Episode 15: Lines and Heuristics | The Force Unlimited

Hello, my name is Parker. And my name is Ned. And this is The Force Unlimited, yet another Star Wars Unlimited podcast. This is Episode 15. We are recording on May 19th. And it has been a good day. I played in my showdown today, and I had fun with those matches, but first I want to talk about the matches that we just played. Ned, because I feel great, and I'll tell you why I feel great, but I want to hear your thoughts on the match first. So I was playing a Sabine Yellow list.

I mean Parker was playing Boba Yellow. It was close-ish both games, but I lost the race both times. I was a damage short in the first game. I was about an action short, and in the second game I was a hero activation short. But definitely I felt like I kept getting had on every street, and it was nothing like playing the Falcon to get it immediately no good to be dead. That's a real bad feeling. And I saved a third no good to be dead to do it again.

My takeaway is I was running Bobby Sapphire's list, and I'm considering taking it to a future showdown. But the reason why I love it is because I forget you're phrasing at the end of the game, but Bobby Sapphire described one of the joys of the list is that you're playing a Sabine player, so thank you for choosing Sabine tonight, Ned. And they don't realize they're not the beat down. Yeah, I know that was exactly the situation is like when I'm playing Sabine Yellow, I just dial in.

I am the beat down. I don't have to make choices about role assignment. I am the beat down, but I wasn't. You were the beat down. And that was absolutely, and I mean, and watching that play out exactly as described was incredibly satisfying. That was my takeaway was that I think it's a good list. I think it, well, the segue is nicely in my discussion of my showdown. So because I ran my showdown with Crenet Green.

And I had originally planned last weekend, I was debating between running, cutting, boba using the KTOD list and using Richie's list from the Orlando 5K that I found his description on the late night masterclass with Lupert, incredibly compelling. The way he described the deck as played, I thought it was a really compelling argument to the way I play games.

And due to a combination of sick family and some work shenanigans, I wasn't able to get time in on the lines that I needed to to feel really comfortable with the list. And I think, I mean, I think it's a kind of established truth that the run the deck you know is more important than Rich's would deck. Yes, 110 percent. And there are very rare exceptions to that rule of, you know, you are better running a deck that you know than a deck that is considered better by the meta that you do not know.

Right. And so I just, I didn't have time to get in the lines. And I felt there were good choices for the showdown event, a 47 person event. And 47, which I have thoughts about because they gave out takedowns to everybody and yet they had two kits and gave out just the 15 mases from one kit. So it's like, hmm, but it was a good turnout. It was a good event. I couldn't get the lines in. I found both lists very compelling, but I had to run what I know and what I know is blue green villainy.

I've been running Iden and Crenic and I leaned into that and I felt good about that. But I've been not high on the cutting, boba lists since I saw the description of how it plays. And you know, this is me trying to actively get rid of that scrub mentality we talked about because yellow is my least is the least appealing color of the game to me. And I'm and it's so double yellow literally means it's playing nothing but cards that I just don't super enjoy.

But I'm trying to get rid of that scrub mentality. I want to, you know, when you got it, you got to have the line play the games that are really decks that are good. So, but the thing they really surprised me and so it was a best of one which I didn't love. I still don't and not 100% sold on the idea of sideboarding. I accepted it's a thing but we had the episode where we talked about the val, you know, that sideboarding gets rid of variants where I just rolling the dice two to three times.

I also think helps. I think I read the meta really well. If I may to my own horn. That is the one thing I think I nailed. And I wish more, I wish there was content about this because I don't, I don't think there is a lot of good content out there on on meta literacy. There's a lot of content on what is the current meta. What should you expect going into the next week or two, but that's somebody reading the meta for you.

And that's the same thing as the ability to, you know, I want somebody, I don't want somebody to give me fish. I want somebody to teach me to fish. This is kind of a plea to people who are actually good at the game. I mean, I, I felt like I did a good job and I'm going to go through my reasoning. And I, and I apologize to you listen if you don't care about how I did it my showdown.

But the lesser brand, I think Ned and his math is our primary brand, but our lesser brand is also me exploring TCGs after being out of TCGs for 20 years. And so, you know, again, referencing Bobby Sapphire did a, I think solid video on levels based on a Slansky's theory of poker. A book I'm sure you have read and I'm sure I have not. And, but the basic, it felt kind of intuitive to me. It's this princess bride. I know what you know that I know that you know that I know that you know.

And, and you know, it felt very, the no disrespect to Bobby Sapphire. It felt very obvious to me, but I also respect. You have to say obvious things. Well, so yeah, like it, it makes me think about psychology majors, right? Like, yeah, you get these studies that are like, sit Danford's been five, five, five, $300,000 to find that men are more interested in dating women. They find attractive.

And it's like, because it saves a lot of money, but like, and given that to me, you know what I mean, but it's like at the same time, like somebody at one point had to prove mathematically the two plus two equals four, right? Like, it says who, well, it famously takes a very, very long book to prove that one and one is two. Right. So, yeah. Right. So you have, and so similarly with like psychology, you have to like men are attracted to women who are attracted. You know, you do.

Well, you got what here's where it says that here's the thing. And yeah. And so similarly with like tabletop gaming, TCA, specifically like, don't just play your hand or don't just play the pieces on the board. You got to play what your opponents thinking about and what they're thinking about your thing. And it's important that it be said. So I'll do respect to Slansky and Bobby Sapphire and KTOD. Like it felt obvious, but I respect that it needed to be said.

But that felt like a game specific level, like I know that what cards are in my hand and you know, you think you know what cards are in my hand and I know, I think I know what you think cards are in my hand. I want that to, like, those are the trees. I'm interested in the forest, right? And how, like everybody loves Boba. So everybody, so that's the good deck to run. And if everybody, if you know that Boba is a good deck to run, then you tech against Boba.

But if everybody techs against Boba, then you know, if everybody's running Sabine to be Boba, you know, to go under Boba, then people start running, you know, or you know, as people run BluVader to be Boba, so people run Sabine to go under BluVader. And you get, you know, like that rock, it's, yes, in the perfect world to rock paper. Scissors, but you're never going to get a perfect sampling and a given event. So how do you read that matter? How's that been a literacy?

I think I did a very good job reading it. I think that was luck. I'm sorry, skill. I assessed my assumption going in and I think this bore out in the decks and attendance that it would be Sabine and Boba. I think if you don't have cards or you're anticipating Agra will dominate a best of one format, you're going to go with Sabine or Leia.

If you have, and supply shortages means there's a lot of reasonably competitive players in Portland who do not have all of the cards necessary to run a lot of decks. So that means sort of Sabine or Leia which run light on legendaries. And then Boba was hot three week, Boba Green was the deck three weeks ago. And I think so there's a lot of people who I assumed don't watch 15 hours of school content every week like I did. What? Yeah. And assume that remains true. And so we bring Boba Green.

And I think I expected there would be some non-zero amount of like red-eyed and bluevader hard control. But both of those run really high on legendaries which supplies tight for a showdown, right? It should end like that casual. It's not that nobody's paying cash. Nobody's flying into town. And so my assumption was, okay, tech against those two. And I felt like I did a reasonably good job with that with Green Clinic. And first game went up against Boba Green. Did not draw well.

I mean, best of one is best of one. I was totally ready for it. I called it. I anticipated it. I got steamrolled. Second game was against Red Leia. Tech against it was ready for it. Item alive, Traderous does a lot of work when there's no sideboard. That is such a brutal card. Such a bad thing. I mean, it only is if they don't, if they're not expecting it, right? Like in the best of one.

If they can sideboard in answers like the Sabling Fangfighter, it's a lot of money to lose you know, to gain nothing. Third game, and this is one of those joyful experiences. Third game I'm playing against. A wonderful man named CJ. And I think I had him. We were in resource seven. I had just attacked with Vader. He was preparing to next turn. Luke me.

We were talking about out the game afterwards, but I had two vanquishes, an Avenger and an overwhelming barrage in my hand and we were like going into resource eight. I felt very good about my late game odds. And like I seriously considered, he was running two Sparker Bones. Seriously considered his list, Richie's list. I knew the list like to a tee and the software crashed until they repaired us like 10 minutes in.

No. So I don't know like, I don't know if I blame Fantasy Flight and their software team or if I blame the store, but it was like, and again, I've been out of this for 10, 15 years at the software crashes. Like should they be? I don't know what they're supposed to do. And that's it. But it was like, I was like, I had him. Third game. I played a different boba green. And I felt like a jerk. I miscalculated it.

For some reason, I had my head that he was on a 30 HP base, but he was on a 28, 5 HP base. I have lethal. And I was just jerking him around for five, like trying to get that line up for 30 HP when I have lethal on 25 HP, but I still was able to lock the game down enough that I got the game. I felt after I was like, oh, sorry. I was like, oh, the game four I went back and played CJ again. And this time he took me. And that's that like best of one.

Yeah, there's nothing you can do sometimes for bad. Game five was why I play the game. I played a green sub being list. And I healed for 23. And he still got me to like 24. I was like one hit point away. And I healed for 23. And he's still the 24 damage, but I won. But I mean, like running vigilance is to just be removing and healing for five. I had an unlisted credit. I had an unlisted starviper. And I was able to keep initiative for most of the game.

So it's just like, no, I'll just keep gaining four or nine back each turn. And eventually you run out of steam. And that I mean, you watch somebody break in front of you. And that was a joy. I mean, a daylin, I believe his name was, sorry. I mean, like, that's why you play blue green. Oh, yeah. To just stall and heal and watch an aggro deck suffer. And then deck six. I played a gentleman named Justin who you and I both, I believe, played against the guardian drafts. Really friendly guy.

He had the reps of green sub being. Yeah, he's a good player. He had his reps in. And he also had a green sub being list. And I was ready for it. I felt like I needed to ramp into him. And I had one of those Mulligan edge cases where you're like, it's pretty good. I think I can do better. And then you toss it. And I don't think I didn't have a tour of three cost in my. Yeah, you just get right over. Yeah, it's like, OK, yeah, best of all. Yeah, right. And so that was my experience.

I first game, I posted on Twitter that I was, I had a bit of the yips like super nervousness. So just got to get that out of the system. So I'm pretty happy with the 3, 3. But the thing I felt most great about was in between games, walking around looking at the deck list. There was a slightly higher hon count than I expected. I don't know if that's variance or meme is reading. I think that people like hon. I think that that like, I mean, depending on the honeless that they were running.

But like, hon green is if you are not necessarily a strong player, it is a deck that lets you have very strong feeling turns, right? Mm hmm. Well, I didn't see Hon yellow, but I saw multiple hon blues, multiple hon reds and hon greens. Like, there was a decent showing. I didn't play a hon. I didn't attack against it. So any more so than playing against any kind of blitzie mid range. I feel like you have your tech against Foba and a best of one.

Yeah, no, I think that you, it's a different but similar play pattern where you are. You're just getting ready for this one discussing turns. Yeah. Yeah. Like, Fishery or Super Laser Baster, ramp, like stall, try to, you know, although hon gets a Sparker Abilion in, you know, in cost, which is rough. So anyways, that was my first showdown, my first competitive event in 15 years. It was one last note.

I think the best part of it though was the sheer number of people there who I recognized from Red Castle or from Knights at Guardian doing draft or early contracted or from my pre-releases. And how many people recognize each other and even with like 47 people are coming in from a bit all over and it was nice to watch like a kind of a game start becoming a community, right? Like where people become recognizable and I thought that was really satisfying.

Like that was just, yeah, it was nice at the end of the day. Like even, I was like, well, I'm probably going to lose but I could look up and just like see all these other people that I knew, I knew their name. Yeah, it's human beings, right? Like you're not playing against strangers, you're playing against people that, you know, you know who they are. Yeah. Runeterra and Snap don't have human beings. No. It's nice. And for good or for bad, right? Yeah. I mean, yeah. It's true.

I mean, I very carefully selected my outfit to ensure that my shirt would remain tucked into my pants deep. Entire time. So yeah, it was great. But let's talk about our episode. Speaking of who is the beat down and so forth, what are we talking about today, Ned? We are talking about lines and heuristics. So this I think is an important thing to explicate. I think going back to what you said about Theory of Poker and the like level one, level two, level three, this is a kind of obvious topic.

And if you are an experienced player, you probably already know what we're talking about. I think that it's helpful to draw it out specifically and then also to try and drill in on the places where these two differ and why you need to keep kind of both sets of tools in your repertoire. That makes sense. That does make sense, Ned. So let's start with our, you are my favorite thing. Let's define our terms. So we have lines on the one hand and we have heuristics on the other hand.

So a line is a specifically calculated pattern of play. So an example of this is if I have two, three cost cards, which one do I play? And the one way that you can purchase is you can take the line where you can say, if I play this card, then I expect my opponent to do this to which I will do this and you draw the line out to some what? You know, generally speaking, one does not do the entire game tree.

Then terminates at some point like one or two or three turns down the line at which you say, okay, that seems good enough. It seems like I'm in a fine position. I'm not going to calculate any further. On the other hand, you have a heuristic, a heuristic approach to which three cost cards do I play is I think that I need to be defensive here.

So I should play the more defensive card or if I am trying to beat the beat down, what up card is more aggressive feeling and I'm going to play the more aggressive feeling card. And a heuristic is a rule of thumb, an approach, a way of kind of short cutting that calculation and that decision making. So I think that that's kind of like a high level summary. Does that make sense? No, it makes perfect sense. I mean, rule of thumb, right? Like that's the blackjack, right?

Like, you know, always do this, never do this. Yeah, always stay on a 16. Yeah, or whatever. Yeah, and one of my final projects when I was getting my post back in computer science was playing something called mini chess, making like a chess engine, but using a special variant of chess that's good for idiot computer science bachelor students. And that's just like search trees, right? Like, yeah, I'm going to calculate as far as my human brain can of if this then.

But so is a line and I'm thinking back to all my competitive chess and middle school. Yeah, is a line. How much of a line is if I play this, you're likely to play this and I'm just going to look through the likely options of the options that I care about versus how much is a line like a full tree that so if I play this to cost cars, yeah. Do I am I considering all the cars or am I playing considering just like, you know, how wide is each level of that tree? It is.

Or is that just a question from the brain? Yeah, yeah, I think that in chess, typically like the lines are pretty narrow. And again, it varies, you know, like in the early game, the lines are much wider, but typically you'll calculate when you're taking a line, you're going to take, you're going to look at like two or three responses that they have, like two or three common response. You're not going to consider something completely out of left field, although you might. Right.

If you're a chess player, you will, you will consider lots of different options quickly because that that's what it means to be a good chess player. Okay. And I think similarly, like if you want to get good at, at swoo, if you want to get good at, at star wars and limited, what you need to do is you need to calculate as wide as possible and as deep as possible as fast as possible. Right. And like the better you get the faster you can, you can do this.

Okay. Okay. It does require that you have, you do at least two or three things for my opponent could have unless you have very specific knowledge about their hand, right? Like, like if you spark a forbidden them, then you know exactly what they have. But most of the time you're kind of putting them on a range of things that they could have and you want to calculate a line. And when we're going into calculating a line, there's a couple of different ways that you can approach that.

And I think that we should, we should be specific here because it's really easy to like talk in general. So I'm going to have a specific line that we're going to talk to. Okay. So we're going into turning. Okay. First just define one turn two. Yeah. So we're going into turn two. We have three resources. We have the initiative for some reason. We are on green bean that's saving green. And so we are a very aggressively slanted deck. And we have a battlefield marine in play. It is a three three.

And we have a wing leader in hand and no other turn three plays. My opponent, Oppo, is on Vater Blue, a very controlling slow deck with very few threats. And they have guardian of the wills in play. So let's talk about. No, before we get to that, before we get to that, one, dear listener, we are not a content creator, a YouTube content creator. We are a podcast that happens to be on YouTube. And I will at least map out the opening for those of you who are visual learners.

But for those of you who are not watching a YouTube who are driving your car like me, I'm going to say that backwards, Ned, just to ensure that I'm picturing my head because we do not yet have a graphic for this for ourselves. So the opponent, Oppo, is playing Blue Vater and they have a guardian of the wills. Yeah. So they played in turn one. We are Green Bean and we have a battlefield marine in play. We have a wing leader in hand. And that's the only relevant card in our hand for this line.

Yes. Because it's our only turn three play. Got it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And we can pretend we have no other twos and no other ones. And we're going to simplify this as much as possible to try and like deal with this. This is a thought exercise. Yeah. That's our brand. Yeah. So let's talk about all the possible things that you could do. So we have a three three and they have a two two.

So like one thing that we could do, we could attack our three three into their two two, kill their two two and be left with a one one. And then well three one rest of the turn from there. We can attack our three three three three one, right? Not a one. Yes, a three one. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, it's a three one. It would be it would be rather a three three with two damage marked on it. Sure. Yeah. We could attack our marine are our three three marine into their base.

We could play our wing leader, put the counters on the marine and then go attack the guardian. So you're phrasing this on the assumption that like how would the turn play out? Yes. Yeah, but like they're obviously going to get to do a thing in in between these two steps. But like this is this is the line that we're taking. We're not going to be interfered with. How do we hope this plays? Yeah, exactly. So option three is wing leader on to guard battlefield marine and then attack the guardian.

Attack the guardian. Yeah. Option four is wing leader on to marine and then attack the face. Option five is we use our Sabine ability and then do literally any of the things that I listed before. So we're just kind of like taking a time we could pass or we could claim initiative. Or we could do the reversal of five and do any of those things and then do this. Right. Yeah. So I'm leaving the say I'm leaving the option for one through four.

I'm leaving the option of doing the leader at the end is mostly just leader to fill time. Right. Like you can't leader. Oh, I would just say yeah. Leader ability to fill time and then back to one through four. Likewise, pass to fill time. Okay. Right. Yeah. So before we calculate, it's important to talk about the range of hands that our opponent could be on. So let's talk about relevant cards that they could have. They could have fallen lightsaber.

Which will turn their guardian into a 55 with a reasonably gnarly on attack ability. They could play fifth brother. I've seen some I don't know if this is popular anymore. The Vader blue list that I'm familiar with runs fifth brother. I think it's a pretty reasonable card. They could have it. I it might not be popular anymore. They could have force throw like the guardian is a force unit. So they could have forced their own. They could choose to play force throw.

I'm not putting them on force lightning because I mean, we could talk about force lightning, but I don't feel like that's run very much anymore. And it's not as popular in our search tree has a given width. Yes. Yeah. Open fire. Right. So that they have four possible things that they could have. So Parker, let's give arguments like just from your gut what line smells the best to you. So we're I mean, so my and we have not scripted this deal listener. Now, I think this play.

So I'm, you know, bearing myself out here, put him going on. My instinct is to the wing leader first because that puts I mean, sure they can take out a wing leader, but the whole thing. Then they're only taking out half of my play. And that puts you head in space. And it's more specifically puts battlefield marine out of reach of, say, open fire. It makes their force they'd have to discard something pretty good or aggressive to force throw.

Yeah. If they play fifth brother, I take it to play fall and lightsaber. I also take it in which both case, if I even for the fall and lightsaber on the guardian of the wills, they're losing two cards. I'm losing one and a half because I still have my wing leader body. So that feels like the optimal play for me there. I tend to agree with you like that, that knowing nothing about my opponents had, that would be the thing that I am going to lean towards. There is one small wrinkle with this.

And this is the wrinkle that we must discuss is if they play fall and lightsaber, and then we attack face or we do, whichever, they can trade their guardian into our battlefield marine and then they can use their Vader ability to ping down our wing leader. Because, because, you know, the guardian, and then we're on an empty board, right? Whereas, they have fall and lightsaber and they have no other cards, right?

Like we put them exactly on fall and lightsaber and we attack our battlefield marine and a guardian, they have to just pass. Right. Okay. Yeah. That's what you're saying. That's only if they have exactly fall and lightsaber and no other relevant cards. Wait, how they can't afford to Vader, Vader, right? Vader has one. Right, but fall and lightsaber is kind of like one on guardian. Yep. But they could still do that even if we attack into them.

No, because if we kill the guardian, they can't play the fall and lightsaber. There's nothing for them to play it on. Oh, I see what you're saying. So if we battle for the marine into the guardian of the will, yeah. Uh-huh. Then they can't, okay, I see what you're saying. That is the only, like I agree with you. Like in a vacuum, I would absolutely take the line that you take. I think that that line is the best line.

Like it, and this is where we go into calculating lines is, um, well, just over here on the best, the reason why that's the best, you know, but that comes, I guess, into calculating lines. Yes. You know, that's probably the best play maybe, but at the same time, they also have a high likelihood of, um, having more than fall and lightsaber, right? Like, yeah, odds are if you've built your deck correctly on turn two, you have more than a one card that costs three or less, hopefully.

That's an upgrade that requires that you have like a reasonable unit. Yeah, right? Like, yeah, I can speak from personal experience today that is not always true, but that's the best way to do something. It's not always true, right? Right.

So, when we talk about lines, I think that that important things to do when you're calculating lines is generally speaking, there will be lines that will tend to be better in most circumstances and there will tend to be lines that will tend to be better in specific circumstances. So, looking at this, um, under a very specific circumstance, a kind of weird line of attacking the marine into the Guardian, and just to go back, why are we focusing on getting the maximum damage on to the base?

Because we're the, we're the beat down. We're the beat down, right? That's a heuristic, right? Like, like, we're operating under the heuristic that, um, being the beat down is a heuristic. And, and we're blending things a little bit here, but we are operating under the assumption that we need to kill our opponent as quickly as possible. And so, we want to value base damage very highly. We have to consider like future terms.

We want to have like a good board presence as well, because if, if we lose our whole board, odds are that we're not dealing as much damage and subsequent turns, but in general, we are valuing base damage very highly. And so, because we're valuing base damage very highly, we want to try and take lines that will maximize the amount of base damage that we can inflict.

And the line that maximizes both maximizes the present value and the expected future value of the amount of base damage is, uh, wing leader, both boosting Guardian and then attack Guardian into base. That is like the, the optimal line, right? And when we, if we're, if we're adhered, so our optimal line once we assume the base damage, once we accept our heuristic, yes, the base damage is a point of base damage is worse more than a point of unit damage because we're the beat down.

Then five points to base is worse more than five points to unit. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I think, I think that that's reasonable. I think you could make arguments, right? Like in this is somewhere where, as you get more experienced, these lines will tend to resolve themselves because you'll have played them out before and you'll have seen like, what is the consequence of this? I think that some of the lines you can obviously dismiss.

Like I think you can dismiss because we're the beat down, we can dismiss claim, right? Like we're wasting resources that, that seems like a bad move. Past we can, we can also dismiss. I don't, I don't, I don't, I think you can have something you can play to board. I don't think you'll be down even factors into that. Even if you're the control, if you have units to play on board in this scenario, right? Yeah. I think generally you do.

You generally want to take game actions if one can take game actions, right? Yeah. Right. And same thing with past, like, because we're opening ourselves up to, Vader is happy, like if turn two is just nothing happens, they're happiest a clam, right? Yep. Yep. Yep. And then the leader ability puts us, and why we don't generally want it, as say being, do the, the leader ability first is because it puts us on the back foot, right?

Like we go from, let's say that we leader ability and then they put the lightsaber on the Guardian, and then we play wing leader. They're now advantage, or if we don't, you know, if we're, we're, we're, we now have lost the option to attack our Guardian into our battlefield marine advantageously into their Guardian, right? Yeah. Yeah. So we wanted to.

Yeah. And I, I mean, side note, that's the, I think that's, you know, people discount the skill behind a strong aggro pilot, but knowing when and to, I mean, you don't want us to be in every turn, right? No. No, that was hard to figure out when you want to. And, you know, so if we discount the bottom three lines, the next thing that we're left with is, do we want to play wing leader first or do we want to attack first?

If we play wing leader first, we have a larger unit, we can attack for more this turn. So we've got more damage coming in. And we're dodging a pretty wide variety of their stuff, right? Like we're dodging open fire, we're dodging some kind of a weird force throw play. Like a cheap force throw play because I mean, also if they force throw off of us, like we discard the card, our hands all tiny garbage.

So like, I mean, it can't be that tiny because we've accepted that it's four cost or higher, but why are we running a handful of fives than to be green? They have to be four cost, right? Yeah. Or empty or whatever. Yeah. Right. So we have a metal serum, you know, we could discard a metal serum on your way or I don't know. Yeah. But we're leaving that as we're pretending the rest of our hand is nonexistent for purposes of this. But yeah, like they could they could force us.

Fifth brother feels like a bad like they might have to make that play. I don't think that they're happy about making that play because you know, you have to because you need to get the units on board to answer us. But I don't think that I think that that's kind of like a slower play from them. So if they play fifth brother in general, I feel like we're happy. Mm hmm. I think that's why.

Yeah. Fifth, if you are off, um, fifth brother in a lot of current blue red lists, um, not because I think fifth brother is good, but the meta is currently pushing towards more control. Yes. And like fifth brother is a very mid-rangey. Yeah, I mean, like it's a it's a cheap, efficient unit that is kind of like a slow removal, slow removal effect, you know. Yeah. And so yeah, we're perfectly happy with a fifth brother. So the one that makes us nervous would be fallen like they were right. Right.

And so when you're calculating, sometimes you need to accept that your opponent can just have the cards, right? Like if you're putting them on, okay, we're going to take this line. So I mean, the line that we described where we're going to play the wing leader and then attack with the battlefield marine. And you know, we can make a game time call over whether we're attacking their guardian or whether we're attacking their face.

But you know, if they're playing fallen lightsaber, I feel like sometimes they just have it, right? Like, and yeah, yeah. And you have to make sure that if they have it, the line doesn't leave you completely blown out. Or sometimes you can't avoid it. Sometimes you can't play around it. I think that in this circumstance, you can't really play around it, right? Like what are you going to do? I think that attacking that.

Well, and that goes back to like thinking about certain trees of chess, right? Like, right. Sometimes you, you know, in theory, you're playing out the tree to loss, right? But that you're not. Obviously, that's the worst example of, you know, even when it's a computer, you can only go so deep. So there's, well, this one results in me losing a rook. This one results in me losing a pawn. Like if you get to game loss, definitely don't do that.

But sometimes you have to take the, well, the still the optimal play is lose the rook, right? Yeah. That's the best line I can get out of here is take some beating. Yeah. And so like in this circumstance, I think that we're favored probably, but I think that it's, you know, it is a non-trivial chance that they have the fall in lightsaber and we just have to take our medicine and end up with a clear board moving into turn three, which is not our favorite, but, you know, what are you going to do?

What are you going to do? Yeah. Okay. So, yeah. Was that, was that informative? Do you think that? Yeah. So, I think that really becomes down to, so I want to talk about heuristics. But so, there are lines, you learn lines by playing, right? Yeah. Essentially, this expands your search tree. You get to a point where I'm going to do this because I know what outcomes are good for me. I know what outcomes are bad for me, and I don't actually have to spend any time calculating it.

So, I don't really need to turn one enough times to know of these two cost units against. This is the two cost unit I want to play. Right. Yeah. Against, in this matchup, on this turn one, with these two choices, which one do I, am I happier to play, which one do I prefer to play? Do I want to play? Do I want to see their hand or do I want to look at the top two cards of my deck and filter, right? And so, I get that. And so, you know, some of that is just natural ability, right?

Like some people are just naturally capable. Their brains work that way of thinking farther out, keeping track of more options, right? So, everybody has some amount of search tree and some people have more. You can gain more search tree by playing because you get, you're no longer calculating in the moment. Yeah. You're just, you're looking at, you're looking it up rather than computing, right?

Like, to do using it, you're looking it up, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're not, you're not, you're not. And just similar to, like chess, right? Like opening moves, do, do book moves. They've been calculated by other people. But and at a certain point though, it doesn't matter who you are, you get to a point where I, you know, either your game state is weird enough that you haven't seen it as often. Yeah. And so you are calculating, right?

So in any given game, opening rounds, opening hands are going to be solved, right? Like for a given matchup for a given hand, they're never going to be perfectly going to be solved. So you're always going to have some, do I resource this question? But as a general rule, your line is going to be solved at some point, but you are going to encounter unsolved lines. Yes. And you're going to have to calculate a search tree.

Yeah. And it doesn't matter how good you are unless they, unless you're at like, you know, 22 damage on base. How do I get to solving this? Right. There are going to be search trees that are too big for a given human. Yes. Right? As I see it. So you reach the end of your ability without going to time, without indulging in analysis paralysis, you are quickly reaching the end of whatever your personal search tree limit is. You can think no wider, no deeper.

And I would assume at that point, then you rely on rules of thumb on characteristics. But I guess for me, the question is, you know, how do you identify that pivot? Right? Like, I think it varies. I mean, I think that one of the things about lines is that it's really all, it's tempting. If you're trying to improve as a player to do more calculation, but it's particularly because most of the time you are not playing one off games, you are playing like sequences of games.

And mental fatigue is non zero, right? Especially if you're spending a huge amount of your energy in the early rounds, like calculating out these things to get one more point of damage, it might be improving your overall when, in from like the point of view of perfect you with no fatigue, you're doing better. But in reality, you're just tiring yourself out and you're going to perform like the deeper you go in your tournament run, the worse you're going to perform.

You kind of want to wait to count. And this is something that you also have to get good at. And I think you have to have heuristics around when you calculate and when you don't, right? Like, you know, one, you're spending so much time agonizing over turn one. Yeah. Like you're burning just mental cards. Yeah, it should be solved. Like you should. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So like common places where you stop is, is my opponent making a weird move, right? Like, are they doing something that is unusual?

You might want to stop for a moment and think like, are they lining up an overwhelming barrage? Are they lining up a super laser blast? Are they lining up some kind of another weird unorthodox, like a surprise strike or a shot first or some other like fast effect that you're not. No, it's always fun to me. And this is obvious, I think to most people, but it's always satisfying when you see the play as it happens when it's like they're playing green villainy and they resource seven.

And you're like, oh, you hit resource seven. You're turning seven. You're going to play a Vader. Yeah. You're probably Vader, right? Like, once you've cleared four or five resources, I'm assuming, oh, you just keep going. Yep. Like, there it is. There's the card, right? And so yeah, whatever the opposite of that is, the weirdness we're, you know, out of aspect cards or.

Right. So, you know, I think, if you're a opponent is starting to amass a reasonably sized board, you need to stop and you need to say, am I going to die? If you're, if you're starting to get your opponent close on base health, where are these rules of, are these rules of thumb in general or these rules of thumb about when to stop calculating? This is rules of thumb for when to start calculating rules of thumb for when to start calculating. Like, are they doing something weird?

This is these are meta heuristics. Right. Yes, exactly. The heuristic of when not to use a heuristic. So, right. If they're doing something weird, calculate. If they're, you know, take 10 seconds or however long it takes you, and you do the overwhelming barrage map, do the, do they have, are they going to have lethal that you can't stop? Right. If they have enough damage on board and your deck doesn't have the ability to, you don't have balances, you don't have.

Think for a second, if they have like a reasonably sized board and your, your health is at a certain point, think, can they kill me this turn? Are there actions that I could take to prevent myself from dying this turn? Let's calculate them. Do I have a reasonably sized board or is my opponent's health low enough that I think that I could possibly kill them this turn? Let's stop and see if I can calculate lethal, right? Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, don't get so obsessed with the game. Right.

You forget the point of the game. Yeah. So, okay. Right. Generally, the, the stop at calculate is there or if you find yourself in a sharp position, right? So, the position is somewhere in there. Sharp, sharp, like like nice. Oh, sharp, nice. Sharp, sharp, sharp. Yeah. Like knife. A sharp position is a position where it feels like the, and this is, we're using, again, metaheuristics here, but it feels like you are in a real danger of having the game slip away from you.

So, an example of this is you are on aggro and your opponent has played a reasonably sized Sentinel unit in the, in the lane that you are operating in. Okay. So, so, so wait, hold up. Yeah. So, you're probably going to tell me, I'm probably saying something obvious, but yeah. That, that last heuristic just feels like feelings, right? Yeah. That, that's a heuristic based on experience.

That is the, I mean, in the sense of the opposite of a rule of thumb, like, you know, rule of thumb is, I don't know, you know, don't go down creepy alleys. Well, okay, what's a creepy alley? Well, oh, okay, you know, you got to, right? Like, I can't teach that to my kid. I have to, you know, the rule of thumb needs to be, do, you know, like, like, the strangers, right? Yeah. Like, the nice clear line.

So, if you feel like the game is slipping away from you, it feels less like a heuristic to me because, I mean, yeah, you need to stop and calculate. I could hear that. Yeah. But we're, we're, again, like the meta, the meta heuristic meta calculation space of when you go. And I think another point that we've got. All out feelings and meta heuristics, that's it.

Yeah. Another point that we need to talk about, I think, before you move on is when you're comparing lines, one of the elements of calculation that you need to think about is the potential gain and the potential loss. So if you feel like you are advantaged, you want to adopt kind of like a mini max calculation policy. Like if you feel like you are, and by that, and you like, what is the mini max calculation policy? Yeah. Sorry.

A mini, you know, your opponent could have a bunch of different cards. Mini max says you want to maximize the minimum outcome of the line. So if you imagine that your opponent has the best possible hand against you, but you feel like you are advantaged. And again, this is where we're getting into the feeling, the feeling zone. But if you feel like that you are advantaged, you generally want to calculate such that you do not lose, right? Like, the game keeps going on. Just keep the game going on.

You know, like, if there's two branches and one is you suffer and one is you lose, two suffering, right? Right. Obviously. But beyond that, like if you are advantaged, you want to try and minimize the possible loss as much as possible. Right. Yeah. Yeah. If you're winning, just keep the game going because you get closer to victory. Right. You're right.

Contrary wise, if you are losing, you want to try and take, you know, if you are losing, and the game is likely to continue not in your favor, something that you need to consider is when I'm calculating lines, is there a very thin needle that I can thread through to win this game? Can I assume? Yeah, yeah. If there is one line that will win you and the rest of the line and like, okay, if they have any set no unit, I'm hosed. But what's, you know, your hose, anyway, dude, just... Right.

So, if there's, if most of the lines are resulting the game going on, which is bad for you, and there's one line that results in either you winning or losing, take, even though that's the only one that results in you losing immediately, take it because it's also the only one that results in you winning immediately. Exactly, yeah. You have to swing. Whereas if you're advantaged, you wouldn't go down that path because you are benefited by the game just continuing on. Exactly. Right.

And this ties into like, who's the beat down, right? Like, if you are the beat down, your mindset needs to be, I have to be aggressive, I have to swing, I have to shoot for those like, high variants, winner lose lines. If you are not the beat down, don't do that. Do the opposite. Yeah. Don't lose. Yeah, yeah, no. So the reason why, who's the beat down is such like a fundamental question. Okay. Okay. Yeah. All right. Okay. So we have our meta heuristics went, we know it lines our calculation.

Yeah. We have meta heuristics. When do we calculate? Yes. At a certain point, our calculations will fail us. We'll reach the end of our personal search tree. Yes. And then we pivot to heuristics. Yeah. Okay. So a heuristic is a rule of thumb. If you don't know any better, do this thing. So I think that the classic heuristic is who's the beat down tells you, if you are the beat down, you should be attacking face.

You know, if you are not the beat down, you should probably be attacking their units. Right? Right. Just quick note, I believe we were the first people to address that question in the context of Star Wars and limited. Not the best. I actually the best breakdown of it is, it was tower number nine's article, but you know, just hey, feathering our cap, I think we were the first person to take that very low hanging fruit. Extremely. Yeah. And apply it to Star Wars and limited.

I could be wrong in that. Please at us. That is, you know, that's what, that's what, why, you know, that's not how the force works before some limited Gmail.com. Have to be corrected. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm going to take that for now. Nice prior art, yeah, yeah. So, okay. So, another good heuristic is if you're the beat down, if you're the more aggressive deck, generally you want to attack first.

This is more of a fuzzy heuristic, but in general, you want to attack first because as the board state develops, it's likely that it's not going to develop in your favor. So try and get those units to give you value before they die. Right? Or that they can't make an opening it where they can, but it's less relevant. The bell's been wrong, right? Yeah. You're right. Right. And this is, you know, and this is the point of heuristics is unfortunately heuristics are not always going to be right.

There are absolutely going to be cases where that is wrong. I think that in the line that we discussed above, you don't want to attack first because you want to get that wing leader out to get you more points. But, you know, if you can't see it, of course. All rules of thumb are sometimes wrong. Right? There's always exceptions to prove the rule, but the idea is you can't calculate when the heuristics are on this whole point. If you can, you wouldn't be relying on the heuristic.

Okay. Yeah. Another one is Mulligan heuristics. It's, do you have a hand that affects the board on turn one and turn two? You know, again, you need cards that affect the board. So, you know, make an opening is a classic example of a card that might affect the board or might not because if they have a three hit point unit, all you're making opening is doing is it's reducing the amount of damage that you're taking and healing you a little bit. So, that's not really affecting the board. Right?

Right. So, that's why frequently, if you keep a hand where my plan for turn three, unless I know that your deck is running a lot of two HP units, keeping a, my turn three plan is going to be playing make an opening, frequently feels bad, unless you've got something that you're supporting. Right? Nope. Yep. Yep. And then there are like more, these are very general heuristics, but I think that you develop heuristics against certain decks.

So, for example, I have now played enough games against Tarkan to, wherever I see an imperial unit after like the second XP, the second experience token goes on it, it just needs to die. Right? Because what is going to happen is that I'm going to keep saying, you know, I could deal with this now, but I could also deal with it later. And then they've got this like giant six, seven shore trooper that I could have dealt with a million turns ago.

And it's beating my butt and I have to trade my whole board away for it. Right? No, Tarkan is a lesson in like dealing with your own procrastination. Tarkan is just a deck of snowballs. Yes. I think the reason why Tarkan's not a meta deck is because once you train yourself to just clear everything out quickly, if you can neuter the Tarkan's leader ability then he's actually at best beat here. Right? You know? You have to learn that lesson the hard way.

You might think that you are the beat down, you certainly well might be, but even though you're the beat down, you need to be spending a non-trivial percentage of your resources on keeping the board clear just because it will snowball completely otherwise. Parker, do you have some heuristics that you've come up with that you want to share? Probably fewer. Am I immediate? And I'm not going to get into it because it's not an interesting part.

It's my immediate response to my head as you were listening to these rules of thumb. It was like lawyer brain like I can think of exceptions to that one. That one obviously I can think of exceptions, but yeah, that's an indicator. Right. Yeah, no, exactly. The one that I've been forcing myself, I probably have fewer than you would like. The one that I always focus on and it's less or heristic of play, but is a play style, but is make them have it. Right? We're discussing earlier.

If they have the thing that's going to make you sad, the thing is don't assume they have it. Right? Even if they have it, if you constantly play around it, then they're getting the benefit without having to play it. Right? If you're always worried about take down a vanquish and so you don't play things that can lose to take down a vanquish, then they're getting the benefit of take down a vanquish without having to spend the four to five resources. So make them have it.

Put out your card that they will then take down. Yep, that's the line. And then we can move on and now I don't have to worry about take down. I don't have to worry about take down. Yes. Because you spend, I mean, I have to worry about up to three of each. But the, but the, that's the heuristic I've been really trying on is make them have it. And is, is, if you go, you know, don't, if you're going into resource five with against Greenville, like assume OBS coming, right?

Like, he's, like, 100, 110%. You know, we're definitely got Greenville and any Vader, 110%. Vader's coming. I think that's really the thing. Right. The thing I'm excited about shields, because that's the heuristic I'm not excited about, is you'll still, I mean, again, similar to Target, there, there's going to be decks where you're like, this deck always runs Vader. And maybe every Greenville and the deck always runs Vader forever. You know, who, I don't know exactly how pushed these cards are.

But right now, knowing that every deck that can run a given card runs that card, and that is a card that you have to respond to, those are the heuristics of like, it doesn't matter whether I'm playing, you know, against Boba Green, Clinic Green, I didn't green, you know, I'm playing against Tarkin anything, if I'm playing against Palp anything, right?

It's, am I going to see, what are the, you know, is they could overwhelm you, Barrage, next, you know, I'm on resource four, turn three, and they're going to overwhelm you, Barrage, next round. Like, what, what is already on the board that's getting plus two plus two that I'm most sad about? And okay, let's assume on, you know, resource six, next round, I'm getting Vader.

I'm getting five, one of my units is getting five to face, unless they're playing a lesser version of the deck that runs Veer, in which case I'm getting six to face. You know, those are my roles of thought, but those are, I guess that's more just like anticipation. No, I think that those are good, I think that those are good heuristics to adopt.

Anything else that occurred to me that I think is really important is in the vein of like specific card heuristics, never deploy your leader onto an empty board against Blue Villainy. Yeah, I have been powered the Dark Side too many times. Yeah, never to, no, exactly. And that's a good heuristic right? Because you always are thinking about against Blue Villainy power the Dark Side and what's the line?

And that's one of the reasons why Wing Leader is great is, you know, it puts out, that's why Gredo is great. Like it gives you those outs for power the Dark Side. Like here's a cheap body I don't care about, but the, even if the board is clear, never deploy your leader into Blue Villainy on an empty board. Yeah, no, that's a perfect heuristic. Yeah. Okay, so we have these heuristics. Do we want to talk about like briefly, like, yeah, so heuristic is a role of them.

And like I said, legal mind immediately thinking about what my client, this role is applied to my client. Yes. How, how, I mean, like heuristics aren't always true. Right. I mean, like that's the point of the heuristic, right?

And that's why you have to calculate is that heuristics are a way to approach playing a turn when you do not want to spend the mental energy to calculate it because you need to save your brain or because like, I have seen this enough times that I have internalized what the, the effective line is so it kind of turns into a heuristic, right? But you know, talking about, I've calculated all the lines. This, this two cost unit into Sabine Yellow is the right play.

I don't, I don't need to do the lines. I've played this game enough. Yeah. I've tried both. I know what the line and so a well-trod line essentially becomes a personal heuristic. Right. Okay. So let's, let's talk about like specific failure cases. So for example, let's talk about who's the beat down? The idea of who's the beat down? If you're aggro, you want to be attacking face. If you're controlling, you want to be attacking units.

Except when you are control, at some point you will have turned the corner and when you've turned the corner, you feel like you have a reasonable domination of the board in which case you need to start killing them as quickly as possible so you do not get for a cause to death. So you do not get like sneak attack, whatever. They can still put out K2SO and, yeah. And four cause and I mean, 3K2SOs and 3 Fichibis is what, 333, 21 damage alone.

So if you drag the game out, they don't even have to be able to hit your face directly with those units. Yes. So at a point you need to, you know, again to what we're talking about, about meta heuristics. At some point you need to recognize, I have turned the corner now. I need to turn off that part of my brain and turn on the, let's kill the most quickly as possible. Okay. Yep. So the characteristic in general is you should use all your resources, right?

If you have two lines that both seem fine, do the one that uses more of your resources. We talked about this under when we were talking about advantage theory is that every resource that you do not spend, you are losing resource advantage. You know, you are wasting resources. But this fails with things like initiative. Yes. This fails for things like initiative. This also fails for, you have frequently like two rules of thumb collide. So an example of this is saving your removal.

If you're playing control, generally you do not want to use your removal on cards that you can answer other ways, right? Like if you've got a takedown and a vanquish, if you, let's imagine that you've got like in hand a vanquish and they're digging you with some like spec force trooper, right? The spec force trooper, it's a two to joker. You've got five resources up, you could vanquish it, but you shouldn't. Right, you should. Right.

Outside of very specific, and again, outside of very specific lines. Oh, I, yeah. Yeah, what did I do? I vanquished something today that I was like, no, it was a green squadron with a, no, it was sorry, it was a, in Ferno 4 that was traders away from me with two experience. I put two experience on a traders or on an in Ferno 4, thank you, Gideon Hask and they trade us out for me and I was like, I don't want to vanquish this. I'm saving this for Luke. This is unpleasant.

I'm giving you the peak at the top of your deck. Yeah. Those were my experience points, but you know, sometimes I'm just going to pop the band a, yeah. And this is where like you have to move out of heuristic spacing up to move into like a little more into calculation land. Mm hmm. Okay. Another example of this is weird lines versus trusting your deck.

So this is something that I'm really vulnerable to because I'm the kind of person who likes trying to solve those stupid, can you kill your opponent this term puzzles is I've never done one of those. And you know, all credit to outmaneuver for making them for Star Wars unlimited. I get like two in and I'm like, I don't care.

I just I cannot that's like no, like and that, but again, that goes to you and me and like, yeah, no, I love, I love trying to figure out like, but frequently I will be placed with a, I will be in a situation and I will try and calculate the line. Like, is there some weird thing that I could possibly do? And if exactly the right things line up, yeah, yeah, if I do this and this and this, I can trade like my, my units away into their Luke and then, but like, why are you doing that?

Just, just trust your deck, right? Like, yeah, this is why, this, yeah, and that's why I play, right? Like, yeah, stuff is like, which of these regards is the best stuff? That's the best stuff done. Move it on. Like, let's do it. Yeah, and I just, I love my scrappy crappy decks and when you're playing scrappy crappy, you have to find ways to turn your garbage into gold, but sometimes like a lot of the time when you're playing Premiere, you're not playing scrappy crappy draft decks anymore.

You know, you're playing Agro, so it has like that, that scrappy crappy feel. But it's peak aggro, right? Right. Yeah. You're fine to still the aggro. So, right. Don't, don't do some weird line to trade three to one into your opponents unit just because you can, right? Like, you may have calculated that, that you can do it this way, but just, just trust your deck sometimes and, and roll with it. All right.

I think, I think that's pretty much it for us now, but do you have a, so I guess, I guess for me, really, other than mental exhaustion, do you have a, I mean, what's the pivot other than time and time? So imagine it's game one, magic one, yes, resource five. So you're into the game, you're into weird spaces where you're, you know, you're early, it's not, it's not well defined. Yeah. You're, you're something feels a little off.

How much, like, how do you know when you stop trying to calculate and playing if this than that, if this than that, and just go with the, this feels right? Um, that's kind of a personal question. So one of the things that is troublesome about TCGs in a physical space is that there is not a chess clock. So technically, you can, if you, despite what many people want, which, no, but yeah, there is not currently a chess clock.

And so theoretically, if you're playing, like, imagine this is the classic kind of scumbag e-move is I am playing a slow control deck. What I'm going to do is I'm going to be very deliberate in my game one when I'm advantaged. I'm going to win game one. And then when we move into game two, oh my goodness, you no longer have enough time left on your clock to be able to win game two. Would you know we've got to double lock the game? And I get that one.

Yeah. Yeah. I've thought at length about that. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So, so that's, that's the evil machination answer to the, but like, when is that happening? And when are you actually like legitimately thinking? Right. And I mean, I think it's, it's a personal question. I will say that true, do not try the patience if you're opponent. And this is something where different people have different tolerance.

And I think that at different levels of competition, if you're playing for just like a showdown, or if you're, you're playing like your standard premiere night, you can probably be a little bit more deliberate in your play to a certain extent. But you also might not want to be more deliberate in your play. But I think that, you know, if you're out of 5K, you're out of one, you know, even you're out of 1K, your opponents will expect a certain pace of play out of you.

And if you're having to sit there and calculate your lines and you're slow at it, they want to go take a bathroom break and grab a seat in between their feet. And I would like to get, yeah. I was thinking that is like that, I mean, that weird line of play, like that's how you get good. And that's how like the topography is discovered. Like, we have a moment. I'm going to take this weird line all the way there with natural conclusion a couple times. So, let's try this card in this deck.

You can only confirm that it's, I mean, that's how things like Blue Vader came about. Just think, you know, how Green Luke kind of got a resurgence, how Green Chewie kind of became a thing, how, you know, Jay on a playable, like took like Sabine Yellow and really ran with it is by saying, hey, what's the weird line? But you don't do that. Yes. In a unforgiving environment. Right. And sometimes it comes out really well. Yeah. And that's what research is for in that tournaments.

Yes. And this is, you know, if you're playing at your locals, if you're just jamming on the kitchen table with friends, those are the perfect times to stop. And particularly when you're playing with friends, you can go get a beer, guys. Like, I got to figure out. Yeah, no, not only go get a beer, but also like, I'm thinking about like, talk out loud with your friend, right? Right. Like, you know, this is something. This is the value of teams, right?

This is the value of teams of like, yes, we all want all of our decks to be better. So I'm going to explain what I'm going to do because there's no value. And the surprise, right? You're going to play these same decks again. And I want to work through this line worth it. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, yeah, that's why I'm going to get good. Yeah. Yeah. It depends on good. Yeah. I love it. It depends.

That's my favorite answer in the world to everything as a parent, as a former lawyer, as somebody who works in software. Like, can we do this? It depends. I love it. Dear listener, that's all she wrote. This was episode 15 of the Forsel Limited. We're recording May 19th. If you have any thoughts about the episode, please write in to the Forsel Limited at gmail.com to somebody who spoke up recently and said that the true reason they listen is Ned.

I agree. And Ned, I'm going to put you on the spot. Next episode is a power of two. So let's do some math. Yes. Because those are, those are magic numbers. The powers of two. We'll link that commitment now because it's an increasingly less onerous commitment. And on Ned, every episode that is a power of two, we promise there will be math. So on our 60th episode, we have another 30 seconds.

Yeah, I think that we have enough spoilers that I can go through and I can update the old regression and see, like, can we, can we look at any differences? No promises here. No, no, no, no. We'll do something, Matthew. Yeah. Next episode. I promise. Ned, do you have any final thoughts about the episode? Way to put me on the spot here, Parker, with the powers of two. No, we're in the show notes. But, well, I'm happy. I'm happy too. Yeah. Sometimes I need you to do math is, that's public, Ned.

And just, yeah. But again, it's an increasingly less onerous, right? Yeah. 32, then 64. And then you'll have a whole other hundred, you know, 128. Like, at some point, it's not a promise anymore. Yeah. Yeah. It actually becomes a promise on me when we do it on 127 and not 128. And it's like, Parker, you promise. So, okay, with that dear listener, we will see you in two or three weeks. I haven't looked at a calendar, but our new schedule, the second and the fourth. Yes. Two things of the month.

Areos.