In the Admiral thread there was some discussion regarding Dodonna and how it was hard or impossible to determine his effect on gameplay overall due to the situational aspect of the crit cards. While true that we can never have an EXACT value, we can at least do some math with some appropriate assumptions and get a rough idea of his effect. But I don't have time to do that. I DO have time to help people with the math and its not that hard. Here's the process I propose.

1) Review the crit list (first response below)

2) Determine the general situation you wish to analyze. While we can't know exact situations, certain situations commonly DO come up. Here are two worth figuring out.

2a) In a luke's pride list where you are sneaking crits through shields

2b) In a finishing scenario, where you are fishing for that last point of damage

3) Determine how you make the cut for a crit-card for each situation. Cards should either be "in" or "out" to keep things simple. Some "in" cards may occasionally come up blank in the real world, but so long as the vast majority of time they are really wanted, keep them in.

4) Go back through the crit list and determine if a crit card would be "in" or "out" for your situation.

5) Determine the odds to draw an "in" card in 1 draw where: IN = the set of cards you want

Probability of finding = IN/52

Multiply by 100 to determine a percentage of time of finding an "in" card in one draw.

6) Determine the odds Dodonna finds an "in" card for you.

Probability of NOT finding in 1 draw= (1 - (IN/52))

Prob of NOT finding in 4 draws = (1 - (IN/52)) x (1 - (IN/51)) x (1 - (IN/50)) x (1 - (IN/49))

Prob of FINDING AT LEAST 1 in 4 draws = 1 - ((1 - (IN/52)) x (1 - (IN/51)) x (1 - (IN/50)) x (1 - (IN/49)))

Multiply by 100 to determine a percentage of time of finding an "in" card in 4 draws.

7) Compare 5 with 6 to see how effective Dodonna is.

8) To see total effect. Figure out how much damage an "in" card is worth most of the time. Multiply by the difference in percentages above. Multiply that by the number of expect crits being handed out over the course of a game.

As 8 will be dependent upon your list build, we can see right away that to build around Dodonna, we want to maximize the number of crits being rolled. I'd suggest a rebel fleet with a carrier, Luke, a LOT of Y-wings, and some number of Advanced Proton Torps on MC30s.

Damage deck:

Man, this'll be tough. How do you value things like making "Dangerous Territory" almost unplayable against Dodonna as First Player?

I applaud the effort though, and will contribute where i can!

Man, this'll be tough. How do you value things like making "Dangerous Territory" almost unplayable against Dodonna as First Player?

I applaud the effort though, and will contribute where i can!

Damaged Controls would be one of those high variability cards that for most situations should be in the "out" box. If you do include "Dangerous Territory" for your objectives, then just pop DC into the in box. As for the rest of the cards, They'll probably hit a max of 1 or 2 crits from Dangerous Territory so the odds of it being defining are pretty small. But in those cases you would look for crits similar to ones where you are trying to sneak a crit through shields. The most damaging being something like "Projector Missaligned" where they could lose up to 4 shields.

I have played a lot with Dodonna. Most of the crits are highly situational, and it's very cumbersome and not very useful to know the probability of each crit you need drop at least once. Structural damage should be 50% though to get at least one (49.85% to be precise if the math is right), so you can always have a fallback of "just" doing one more damage.

For instance, a VSD-I has a double shot on my guppy with its side-back. The guppy is hurting, can't take too much damage. Coolant discharge comes up and I use it, my guppy limps away with 1HP and repairs. Would you always use this? Probably not..

Another example, I'm hitting a GSD, but I can't concentrate fire too much on it. Compartment Fire comes up, the GSD had all its tokens exhausted. Dead GSD quite soon.

I think there's a more interesting discussion you should have with yourself while playing. The crit you pick has to bring better benefits than one extra damage. That for me is the baseline.

Pretty useful toolkit there. Worth keeping in mind that as the game goes on and more cards are drawn the numbers in those Step 6 calculations would change (there's no longer the full 52 cards in the deck, and while many of those drawn will be face-down and unknown there's going to be several face-ups either in play or discarded from previous uses of Dodonna). But again, that's one of the hugely situational variables that's not worth trying to predict.

Might be worth glossing over the situational specifics and just looking at how, in general, Dodonna improves your chances of finding a result you're looking for.

Threw together a quick chart based off of your formula showing the chances of pulling at least one of the cards you want based on how many of the Crit cards are classified as "IN" for a specific situation (based on drawing from a full deck of 52):

So in situations where you're treating more than half the available Crits as IN then you're starting to eat into how useful Dodonna might be. As you'd expect, the more precise you want to be with the crits the more useful Dodonna becomes. At the lowest point (going for a single specific crit, 2 cards in 52) Dodonna jumps you from less than 4% to over 11% chance, almost tripling your chance to get that pivotal card.

Even in a more realistic situation (somewhere in the 10-20 available crits range, I'd estimate) you're still looking at doubling your chances of pulling out a relevant crit when you've got Dodonna.

8 structural damage. . . And I have not seen one on an opponents ship for 7 games. . . Bleh. . .

My list to use Dodonna to the fullest.

+++ Shrimp ala Dodanna (390pts) +++

++ Rebel Fleet (Standard) (390pts) ++

+ MC30c Frigate (342pts) +

MC30c Torpedo Frigate (102pts) [Assault Proton Torpedoes (5pts), XI7 Turbolasers (6pts), •Foresight (8pts), •General Dodonna (20pts)]

MC30c Torpedo Frigate (80pts) [Advanced Projectors (6pts), Assault Proton Torpedoes (5pts), XI7 Turbolasers (6pts)]

MC30c Torpedo Frigate (80pts) [Advanced Projectors (6pts), Assault Proton Torpedoes (5pts), XI7 Turbolasers (6pts)]

MC30c Torpedo Frigate (80pts) [Advanced Projectors (6pts), Assault Proton Torpedoes (5pts), XI7 Turbolasers (6pts)]

+ Squadrons (48pts) +

YT-2400 (16pts)

YT-2400 (16pts)

YT-2400 (16pts)

+ Objectives +

Assault Objective [Precision Strike]

Defense Objective [Contested Outpost]

Navigation Objective [Dangerous Territory]

Interesting build there Lyraeus. I think it will match up well against Imperials and probably a lot of Rebels because of the speed available. I worry about an Ackbar gunline, but I have a feeling he's going to be this wave's Screed (ie powerful and everyone and their mother is using him).

@Lyraeus: +1 Like for the name alone!

Pretty useful toolkit there. Worth keeping in mind that as the game goes on and more cards are drawn the numbers in those Step 6 calculations would change (there's no longer the full 52 cards in the deck, and while many of those drawn will be face-down and unknown there's going to be several face-ups either in play or discarded from previous uses of Dodonna). But again, that's one of the hugely situational variables that's not worth trying to predict.

Might be worth glossing over the situational specifics and just looking at how, in general, Dodonna improves your chances of finding a result you're looking for.

Threw together a quick chart based off of your formula showing the chances of pulling at least one of the cards you want based on how many of the Crit cards are classified as "IN" for a specific situation (based on drawing from a full deck of 52):

So in situations where you're treating more than half the available Crits as IN then you're starting to eat into how useful Dodonna might be. As you'd expect, the more precise you want to be with the crits the more useful Dodonna becomes. At the lowest point (going for a single specific crit, 2 cards in 52) Dodonna jumps you from less than 4% to over 11% chance, almost tripling your chance to get that pivotal card.

Even in a more realistic situation (somewhere in the 10-20 available crits range, I'd estimate) you're still looking at doubling your chances of pulling out a relevant crit when you've got Dodonna.

This is very interesting. I wasn't expecting the difference to be quite so stark. Haven't run Dodonna much myself, but after playing Precision Strike at Sullust (and being wrecked by two particularly nasty crits), I will need to explore this again. Pairing him with bomber squadrons seems like a no brainer to really tap into his crit fishing advantage.