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Your whole argument that "probabilities are irrelevant if you only try it once" is wrong. Statistics are irrelevant if you only try an experiment once.

But we KNOW the distribution that results from rolling a pair of dice. We HAVE done enough experiments to "settle it".

Similarly, we KNOW the distribution of a damage deck. We don't need to shuffle the deck, draw the top card and repeat the experiment thousands of times to figure out that, by golly, there's a 7/33 chance that I'll draw a Direct Hit!

I agree that you cannot draw statistically significant conclusions based on a small sample size. But that is totally besides the point here - we aren't doing statistics to try and figure out the distribution, we KNOW the distribution and we are looking at the probabilities that come with that distribution.

But we KNOW the distribution that results from rolling a pair of dice. We HAVE done enough experiments to "settle it".

And why do we know this again? Oh right, because we have done it enough times to verify it. (The scientific method).

Probabilities is what yield you your expectations for your statistical model.

Again let me try and explain how probabilities work, and why they are so peculiar.

The probability of rolling two dice yields a Maxwellian distribution as we talked about earlier. (Hint: a Maxwellian distribution looks like a tall hill with vertex at the highest probable event.)

This is what we expect to see with a high amount of statistical data.

Now lets take the example of Settlers of Catan i mentioned earlier. Despite the probabilities, and even despite the statistical model being consistent with 1000 games of Settlers of Catan, you can still play that many games of Settlers of Catan without having a single individual game being consistent with your statistical model.

This is exactly what I am trying to convince you of. The rule of drawing and turning all damage cards is a waste because almost no ships benefit from it, and when they do, during those unlikely scenarios even probabilities are irrelevant for the decision process unless you expect to win exactly as many games as the probability of you getting what you expect.

If I am rolling one die once, I have a 1/6th chance of rolling a six. If I am rolling two dice once, I am 1/6th chance of rolling a six on one of my dice and 1/6th chance of rolling a six on the remaining die.

Yes, I am aware of how SUM OF THE DICE works with probabilities, but this information becomes only relevant for you once you roll more dice. On a single roll, anything can happen.

To understand this you need to isolate yourself from statistical data. Imagine being 5 years old and not knowing mathematical models at all. You pick up your two dice for the first time in you life and you roll them. You get an one and a two. Unlikely but probable is NOT what you are thinking. Its just an outcome. It is only when you begin to roll these dice again and again that you learn of its Maxwellian distribution.

Yes, what you are saying is relevant in a game of poker. In X-wing, it is not due to the nature of the game. Especially the fact that X-Wing relies much more on the physical properties of the game, where as poker only rely on probabilities.

I am not denying that the probabilities exist, I'm merely trying to express that the probabilities are irrelevant and not in any way consistent to work with because they are probabilities. Its only when you have done it enough times that the probabilities stabilizes and the pattern becomes relevant. For a single game itself, it is not important information due to the nature of the game.

I'm no mathematician, but even without seeing which cards are now out of play, I understand that the remaining 28 cards is a different pool of possibilities than the 33 I started off with, when it comes to which critical hit effects my ships might suffer later in the game. It doesn't matter if I know what the odds are or if I can make use of that information. The game state has changed somewhat. Convince me that it hasn't.

What you're saying is that both of the following scenarios will yield different results?

• I shuffle a deck of cards, discard 3, then look at the top card.
• I shuffle a deck of cards, discard 5, then look at the top card.

Of course, for a given order of the cards, both scenarios yield a different result (the 4th card is not the same as the 6th card).

However, if you do this a few hundred times, you'll notice that the cards you get in both scenarios share the exact same distribution.

Discarding 2 extra cards made no significant difference.

In a similar vein, the rules tell us to deal facedown damage cards before dealing faceup damage cards. If you do this out of order, you're arbitrarily tampering with the way the game is supposed to be played. Your opponent has every right to make you flip them back over in the proper sequence -- and should.

I agree that the rules specify a certain sequence. I'm saying that it makes no difference whatsoever.

The given order of cards is established when my opponent cuts my shuffled deck, even though that information is hidden. Do you agree?

Because I don't care how things shake out over hundreds of games, any more than I care about how my die rolls or positioning average out over hundreds of games. What matters is the state of the match I'm playing.

Now lets take the example of Settlers of Catan i mentioned earlier. Despite the probabilities, and even despite the statistical model being consistent with 1000 games of Settlers of Catan, you can still play that many games of Settlers of Catan without having a single individual game being consistent with your statistical model.

Of course. You can also flip a coin 10,000 times and get 10,000 tails.

A statistical model says this is likely to happen once every 2^10000 attempts.

On a single roll, anything can happen.

Are you somehow trying to imply that, if I roll a pair of dice once, I am just as likely to get a sum of 2 than I am to get a sum of 7?

Or, if I'm playing my first game of X-Wing and draw a face up damage card, I am just as likely to get a Direct Hit as I am to get a Blinded Pilot?

Please, for your own sake, never go to Vegas.

Its only when you have done it enough times that the probabilities stabilizes and the pattern becomes relevant.

What you are speaking of is STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE, and has nothing to do with the probabilities involved with rolling dice or drawing cards since those both have KNOWN distributions.

• If you call 5 people and ask them if they prefer Chocolate of Vanilla ice cream, and 4 say Chocolate, this doesn't mean you can extend this 80/20 distribution to the whole population since your sample size is too small.
• BUT, if you've already asked everyone to fill out an anonymous survey and you learn that 75% of people prefer Vanilla, and you then call someone at random and ask them, you know that there is a 75% chance the person you chose prefers Vanilla.

When drawing cards from a deck that we know the exact contents of, we are in that second scenario, not the first.

To everyone arguing that cards dealt face-down to a ship do not alter what you know about what is in the deck, you are wrong.

Once a ship is destroyed, all of those cards are placed face up in a discard pile. Even if I don't see ALL of those cards, I WILL see ONE of them, even on a ship that took no critical hits. So, if I blow up a TIE, and see a blinded pilot card on top of the discard pile after they deal and discard, I know there's at most one left. That means the minute I see another one, either as a faceup on the pile or as a crit, I know there are no more. And if I see a third, I know somebody has a broken damage deck.

It may make no discernable difference, but watch a Magic player's reaction as their opponent up and decides to reshuffle their own deck mid-game without cause. It changes the game state, even if neither player knows the order before or after the reshuffling.

Just because the damage deck in this game is not central to play doesn't mean it's acceptable to ignore the rules about how it's used.

The given order of cards is established when my opponent cuts my shuffled deck, even though that information is hidden. Do you agree?

Because I don't care how things shake out over hundreds of games, any more than I care about how my die rolls or positioning average out over hundreds of games. What matters is the state of the match I'm playing.

Then I suppose you also don't care about the all the other probabilities in the game?

• How to optimize using C3P0 when rolling 0, 1, 2, or 3 green dice
• Are you better off taking a TL of a Focus for offense with Chiraneau
• Is Expose a better action than Focus
• Am I better off using Brath's ability to put 2 crits on a Decimator, or 4 hits
• Etc.

Because, I mean the probabilities are only relevant over hundreds of games, right?

Or do dice and cards somehow act differently?

You guys do realize that, even in Poker, a game that has probably been subject to more mathematical analysis than any other card or dice game, everyone agrees that burning cards makes no difference? And burning a card is the exact same thing as drawing extra face down damage cards.

If you do a Google search to know if this affects the odds at all, the response is overwhelmingly clear. Here's a sampling:

• No. So long as the burn cards are unknown and the shuffle is truly random they have no effect what-so-ever.
• No. The probabilities do not change in any card gave by burning cards.
• No, those cards have no significance to odds calculation.
• No effect whatsoever.
• The number of cards burned and/or dealt have zero affect on your odds.

To everyone arguing that cards dealt face-down to a ship do not alter what you know about what is in the deck, you are wrong.

Once a ship is destroyed, all of those cards are placed face up in a discard pile. Even if I don't see ALL of those cards, I WILL see ONE of them, even on a ship that took no critical hits. So, if I blow up a TIE, and see a blinded pilot card on top of the discard pile after they deal and discard, I know there's at most one left. That means the minute I see another one, either as a faceup on the pile or as a crit, I know there are no more. And if I see a third, I know somebody has a broken damage deck.

It may make no discernable difference, but watch a Magic player's reaction as their opponent up and decides to reshuffle their own deck mid-game without cause. It changes the game state, even if neither player knows the order before or after the reshuffling.

Just because the damage deck in this game is not central to play doesn't mean it's acceptable to ignore the rules about how it's used.

I know what the rules say.

I know it makes a difference once you flip those cards face up.

I'm not suggesting we ignore the rules.

I'm just arguing for the mathematical truth that discarding extra cards makes absolutely no difference to the expected outcome.

Now lets take the example of Settlers of Catan i mentioned earlier. Despite the probabilities, and even despite the statistical model being consistent with 1000 games of Settlers of Catan, you can still play that many games of Settlers of Catan without having a single individual game being consistent with your statistical model.

Of course. You can also flip a coin 10,000 times and get 10,000 tails.

A statistical model says this is likely to happen once every 2^10000 attempts.

On a single roll, anything can happen.

Are you somehow trying to imply that, if I roll a pair of dice once, I am just as likely to get a sum of 2 than I am to get a sum of 7?

Or, if I'm playing my first game of X-Wing and draw a face up damage card, I am just as likely to get a Direct Hit as I am to get a Blinded Pilot?

Please, for your own sake, never go to Vegas.

Its only when you have done it enough times that the probabilities stabilizes and the pattern becomes relevant.

What you are speaking of is STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE, and has nothing to do with the probabilities involved with rolling dice or drawing cards since those both have KNOWN distributions.

• If you call 5 people and ask them if they prefer Chocolate of Vanilla ice cream, and 4 say Chocolate, this doesn't mean you can extend this 80/20 distribution to the whole population since your sample size is too small.
• BUT, if you've already asked everyone to fill out an anonymous survey and you learn that 75% of people prefer Vanilla, and you then call someone at random and ask them, you know that there is a 75% chance the person you chose prefers Vanilla.

When drawing cards from a deck that we know the exact contents of, we are in that second scenario, not the first.

Again, I am not denying the existence of probabilities.

I'm trying to tell you that in most cases, the probabilities learned in a damage card deck in a game of X-wing are irrelevant unless you pick the exact scenario in which you have a 30% chance of drawing the card you need to win and you play it a 100 times (and are fine with only winning 30% of those games).

Just remember that probabilities are, just like all other models, exactly just that: a model.

We have the same "issues" in science based models (such as the models I use on a daily life when working with astrophysics).

They might approximate the likelyhood of events in the world, but one thing statistical models fail to do is justify the actual physical events.

They only approximate chances and can never predict what will actually happen.

This is what I am trying to explain to you. It is fine and dandy information to know that taking the red pill grants you 30% chance of dying instantly, but that is only an approximation.

Even with 99.999999% chance of winning, you can still be the one who does not.

Again, please do not misunderstand this as a failure to understand probabilities. It is not what it is. It is rather a realistic view of dynamic events of the real world, where our statistical models fail to explain the first few steps.

You keep bringing examples of research done in the field in which they verify "your explanation". What you fail to understand is that the scientific method does exactly what you want. It tries to verify through many retries if the statistical model is consistent. I am not arguing against this. I'm trying to enlighten you on the very first steps you take when researching probabilities. An accepted truth for many people who work with statistics is that the first few points of data are going to make no sense. It is because there is a failure in our statistical model to predict the first few outcomes.

This can be seen many times in X-wing as well. There are equal hit chances with TL as there is with Focus, but that doesnt change the fact that many times of doing Focus can yield the thought "****, I should have Target Locked instead! I rolled 4 blanks!".

Individual matches are not won or lost on mathematical probabilities over hundreds of games. If you get on a hot streak of dice or irrelevant crits coming your way you might win despite poor deployment or a bad matchup.

It doesn't matter to me if I'm unlikely to hit a string of four Direct Hits. When it happens, it's because that's how the deck was shuffled. I don't get my 8 hit points back because I'm statistically unlikely to have received those cards.

The initial game state matters, and playing the game by the rules changes the game state in different ways than not playing by the rules. I don't buy this Schrodinger's Cat business, since it doesn't apply to facedown cards any more than it applies to cats in boxes.

Hey guys, the reason I posted the question was that as a new player there are a ton of things to remember and do in the game. I would often minimizing what was unnecessary. This seemed like that, so I wouldn't do it. But my opponents would get very strict about it and I couldn't understand why. No one gave a convincing reason, the fact that we were all doing it wrong didn't help.

Since you are supposed to flip all the cards over afterwards.. that does give more information to a player that they could use for some decision making. There is no doubt to me on that. As a game design, I think the decisions being made there are weird and very gamey, but that's a different topic.

Thanks to everyone for helping me at least feel like I'm doing something that has a purpose when I do it, even if the reason is odd to me, at least it's not pointless.

Individual matches are not won or lost on mathematical probabilities over hundreds of games. If you get on a hot streak of dice or irrelevant crits coming your way you might win despite poor deployment or a bad matchup.

A good player if going to play in such a way to maximize their odds.

Sure, sometimes they'll lose because their opponent just got really lucky.

That doesn't make probabilities meaningless.

Edit:

And I'm done here.

I wish you all the best of luck if you ever go to Vegas.

Sure, sometimes they'll lose because their opponent just got really lucky.

That doesn't make probabilities meaningless.

It doesn't mean they're so important that you can choose to ignore the rules without it having an effect.

To everyone arguing that cards dealt face-down to a ship do not alter what you know about what is in the deck, you are wrong.

Once a ship is destroyed, all of those cards are placed face up in a discard pile. Even if I don't see ALL of those cards, I WILL see ONE of them, even on a ship that took no critical hits. So, if I blow up a TIE, and see a blinded pilot card on top of the discard pile after they deal and discard, I know there's at most one left. That means the minute I see another one, either as a faceup on the pile or as a crit, I know there are no more. And if I see a third, I know somebody has a broken damage deck.

It may make no discernable difference, but watch a Magic player's reaction as their opponent up and decides to reshuffle their own deck mid-game without cause. It changes the game state, even if neither player knows the order before or after the reshuffling.

Just because the damage deck in this game is not central to play doesn't mean it's acceptable to ignore the rules about how it's used.

I know what the rules say.

I know it makes a difference once you flip those cards face up.

I'm not suggesting we ignore the rules.

I'm just arguing for the mathematical truth that discarding extra cards makes absolutely no difference to the expected outcome.

I respectfully disagree. The discard pile is not reshuffled until after the damage deck is empty. Drawing extra cards empties the damage deck faster, putting 'used' critical cards back into the draw pile sooner. This new damage deck is not the same as the old, since any face up cards on surviving ships are known to not be in it, and any face up cards from destroyed ships are known to be in it. Only face down cards on surviving ships are 'burned'.

I respectfully disagree. The discard pile is not reshuffled until after the damage deck is empty. Drawing extra cards empties the damage deck faster, putting 'used' critical cards back into the draw pile sooner. This new damage deck is not the same as the old, since any face up cards on surviving ships are known to not be in it, and any face up cards from destroyed ships are known to be in it. Only face down cards on surviving ships are 'burned'.

That is a very valid point and I agree completely.

However, I maintain that some people here have some very wrong ideas about how probabilities work.

I respectfully disagree. The discard pile is not reshuffled until after the damage deck is empty. Drawing extra cards empties the damage deck faster, putting 'used' critical cards back into the draw pile sooner. This new damage deck is not the same as the old, since any face up cards on surviving ships are known to not be in it, and any face up cards from destroyed ships are known to be in it. Only face down cards on surviving ships are 'burned'.

That is a very valid point and I agree completely.

However, I maintain that some people here have some very wrong ideas about how probabilities work.

That is perfectly fair. You are entitled to your own opinion

This thread started to hurt my brain on page 2

Maarek Stele's ability!!

If a ship is destoyed and his ability kicks in after, whether on that ship or another it changes things! Esp if his ability kicks in at a later time! If the cards arent drawn, then it affects the cards you get to choose from!

New tactic: It's the same reasons you burn cards face-down in poker:

It's an anti-cheating mechanic.

Maybe this topic is a couple days old and I stopped reading after the first two pages but outside of simultaneous fire circumstances I see no good reason to keep drawing cards after a ship is destroyed.

While I don't think there are good reasons to draw out all the cards there are other reasons to draw the cards although most are to fill some kind of statistical use.

I guess the counter question is "why don't you want to draw all the cards called for?" It takes more time but if the fear is that you will 'run out of cards' you then just take the discard pile and reshuffle that to create a new deck to draw from. Personally, I don't see much reason to actually draw a card at anytime unless an effect is calling for a 'face-up' card at which time the card would be used and remain as it is 'known' even if turned face down again.

Well, I don't know if it's enough to convince everyone, but I personally do it because rules and for the laughs. Just taking a ship off the board is fine, and I don't complain about my opponent doing so, but I find dealing out the sometimes huge amounts of overkill strangely amusing.

stop ... beating .... dead .... Equus ferus caballus

Interesting. I didn't knew there was actually a rule asking for you to deal all damage cards. I'll keep that in mind for my next tournament, just in case. As for the casual play, I'll ask my opponent which way he prefers and abide, but I personally don't care if my opponent deal all his cards or not, sometimes he just remove the ship from play without even bothering to deal the cards and I'm okay with it.

I love that picture every time I see it!

Of course, I used to not know that horses could lie down, so when I saw the two belgian horses on the farm I live on lying in the field on their sides I was like "NOOOOO!"