It's usually the red dice that upset me the most. I do LOVE (and hate) those games where you repeatedly get shafted on important dice rolls. Where that 1 hp enemy ship has been arc dodged by my ship, only for my ship to roll 1 hit into 1 evade. Green dice stopped making me sad, as stuff dies, so you just have to focus winning with what you have (winning from behind IS pretty fun). But when you have already lost some ships, and you've calculated the path to victory, and you've set up that TL+F out of arc against a higher PS foe, and it still falls short, that's when it's amazing (upsetting).

I DO know that it happens to both me and my opponent's though, so I don't get too beat up about it anymore. Lots of games are won by even just the small dice rolls working out, those 1 or 2 extra or less damages. You just have to keep focusing on the next steps to victory if you want to win.

I mean, there are plenty of games that LOOKED like I won handily, when in fact, most my dice worked in my favor, and very few of my opponent's worked out. So I gotta expect the same will happen to me sometimes.

You don't know pain until you've rolled 6+ blanks and lost Whisper/Fel in 1 hit...

I lost Turr Phenir to a pre-nerf turbolaser blast from a CR90 once. at range 5. in one shot.

It was pre-autothrusters but still...

I once had Zeta Leader finish off both Soontir and Darth Vader alone. I would roll full hits (with rerolls) against a turtled Vader, and he would roll nothing but blanks. I was happy

It's usually green dice that hate me (I've had Whisper 'one-shotted' through an asteroid by Heavy Laser Cannons more times than I care to remember!) but at my last tournament it was my red dice that turned against me...

Flying Poe, Miranda with TLT and a TLT Stress Hog with title I rolled a grand total of 17 attack dice in one round (... a three dice attack from Poe. Two TLT attacks with Miranda and a two dice primary followed by two TLT attacks with the Y-Wing). The outcome of this 'bucket-o-dice-arama'? I took a single shield off a Kihraxz Fighter! And Poe did that in the first attack!

I've even checked all my dice to ensure that they have the right number of blank sides

careening off topic, but about crits, the funniest one was when i actually had good luck.

My opponent had a B with shields, so the crits didnt matter, but it would have been fun if it did:

Maarek with ATC lock: rolls 2 natural crits. Adds a 3rd crit.

3crits.

1.) Typically I just god roll. 1 health HWK needs to stay alive? Lol 2 evades git gud. I have more stories of stupid dice nuking my opponent for me than me getting screwed.

2.) I understand that unmodified dice are awful so when they blank out I'm not pissed.

3.) One time I had 3 B-Wings against an opponent's 3 B-Wing list. Every attack was hit and 3 blanks even after spending target locks. The game went to time with nothing destroyed. Hooray for draws lol.

4.) This whole thread is confirmation bias.

Once killed a cloaked phantom ay range three through a rock with a Headhunter.

Phantom had one shield remaining. I rolled Crit crit. He rolled nothing on six dice with a focus token. Direct hit. Boom.

Once, a sternguard squad with 2 missile launchers (the only two survivors of squad) were in the same ruins as a dark reaper exarch, so after moving. I fired "You know you need 6's to hit right?" me: yep... <two sixes later, one dead exarch>.

Another time, a devestator marine, sole survivor of his squad just got ejected from the rubble of a building. Snaps off 3 shots. 3 6's, 3 hits. then 3 1s. no wounds.

Dice man.

In x-wing i've had similar, green dice are notoriously fickle.

I remember those days. Used to fight a lot of Space Wolves with my own Marine Chapter. I loved a good brawl, so against another medium weight CC army with the same armour save, it would degenerate into a lot of futile power gauntlet slapping. Roll a bunch of hits, roll some wounds, roll all armour saves. No retreat. Do it again next round. What do you mean you're going to Tank Shock? Hell, gotta do something to break up the evil dice circle!

Me and Raynuk do the same thing, whenever we teach people to play, it's naked Xwings vs TIE swarm. It's best to learn on naked ships and learn dials and positioning before secondary cards and missiles and everything.

Except that one time we were teaching two new guys. Gave one of them 4 Red Squadron X-wings vs the generic TIE Swarm we gave the other guy....

Too bad I brain farted and only gave him 6 TIEs (3 Obsidian and 3 Academy) instead of 8 TIEs (4 of each) Didnt notice it till about halfway through the game, but the Swarm still did fairly well for only being 75 points worth!

Yup. It's one reason I don't fly TIE Interceptors any more. LOVE the things to death, but...

Store-championship-level competition last year, I had a 3x Interceptor list. Carnor Jax, Soontir, Turr. Ran against a Falcon + 3x A-Wing list, and did *glorious* job arc-dodging all over the place - totally pwning my opponent, I just kept getting shot after shot that he couldn't respond to...and none ever went through. I'd roll 4 dice, get 1 hit, he gets an evade. etc. One turn, he finally got a return shot from one of his generic A-Wings, as I'd arc-dodged out of everyone else's effective range, and he takes the shot on Carnor (with focus, and he had no tokens - no focus or TL or anything). He rolls 2 dice...gets two crits, natural. Fine. With Stealth Device, I'm rolling 4 evade dice, and I have that focus, *and* I have a hull upgrade (so four hits to kill). Roll 4 dice...all blanks. Well, @%@(*&! Okay, draw the two crits. Direct hit. Direct hit.

!!!!!!!!!!!!

Whole match went like that, it was over in something like 40 minutes, with my doing absolutely no damage to his ships at all (literally not a single shield damaged, absolutely nothing) and having lost my entire list through ridiculous freak-shots.

I probably would have picked up my models, placed them neatly back into their case without saying a word, packed up all the rest of my stuff and finally say 'Not today boys' and walk out. LOL

The sad thing is that the rest of the day was actually alright. I had a 'modified win' on my first match (it was another heavy + fighters list, that I actually would have won outright using the current scoring system, but he killed one of my Interceptors and I only managed to kill his light support ships - Dash down to one health when time was called and Soontir and Turr on the table undamaged, but there ya go...), and this was the second match that just went straight to hell. Third was another match vs a fattie list that worked the other way - I ended up with a loss, but using the new scoring would have won outright (both freighters down to 2-3 health each, and I only lost a single Interceptor). Proceed to win fourth and fifth, but 2 wins, 1 modified win, and 2 losses were not nearly enough to place with 40+ players.

Really just that one round that makes the whole day stand out in my mind, and I've not flown Interceptors since. You can do everything right, fly the perfect flanking attacks, arc-dodge nearly the entire enemy force - and a single luck shot blows away 1/3 of your undamaged list. Not okay. Not okay at all.

Regionals this year lost my elimanation match due to never rolling full hits on red dice with a focus. 5 ties and Fel, always rolled one blank. Han lived with 1 health. Now, could I blame dice? Yes seeing as I had shots on his falcon everytime. But do I? No, because I know I could of had the game if I had done a hard 3 turn instead of a 3 bank to block Han one last time. So I lost to my own error. Sure dice would of been nice, but you can usually compensate for them.

I've lost a cloaked focused phantom as well, rolling 15 blanks and one focus in a single round of firing from the opposing side. To be fair, he rolled blanks on his red as well and had to gunner both shots. So it does happen.

You roll Fel twice and roll 5 blanks in back to back games and we'll see what you say then. Haven't played him in a few months. Still my favorite Pilot, but I needed change.

Another anecdote from last week's playtime.

Flying Xizor around in formation with his mooks. Went to move Xizor... and he's just barely clipping an asteroid.

Picked up his ship to move it... and the peg came clean out of the base. The base fell off, and the pilot token came out.

Ashley quipped "that ship's falling apart".

...then the Starviper's wings fell off.

That's just the kind of thing that happens when you fly into an asteroid, I guess...