Ok,
This intrigued me a little bit so I tried to draw up a table that would allow us to interpret this data to some extent.
Since I don't have the actual coding that MarcinS used to refer to, I needed to make some assumptions which are based on what we know about the physical cards, as well as what we know about the limitations of the digital cards. For example, we know the odds of pulling a foil are 1:6 for the physical booster packs, so we can assume that MarcinS did the same. While these assumptions are presumably correct, there have been many anomalies experienced in opening booster packs on LOTR GEMP, which resulted in an unreasonable amount of duplicate rares in a relatively small pool of packs. As of yet such anomalies are unexplained, but will be temporarily ignored, for the purposes of interpreting this information.
Assumptions:1. The odds of pulling any given rare from a booster pack of a certain set is 1/n, where n = the total number of rares in that set (usually 60)
2. When opening any number of packs of the same set consecutively,
unlike the physcial cards, the odds of pulling any given rare are
unaffected by any rares pulled previously, and remains 1/n.
Theories to Test:1. Because Masterworks cards are essentially an alternate image replacement of their respective rares, there is no additional coding added by MarcinS to govern a differentiation between Masterworks rares and their respective "normal" rares. Thus n simply becomes n + M, where M = the number of Masterworks cards included in that set, and the odds of pulling any given Masterworks card is 1/(n+M)
2. MarcinS did, in fact, include a seperate set of rules in the coding to govern Masterworks cards. It is unknown what this coding is, or what odds it represents, but could be assumed to be similar to the rules governing foil cards. i.e. There is some seperate set of odds that need to be run to decide whether or not a booster pack will contain a Masterworks card.
Regarding Foils:The odds surrounding foils is a completely different topic that I will also evaluate, but seperately. It may be that the odds in GEMP of pulling a R/U/C foil are each weighted by their respective representation on the proverbial "sheet" they are cut from (in this case their appearance in the booster pack, 1:3:7. Conversely, it is possible that there is no weighting in the appearance of foils in GEMP booster packs, such that the odds of pulling any given foil are 1/6 * 1/n, where n = the total number of cards in the set.
Although I do believe evaluating the odds surrounding foils will be beneficial to our ultimate conclusions regarding AI cards (I actually pulled a Masterworks foil), I left out information on the foils in this data set.
I opened a total of 300 packs, 100 from each of sets 12, 13, and 15.
Set 12:Masterworks pulled:Faramir's Sword -
12O2Faramir, DoG -
12O3Gandalf, TWR -
12O1The Witch King, Black Lord -
12O9Total Pulled: 4
Non-Masterworks pulled: 96
The easiest test to run, however
raw, is to see the ratio between the odds of pulling any given rare, when including Masterworks in n, and the total number pulled vs 100 packs opened.
Odds of pulling Masterworks: 4%
Odds of pulling any given rare from set 12, inc Masterworks: 1.5%
Though not sufficient for a conclusion, the number of Masterworks actually pulled reflects a greater percentage than the percent odds of pulling any 1 Masterworks from the set, assuming that they are part of n total number of rares.
We can expand on the information about the rares that were pulled.
Total rares pulled: 96
Rares appearing 1 time: 24
Rares appearing more than 1 time: 23
Rares that did not appear: 10
Now, if we added those Masterworks cards that were both pulled and not pulled to this information, our subsequent statistical data wouldn't differ too much, so instead, for purposes of potential Theory 2, lets evaluate both the rares pulled and Masterworks pulled as separate groups, and compare their statistical data after each being individually evaluated.
For each of the three scenarios, I assigned associating numbers that are each 1 unit apart from the other associating scenario. For the mean, positive, indicating an inclination towards pulling more than 1, negative indicating an inclination towards pulling none, and zero indicating all scenarios are equally likely (which we can see already isn't the case).
General Rares:Mean: 0.228 (indicates a likelihood of pulling more than one of any given rare
over not pulling that rare at all).
Standard Deviation: 0.732 (indicating the unitary allowance of any card pulled once to have been instead pulled more than once or not at all).
Masterworks:Mean: -0.5 (indicates a likelihood of not pulling any given Masterworks at all
over pulling more than one of that Masterworks)
Standard Deviation: 1.10 (basically saying, as 1 unit indicates a change of scenario, that any Masterworks pulled once, is just as likely to have been pulled more than once
or not at all).
What we can draw from this is two distinct differences between General Rares and Masterworks cards.
1. For any given card evaluated out of a number of boosters opened, you are more likely to pull none if it is a Masterworks and more likely to pull more than one if it is a general rare.
2. For any given card evaluated that
was pulled once out of a number of boosters opened, it is 50% more likely that it could have
either been pulled more than once
or not at all
if it was a Masterworks than if it was a general rare.
Ok, they seem to function pretty differently as of now...since this is already getting ridiculously long, I'll take a break for a bit, and then crunch the numbers of the other 200 to get a total and see how we rank overall.
Topic: Alternate Card Images on Gemp: What are they and how do you get them? (Read 6156 times)