I love this question, and started to write out an answer before realizing that there were several contingencies to talk about. For example:
-When do you draw the salvation/savior/Ace of Hearts card? Or do you start with it on top of the deck?
-Are you including mechanics like the Ace of Spades (put the King of Spaces back in the deck) or the Ace of Diamonds (remove a token on a 5 or 6) like in The Wretched itself, or are you just following the Wretched & Alone SRD?
-How many pulls do you have written into your game? How many pulls are you assuming will cause the tower to fall down? In a different thread, Sealed Library mentioned that they designed around ~30 pulls ending the game, so I used that as my default here.
I puzzled about ways to write an answer including all of that info, and then decided that it would be way better to have a computer do the hard work for me. So, I wrote a computer simulation to allow the user to manipulate all of the relevant variables, ran it for many, many simulations with various different settings, and came up with a few fascinating take-aways.
Before I get to any of that stuff, you can find the model, and instructions on how to run it here: https://github.com/brismithSFHS/Wretched_Alone_NetLogo Please feel free to use/manipulate this model however you would like.
Ok, now on to the lessons learned.
The rules-as-written make the game BRUTALLY hard to win, verging on impossibility. Check out this screenshot of one of my model runs:
Let me explain what I modeled here. The savior (Ace of Hearts) is NOT on top of the deck, and we're NOT using the Ace of Spades or Ace of Diamonds mechanics from The Wretched. Also, just like in The Wretched, there are 32 cards asking you to pull from the tower, 10 tokens placed on the Ace of Hearts, and we're assuming that 30 pulls from the tower will cause the tower to crash.
I ran this simulation for 1 million games. Exactly 1 of them produced a win condition. I was floored. I knew this thing was hard to win - didn't know it was THAT hard.
So, let's try to get it closer to the 50-50 win condition you originally asked about.
I tried turning on the savior- putting that card at the top of the deck. That resulted in 3 wins out of 1 million games. Not a huge improvement.
Next, I put the savior on top of the deck, and turned on the Ace of Spades and Ace of Diamonds mechanics. That got me to 288 games won out of 1 million, or about 0.03% win rate.
The tokens are clearly the most limiting factor here, so I went after them next.
With the savior mixed in the deck, both ace effects off, and 5 tokens, I got a win rate of about 0.5%
With the savior on top of the deck and both other ace effects turned on, 5 tokens yielded a win rate of about 10%.
Ok, when do we actually get to something approaching 50-50? Well, it turns out...
If you shuffle the savior into the deck and don't include any of the other ace effects, 1 token STILL only gets you about a 40% win probability. Having 2 tokens cuts the win percentage down to about 16.5%.
If you shuffle in the savior, but include both of the ace effects, with 1 token I got about a 46% success rate. 2 tokens took this one down to about 27% win rate.
In terms of stacking the deck, if you put the savior on top, don't use the ace effects, and use only 2 tokens, you get roughly a 49% win rate. This is the closest that I was able to get to 50-50.
Savior on top, both ace effects, and 3 tokens gets you about a 40% win rate. 2 tokens with those settings get you to a 65% success rate.
Anyways, please take a look at the model and mess with any of the settings you would like.
Thanks for a great question, and I hope this helps!
-Brian