Friday, December 14  How Random Is A Card Game?  One of the
factors that is often used to describe a board/card game is
randomness. How much will events outside your control such as
drawing cards, dice rolls or other random factors affect your
chances of winning?  While playtesting Codename: Jorvik, I got
to thinking that a good way to determine the level of randomness
is to play a game between people of equal skill using the same
strategy. Don't have an evil twin? Play against yourself. In
games where you score the game, play against yourself a bunch of
times, and the look at the scores that result. If they vary a
lot, then there is a lot of randomness, if they don't (or you
get a lot of draws) then there isn't.  I've also stepped up my
recording of my games of Jorvik. At first I was just recording
scores, and who started (in an attempt to spot any first player
advantage). Now I'm adding a few others to the mix:    • Which
cards are left over? The game may finish with cards not used,
recording those might sp