Greg's behaviour in Planechasing event

Volrak

The thread below was deleted after I responded to it yesterday.  I've re-posted because it has useful information about the behaviour of AI-controlled PWs in general and Fblthp in particular, and because it took effort to produce that information.  I've preserved the original poster's anonymity in case they were the one who deleted it.

Original question:

In this thread from earlier this year, Volrak made the following conjecture about how Greg used his abilities.

Volrak said:

AI loyalty ability usage appears consistent with the following.  Immediately prior to each of the AI's gem matches:

• Choose one of the 3 PW abilities, with equal chance for each.
• Try to use that ability.  It of course does nothing in case of no valid targets, insufficient loyalty, or an ability already used this turn.

However, I've just witnessed Greg, in Planechasing Fblthp, refusing to use his abilities turn after turn, despite the fact that both players had creatures in play, and that he had enough loyalty to use all three of his abilities.

Greg does use his abilities on occasion; but there are also turns when he declines to use one altogether.

@Volrak is this new information to you? Is this a change in Greg's behaviour? Is that behaviour Greg exhibits only in this event? Or is there something I'm not taking into account which is prevent Greg from using some or all of his abilities?

Answer including edit as posted:

Volrak said:

Any of the above is possible of course, but the only time I could reproduce what you described is when Greg's hand was full.  That would prevent use of at least some (and maybe all) of his abilities in the current PF event.

Edit: I tried an additional game with plenty of discard to see what happened when Greg's hand wasn't full.  He used his 2nd and 3rd abilities about 1/3 of the time each when able, as expected.  However, though he had plenty of opportunities, he never used his 1st ability under any circumstances.  Bug, or deliberate feature?  You can judge for yourself - but it's worth noting that restricting a removal effect to only be able to target opponent creatures is in line with most targeted removal in the game; if Fblthp's 1st ability was given the same constraint at some point then he might not ever use it prior to level 50.

Kinesia

Ah, yes, the card draw restriction was one I bumped into myself, wondering why I couldn't use some of my abilities when I want to. It was a good change overall for most planeswalkers.