@Netace, I completely disagree with almost your entire stance on dice; though not, necessarily, the statements you made.

Your descriptions is exactly why I never cared for 40k, the game of: "let's just dice off and see who wins!"

I've always preferred Fantasy due to the movement phase and positioning being more important than dice: Armada very much mirrors fantasy over 40k, and X-Wing vice versa.

You state that you can't not take hits if you can shoot in Armada. That's very misleading imo. Sure, but you can also get two shots off when they get one; you can trade a 5black3red for a 2red1blue attack; etc.

X-Wing's movement phase is gorgeous; but the core of the game is about dice-offs and there is simply no side-stepping that case. I roll around with 8health 1agility ships due to this factor, and I can still just melt if they roll well regardless.

In Armada, you can always respond. You can always plan. You can mitigate damage reliably (If you consider their armaments that might limit you: XI-7s for instance).

What's more, there are many more ways to curb random chance in Armada. I have seen my "devastating" victory front arc shot bounce off and do nothing...hence I have loaded her to the nines with rerolls, extra dice, and a turbo to mitigate enemy tokens when dice don't go my way and give accuracies I might need.

So yes, dice are important, that much is obvious. However, Armada is, in my estimation, the absolutely best disigned dice game to reward good play and mitigate the kinds of absurd events that can stem from 40k or X-Wing dice-offs.

Did dice decide the ultimate fate of the flagship that game? Yes. But it's the previous turns of positioning and movement that the ships there in the first place.

Perhaps it's a matter of PoV, but I disagree. Dice didn't decide that game, they did what dice do, put a random element into the game.

I guess from my perspective... Dice can rarely ever lose a game, because it requires poor planning and play on my part for random chance to matter that much.

Which isn't to say it can never happen. If your ISD II throws 48 dice and gets a total of 4 hits out of it... then there is truly little you can do.

Seeing a lot of folks talking about games coming down to a few bad dice rolls as a bad thing, which surprised me. I've always seen that as evidence of a tight game where both players were evenly matched. Thoughts?

If you don't like dice, play games without chance. If you want to play games without chance, you play Diplomacy. If you play Diplomacy, you lose all your friends. Want to keep your friends? Play Armada!

Hahaha Diplomacy. The best game ever IMO. I understand you. Id played diplomacy for a long time (and I still in) and dice make me cry sometimes but who cares. Nothing like throw amount of dice that I can't keep in my hand, well nothing but wins with Italy

We tried it once in college. Didn't last a full round.

"The Dice decide things only rarely"

"Coming down to a dice roll is a sign of a close, even game"

I contest these points. Dice are how things are decided.

This is a lot easier to demonstrate in larger games, so let me start somewhere else, and work my way back to Armada:

Er, sorry, when I said "Close, even game" I meant the two players were matched well, it was not intended as a comment on Armada as a whole. Hazard of communicating via text.

There are quite a few cards that mitigate the effects of luck, Leading Shots, SW-7 Ion Batteries, Screed, Lando, Home One, Turbo Laser Reroute Circuits, Ordinance Experts and Darth Vader to name a few.

So, if luck isn't going your way change it.

Without getting too in depth with analysis of probabilities and so on... because I truly hate that level of crunchiness in my tabletop games... I can say this:

In my experience, any given game of Armada is decided by the admiral that A.) Has the best plan and B.) Executes that plan the best.

Whether that plan is to put as many dice on the board and on the enemy as possible out of a few arcs, or to put a smaller number of dice spread across more arcs, or to play to the objective, or to flank... is irrelevant. It's the fact that they HAVE a plan and they understand their ships well enough to adapt that plan to the changing board conditions.

A good plan will take into account the randomization of the dice and, in the case of Armada, the fact that different dice have a different probability of doing different things at different ranges, particularly when combined with upgrade cards.

Dice can slow a plan down. Dice can speed a plan up. Dice can drag a game out. Dice cannot make/break a plan, and dice cannot decide the outcome of a game wholesale.

The ONLY time I've EVER seen dice truly decide who wins a game is when two players are both closely matched and playing flawlessly (or at least making an equal number/level of mistakes).

It is really this fact more than any other that has left both 40k and X-Wing being underplayed, for me at least.

There was one time when a my opponent played very well and destroyed every ship I had except a lone CR90 that was on the run. He had 3 VSDs with no squadrons. Due to the spanking I was taking and the turmoil that comes along with that I had done extensive damage to all 3 three of his VSDs and began concentrating on his flag ship. I was down to my last roll of the game, a single x-wing squadron. I rolled against a his flagship with two hull and Admiral Motti. HIT/HIT, Motti was destroyed and started a chain reaction that destroyed his two escort... Que "Yub Nub" and the oppressed masses started celebrating.

This was not the only situation like this I have had. several times games have come down to the last roll of the game.

several times games have come down to the last roll of the game.

But again, that wasn't due to the last roll of the game. The last roll simply let you capitalize on what you had already done.

If you hadn't damaged his flagship to that extent, the lone X-Wing wouldn't of done anything.

Oh and there was another game where I was playing as rebels and wanted to skirt the edges of the board staying out of blue dice range. By the end of round 4 I had only managed to roll 1 hit with three ships.... needless to say I jumped to Hyperspace to fight another day.

There are quite a few cards that mitigate the effects of luck, Leading Shots, SW-7 Ion Batteries, Screed, Lando, Home One, Turbo Laser Reroute Circuits, Ordinance Experts and Darth Vader to name a few.

So, if luck isn't going your way change it.

It is worth noting that a re-roll grants you the same chance of rolling poorly as the original roll did.

@Bitharne

I also stopped playing warhammer awhile ago. I probably could have really gotten into Fantasy, except my beloved bretonians continued to languish in the corner, equipped with key items that did nothing.

Anyway....I am sorry you disagree, but I'm thrilled that you see where my point is coming from. Looking through your post, I am struggling to see where you refute me. I will concede my points about X-Wing to you, but I am going hold onto my assertion about Armada. It is true that you aren't rolling opposed the way you are in most other wargames. But in a way, this simply re-emphasizes that a lucky roll from the opponent could render you helpless, and without recourse.

Then again, perhaps it might be better said that the dice DON'T decide who wins, but rather dictate how the game should play out. If you have your plan of action, and you do that, the Dice will decide if that action goes well, neutrally, or poorly. Based on that feedback, you then decide if you press your advantage, fall back into a more conservative flight pattern, or maintain the status quo for more input.

A well designed game provides you agency. As well-designed games, Armada and X-Wing give you that agency. I think everyone can agree that it matters more what you do than how you roll. .....I'm going to keep my lucky token in my pocket all the same

Play enough games of Armada and you'll have all kinds of stories.

You'll have games where the dice hardly matter and you trade blows evenly, forcing the best moves/activations to win.

and you'll have others where someone lands an absolute monster salvo at the right moment which changes the outcome.

You'll find similar responses here and in the X-wing forums. The general notion is that skill/ability will mitigate dice. Even x-wing with its hated green dice, can demonstrate that a good player will seek a list and make moves that mitigate the risk inherent with dice.

X-wing can be frustrating, because you can make a killer move and have a ship dead-to-rights, roll a sick amount of hits only to have those green dice take it all away. In your head, you're thinking "but that ship *SHOULD* be dead!".

You can sometimes have similar happens in Armada, although less frequently. But i've seen Star Destroyers toss out 9 dice and get 3 hits and no accuracies. Lord Vader would not be pleased.

Then again, perhaps it might be better said that the dice DON'T decide who wins, but rather dictate how the game should play out. If you have your plan of action, and you do that, the Dice will decide if that action goes well, neutrally, or poorly. Based on that feedback, you then decide if you press your advantage, fall back into a more conservative flight pattern, or maintain the status quo for more input.

A well designed game provides you agency. As well-designed games, Armada and X-Wing give you that agency. I think everyone can agree that it matters more what you do than how you roll. .....I'm going to keep my lucky token in my pocket all the same

I disagreed with your first posting.

I do not disagree with this.

I would, however, add an infantile "Neener neener, Armada is better than X-Wing" plug, and possibly dance a little jig.

Did dice decide the ultimate fate of the flagship that game? Yes. But it's the previous turns of positioning and movement that the ships there in the first place.

Perhaps it's a matter of PoV, but I disagree. Dice didn't decide that game, they did what dice do, put a random element into the game.

I guess from my perspective... Dice can rarely ever lose a game, because it requires poor planning and play on my part for random chance to matter that much.

Which isn't to say it can never happen. If your ISD II throws 48 dice and gets a total of 4 hits out of it... then there is truly little you can do.

Which part do you disagree on? The part where I said correct maneuvering was essential to make it happen in the first place?

I mean, I guess I could have moved like a complete idiot, but I doubt I would have won. Hence the nature of the thread, dice isn't everything.

Imho, dice simulate a chance aspect that is present in 'real' battles, but not in miniature wargames. I.e. you won't loose an Armada match because your Admiral gets assassinated by his bodyguard mid battle, nor will a stray starfighter kill all the senior bridge officers. And if you need real world examples, remember that air-launched torpedo that by chance struck the Bismarck's rudder causing it to be pretty much defenseless later on? Aside from a very complicated ruleset, dice are the only way to simulate the chance aspect involved in any real battle. Therefor I like it. Yes occasionally (rarely though) it will cost or win you the match, but this is part of the fun. No matter how great your tactical genius, lady chance may still ruin your day.

Imho, dice simulate a chance aspect that is present in 'real' battles, but not in miniature wargames. I.e. you won't loose an Armada match because your Admiral gets assassinated by his bodyguard mid battle, nor will a stray starfighter kill all the senior bridge officers. And if you need real world examples, remember that air-launched torpedo that by chance struck the Bismarck's rudder causing it to be pretty much defenseless later on? Aside from a very complicated ruleset, dice are the only way to simulate the chance aspect involved in any real battle. Therefor I like it. Yes occasionally (rarely though) it will cost or win you the match, but this is part of the fun. No matter how great your tactical genius, lady chance may still ruin your day.

Fair point.

The likelihood of impossible things occurring increases exponentially based on the number of shots being fired at any given time.

Stories abound of crap like this during wartime. My mind goes to one of the frogmen teams clearing tank traps from beachheads prior to the Normandy invasion.

Guy crawled up the beach under heavy fire, rigged explosives, got back to a safe distance, was preparing to detonate... and had ALL of the fingers on his right hand severed by a single bullet, dropping the detonator into the ocean.

I see the random element of the dice representing the fact that I, as a commander, am depending on gunnery crews and deck officers to execute my commands.

Imho, dice simulate a chance aspect that is present in 'real' battles, but not in miniature wargames. I.e. you won't loose an Armada match because your Admiral gets assassinated by his bodyguard mid battle, nor will a stray starfighter kill all the senior bridge officers. And if you need real world examples, remember that air-launched torpedo that by chance struck the Bismarck's rudder causing it to be pretty much defenseless later on? Aside from a very complicated ruleset, dice are the only way to simulate the chance aspect involved in any real battle. Therefor I like it. Yes occasionally (rarely though) it will cost or win you the match, but this is part of the fun. No matter how great your tactical genius, lady chance may still ruin your day.

Hear, hear.

I learned a long time ago that the best chances I have a winning a DICE game is to maximize the chances I have to throw more dice at the opponent and decrease the chances he has to do that against me. That's why positioning is so important in most table-top games, X-Wing, 40K, Armada included.

Sometimes the dice sucks, but yeah that's part the game. Unlike other games, at least Armada gives you upgrades that you can buy to modify these unwanted results (more so than other games I'd say).

Let's try and talk about this objectively.

1. If you've read Playing to Win, or the Art of War, you'll notice a few things. Playing to Win says that a good player knows what his odds are. He doesn't put much to a toss up. He has back ups to ensure any chances under 90% surety.

An example of this that I do: My opponent's Demolisher was going to kill my lead conga ship.. until I blocked his path with a boxing. Instead he flies around me to get a last shot. Ends up with Glad having no shields and 2 hull left.

My first AF mostly blanks. No big deal.

I had two back up plans: My second AF could fire on him with his front guns, sacrificing 2ackbar dice on his other shot, while gaining 2 red on the front shot. I could also ram him with the second AF. (Which I ended up having to do.) Yet another final hope was I could intel Dash out to try and do 1 more hit.

Either way, he was likely going to have a really hard time trying to turn around.

There are so many chances in my plan to kill him that there is basically no gambling.

Art of War makes this strong piece of advice: If you enter a battle, you should KNOW before it begins that you will win it. That means practice. Plan for backups. Etc.

2. Armada is funny enough actually strongly dependent on dice in my opinion. Even more than Xwing: In Xwing, by good flying: you should assure you always have a F or TL. This is rule1. By adding the extra dice mods, it tends to give you abilities to increase your dice hits by a significant margin compared to simple bad luck naked rolls.

In Armada, we have very few dice mods, most of which require you to list build into. Generally, you are rolling naked dice. You probably only have 1 turn where you even have a conc fire token.

Conc fire dial and token are basically at best 1 extra and 1 reroll. This is like Predator on a 6dice roll. Its not great really.

Even though the odds are about the same for Xwing: 6/8 sides are a hit, in general, we are looking to get the better sides: the doubles, the crits etc. tons of accuracies also suck. So in general, I'd say that Armada dice ARE worse in the naked sense, compared to Xwing Focused dice.

The take away from this is that every list should have dice mod built in. On my fighter lists, I will sometimes take Screed, simply because he's a cheaper admiral and he makes my ships punch harder in conjunction with expensive fighters, where I can't afford strapping ordnance experts to every ship.

On all my black dice ships, I tend to take ordnance experts.

On red dice ships, I tend to try and add XI7s.

Every list should have a Plan A for when to store a Conc fire token. (Though I note that as opponents get better neither of us is capable of even using a SINGLE turn to store one since we have to react so hard to each other. Navigates and Repairs and Squadrons instead. And when I finally reveal a Conc fire, it tends to be during combat already, and becomes a dial instead of a token. this type of reactive play is Plan B, which I now execute most of the time, as my opponents get better.)

I see the random element of the dice representing the fact that I, as a commander, am depending on gunnery crews and deck officers to execute my commands.

This very much works for me. The [literally] largest difference between an Admiral telling his crew to fire and a Planeswalker launching a fireball is a chain of several thousand people - one might have had too much last night.

I don't buy that X-wing's dice are less random than Armada's. If anything, I'd say the opposite is true. The difference, however, is how the two games approach dice modification.

A lot of x-wing centers around dice modification, as FickleGreenDice can tell you (Although, quite frankly, he doesn't trust naked red dice any more these days*). While some of that is done during list building, most of the dice modification is interactive (unless you're Rear Admiral Chiraneau). The bulk of dice modification is gained through actions- This in turn makes taking more actions and making better use of them a huge focus in X-wing. And there are lots of ways to affect your opponent's actions- Blocking, obstacle placement, Stress mechanics, etc.

Pretty much all dice modification in Armada is the result of list building. Apart from obstruction, there's not a huge amount I can do to stop my opponent from using Admiral Screed or Leading Shots. The thing is, though, the actual odds of success are about the same in both games. A modified attack in X-wing has an expected damage return of .75 per dice**, but in most cases this comes at the cost of not getting to modify your defense dice. Naked blue and red dice have the same average damage return in armada, while Black dice actually have a higher damage return. And unless you're using Vader to force multiply your attacks, improving the odds of your dice rolls in armada has absolutely no affect on your defenses.

So, from a raw numbers point of view, I think armada is actually less random. However, because we have fewer ways to modify the dice, when rolls don't go our way, we feel more powerless- whereas an X-wing, you can frequently look back in the turn and see how you could have gotten another force multiplier or blocked access to one of your opponent's force multipliers. At least that's my perception.

*Disclaimer: I do not know FGD in real life, just in case anyone (including potentially him) was confused. I just spend a lot of time on the X-wing forums, and pay special attention to his posts because I appreciate many of his insights into the game. As a result, I also see a lot of jokes about the evils of naked dice and how they're out to screw him over.

**Exempting more complicated mechanics and force multiplication stacking. But I do not have time tonight to rattle off every different die modifier in X-wing.

Without getting too in depth with analysis of probabilities and so on... because I truly hate that level of crunchiness in my tabletop games... I can say this:

In my experience, any given game of Armada is decided by the admiral that A.) Has the best plan and B.) Executes that plan the best.

Whether that plan is to put as many dice on the board and on the enemy as possible out of a few arcs, or to put a smaller number of dice spread across more arcs, or to play to the objective, or to flank... is irrelevant. It's the fact that they HAVE a plan and they understand their ships well enough to adapt that plan to the changing board conditions.

A good plan will take into account the randomization of the dice and, in the case of Armada, the fact that different dice have a different probability of doing different things at different ranges, particularly when combined with upgrade cards.

Dice can slow a plan down. Dice can speed a plan up. Dice can drag a game out. Dice cannot make/break a plan, and dice cannot decide the outcome of a game wholesale.

The ONLY time I've EVER seen dice truly decide who wins a game is when two players are both closely matched and playing flawlessly (or at least making an equal number/level of mistakes).

It is really this fact more than any other that has left both 40k and X-Wing being underplayed, for me at least.

Well said.

I see the random element of the dice representing the fact that I, as a commander, am depending on gunnery crews and deck officers to execute my commands.

This very much works for me. The [literally] largest difference between an Admiral telling his crew to fire and a Planeswalker launching a fireball is a chain of several thousand people - one might have had too much last night.

My early games of Armada saw my rear gunnery crews on any VSD suffering from severe narcolepsy. They'd get the order to fire, snap out of whatever twilek/rodian ménage à trois dream they were having, and bravely blast the hell out of empty space.

They've since had the appropriate performance reviews with Lord Vader.

It's not easy being the OiC.

At least that's my perception.

I'd say it's pretty dead on. In X-Wing if I wiff an attack roll it can be said that it was my own fault. Between Target Lock (or some other reroll mechanic) and focus, I should get 2.8 damage, 2.9 if you figure crits, so there's a lot I can do to improve my odds. I can also do a bit to lower the defenders odds.

In Armada there is no focus result, and not much that works like a TL. So you really are limited to what you roll with little chance to change it after the fact. That would make dice rolls stick out more because all you can see is how those octahedron of betrayal once more screwed you over. In X-Wing anyway, you tend to think "if only I had X".

Armada's dice are already naturally modified, relative to X-wing

even the red has a 75% chance of a useful anti-ship result, which is the same as X-wing's red dice + focus

only blue anti-squadron hits the 50/50 chance

so you have superior or the same odds to inflict damage, but X-wing then introduces the nonsense of green dice. Green dice are even more spikey, sporting only 3/8 evade faces + 2/8 focus at most. This leads to stark differences between say, the Tie Fighter and our CR-90. Our Cr-90 can survive a long range shot guaranteed, but a Tie Fighter can and will pop to **** dice regardless of how you modify. On the flipside, you can utterly deny your opponent modifiers only to have him fart out a perfect full evade roll to negate your attack.

Armada is far less dice dependent. A cr-90 that wanders into the front arc of an ISD-2 deserves to get vaporized, but a full health Tie sitting on focus shouldn't be exploding while taking and unmodified shot at range 2

add to that the fact that you roll less dice (only 1 through 4 offensive dice, compared to Armada's handful) and that Armada is now capable of plenty of modifiers (TLRC, Vader, ordnance experts, Home One, CF token + relevant officers, SW-7 ion, leading shots etc.), and yeah X-wing gets far more bull

Don't get me wrong, I love the game to death, but it's very frustrating not being able to play anything without full modifiers (or, better, Accuracy Correctors) even the least bit reliably.

In Armada, bull can still happen, but it's stupidly rare.

Imo, defense dice are an archaic holdover from Warhammer 40k (hell, Fantasy did it far better by reducing armor effectiveness through higher strength weapons) that we shouldn't be polluting our games with, and Armada gets that down perfectly

Armada's dice are already naturally modified, relative to X-wing

Sure, the issue isn't how good or bad the dice are. It's the fact that once the dice hit the table in Armada, there's little you can do to improve the result.

Imo, defense dice are an archaic holdover from Warhammer 40k

I for the most part don't like defense dice. I think Flames of War does it very well. But for a dogfighting game I think the defense roll is thematic because hit or miss is as much about how well you shoot as how well the other guy dodges.

but we already have dodging in X-wing, it just involves actual positioning and avoiding opponent firing arcs

ditto Armada, wherein you can't dodge everything but you can severely diminish the firepower you're taking

but we already have dodging in X-wing, it just involves actual positioning and avoiding opponent firing arcs

There wasn't nearly so much of that in wave 1 as there is now. Also dodging is more than just getting completely out of the ship's gunsights, it's also small jinks that mess up the shot.

I don't ever expect you to agree. But IMO defense dice makes sense in X-Wing. Although they wouldn't in Armada, I think the way they do it in Armada is very thematic.