Deck Size & Formula

Trigger wrote:

1. Wondering what size decks players use for a 2-player game

None. If there are only 2 players, I find something else to do.
There are plenty of good 2 player games, standard V:TES isn't one of them.
Variant V:TES is a good alternative.

Trigger wrote:

and for every player added. I know the max size, but was curious if well designed decks were constructed with less cards.

I don't know of anyone that plays with the deck construction rules as printed in the rulebook. The online community has used the tournament rules practically since their introduction. Decks are 60-90 cards and the number of players doesn't matter.

Trigger wrote:

2. Any good formulas of the number of each type of card in someone's Library?

Legbiter had a theory for that called Happy Families . The second link in the left hand pane has theory and examples or you can examine just the theory, here .

I've found that 75 cards is a good goal to aim towards. But that does depend on the type of deck you are playing, and how many of your "power cards" you are using.

If you are building a Potence combat deck and you own 5-6 Immortal Grapple, than I would recommend a smaller deck (60-70 cards,) For a 90 card deck you will probably want 10 Immortal Grapple.

Often, you will have a variety of "power cards" such as Pentex Subversion, Giant's Blood, Heart of Nizchetus etc. You might have one or two copies of some of these card. A smaller deck will assure you see more of these cards in the course of a game.

The other thing to consider is that with a smaller deck you have to make your actions count. Failed actions with a smaller deck are more costly than failed actions with a larger deck. In a long game you might find yourself running out of cards which could make the different in a game win. But more often, you will be ousted seeing less than half of your deck.

I haven't found a better 2-player format than Battle Arena (except that we used to play with the so called "banned" cards)

Trigger wrote:

2. Any good formulas of the number of each type of card in someone's Library?

Hypergeometric distribution is what you want.

In Excel it's HYPGEOMDIST (N, Z, X, Y)
where
X is the number of a certain card that you have in the deck.
Y is the number of cards in the deck.
Z is the number of cards you are drawing.
N is the number you are checking for.

So, if you have a 70 card deck with five Lilith's Blessings and you're wondering what are the odds of finding at least one amongst the ten first cards, you would put this in excel:
HYPGEOMDIST (1, 10, 5, 70)

The answer is about 40%, btw. Naturally you'd want to put it into Excel so that you'll have the Z going up from seven so that you can check what's you chance of finding the first Lilith's Blessing at a particular time in the game.

There's also an online tool for this but it isn't as handy:
stattrek.com/online-calculator/hypergeometric.aspx

Lemminkäinen wrote:

Trigger wrote:

2. Any good formulas of the number of each type of card in someone's Library?

Hypergeometric distribution is what you want.

There's also an online tool for this but it isn't as handy:
stattrek.com/online-calculator/hypergeometric.aspx

Or you could use the tools that Ira put together.

www.irafay.com/cards.php