SantoriniPowerTyche

Introduction

As the goddess of fortune, Tyche bestows luck by blessing her workers with extra turns. However, she is not like most gods as playing with her involves luck and randomness. You need strategy in order to use her good luck to your advantage…

God Power

Shuffle a deck consisting of 6 cards from 1 to 6. At the end of your turn, draw the top card from the deck. If it is 6, reshuffle the deck with all 6 cards and you may take an additional turn, otherwise discard the card.

Category

Others

Explaination

Tyche places a deck of six cards numbered from 1 to 6 next to her. At the end of each turn, Tyche draws a card at random and proceeds to remove that card from the deck. If that card is a 6, Tyche may take an additional turn and the deck returns to its initial state (six cards from 1 to 6). Otherwise, nothing happens (except that the deck will have one less card in the next turn). Do note that no cards are drawn at the end of an additional turn.

In other words, in the first turn, Tyche has a probability of 1/6 of taking an extra turn. If such a situation happens, the same probability will hold in her next turn. Otherwise, Tyche plays a normal turn and in the next turn she will have a probability of 1/5 of taking an extra turn. If Tyche is consecutively failing to pick card number 6, the probabilities of taking an extra turn continue to increase in the following order: 1/4, 1/3, 1/2 and 1. In particular, when Tyche only holds a single card, she knows for a fact that she will take two consecutive turns on that move. This can be one of the most dangerous scenarios to face against Tyche and that’s the move where all the bad luck might have paid off. For example, if Tyche is able to build a level 3 adjacent to a level 2 she occupies, she is able to win (just like Achilles would be able to). Tyche does not play as most of the other powers and it really depends on whether you want to rely on luck or not.

Game Strategy

Probably the best plan for Tyche is just to try to move up to level 2. Once she is up there, all sorts of nasty moves can happen. We highlight the case in which Tyche is on top of a level 2, with an adjacent level 2. In that case, if she only has one card remaining at the start of her turn, the victory can be achieved (similarly to what Achilles would do). If she has two cards remaining, the winning chance is 50%. However, in this case, Tyche must be careful not to give the game away in case she does not get an additional turn.

Specific Matchup

Athena

If Athena moved up and in that turn Tyche gets an additional turn she may NOT move up once again.

Chaos

You might see this matchup being offered quite a few times and I would always suggest you to pick Chaos. Although Chaos also involves luck, he is more in the spirit of the game as it can be more predictable. Moreover, Chaos’s pool of powers is better than Tyche.

Europa & Talus

Europa has to take into consideration that Tyche might move twice and Talus’s location must be rethinked due to such possibility.

Hecate

Tyche gives you an interesting opportunity to find Hecate’s workers in one turn. This is an impredicable matchup and might be decided in a specific turn…

Triton

It is in these kind of matchups where Tyche can prove her worth by taking out a much stronger opponent (probably relying on luck).

Zeus

It is hard for Zeus to prevent Tyche from moving up to level 2 and we already know how dangerous she can be once she gets up there.

Conclusion

It is tough to rank a god which involves luck, but you can get a general idea after trying it against some powers. In general, Tyche is a reasonable power which can surprise the opponent at any moment. At the end of the game, the side who loses will feel like they were the unlucky one, but that’s just how it is when you play a strategy game with a power like Tyche.

Tier ranking: B