and pray for Burnout/Reform cards, possibly not playing your Champ turn 1 so you can drop it later and it can kill the boss before dying. Don't like those odds? Pick more straightforward clan combos that don't sometimes force you into those positions then.

[LadyPeorth]

Assuming from the word go of selecting your two clans: Yes. Every run is winnable.
Assuming from the random spells: Yes. Likely every run is winnable.
Assuming from after Daedelus: Likely here is where runs may or may not broken. If your ground work isn't fully set by this point, you may find yourself. Daedelus is a good "hope your run is close to ready" check.

[Dlanor]

Originally posted by LadyPeorth:

Assuming from the word go of selecting your two clans: Yes. Every run is winnable.
Assuming from the random spells: Yes. Likely every run is winnable.
Assuming from after Daedelus: Likely here is where runs may or may not broken. If your ground work isn't fully set by this point, you may find yourself. Daedelus is a good "hope your run is close to ready" check.

I'd say some people might throw away a run way before Daedelus. If they pick a meme artifact like Volatile Gauge in a deck where all of your starting cards cost 0 or 1, this can ruin you if you're Melting Remnant where suddenly you can't even play your Dregs for free a lot of the time. Like, if your starting cards are mostly 0 cost and you pick Volatile Gauge with the hopes of maybe eventually getting expensive cards, you could throw the run away right there just by making the first couple fights way more difficult than they should be. There are very few of these "run throwing" artifacts, but they absolutely exist.

I think pretty much every run is winnable even with the random starting cards, but sometimes people misplay right away and assume that whatever they did wasn't a misplay. Maybe if the final boss removes half of your buff stacks over and over Spikes Sentient isn't the winning play this time. Choices can lose you a run long after you make them.

[Neon Black Interactive]

Originally posted by Thegooblop:

Originally posted by Foolswalkin:

You choose clans before cards before leaders. You can pick Melting/Umbra, not get a reform or burnout card, and be given only a choice between reform or burnout Flicker.

There are only 8 commons per clan, in Melting 3 give Burnout and 1 is the simple Reform spell. That's a 50/50 shot of a card that works with it. Of course you get an additional chance of burnout/reform support from the uncommon card too. That said, Melting/Umbra are both very specialized classes with lots of gimmicks, taking them both at once is just factually taking a risk you end up with a bad start, which is easy because neither of them has that much when it comes to direct damage. Compare that to Awoken, where The Sentient can basically win early fights by itself if you keep healing it and put even just Stewards behind it.

At the specific point you describe, you've taken the risk of picking a combo capable of having a rough start, and now it's up to you to pick the choice with the highest chance of recovering. You can take Reform Flicker and try to avoid Morsels as much as possible, maybe even using none of them and simply running a Melting Remnant deck with support cards giving capacity and ember once you remove the Shadesplitters. You can take Burnout Flicker and pray for Burnout/Reform cards, possibly not playing your Champ turn 1 so you can drop it later and it can kill the boss before dying. Don't like those odds? Pick more straightforward clan combos that don't sometimes force you into those positions then.

The way burnout rector tends to bone me early game goes as follows:
1. Get a reform or burnout application card in starting deck. As a result take burnout rector.
2. Play burnout rector turn 1 because of course you are.
3. If I got molded as my starting card draw them both before rector burns out then have them end up towards the bottom of the deck on the second cycle through the deck. Proceed to be unable to kill boss.
4. If I got something to apply burnout like hallowed dripping proceed to have them both be at the bottom of the deck resulting in rector burning out before I can extend his burnout timer. Proceed to be unable to kill boss.

This usually happens on the first or second fight.

[TheoreticalString]

At Covenant 9? Yeah, probably. At Covenant 25? Probably not. Part of having interesting choices and interesting start conditions is there's no formula for making the right ones. Sometimes there's no formula to actually win I think. Maybe 10-20% are totally unwinnable for a psychic that makes perfect decisions.

Stygian/Umbra are probably like 80% of those unwinnable runs.

However chances are you just made mistakes, especially if you lost at Cov 9.

[Leopanther]

In a realistic scenario with a normal human being doing decisions to the best of their available knowledge - no, I don't think every run is winnable.

If you look at every possible choice path, while knowing exactly which cards are offered, which upgrade options and artifacts and events etc and have the genius to find the most optimal out of all those countless possibilities (or more realistically have a super computer auto-play through thousands of variations of the run to find the one that works) - then I think the possibility exists that every run has at least one possible path to victory.

There's so many things we don't know when starting a run - it's impossible to always make the right decisions. We're human, not omniscient beings.

[Drecon]

What I find interesting in discussions like this is that it's possible that you make the correct decisions and still lose in a game like this.

For example: you have a choice where one option wins you the run 80% of the time and the other wins you 10% of the time. A good player will take the 80% and still lose the run 20% of the time where a bad player might take the 10% and proceed to win that amount (I'm overstating things a bit here, but it's just to make a point).

My point is that it's a very different discussion to ask if you can win every run or if you can win every run with perfect play. Sometimes making a decision that is better in 80% of cases will lose you the run in the other 20% of cases.
I think it's very well possible that every run might be winnable, but I could see that a number of those wins will only be achieved by making decisions that would lose you the run in most of the cases.
I think a much better way to approach games like this is to find a way to win the most runs on average rather than winning every run period. Otherwise you're approaching this like a puzzle game rather than a rogueli(k/t)e.

[kebabsoup]

I don't think every run is winnable, in the sense that I don't believe the devs have coded the game to explicitly generate at least one path that leads to victory. RNG means that sometimes you miss that 99% shot at point blank with a shotgun.

[Foolswalkin]

Originally posted by Thegooblop:

Originally posted by Foolswalkin:

You choose clans before cards before leaders. You can pick Melting/Umbra, not get a reform or burnout card, and be given only a choice between reform or burnout Flicker.

There are only 8 commons per clan, in Melting 3 give Burnout and 1 is the simple Reform spell. That's a 50/50 shot of a card that works with it. Of course you get an additional chance of burnout/reform support from the uncommon card too. That said, Melting/Umbra are both very specialized classes with lots of gimmicks, taking them both at once is just factually taking a risk you end up with a bad start, which is easy because neither of them has that much when it comes to direct damage. Compare that to Awoken, where The Sentient can basically win early fights by itself if you keep healing it and put even just Stewards behind it.

At the specific point you describe, you've taken the risk of picking a combo capable of having a rough start, and now it's up to you to pick the choice with the highest chance of recovering. You can take Reform Flicker and try to avoid Morsels as much as possible, maybe even using none of them and simply running a Melting Remnant deck with support cards giving capacity and ember once you remove the Shadesplitters. You can take Burnout Flicker and pray for Burnout/Reform cards, possibly not playing your Champ turn 1 so you can drop it later and it can kill the boss before dying. Don't like those odds? Pick more straightforward clan combos that don't sometimes force you into those positions then.

I'm fine with those odds because I enjoy the playstyle. Also I'm fine giving up my win streaks and restarting if I have an unworkable start.

I'm fairly confident it answers the OP's question, though - not every run is winnable, because some clan combos can have very difficult starts and on high Cov you don't have much time to recover.

[MimicMachine]

I agree with much of what has been said by both sides, but I think every run may not be beatable for a normal human at higher Covs.

I do agree with "technically almost every run is beatable" and in a way it is if we assume a computer player or all knowing person played then they would almost never lose.

But most of us aren't either can't handle doing those things or just haven't learned them yet.

I do however think that some of the losing runs may not be losing for normal people if they chose to think in a different way when their normal strategies aren't working.

[Waschbär42]

Originally posted by Thegooblop:

There are only 8 commons per clan, in Melting 3 give Burnout and 1 is the simple Reform spell. That's a 50/50 shot of a card that works with it. ...
Pick more straightforward clan combos that don't sometimes force you into those positions then.

Exactly! Pick a clan (combo) which is not inherently at risk at getting screwed at the beginning ... This alone should answer OP's question imho. See Urilbedamned's explanation above for more details

[speedingdeath]

Originally posted by Waschbär42:

Originally posted by Thegooblop:

There are only 8 commons per clan, in Melting 3 give Burnout and 1 is the simple Reform spell. That's a 50/50 shot of a card that works with it. ...
Pick more straightforward clan combos that don't sometimes force you into those positions then.

Exactly! Pick a clan (combo) which is not inherently at risk at getting screwed at the beginning ... This alone should answer OP's question imho. See Urilbedamned's explanation above for more details

As the OP, I will say that this line of thinking actually dodges my question, because the 'run' is itself defined by the random sequence of enemies and rewards generated *for the pair of clans you chose.* Avoiding a clan pairing is avoiding the run, which means you can't win it in the first place.

Sure, as a player, you can choose only the most meta clan pairing every time, and maybe never get unlucky, and win every run, but then all you're doing is *avoiding* the difficult/unwinnable runs.

I imagine most players going for streaks will be doing them on random, since that's the most challenging. In that case, you can expect every pairing with a 1 in 20 frequency, so you can't simply choose to avoid the rough combinations.

But even if you aren't playing on random, not losing a particular run because you just avoided playing it doesn't count as it being winnable.

[Waschbär42]

Originally posted by speedingdeath:

Originally posted by Waschbär42:

Exactly! Pick a clan (combo) which is not inherently at risk at getting screwed at the beginning ... This alone should answer OP's question imho. See Urilbedamned's explanation above for more details

As the OP, I will say that this line of thinking actually dodges my question, because the 'run' is itself defined by the random sequence of enemies and rewards generated *for the pair of clans you chose.* Avoiding a clan pairing is avoiding the run, which means you can't win it in the first place.

Sure, as a player, you can choose only the most meta clan pairing every time, and maybe never get unlucky, and win every run, but then all you're doing is *avoiding* the difficult/unwinnable runs.

I imagine most players going for streaks will be doing them on random, since that's the most challenging. In that case, you can expect every pairing with a 1 in 20 frequency, so you can't simply choose to avoid the rough combinations.

But even if you aren't playing on random, not losing a particular run because you just avoided playing it doesn't count as it being winnable.

What I was trying to say was, that the "remnant problem" makes it (at least for me) obvious, that not every run can be won. My answer was a bit confusing because of poorly applied sarcasm^^

The other guy said, "pick a different combo if you have the remnant problem" - which for me is not a solution whatsoever (like you explained).

[Malkav0]

This is a tough question since you spend your time making decisions. Each can have different outcomes. What I could foresee is a seed where the fact of winning would be related to decisions you cannot see the out come. For example, I ran some tests, removing just one card from a deck completely change the starting hand of the next fight. And you cannot foresee that at all, all you see is "I have 1 less card, my deck is less crowded, that's good for what I wanna achieve". But in reality, you'd have a crappy hand without the removal and a great hand with the removal, and not know it. That kind of outcome can be seen as not really winnable, since it's barely planned. I'm pretty sure most if not all run can be somewhat in a way, but a few of them might require RNG manipulation, so they'd not be very interesting.