Again: a deck of cards does not give you a "perfect spread" or "average results", unless you very specifically pull every card in the deck once in a game. If you don't, you can pull two dodges in a row, reshuffle, and then pull two dodges in a row again. Sure, there's a fat chance of that. But there's also a fat chance of that happening on dice, so what's the difference? Other than the fact that you're shoehorning in a mechanic that wasn't meant to be in the game, that is.

My understanding is that this is pretty much exactly what they would do.

How would you propose to do that? Arbitrarily end the game once an attack or defence deck runs out? Stop attacking and defending once a deck runs out?

Again: a deck of cards does not give you a "perfect spread" or "average results", unless you very specifically pull every card in the deck once in a game. If you don't, you can pull two dodges in a row, reshuffle, and then pull two dodges in a row again. Sure, there's a fat chance of that. But there's also a fat chance of that happening on dice, so what's the difference? Other than the fact that you're shoehorning in a mechanic that wasn't meant to be in the game, that is.

My understanding is that this is pretty much exactly what they would do.

How would you propose to do that? Arbitrarily end the game once an attack or defence deck runs out? Stop attacking and defending once a deck runs out?

I confess that I don't really understand your question. They would run through the entire deck (in this case, say, twelve cards, two for each die side). Once they had used all twelve cards they would of course shuffle the deck at that point and then start drawing again.

So no, it wouldn't be a perfectly even distribution unless you happened to roll a particular die a multiple of twelve times over the course of a game. But it would be more consistently even than rolling an actual die, particularly given the smallish sample size of a single campaign mission's worth of rolls.

Again, I don't think that using a die deck would in any way improve the game, but it makes a whole lot of sense to use when playtesting.

Edit: Just as a bit of a thought experiment to further explain what I'm talking about, consider an example game where a white die is rolled 14 times. If you're rolling an actual die you could theoretically end up rolling the X-man anywhere from 0 times to 14 times. If you're using a dice deck you could end up "rolling" the X-man anywhere from 2 to 4 times. Which of those is better for a playtester?

And, yes, obviously rolling 14 dodges in a row is insanely unlikely. But not rolling any dodges in 14 tries? It's not likely, but it's not unheard-of. And any test that you ran where you ended up with a statistical outlier wouldn't end up giving you a whole lot of useful information, so you'd have wasted your time.

Any play tester who rolls the dice, getting more than statistically likely X-men and thinking their squad is unbeatable because of it would be an idiot.

I don't think the issue is with them being an idiot. The issue is that a game session full of statistical anomalies with their dice rolls has wasted valuable play testing time. Sure, that session isn't a complete waste, but it makes sense to curb those outlier sessions to get the most reliable information every testing session.

-ryanjamal

I don't think the issue is with them being an idiot. The issue is that a game session full of statistical anomalies with their dice rolls has wasted valuable play testing time. Sure, that session isn't a complete waste, but it makes sense to curb those outlier sessions to get the most reliable information every testing session.

-ryanjamal

No, if they thought that they are definitely an idiot.

Any play tester who rolls the dice, getting more than statistically likely X-men and thinking their squad is unbeatable because of it would be an idiot.

But how do you measure how statistically unlikely the die rolls are? Stop after every roll and record the results, then spend a couple hours after the game doing some statistical analysis to figure out that you rolled 23% above average in that game? No, that wouldn't be a wast of time at all....

Sure, a dice deck can still give rise to some statistical anomalies, but they are going to be less than rolling actual dice can produce. If your playtesting a game and end up rolling 6 x-wings in a row (or 6 three blocks, or whatever) then you haven't learned anything about the overall balance of the fame, you've just wasted an hour or more of valuable time be that game told you nothing of value to a play tester.

Keep in mind, the goal is not to just compensate for extreme runs of the extreme results, but to compensate for extreme runs of ALL the results. Even if an anomaly occurs and you get 4 x-wings in a row with the deck, you know that you didn't get 4 in a row of any other result and so those turns aren't a complete waste. Besides, with such an obvious anomaly, they can probably back up a few turns, reshuffle the deck and go again, instead of replaying the whole game from the beginning.

I don't think the issue is with them being an idiot. The issue is that a game session full of statistical anomalies with their dice rolls has wasted valuable play testing time. Sure, that session isn't a complete waste, but it makes sense to curb those outlier sessions to get the most reliable information every testing session.

-ryanjamal

No, if they thought that they are definitely an idiot.

-ryanjamal

I don't think the issue is with them being an idiot. The issue is that a game session full of statistical anomalies with their dice rolls has wasted valuable play testing time. Sure, that session isn't a complete waste, but it makes sense to curb those outlier sessions to get the most reliable information every testing session.

-ryanjamal

No, if they thought that they are definitely an idiot.

Ha ha, I see we're closer to reaching a consensus.

-ryanjamal

One step at a time lol