5 pages on THIS?

Hey, I tried to make it a better conversation, rather than just dice-whining. What do you have?

More musicals.

1) The more skilled you are, the less the dice will matter in your games. That's because you will factor in the balance of probabilities.

So I guess we need to define exactly what 'skill' is when it comes to X-wing. It would seem that skill has some measure to do if you win or lose a game. However, winning a game does not mean you have skill.

I know a lot of newer players I've taught who have certain skills but cannot beat me because I have more experience. So winning and experience come into play for our definition.

So a working definition would be something like:

The ability to win on a continual basis due to past experience/knowledge of the game.

Skill is divided into several subsets:

Listbuilding.

This is where the game starts before it starts. I know you've mocked it in the past, but listbuilding is a critical skill for X-wing players as they can influence exactly the one thing this thread is about: The dice. A list of only Academy pilots rolls a lot of dice a turn. A list with Academy pilots and Howlrunner can reroll a lot of those dice, increasing your chance to hit and decreasing your chance to miss. Wedge reduces the amount of dice your opponent rolls when defending, Admiral Chirno turns eyeballs into crits, gunner gives you a second chance and so forth. And that's just influencing the dice. Lists can also be build to hinder your opponent, make ships tough as nails to shoot down, be nearly impossible to target, the list goes on and on. Listbuilding is an essential skill when playing this game.

Target priority

You are not playing in a vacuum. Your opponent will be building lists as well. Determining which craft are most critical for his list, or perhaps which will crumble first, is as important as building your own lists. A Howlrunner swarm without Howlrunner will be doing a lot less damage than a Howlrunner swarm with one less Academy pilot. Of course, Howlrunners also tend to be well protected, so picking the right ships to take him down is important as well.

Estimating range.

Unfortunately one of my lesser skills, the ability to judge the range between your craft and an opponent's craft can mean the difference between getting into an unshakable range 1 position and crashing into its rear. Many a game has been won or lost based on whether someone accurately estimated the range and which manoeuvre to take. Of course, your opponent can heavily influence this skill, which leads us to:

Anticipating your opponent.

Just as you are trying to outmanoeuvre your opponent is also making manoeuvres to try and beat you. Anticipating where your opponent is going to move his ships is essential in staying out of his firing arcs, but keeping him within yours. All of this eventually leads to:

Thinking ahead multiple turns.

It's one thing to react to your opponent as he is doing his actions. It's another to anticipate what he's going to do next. But guessing what his plan for the next three turns is? That's another step further. Yet, the truly skilled players tend to have a plan that goes several turns beyond the one they're in now. And for all those turns they're thinking ahead, they're estimating ranges, anticipating what their opponents are doing and where they will be, which craft to target first and with which fighters they can best be killed.

All of these are skills that can be learned. Can dice still foil someone with all these skills? Sure. But the nature of randomness means that someone with these skills has a far better chance than someone without.

Stop feeding the trolls people. Skill will always be more important than dice. You either understand this or have a closed mind. Sure there are those games where you fly your opponent equally, and it comes down to dice, but those are few are far between. Suck it up and stop making sky is falling etc. threads.