Did some statistics on the Lando Crew C-3PO Crew combo to answer someone's question about Lando Crew on the Ghost and it turned into enough material for its own thread.

Lando himself isn't a terrible crew option.

14% of nothing at all.
19% chance of a single focus token.
28% of a single evade token.
19% chance of focus AND evade.
6% chance of double focus.
14% chance of double evade.

Bunch of meaningless numbers? Let's express it, in true Cloud City fashion, as a roulette wheel (or a pie chart at least).

Lando's a gambler, and when you use his ability he spins the wheel. Hit pale green, you break even. Hit red, and you just wasted your action. Hit green and you got a bonus action out of this.

The Ghost makes a lot of attacks and thus likes a good supply of focus tokens. As a zero agility ship it's also going to get a lot of value out of Evade tokens. Whether or not Lando will earn his keep is a gamble, but his chances of making things worse aren't that bad.

It's also interesting on the Falcon, which with one agility die will get more defensive use out of the focus, even though it doesn't get any offensive use out of them. PTL, Kanan, Lando and Engine Upgrade with Millenium Falcon title could be a very interesting Falcon setup. You spin the Lando wheel before choosing to PTL and what to PTL into.

Speaking of C-3PO, anyone want him to tell you the odds?

Lando uses evade dice, and thus can combo with C-3PO.

These are betting 0 evades, 1 evade and 2 evades respectively.

The Guess 2 wheel turns double evade into triple evade, which given how unlikely that is to show up isn't really worth the 6 point 2 slot expenditure of Lando and C-3PO.

Guess 0 and Guess 1 are a very different story. C-3PO only interacts with the Evade results. This makes him more than just insurance on Lando: he stacks with focus results. The whole of Lando and C-3PO is greater than the sum of its parts: C-3PO can either make Lando a safe bet or raise the reward without raising the stakes over the basic Lando.

With the 0 evade guess, you're guaranteed an evade. Focus and Double Focus become Focus Evade and Focus Focus Evade respectively. The zero approach is no risk with good chances of bonus tokens.

This turns Lando into an Evade action with a better than 50% chance for bonus tokens. Better (or worse, depending on your side of the table) still, this doesn't count as an evade action, meaning it and Evade can stack if you've got double action economy going.

You can still gamble by betting on 1 evade, which gives you this wheel.

The dead zone is back, but your chances for double tokens are much better too. Combine this with a PTL/Experimental Interface setup on a Falcon to stack with the Evade action and you've got decent chances of triple evade. If you don't, there's a good chance you'll get a lot of Focus Tokens to make your attacks hurt. Yes, raising the stakes over guessing zero means you might get nothing at all, but your opponent doesn't know when your ridiculous defense is going to drop either which hampers their ability to capitalise on it. The Ghost can also do this with Experimental Interface or Squad Leader.

I've been running something like this recently...

Lando might be my favorite crew member. Bit of a gambler in me as well, I suppose.

It's nice to see it all mapped out like this though, its changed my perspective a bit :-D

I love Lando, but he always drops the multiball when there are limited combat options and when you need him most loves to drop the goose egg.

every

friggin

time

This deals getting worse all the time.

Excellent thread, thanks.

I had been kicking this same idea around, thanks for the visualization!

I need to revisit Lando with goldenrod.

The last time I ran Lando I blanked 3 times in a row. I put him back in my binder and haven't touched him since.

Excellent thread, thanks.

Agreed. Thank you for putting the time into this clear explanation.

I ran him the first time about two months back and never failed to give a focus or evade result. This was the same night that Han the Nerf Hearder got smoked in three rounds of combat.

But...but...

But...but...

Consider Double Recon Kanan, vs Lando/3Po Kanan

3 different attacks get reduced by 1/2 of a hit each, 3/4 if they had focus. Best case is 2 1/4 damage prevented. 2 ship list, that drops to 1 1/2 with focus

With guess 0, you've got a better than even chance of getting 1 1/2 (1 3/4 with enemy focus) or better

This is an excellent thread, thank you Blue Five

But...but...

But but....1 or 0 green die on falcon/ghost....such a defensive eyeballs. We talk about evades mostly here.

I was thinking about Attack Shuttle with ezra PtL and Lando. Unless i blank out, worst result is eye+evade and considering ezra's ability...

I've always liked Lando, but the visual representation makes him far more appealing.

Pairing Lando with Jan Ors also gives a good chance of double evade. Combined with Experimental Interface and the evade action you're getting 2-3 evade tokens per turn.

I like the thread a lot, but would like to raise a few caveats and counterpoints.

Lando on Offense

Lando is not a good upgrade if you're planning on buffing the Ghost's offense. You spend three points, and--because only focus tokens are useful on offense--you have an average of 0.5 focus tokens per use, and just a 44% chance of generating anything at all. If you need that token, you certainly don't plan around a 44% chance.

Lando on Defense

Okay, but those evade tokens sure are useful on defense! Or they would be, except the VCX-100 already has the evade action in its action bar. So really, in order to be worth taking Lando needs to be better on defense than the evade action, and the difference needs to be large enough that he's worth three points.

But he isn't. The average number of evades generated by Lando alone is 0.75, with just a 61% chance of getting at least one evade token. And since you can't use focus tokens for the Ghost's defense very often, you can't afford for that to be the only defense you get in the round.

Lando and Threepio

A huge part of that reliability issue, especially on defense, can be mitigated by combining Threepio and Lando. As your charts correctly indicate, you can raise the floor by picking 0, and raise the ceiling by picking 1. But that's a minimum of 6 points and two crew slots (or, worse, 9 points and two crew slots and a modification slot and a stress for Lando + Threepio + Experimental Interface + evade action). You can run Recon Specialist + Jan Ors for 5 points and the same two crew slots, and get focus + evade every turn, for instance.

So what is Lando good for?

I think you buried the lede on this one. Basically, the answer is that you want to use Lando almost exclusively because of Experimental Interface. Most of the usual cheats that get you outside the usual action economy (e.g., Push the Limit) aren't available to the Ghost because it lacks an elite talent slot. Experimental Interface is available, but only works on upgrades with the "Action:" header, and Lando is one of the few Rebel options right now that generates extra tokens using that header.

So while I don't think he's bad, exactly (he's no Expose, which is ironic because the Ghost is one of hte few ships that could legitimately get a lot of use out of Expose), I think I'd put him in the "cautious/advanced" category. There's very little reason to run him without EI, and if you're already running those two upgrades, it's easy to justify also bringing Threepio in order to smooth out the results. But be careful, because as noted that's 9 points and three slots and a stress token to get rid of every round: it provides fairly impressive mitigation, but the opportunity costs and activation costs can be tough to pay.

Will now officially try and build a Ghost without Zeb+Rec Spec... (though I'm not quite sure I can give up the AC+ABT).

The fact that Lando goes well on the Ghost says so many great things about the strong connection this game has between theming and gameplay.

Pair Lando+Threeps with Lone Wolf for fun & profit?

Lando on DefenseOkay, but those evade tokens sure are useful on defense! Or they would be, except the VCX-100 already has the evade action in its action bar. So really, in order to be worth taking Lando needs to be better on defense than the evade action, and the difference needs to be large enough that he's worth three points.But he isn't. The average number of evades generated by Lando alone is 0.75, with just a 61% chance of getting at least one evade token. And since you can't use focus tokens for the Ghost's defense very often, you can't afford for that to be the only defense you get in the round.

Kannan's ability is a nice defensive bump for the Ghost, and provides a fair bit of flexibility. The question in my mind: is reducing the number of incoming dice better damage mitigation for a zero agility ship than removing a single positive result?

This obviously ignores cases like Omega Leader where you can spend the focus to reduce the attack, but can't spend the evade token.

(Wait! Is that true? Is Kannan's ability a die modification? Is this in the FAQ?)

Incidentally, here are the Lando odds (where E=Squiggle, F=Eyeball, and W=Blank):

EE=9/64

EF=12/64
FF=4/64

Total for 2 Tokens: 25/64

EW=18/64

FW=12/64

Total for 1 Token: 30/64

WW = 9/64

Total for 0 Tokens: 9/64

The odd-distribution for Evades are identical to the odd-distribution for Whiffs, so reverse the order for stacking with Threeps (e.g. Bet 1 evade for your likeliest result)

Lando on DefenseOkay, but those evade tokens sure are useful on defense! Or they would be, except the VCX-100 already has the evade action in its action bar. So really, in order to be worth taking Lando needs to be better on defense than the evade action, and the difference needs to be large enough that he's worth three points.But he isn't. The average number of evades generated by Lando alone is 0.75, with just a 61% chance of getting at least one evade token. And since you can't use focus tokens for the Ghost's defense very often, you can't afford for that to be the only defense you get in the round.

Kannan's ability is a nice defensive bump for the Ghost, and provides a fair bit of flexibility. The question in my mind: is reducing the number of incoming dice better damage mitigation for a zero agility ship than removing a single positive result?

This obviously ignores cases like Omega Leader where you can spend the focus to reduce the attack, but can't spend the evade token.

(Wait! Is that true? Is Kannan's ability a die modification? Is this in the FAQ?)

Kannan's ability is not a die modification. You're not changing the results of the die, you're preventing it from existing in the first place.

Its just like Wedge's ability, but in reverse.

Kannan's ability is a nice defensive bump for the Ghost, and provides a fair bit of flexibility. The question in my mind: is reducing the number of incoming dice better damage mitigation for a zero agility ship than removing a single positive result?

Generally, an evade token is better than Kanan's ability. Removing a die before rolling means removing (depending on the context) 0.5 to 0.9375 hit results; removing a successful result after rolling always removes exactly 1 result. The advantage in Kanan's ability comes with the fact that it's a lot easier to end up with multiple focus tokens (Kyle pilot, Kyle crew, Garven, Esege, and most importantly Recon Specialist) than it is to end up with multiple evade tokens.

I think the only pilot I would take Lando, EI and C3PO is Kanan, since he can make use of all the focus tokens. Plus, you can EI focus+lando or evade+lando depending on the situation.

However, as others have pointed out, being limited to green maneuvers is a big deal on a large ship with an arc. even if you get Advanced Sensors (which has its own cost by giving up the other systems which are more useful on a VCX) and shed the stress on the same turn, all it takes is somebody to hand you a stress token and all your action economy is gone.

Kanan with 2 recspec has the same problem with enemies denying you actions, but at least you're not stressing yourself. Plus those focus tokens you can always use them at protecting a different ship (assuming you're in range), while all the evades from Lando might be wasted if they are focusing another ship.

So yes, Lando, EI and C3PO can make you rather tanky, and if it's 1 vs 1 ship at the end game it might be good, but the cost is significant and I am not sure it's worth it.

Kannan's ability is a nice defensive bump for the Ghost, and provides a fair bit of flexibility. The question in my mind: is reducing the number of incoming dice better damage mitigation for a zero agility ship than removing a single positive result?

Generally, an evade token is better than Kanan's ability. Removing a die before rolling means removing (depending on the context) 0.5 to 0.9375 hit results; removing a successful result after rolling always removes exactly 1 result. The advantage in Kanan's ability comes with the fact that it's a lot easier to end up with multiple focus tokens (Kyle pilot, Kyle crew, Garven, Esege, and most importantly Recon Specialist) than it is to end up with multiple evade tokens.

esege only works when attacking, so not with Kanan