Just finished a game on vassal that I lost. Considering how skewed the dice were, it was still a pretty close game at the end.

We both had pretty average defensive dice, and my offensive dice were pretty average as well, but his offensive dice were INSANE.

He rolled a total of 31 attack dice during the game. Before any modifications, he got 14 hits, 10 crits, 7 focus, and ZERO blanks!!

That's 8.5 more hits/crits than average, which feels like even more because of how many crits he got.

Dice decide every game.

All you can do is manipulate the board via squad selection, positioning, and good tactical decisions, to try and slant the odds in your favor. Ultimately, though, it's a wargame that uses dice, and they're eventually going to be the deciding factor. Poop happens.

Well you know....

O_0

Well you know....

You should not, you really should not. Medieval Medicine went away for so many good reason.

Dice decide every game.

All you can do is manipulate the board via squad selection, positioning, and good tactical decisions, to try and slant the odds in your favor. Ultimately, though, it's a wargame that uses dice, and they're eventually going to be the deciding factor. Poop happens.

It is true that sometime random effects do affect the outcome of the game. However some pepole who are good at statistics (and a little lucky) can make the most of the randomness and come out on top. Unless you got my luck, the you are pretty much doomed .

O_0

Well you know....

You should not, you really should not. Medieval Medicine went away for so many good reason.

Fecal transplants are the frontier. For real look it up.

Can someone give us the odds of those rolls? I want to say that with 30 dice rolled the average should begin to assert itself.

Of course dice can decide a game.

You use my dice. I use my other dice.

Dice decide every game.

Dice decide every game, except for the games that the dice decide NOT to decide, which is also a decision. We think we are in control, but maybe the dice are rolling us?

Humans were invented as a means for dice to generate numbers.

Fecal transplants are the frontier. For real look it up.

Oh... oh, no, no thank you.

O_0

Fecal transplants are the frontier. For real look it up.

Oh... oh, no, no thank you.

Fecal transplants are the frontier. For real look it up.

Experimental treatment for Clostridium difficile for one.

I played a friend who used 2 defenders and Major Rhymer and I used a Slave 1, Soontir Fel, and another Interceptor pilot. Slave 1 went down in flames in two turns, Fel in 1 and the other in 1. The guy couldn't miss. Oh and he had HLCs on the defenders. Also reminds me of what happened last night during an RPG session. My fighter with his mighty Great Sword of electricity couldn't miss anything. I rolled 6 crits against both bosses annihilating the end fight. It was a 2d6 +6 weapon with a 1d6 electricity bonus. Lets not forget the damage I rolled never rolled below A 4 the whole time. SO yeah dice CAN help out a lot.

Ok, so I know the 'company' line about Vassal dice is that they are fair and balanced, and we're not supposed to complain about them... but I swear sometimes when my opponent needs to roll three evades he does without fail, but all I need is one on 5 dice and I botch it every time!

I feel your pain man. That being said I do my best to make sure the dice play as little of a factor in a game as possible, however, in some instances, dice and sway a match one way or the other.

I had a game playing Empire a while back where I rolled 3 evades on around 35 rolls of defence dice.

First shot was range 3, obstructed, on Fel who had an evade + focus and stealth. 4 dice HLC rolled Hit + Hit + Crit after modifications. Fel got Focus and 5 blanks. Spent the Focus + Evade. Crit was agility down. Next shot was A-wing at range 3, obstructed, rolls 1 crit. Fel rolls 2x Focus and 2x Blank. Draws direct hit. 10 def dice rolled and no evades....

Game went downhill from there...

Can someone give us the odds of those rolls? I want to say that with 30 dice rolled the average should begin to assert itself.

No blanks on 31 dice? The probability is 1.34 x 10^(-4), or 0.000134, or odds of 7500:1. (For reference, an American has about 3000:1 odds of being struck by lightning in his or her lifetime.)

Ok, so I know the 'company' line about Vassal dice is that they are fair and balanced, and we're not supposed to complain about them... but I swear sometimes when my opponent needs to roll three evades he does without fail, but all I need is one on 5 dice and I botch it every time!

It's not so much a company line as a statement that everyone who's run any statistical test on Vassal dice, including me, has come up with the conclusion that they're random. (Or rather we've all failed to reject the hypothesis that they're random, which is subtly but not practically different.)

I've been both the beneficiary and the whipping boy of Vassal dice, too, but at this point I still have to put it down to cognitive bias: most people who play on Vassal play more games over Vassal than they do on the tabletop, so we'll see more lopsided Vassal games than regular games. And I think it also makes a difference to have all your rolls laid out in a row where you can see how badly they failed you.

I had a game playing Empire a while back where I rolled 3 evades on around 35 rolls of defence dice.

First shot was range 3, obstructed, on Fel who had an evade + focus and stealth. 4 dice HLC rolled Hit + Hit + Crit after modifications. Fel got Focus and 5 blanks. Spent the Focus + Evade. Crit was agility down. Next shot was A-wing at range 3, obstructed, rolls 1 crit. Fel rolls 2x Focus and 2x Blank. Draws direct hit. 10 def dice rolled and no evades....

Game went downhill from there...

Note: with Auto thrusters you would have been fine!

Remember there is a X-Wing on Vassal dice analysis program:

http://sozin.pythonanywhere.com/about

I hope this doesn't come off with too much snark but...

Random chance happened in a game with dice.

Yes dice can decide the outcome of a given game, but as was pointed out in the Extra Credits video posted (Love those videos BTW.) a single game is not all that meaningful when you have random chance involved.

It seems I've brought this up in too many threads, but I played a two on two game that had our line approaching half the enemy's (we stacked one flank). We had a ton of stuff facing 3 E-wings. Most aren't in range as we approach, but 3 E-wings fire 3 times at a cloaked Phantom at Range 3. He gets 5 evade dice.....and rolls so terrible that the third shot kills him! It's not even like the attack dice were that good. He just didn't get many evades.

I had a game playing Empire a while back where I rolled 3 evades on around 35 rolls of defence dice.

First shot was range 3, obstructed, on Fel who had an evade + focus and stealth. 4 dice HLC rolled Hit + Hit + Crit after modifications. Fel got Focus and 5 blanks. Spent the Focus + Evade. Crit was agility down. Next shot was A-wing at range 3, obstructed, rolls 1 crit. Fel rolls 2x Focus and 2x Blank. Draws direct hit. 10 def dice rolled and no evades....

Game went downhill from there...

Note: with Auto thrusters you would have been fine!

Well probably not. There were a couple of range 1 Z-95s ready to finish him off. They ended up not shooting...Given my ability to roll defence dice that day I wouldn't hold any hope of him surviving.

Ok, so I know the 'company' line about Vassal dice is that they are fair and balanced, and we're not supposed to complain about them... but I swear sometimes when my opponent needs to roll three evades he does without fail, but all I need is one on 5 dice and I botch it every time!

I feel your pain man. That being said I do my best to make sure the dice play as little of a factor in a game as possible, however, in some instances, dice and sway a match one way or the other.

I've had similar happen with real dice. Like the time I managed four hits on a Phantom, including several critical hits, and my opponent managed to roll four unmodified evades. Or was it five hits and five evades? All I know is that I would have thrown my dice into the street if it didn't cost $10 to replace them.

I had a game playing Empire a while back where I rolled 3 evades on around 35 rolls of defence dice.

First shot was range 3, obstructed, on Fel who had an evade + focus and stealth. 4 dice HLC rolled Hit + Hit + Crit after modifications. Fel got Focus and 5 blanks. Spent the Focus + Evade. Crit was agility down. Next shot was A-wing at range 3, obstructed, rolls 1 crit. Fel rolls 2x Focus and 2x Blank. Draws direct hit. 10 def dice rolled and no evades....

Game went downhill from there...

Note: with Auto thrusters you would have been fine!

Well probably not. There were a couple of range 1 Z-95s ready to finish him off. They ended up not shooting...Given my ability to roll defence dice that day I wouldn't hold any hope of him surviving.

Well, having 3 hull left is far better than having zero hull left, even if you were out of tokens.

Sounds like the real issue though is letting 4 ships simultaneously get shots on Fel, with 2 of them being mooks at range 1!

Can someone give us the odds of those rolls? I want to say that with 30 dice rolled the average should begin to assert itself.

No blanks on 31 dice? The probability is 1.34 x 10^(-4), or 0.000134, or odds of 7500:1. (For reference, an American has about 3000:1 odds of being struck by lightning in his or her lifetime.)

Ok, so I know the 'company' line about Vassal dice is that they are fair and balanced, and we're not supposed to complain about them... but I swear sometimes when my opponent needs to roll three evades he does without fail, but all I need is one on 5 dice and I botch it every time!

It's not so much a company line as a statement that everyone who's run any statistical test on Vassal dice, including me, has come up with the conclusion that they're random. (Or rather we've all failed to reject the hypothesis that they're random, which is subtly but not practically different.)I've been both the beneficiary and the whipping boy of Vassal dice, too, but at this point I still have to put it down to cognitive bias: most people who play on Vassal play more games over Vassal than they do on the tabletop, so we'll see more lopsided Vassal games than regular games. And I think it also makes a difference to have all your rolls laid out in a row where you can see how badly they failed you.

According to NOAA your odds of being hit by lightning are 1/12000 over a lifetime of 80 years.

As far as the dice result, the chances of you getting any particular set of dice results for a game of x-wing are all pretty terrible, yet somehow we always finish a game.

Are we talking about chance cubes here?

Can someone give us the odds of those rolls? I want to say that with 30 dice rolled the average should begin to assert itself.

No blanks on 31 dice? The probability is 1.34 x 10^(-4), or 0.000134, or odds of 7500:1. (For reference, an American has about 3000:1 odds of being struck by lightning in his or her lifetime.)

Ok, so I know the 'company' line about Vassal dice is that they are fair and balanced, and we're not supposed to complain about them... but I swear sometimes when my opponent needs to roll three evades he does without fail, but all I need is one on 5 dice and I botch it every time!

It's not so much a company line as a statement that everyone who's run any statistical test on Vassal dice, including me, has come up with the conclusion that they're random. (Or rather we've all failed to reject the hypothesis that they're random, which is subtly but not practically different.)I've been both the beneficiary and the whipping boy of Vassal dice, too, but at this point I still have to put it down to cognitive bias: most people who play on Vassal play more games over Vassal than they do on the tabletop, so we'll see more lopsided Vassal games than regular games. And I think it also makes a difference to have all your rolls laid out in a row where you can see how badly they failed you.

According to NOAA your odds of being hit by lightning are 1/12000 over a lifetime of 80 years.

As far as the dice result, the chances of you getting any particular set of dice results for a game of x-wing are all pretty terrible, yet somehow we always finish a game.

Pretty much true!

Dice decide every game.

Dice decide every game, except for the games that the dice decide NOT to decide, which is also a decision. We think we are in control, but maybe the dice are rolling us?

Humans were invented as a means for dice to generate numbers.

weren't that the mice?

<sigh> sadly, kind of hard to roll a 42 with the x-wing dice