Mind, I am writing this as a german so have lengthly had to go through with his rise to power more than once during school.. after four or five consecutive classes with this subject, everything probably looks like nazis taking over ..

Problem was that George Lucas tried to put modern politics into the fall of the senate. To be piratical it is hard to determine when Rome moved from Republic ruled by a congregation to an Empire ruled by a Monarch. If Lucas made the story closer to the Roman story and not try to make GWB is a Militant overlord helbent on destroying democracy through hidden means it could have been a better story.

Lucas has a great talent for settings and design. But his plot and stories are just horrible.

FFG had a missed opportunity. They should have Vader discard officer cards to have him trigger his ability. Or bring up an additional commander and discard that commander to do something cool.

This won't work, and I'm glad they didn't do it this way. Just stop and consider the list-building ramifications of this... not only are you paying for Vader, but you're paying for the officers to kill just to kick his ability. Plus think about every other Admiral in the game... all of their abilities are constant. Vader works only if you buy all the officers for him to kill, and place them on every ship in your fleet. He would be useless for any list that didn't put officers on those ships. It makes him less worth it than Motti.

Vader's current ability is thematic. Vader squeezes out success at the expense of defenses. By making ships and equipment weaker on the drive to victory he is treating the fleet as expendable. Works for me.

Disagree with this. FFG already pulled this off with Moff Jerjerrod in X-Wing. Saving a ship at the price of a crew card can be cost-effective.

FFG had a missed opportunity. They should have Vader discard officer cards to have him trigger his ability. Or bring up an additional commander and discard that commander to do something cool.

This won't work, and I'm glad they didn't do it this way. Just stop and consider the list-building ramifications of this... not only are you paying for Vader, but you're paying for the officers to kill just to kick his ability. Plus think about every other Admiral in the game... all of their abilities are constant. Vader works only if you buy all the officers for him to kill, and place them on every ship in your fleet. He would be useless for any list that didn't put officers on those ships. It makes him less worth it than Motti.

Vader's current ability is thematic. Vader squeezes out success at the expense of defenses. By making ships and equipment weaker on the drive to victory he is treating the fleet as expendable. Works for me.

Disagree with this. FFG already pulled this off with Moff Jerjerrod in X-Wing. Saving a ship at the price of a crew card can be cost-effective.

It would have been more thematic but incredibly difficult, if not downright impossible to balance. The ability would have to be really strong if not game-breaking in order to offset the costs to it and to take into account that you could probably only use it once per ship and game, as you only sport a single officer slot. Smaller vessels might go without a dedicated officer alltogether, missing out on the vader-ability. Points-wise, you would have to take the average of all officers points cost into account as an additional price tag, but that would factor out that unique officers have a greater value than reflected by their mear points cost, as you can only employ them once per fleet. Sacrificing Wulff is arguably a loss greater than the 7 pts he is worth on paper, for example.

As others have said Vader benefits players that roll below average. If you normally roll above average or are in the dice gods favor then Vader won't provide much.

I don't think anybody "normally" rolls above or below average in reality. Confirmation bias might make it SEEM that way, but play enough games and it'll even out.

If not, get to Vegas ASAP!

That's not how statistics work. The entire population as a whole should roll pretty close to a perfect mathematical average, but there will of course be outliers where an individual rolls below or above that average.

It would be anomalous if there weren't outliers.

This is true for individual rolls or might be true for a handful of them, but over the course of many games your rolls will come out average as well. I think that was the point Extropia was refering to, as there is nothing like a "dice god" (*sounds of rolling thunders in a clear sky*), and there is no player that rolls below average over the course of his or her gaming life.

Nonsense. I'm not saying that it's common, but for you to say that it's not possible for a player to roll above or below average over the course of their time spent gaming is ridiculous. It's random, so there will be results that skew above and below the average, even over extended iterations. You're essentially applying the gambler's fallacy on a large scale.

If you roll low for 4 games in a row, that doesn't increase your chance of rolling high in the next four games. It's still the exact same odds as it was before, because each roll is statistically independent from the previous roll.

If you extend this out further, the same is still true. If a player rolls poorly for one hundred games in a row, that doesn't mean his odds will improve in the next hundred games. He still has the same chance of rolling high or low as before.

And because it's random, there will occasionally be outlying data when someone's average rolls over the course of a lifetime will be lower or higher that typically expected.

As others have said Vader benefits players that roll below average. If you normally roll above average or are in the dice gods favor then Vader won't provide much.

I don't think anybody "normally" rolls above or below average in reality. Confirmation bias might make it SEEM that way, but play enough games and it'll even out.

If not, get to Vegas ASAP!

That's not how statistics work. The entire population as a whole should roll pretty close to a perfect mathematical average, but there will of course be outliers where an individual rolls below or above that average.

It would be anomalous if there weren't outliers.

This is true for individual rolls or might be true for a handful of them, but over the course of many games your rolls will come out average as well. I think that was the point Extropia was refering to, as there is nothing like a "dice god" (*sounds of rolling thunders in a clear sky*), and there is no player that rolls below average over the course of his or her gaming life.

Nonsense. I'm not saying that it's common, but for you to say that it's not possible for a player to roll above or below average over the course of their time spent gaming is ridiculous. It's random, so there will be results that skew above and below the average, even over extended iterations. You're essentially applying the gambler's fallacy on a large scale.

Nonsense? Pretty harsh statement, but lets see. Yes, rolling dice by definition yields random results and yes, the results should vary according to the number of possible results. But with an increasing number of rolls, the probability to roll average over the course of ones gaming life increases, as extreme rolls (negative as well as positive) are negated by the vast number of average rolls one is getting. You might roll bad or great for a game, and heck we all know somebody who rolled bad or great during a series of games. But with the limited number of different results on usual gaming dice (d20 at best?), the number of individual rolls per game and the number of games played per life I still stand with my statement: You will roll average over the course of your gaming life, and the chances to roll perfectly average increase with the number of games you have played. Not ridiculous at all.

Record your rolls over 4 games. Let's find out.

As others have said Vader benefits players that roll below average. If you normally roll above average or are in the dice gods favor then Vader won't provide much.

I don't think anybody "normally" rolls above or below average in reality. Confirmation bias might make it SEEM that way, but play enough games and it'll even out.

If not, get to Vegas ASAP!

That's not how statistics work. The entire population as a whole should roll pretty close to a perfect mathematical average, but there will of course be outliers where an individual rolls below or above that average.

It would be anomalous if there weren't outliers.

This is true for individual rolls or might be true for a handful of them, but over the course of many games your rolls will come out average as well. I think that was the point Extropia was refering to, as there is nothing like a "dice god" (*sounds of rolling thunders in a clear sky*), and there is no player that rolls below average over the course of his or her gaming life.

Nonsense. I'm not saying that it's common, but for you to say that it's not possible for a player to roll above or below average over the course of their time spent gaming is ridiculous. It's random, so there will be results that skew above and below the average, even over extended iterations. You're essentially applying the gambler's fallacy on a large scale.

Nonsense? Pretty harsh statement, but lets see. Yes, rolling dice by definition yields random results and yes, the results should vary according to the number of possible results. But with an increasing number of rolls, the probability to roll average over the course of ones gaming life increases, as extreme rolls (negative as well as positive) are negated by the vast number of average rolls one is getting. You might roll bad or great for a game, and heck we all know somebody who rolled bad or great during a series of games. But with the limited number of different results on usual gaming dice (d20 at best?), the number of individual rolls per game and the number of games played per life I still stand with my statement: You will roll average over the course of your gaming life, and the chances to roll perfectly average increase with the number of games you have played. Not ridiculous at all.

But I think you might be missing the point here. If I completely whiff a roll. I spend a defense token to get a second chance at re-rolling. That right there already increases my odds. If I have a great game and roll well with no need for Vader he is or becomes a safety net simply ensuring if I do have a bad roll. I get a 2nd chance.

As others have said Vader benefits players that roll below average. If you normally roll above average or are in the dice gods favor then Vader won't provide much.

I don't think anybody "normally" rolls above or below average in reality. Confirmation bias might make it SEEM that way, but play enough games and it'll even out.

If not, get to Vegas ASAP!

That's not how statistics work. The entire population as a whole should roll pretty close to a perfect mathematical average, but there will of course be outliers where an individual rolls below or above that average.

It would be anomalous if there weren't outliers.

This is true for individual rolls or might be true for a handful of them, but over the course of many games your rolls will come out average as well. I think that was the point Extropia was refering to, as there is nothing like a "dice god" (*sounds of rolling thunders in a clear sky*), and there is no player that rolls below average over the course of his or her gaming life.

Nonsense. I'm not saying that it's common, but for you to say that it's not possible for a player to roll above or below average over the course of their time spent gaming is ridiculous. It's random, so there will be results that skew above and below the average, even over extended iterations. You're essentially applying the gambler's fallacy on a large scale.

Nonsense? Pretty harsh statement, but lets see. Yes, rolling dice by definition yields random results and yes, the results should vary according to the number of possible results. But with an increasing number of rolls, the probability to roll average over the course of ones gaming life increases, as extreme rolls (negative as well as positive) are negated by the vast number of average rolls one is getting. You might roll bad or great for a game, and heck we all know somebody who rolled bad or great during a series of games. But with the limited number of different results on usual gaming dice (d20 at best?), the number of individual rolls per game and the number of games played per life I still stand with my statement: You will roll average over the course of your gaming life, and the chances to roll perfectly average increase with the number of games you have played. Not ridiculous at all.

You can't look at each roll - or even each game - individually.

What is relevant is the chance of any given payer rolling consistently bad over the course of X games.

If X is low, the changes are good. When X is large, the chance is very small.

Small, but never 0 I might add. So yes, statistically there WILL be some people always rolling poorly. But my guess is that once you've played more than, let's say 10 games, the chances are smaller. At a 100 games, very small indeed.

That said, I'm not sure I like Vader. The ability to re-roll stuff is neat, but I'd rather just be lucky in the first place :-D

Like Han said: Never tell me the odds

Vader's utility is probably enhanced by the fact that in most games your opponent will focus on 1 or 2 ships (at most) at a time. The rest of your ships has tokens that are effectively not just unused, but unusable. What better way of getting them to count, than applying Vader?

After playing an Imperial Guard army in 40 know and tyranids with 30 term a aunts running devourer's, 90+ dice really do roll average