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I think opening Zillo up to all factions doesn't solve the problem. Then everyone would just take it instead of every imperial player.

You could add a core rule that "once per attack you can discard a card to add one block". That might be interesting I guess.

I also agree that it hurts Pierce 2 units more than it should.

At the end of the day, it's a card that was designed to help make things like Vader/AT-ST more competitive... I don't think it achieved that. Imperial trooper lists were doing fine without Zillo. Now they are even better. I play Imp Troopers btw so I'm not bitter, I just don't like what it's doing to the game. It's not a huge problem but I think it should be addressed.

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I feel like Zillo would make more sense if it were only usable for unique figures, or figures above a certain cost. Like you said it seemed to be designed to help Imperial heroes, but instead it's helping Imperial troopers who don't really need the help. It's just frustrating to face, there's not really anything you can do to deal with it, and the Imperial player barely has to make any tradeoffs to take or use it :/

LOVE these ideas. Too bad, cause they rarely make something too good, the designers always seem to mistake on the conservative side.

You can watch the twitch stream it'll be hosted for few days more. https://m.twitch.tv/ffglive

I even downloaded it so I can watch it at my leisure:)

How big is the file? It should be a 12 hours video

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I think opening Zillo up to all factions doesn't solve the problem. Then everyone would just take it instead of every imperial player.

You could add a core rule that "once per attack you can discard a card to add one block". That might be interesting I guess.

I also agree that it hurts Pierce 2 units more than it should.

At the end of the day, it's a card that was designed to help make things like Vader/AT-ST more competitive... I don't think it achieved that. Imperial trooper lists were doing fine without Zillo. Now they are even better. I play Imp Troopers btw so I'm not bitter, I just don't like what it's doing to the game. It's not a huge problem but I think it should be addressed.

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I feel like Zillo would make more sense if it were only usable for unique figures, or figures above a certain cost. Like you said it seemed to be designed to help Imperial heroes, but instead it's helping Imperial troopers who don't really need the help. It's just frustrating to face, there's not really anything you can do to deal with it, and the Imperial player barely has to make any tradeoffs to take or use it :/

Maybe in the future we'll see cards that can counter it, somehow? Some kind of hunter upgrades, or dark jedi or something, that limit the defense modifications the opponent can do (by spending some cost, of course).

IMHO, the best and most non-invasive way to "fix" (air-quotes on account of the fact that I'm not entirely convinced yet that the card needs to be fixed) would be to errata the wording on it to move the discard decision window to the "Declare Target" step of the attack framework.

Adding a block to a defence roll isn't all that and a bag of chips in itself. What makes Zillo abuse-able is the fact that you can safely do that at the very end of the attack framework, once you've done all the math and you know for a fact you can save your guy with that extra block, and there is absolutely no way for your discard to be accidentaly wasted or for your opponent to do anything about it.

You can watch the twitch stream it'll be hosted for few days more. https://m.twitch.tv/ffglive

I even downloaded it so I can watch it at my leisure:)

How big is the file? It should be a 12 hours video

It was about 3 gigs I think. They're now up on YouTube split into each game by boardwars I think too. That's easier. I just didn't know if that was going to happen so I made sure I'd have access to them on my own.

I think both players played very well, but I really felt for the Rebel player, there isn't much you can do when the rolls are so one sided. Somebody should have checked the other guys dice! lol. The way he was rolling I don't think there was anyway he could lose. The Rebel player tried his best but just kept coming up short on the rolls. That's the luck of the game though, you gotta be good to get there and then you gotta be lucky to win. Great job to everyone involved it looked like it was a lot of fun.

I guess I'd be careful before claiming dice are the reason for a victory at this level. It is a troopers build after all with reduduncancy built on redundancy. More importantly he did win 6/6... and at that level I just don't think any sort of dice take you that far.

What I saw was clever play, especially with things like the running away of units that were too weak to achieve more and thus became a liability.

That said as far as tactical play went I thought the semis game with the same troopers list/player going up against the bantha was beautiful to watch. Made me wonder how all of us Aussies got smashed by a bantha at our nationals! He made it look easy

It is a dice game. You are going to get swings one way or another with dice. A couple of weeks ago, I rolled 6 straight blanks on a white die---- never hear the X haters talking about that part of it. Anyway--- given that it is a dice game- given how dice are (you never know who has and hasn't salt water checked their die and if so- what they are using--- I am surprised that both players using the same die pool isn't required at this level. When/if I make it to worlds next year- I will request that in all my games.

I think both players played very well, but I really felt for the Rebel player, there isn't much you can do when the rolls are so one sided. Somebody should have checked the other guys dice! lol. The way he was rolling I don't think there was anyway he could lose. The Rebel player tried his best but just kept coming up short on the rolls. That's the luck of the game though, you gotta be good to get there and then you gotta be lucky to win. Great job to everyone involved it looked like it was a lot of fun.

I guess I'd be careful before claiming dice are the reason for a victory at this level. It is a troopers build after all with reduduncancy built on redundancy. More importantly he did win 6/6... and at that level I just don't think any sort of dice take you that far.

What I saw was clever play, especially with things like the running away of units that were too weak to achieve more and thus became a liability.

That said as far as tactical play went I thought the semis game with the same troopers list/player going up against the bantha was beautiful to watch. Made me wonder how all of us Aussies got smashed by a bantha at our nationals! He made it look easy

It is a dice game. You are going to get swings one way or another with dice. A couple of weeks ago, I rolled 6 straight blanks on a white die---- never hear the X haters talking about that part of it. Anyway--- given that it is a dice game- given how dice are (you never know who has and hasn't salt water checked their die and if so- what they are using--- I am surprised that both players using the same die pool isn't required at this level. When/if I make it to worlds next year- I will request that in all my games.

Why do people compare a difference of 1 block to a difference of infinity block when talking about how good and fair the white die is?

You can definitely request to use the same dice. I heard a few people ask it throughout the day at Worlds, but never for my games. I guess most of us just naively trust in our opponents and the dice gods that they're going to be "close enough".

Why do people compare a difference of 1 block to a difference of infinity block when talking about how good and fair the white die is?

You can definitely request to use the same dice. I heard a few people ask it throughout the day at Worlds, but never for my games. I guess most of us just naively trust in our opponents and the dice gods that they're going to be "close enough".

Because it's not just one side. It's a combination of all the sides. Would you prefer it to go back to where the miss was on the attack die? Would that make it 'feel' better? Or that attacks never miss (except lacking accuracy?)

Having judged / TO'ed events for a long time- one it is about competitive balance, and two- yes, because people cheat. I am not accusing anyone here of cheating, but people do it. That is one way to limit the ways they can cheat.

All of the other sides of the white die are equivalent or better (block/evade is sometimes better, sometimes worse, but overall pretty close to 2 block).

So what do you mean it's a combination?

Having a complete miss on any die cheapens any victory and generally just makes players feel bad no matter which way it goes. The game is more fun with less variance compared to more variance, and the developers are helping move it that way via cards and abilities.

The Dodge can cancel an attack of focused Vader, which can be 11 Damage with Pierce 3.

The harder the attack is, the more valuable is a Dodge. Another reason for "Troopers are better than uniques."

All of the other sides of the white die are equivalent or better (block/evade is sometimes better, sometimes worse, but overall pretty close to 2 block).

So what do you mean it's a combination?

Having a complete miss on any die cheapens any victory and generally just makes players feel bad no matter which way it goes. The game is more fun with less variance compared to more variance, and the developers are helping move it that way via cards and abilities.

Are equivalent or better? Yeah.... no. An evade requires not only the attacker get a surge, but that the surge to be worth more than one block for that to be true. A block is pretty much always useful.

A combination means it factors on a lot of thing. What are the attack dice, what are the attackers surge.

And I completely disagree on your last statement. Having a complete miss add a random element to the game- having things that always succeed allows you to math out the game.

And right now, almost all the hate is on the white die and on the side of the empire. Which is a huge imbalance in the game. Deadly and similar effects which remove the dodge effectively make a white dice useless on 1/3 of the defense rolls. And for a point of context- I play all three factions and usually have at least one list built for each faction.

You're neglecting the fact that a majority of the most popular units all have surge for +2 damage. For these, block/evade can be worth 3 blocks a lot of the time.

With Deadly, Dodge is still effectively an evade, which could be worth 2 damage against isbs or 1 or cleave 3 against the inquis.

Against popular lists right now, I'd say white die is generally only worse against Bantha lists. Against estorms, the evade is pretty strong most of the time, preventing 2 damage or making long range shots more likely to fail. A single dodged 3-die attack from a hero figure can also cost you a game.

Out of popularly played stuff, it seems like hks, officers, nexu, tuskens, and probably Leia, are things you would rather roll black versus. Sabs and eRebel troopers if you have zillo up, too.

Estorms, eHeavies, blaise (to hopefully prevent range/interrogate), luke, obi, eEchoes, gideon, davith, eisb, greedo, you're going to tend to want the white die. The evades/dodges tend to make up for the 1 damage extra on the blank side.

Hired guns and bantha attacks are a bit of a wash either way.

It's just that one blank side that worries me. Stormtroopers fairly reliably hit 5 damage with the re roll, meaning that there's a good chance of being one shot each time you roll the blank, whereas with black dice that's never going to happen (trooper vs trooper)

Personally I'd always prefer the consistency of the black dice, but I get that white can be better, is just the variance I don't like

I think the value of a Black or White die can also be affected by which dice are being rolled by the attacker. White dice aren't great vs Red, since White has lots of Evades and Red only has 1 result with a Surge; it's better to roll a Black against a Red die. Conversely, White is excellent against Yellow, since the the White's many Evades really counter the Yellow die's specialty, which is Surges. Obviously you can get to the point where your only hope against a big attack (ie, Vader with RRY) is to roll a Dodge and so the White is better in that case.

On a slightly different note, I'm personally happy to see some automatic defenses coming in: Obiwan and Jedi Luke have a +1 Evade on their die, the Inquisitor has "Defensive" (+1 Block if you didn't roll one) on a White die, Bossk has +1 Block on a White die, etc. These things start to really change things up and often seem to pull the "best dice" argument back toward the middle ground. That is, a White die with a +1 Block (ie, Bossk) will give just about the same results as a Black die with a +1 Evade (ie, Obiwan)...I tested this on the Imperial Assault Calculator against an Elite Stormtrooper's regular attack roll (with a Surge: +2 dmg), and they came out with almost identical lines on the chart.

let's take some math and answer which defense die is better.

unit / average damage vs 1 black die / average damage vs 1 white die

elite stormtrooper / 2.18 / 2.19

so if we take most used unit now, we can say average damage vs white and black die is the same. same situation if we take in account all existing units in imperial assault.

the difference is because some units is statistically better vs black die and some units is better vs white die.

if you are interested in my calculations, i show you top 5 units, based on average attack per cost (average attack / single unit cost) vs 1 black die and vs 1 white die.

top 5 units based on average damage per cost vs 1 black die:

top 5 units based on average damage per cost vs 1 white die: