I've wrote a new article that I think you'll either love or loathe.

X Happens: In defense of the Dodge result in Imperial Assault

And as a side note, would any of you be interested in getting this image as a t-shirt?

Wouldn't it be cool if every time somebody kicked a field goal in football, there was a 1/6 chance the field goal just knocked it back even when you hit it straight down the middle?

That'd be super hilarious and awesome and make football a much better game.

I love the Dodge because of how much I hate it! I play a little Skirmish [never competitively (although I have no clue what else I would call playing with my friend Dan!)]. However, my focus is campaign. As an Imperial Player, the Dodge is pretty unimportant for my guys. (It doesn't take much threat to get an officer or nexu back.) So, as a result the dodge is usually more of a bane than a boon for me. Everywhere, I've read that you should go for the white die heroes before the black if you want to be aggressive. But, I can't remember the last time I attacked white die hero with an E-web engineer! I HATE having a great roll dodged... And that's a feeling I love!

Woulnd't it be cool if every time somebody kicked a field goal in football, there was a 1/6 chance the field goal just knocked it back even when you hit it straight down the middle?

That'd be super hilarious and awesome and make football a much better game.

I'm an American, so I have no clue why I thought you were talking about Soccer!

Woulnd't it be cool if every time somebody kicked a field goal in football, there was a 1/6 chance the field goal just knocked it back even when you hit it straight down the middle?

That'd be super hilarious and awesome and make football a much better game.

Totally wrong analogy. A dodge equates to a miss, not a reversal of a success. More accurately it would be like trying to kick the ball into the top corner of the net while the goalie is on the other side... But he managed to dive in and block it. And that does happen. White die characters are usually more squishy than black die characters. I've never had an issue with the X.

Woulnd't it be cool if every time somebody kicked a field goal in football, there was a 1/6 chance the field goal just knocked it back even when you hit it straight down the middle?

That'd be super hilarious and awesome and make football a much better game.

How many times does a QB throw a pass a little to high, a little too far, a little behind the receiver because he is under pressure. I won't assume, but have you ever been in the combat arms profession and done live fire exercises? Suddenly your perfect shots on the range are not so perfect when you are under pressure, and its even worse when there is a chance of someone shooting back. The adrenaline alone will causes a degradation of skill. It is why biathletes miss after their heart rate is up to 180 from skiing. White dice people don't dodge blaster fire, but their skill in combat is, to paraphrase Miyagi, to know best defense attack is no be there.

Woulnd't it be cool if every time somebody kicked a field goal in football, there was a 1/6 chance the field goal just knocked it back even when you hit it straight down the middle?

That'd be super hilarious and awesome and make football a much better game.

Totally wrong analogy. A dodge equates to a miss, not a reversal of a success. More accurately it would be like trying to kick the ball into the top corner of the net while the goalie is on the other side... But he managed to dive in and block it. And that does happen. White die characters are usually more squishy than black die characters. I've never had an issue with the X.

Completely agree. And if we want to scrutinize it to that level, what about failing to roll your accuracy, what analogy is there for your blaster bolt just stopping before hitting the target?

You guys are equating the skill from the sports analogies with random chance of a die roll. That's wrong.

The correct analogy is equating the skill from sports with the strategy and decision making that goes into moving your units and deciding what to do.

I love the Dodge because of how much I hate it! I play a little Skirmish [never competitively (although I have no clue what else I would call playing with my friend Dan!)]. However, my focus is campaign. As an Imperial Player, the Dodge is pretty unimportant for my guys. (It doesn't take much threat to get an officer or nexu back.) So, as a result the dodge is usually more of a bane than a boon for me. Everywhere, I've read that you should go for the white die heroes before the black if you want to be aggressive. But, I can't remember the last time I attacked white die hero with an E-web engineer! I HATE having a great roll dodged... And that's a feeling I love!

Return to Hoth has an early mission where Officers have to take out the Rebel terminals, making the officers priority targets. I had an officer survive 3 rounds of Rebel focused fire. He was guarded by a hired gun, and it was the first time I used one of those and the rebels were intimidated by the parting shot. They figured rather kill the officer that's a bigger threat to them than risk the hired gun... I kept rolling dodges either first time or on the reroll. They even made me switch dice to a second white I had, and it didn't make a difference. Eventually Verena realized her attacks weren't going through, and she was being pummelled by the hired gun anyway, so she took him out and used his attack against the officer, killing him finally in round 4. But instead of them getting upset at it, its a funny story we keep talking about, and a learning experience for them to never attack an officer while he has a bodyguard.

That's fine for campaign.

For competitive skirmish, it just gets stupid.

You can play around Dodge to a certain degree, but at some point you have to take shots at white die characters. And if they negate 3-4 of your attacks and you don't get similar results in return, then guess what? You lose. And you didn't lose because they were the better player. You made all the correct decisions and took the dodge into account as much as possible. But you still lost, because you didn't roll enough Dodge and your opponent did.

It won't happen like that often, sure, but it can, and does.

The game has enough decisions and strategy that the better player can usually come out on top. That's why the game is still fun and people play it at the competitive level.

You guys are equating the skill from the sports analogies with random chance of a die roll. That's wrong.

The correct analogy is equating the skill from sports with the strategy and decision making that goes into moving your units and deciding what to do.

That's called Chess. Why have dice at all? Dice represent the messy randomness of battle.

That's fine for campaign.

For competitive skirmish, it just gets stupid.

You can play around Dodge to a certain degree, but at some point you have to take shots at white die characters. And if they negate 3-4 of your attacks and you don't get similar results in return, then guess what? You lose. And you didn't lose because they were the better player. You made all the correct decisions and took the dodge into account as much as possible. But you still lost, because you didn't roll enough Dodge and your opponent did.

It won't happen like that often, sure, but it can, and does.

The game has enough decisions and strategy that the better player can usually come out on top. That's why the game is still fun and people play it at the competitive level.

You are conveniently ignoring there is a 1/6 chance to get a blank. And if I were to keep a record, I guarantee my blanks outnumber my dodges.

You guys are equating the skill from the sports analogies with random chance of a die roll. That's wrong.

The correct analogy is equating the skill from sports with the strategy and decision making that goes into moving your units and deciding what to do.

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. In real life the best strategies can fail because it rained, or somebody got food poisoning, or some other daft thing that can happen.

If you want to remove luck from the game, then you might as well remove all the dice and play chess.

What you're neglecting is that blank is almost identical to 1 block. Whereas the difference between anything and dodge is infinite.

You can still have dice and luck to make things not always the same. But when a single random event can start to determine the entire outcome, why even play?

It goes both ways. Ideally you find the sweet spot where luck matters, but single events don't massively swing the game one way or the other.

You guys are equating the skill from the sports analogies with random chance of a die roll. That's wrong.

The correct analogy is equating the skill from sports with the strategy and decision making that goes into moving your units and deciding what to do.

That's called Chess. Why have dice at all? Dice represent the messy randomness of battle.

Haha, snap, we said the same thing.

What you're neglecting is that blank is almost identical to 1 block. Whereas the difference between anything and dodge is infinite.

You can still have dice and luck to make things not always the same. But when a single random event can start to determine the entire outcome, why even play?

It goes both ways. Ideally you find the sweet spot where luck matters, but single events don't massively swing the game one way or the other.

Almost every war game I've played has some type of dodge or fail mechanic, and usually it is universal, this only applies to certain character, and now there is more and more ways that are being given to force a reroll, or just plain ignore it like that stupid inquisitor. As Neosmagus said, it is, was, balanced into their squishiness, now, with people being able to stack damage never available in the core game, the occasional dodge is perfectly fair.

I think it is somewhat telling that the designers feel the need to include more ways to play around dodge. Those things have definitely made the game better.

Having squishy units that only survive if you roll dodge is bad for balance though. If you're going to get 2 or 3 defense rolls off and they're balanced expecting you to have one of those be a dodge... well, something's wrong.

That's the problem with having such an enormous variance in the results. It makes it very difficult to balance.

Jonathan Ying (designer) tweeted and that ked me for the article. I'll link it tomorrow when I'm not on mobile

my only issue with dodge is 1/6 is quite a high chance considering how few attacks and turns this game has.

If it was a 1/12 1/36 for example (like rolling double 1s) then it would probably suit this game more.

I also don't really like that a blank is not as bad for the defender as a dodge is for an attacker. most of the dice rolls modify results by 1 or two. That's also why most surge abilities are +1 and +2. Dodge is +1000. That's why it's super annoying.

It's a massive outlier.

In theory the blank counters it perfectly, but in practice that's not how it works because of the power difference between the two.
I think dodge is just a bit too strong for a 1/6 chance.

Perhaps it should be more like 2 block 2 evade or something.

Or have a command card that works like a dodge but you can only use it once (or twice) per game... and/or have to spend some points on it.

Or if you get a dodge you get 3 block (like the black dice) but then get to roll again and add the result (with further dodge counting as blanks).

Or give everyone some sort of dodge... then it becomes more standard and expected rather than limited to certain factions or certain units.

I don't hate the idea of dodge, but it can be frustrating to play against and I think it's a bit too strong. On average it evens out of course but it's irritating when they dodge the 7 dmg attacks and not the 1dmg attacks.
The inclusion of rules like deadly which negate dodge is a good step forward I think. We need some more of that.

Having squishy units that only survive if you roll dodge is bad for balance though. If you're going to get 2 or 3 defense rolls off and they're balanced expecting you to have one of those be a dodge... well, something's wrong.

I think that's actually the best use of dodge. Stuff like rebel sabs, hired guns (if they could actually dodge), officers and troopers with low health are fine, because if they dodge one attack, you kill them with the next one.

The problem is when you have stuff like Luke and Leia with high health, recover and a good defense that still gets to completely negate attacks. You need to throw big attacks at Luke to kill him because a storm trooper does 2 damage on average and he can recover 2. It will take on average, about 5 storm trooper attacks to kill Luke, but that's before a recover is considered. But when he can dodge those big attacks, that's where the power spike and balance problem happens.

I actually think most things are balanced pretty well (even with the white dice) but there are certainly issues with it being an annoying mechanic.

I think it's great in campaign because of the different feel of the game, but in skirmish we tend to like a bit more certainty and planning. Especially at a competitive level.

I don't mind dodge on either side. It happens, sometimes more, sometimes less than expected but it really doesn't make much of a difference. I usually try to have some figures (or at least command cards) in the list designed to kill white dice and rely on them in critical situations, so they won't miss because of dodge. If you want to play only troopers and then complain how hard is to kill certain characters, maybe you should consider taking something else? In a way white dice contributes to the diversity of the lists that are good.

Wouldn't it be cool if every time somebody kicked a field goal in football, there was a 1/6 chance the field goal just knocked it back even when you hit it straight down the middle?

That'd be super hilarious and awesome and make football a much better game.

Wouldn't it be cool if every time somebody kicked a penalty kick in football, there was a 1/6 chance of the goalkeeper catching it?

I'm on the side of loving the X too.

I completely get the frustration it can cause on occasion, but it makes "big moments" and the possibility of that coming up makes those rolls exciting.

I love the fact that they have two different types of defence dice representing armoured warriors and/or agile characters and think it demonstrates that difference fantastically well on the tabletop.

Plus there's a good amount of stuff in the game to negate it now, if you're "really" hating on the white dice so much go for a list like this:

Say No to X-Men

The Grand Inquisitor (9)

Elite ISB (7)

Elite ISB (7)

Temporary Alliance (1)

HK Assassin Droid (8)

HK Assassin Droid (8)

+1 for liking the dodge.

Sometimes it helps you, sometimes it helps your opponent. The black and white dice seems completely balanced to me - one's dependable but you might still take damage from great attacks, and one's really swingy, often not very good and sometimes amazing.

It creates brilliant moments and allows for some games to unpredictably swing = more excitement.

Wouldn't it be cool if every time somebody kicked a field goal in football, there was a 1/6 chance the field goal just knocked it back even when you hit it straight down the middle?

That'd be super hilarious and awesome and make football a much better game.

Wouldn't it be cool if every time somebody kicked a penalty kick in football, there was a 1/6 chance of the goalkeeper catching it?

Again, player skill does not equate to random events.

A better comparison is that for every kick made on goal, there's a 1/6 chance that a wall pops up and blocks the entrance so you had no chance to score, regardless of how well the attacker or the goalie were positioned.

Inquisitorsz, if you hate the dodge so much try playing Armada, or better yet X wing! Nothing can compare in IA to having your focused Vic 1 Star Destroyer roll all blanks at close range, except maybe rolling 3 crits in X wing to have your opponent roll 3 dodges (maybe)!

Dice are fickle. You learn to live with it.