Having only played for a few months, a dozen games or so, I'm frustrated with dice results, namely how to know when to assign Focus or Evade. I have very limited access to upgrade cards, and have concentrated my purchases around Imps, so I know I'm missing key upgrades, but upgrades aren't necessarily the root of my frustration.

Would someone be kind enough to explain the finer points of assigning Focus/Evade to me? Also, which upgrades synergize best with which assignments?

Tangentially, I've always had poor "luck" with dice: needing 2+ on d6s, roll a lot of 1s; need 4+ on d10s, roll a lot of 3 or down. I'm actually not surprised this trend has carried over to X-Wing...I tend to roll A LOT of blanks

Thanks in advance for your help.

The rule of thumb is always focus, unless you can barrel roll/boost out of arc.

Focus and be used on offense and defense unlike evade.

I am not sure what exactly you are frustrated about. When you speak about assigning Focus and Evade, I assume you mean perform a Focus or Evade action, to assign a Focus or Evade token to your ship.

In general Imperial ships like TIE fighters have high Agility and lower Attack values. Performing a Focus action grants you a focus token, which can be used to modify either an attack role or defence roll. This makes it the most versatile choice. If you face only one or two enemies that can target you, this is probably a good choice, especially if you outnumber the opponent as he can not shoot all of your ships, and you are most likely to be able to affect your offensive capabilities. If you face a high attack ship that is very likely to attack you, an Evade id probably better as it guarantees that you can evade at least one damage.

It's not clear what you mean by 'assigning' focus/evades.

Can you walk us through the process of a turn for you?

It's entirely possible that you've misunderstood a key part of the play sequence.

I almost wonder what you consider "a lot" of bad rolls. If you're trying to roll a 4+ on a d10 then 3 or less should come up 30% of the time which IS "a lot" depending on you define it. I may not help that you likely remember more of the bad rolls than you do the good rolls so if you forget about half of the good rolls but still remember all of the bad rolls now the bad roll numbers seem to have increased because of your memory.

If you're rolling attack dice blanks happen a massive 1/4 of the time PER DIE so seeing them shouldn't be a surprise and it's even worse with defense dice. Where the other things in the game come in is how do you modify your results to get away from those unuseful ones.

Like the rest I am a bit confused about the actual question. Having a Focus token, usually gained via the Focus Action, allows you the option to spend that token to turn a die which may only give you favorable results 1/2 the time into one that has favorable results 3/4 of the time; you even get to know if that will be true or not before you spend the token. Focus tokens can be used on offense or defense to improve dice rolls which gives them versatility. The Evade tokens are just good for adding an Evade die result when you roll defense; it is always there but only can be used once and may not be enough in some cases.

When you look at other upgrades to help your "poor dice rolls" you are looking at things that will allow you to reroll poor dice or modify the results into something more desirable. When you can reroll a die that gives you a bad result 1/2 the time you effectively convert it into something that gives a bad result 1/4 of the time as you do NOT use it when you get a good result and your bad result only has a 50% chance of being a bad result the second time as well.

So if I understand correctly I think you are asking if a focus or an evade is "better" in a given situation. The short answer is "it depends". The slightly longer short answer is an evade is statistically better for anything less than 4 green dice if you want to keep your ship alive. However that usually means your offense will be significantly poorer.

Now to take it in a bit more depth, when looking at ONLY defense. Statistically you want the highest number of average evades per roll on any given turn.

1 die: Evade is equal to or better than focus 100% of the time so obviously evade.

2 dice: Evade equal or better in all cases EXCEPT when you roll double eye. Double eye is a 1/16 chance so really you should always evade.

3 dice: Here the math starts to get tricky but the bottom line is the average number of evades per roll with either token is something like 1.7 vs 1.8 (I pulled those specific nimbers from air but I do know the difference on the real ones is about that) with evade having a slight edge. However since it's really a virtual tie I usually go ahead and take the focus so I can use it on offense as well.

4+ dice: Focus is usually recommended. Basically at 4 dice your chances of rolling at least 1 eye are about 70% and odds of rolling 2 or more are about 50% so on average a focus will be equal or better than an evade.

Those are good shorthand rules for remembering odds, but the thing you have to remember is even unlikely results still happen. That double eye on 2 dice may be only a 1\16 but if you're running a couple 2 agility ships you could easily roll 16 times in one match. So while it may be annoying for that 1\16 to come up at an inconvenient time, don't throw out the math just because the edge case came up. Edge cases WILL happen but I 100% guarantee you, your dice rolls are no better or worse than anyone else in the long run. One edge case stands out in our mind but we quickly forget 10 mundane rolls in a row. If you track all your rolls (which I DON'T recommend you wasting time on but do as you like) the math will show you your dice are average.

The other point I would make is that which you should do can also be dictated by game state rather than JUST math. For instance, a high PS ship with 1 agility and 1 hull that is going to get shot twice is probably dead no matter what. If it's gonna be able to shoot before it dies though, then you should probably focus for the offense and just accept the likely unavoidable death. There are plenty of other hypotheticals too but this post is really probably too long already, so good luck out there.

Since you are focused on Imperials, I will assume you have at least one of each starter set and hopefully a TIE Fighter and TIE/fo Fighter expansion. You can easily fly a TIE swarm or mini swarm with these. They do not have to rely on upgrades, but more on pilot abilities. Here Howlrunner is a very good pilot to boost your squad, because she allows other ships to reroll those damned blanks.

How you fly your squad is also a factor. A squad of TIE Fighters should fly together and focus down one enemy at a time. If you face of 1 on 1 all over the board you will face more enemy red dice rolls before you can kill any ships.

And while the dice are random and fickle, it is often more down to tactics and strategy than dice rolls, if you win or loose. If a TIE faces an x-wing, especially at short range, perhaps a barrel roll out of the enemy firing arc if safer than focus or evade.

For those who think I'm confused about the sequence of play, I can assure you I'm not. I see the word "assign" as I used it in my OP was a poor choice of words. Of course, when performing an action I "assign" either a Focus or Evade token, or perform some other legitimate action.

Tonight, however, I must stress that my overall dice results fall squarely within the margin of failure. It's not that I "remember bad results" more, I can assure you. My opponent was left agog, speechless at my percentage of blanks.

Tonight's list:

Darth Vader w/ Deadeye, Targeting Chips, and...the missiles that are r1-2, 3 Attack, attack twice (name escapes me now; sue me, it's late).

TIE/sf "Quickdraw" w/SpecOps Training, Sensor Clusters, and...crap. Useless crap.

"Chaser"

"Youngster" w/ Marksmanship

I set up left of center and successfully drew my opponent to that side, only to swing around to center again, forcing him to swing back through a snaggle of asteroids. My maneuvering was spot on, and I went to drop the hammer...

Vader, r1 at Wedge...rolled 3 blanks. Spent Target lock...rolled 3 blanks, so my Focus sat like a lump. I sh!t you not. "QuickDraw", also r1 at Wedge...rolled four blanks. Four! Ten dice, all blanks. Puffed a few Marksmanship shots from "Chaser" and "Youngster" at Shira (sp) ARC...1 hit each, no Focus rolled. None. I Focused like rain...nothing showing but blanks an 2 hits on sixteen dice.

Return fire: I had swarmed him from every direction, so only two of his ships could draw down on Vader, who was sitting on an Evade. Took 6 hits, four of them crits, and I rolled 1 Evade. One. Bye bye, Vader. ARC bips "Youngster" for one hit and one crit, zero Evade rolled, and draw a Direct Hit..."Youngster" blags, round one ends.

I hot-boxed half a smoke, took a piss, and came back at it. His initiative; everybody swings around, asteroids are scragging LoS both ways, but I get "Chaser" at r1 behind the ARC, and roll one blank and one hit. He evades. Hm. Return fire from ARC: two hits, I roll four blanks...

By the time I concede (I'm down to "Quickdraw" with 1 hull remaining, he's still got Wedge no shields, a bastard B-Wing 1 shield down, and the ARC at 1 hull remaining) I'm thinking I've got to have rolled forty plus blanks. When I do hit I'm sitting on Focus that never show. So I do some napkin math: he rolled 67% better than I, and his dice were smoking the first half and less-than average the second half.

W. T. H?

I'm just venting. Decompressing. Yeah, I had a few rolls where 3 of 4 were Evade results, but could I get some of that love on attack? Nope. During the second hot-box I considered quitting this game, selling my stuff for a pack of smokes...we'll see. I'm feeling indignant, bordering on outrage, and I just need to blow some steam.

Sorry, but not really. You know?

I think we have all had games like this. But probably not every game we play. It can be frustrating.

First of are you playing with your own dice and the opponent theirs? Try using the same set of dice. In case your dice roll under par.

Second, try playing arc dodgers. It doesn't matter if you only chip 1 or 2 points of your opponent every turn, if he can not shoot you back.

Or try flying something that can change blanks to either focus or hits. There are several upgrades that allow you to do this.

Dice roll bad sometimes. 5 dice range 1 attack with Fenn Rau and I roll 4 blanks and a focus. Not even worth using the focus, so I saved it for defense. I play with a lot of Tie fighters and almost always assign a focus.

If it makes you feel better, roll all your dice 3-4 times before a game and pick out the ones that roll the best for you. I sometimes do that and it makes me think more about the good rolls when they happen versus the bad rolls.

Sounds like you have poorly weighted dice, have you floated them in salt wAter?

Play more, it'll average out.

Every I feel like the dice screwed me over during a game on VASSAL, I'll run the data through Lady Luck and... it's never really that unbalanced.

My advice is to not let unlucky dice variance demoralize you. It's going to happen so just resolve yourself to be steely to it. Bad dice are bad enough to overcome. Don't give your opponent another advantage by going "on tilt" too.

Green dice do have 3 blanks. If you don't like 'em, get some beefy ships that don't depend on them as much, such as the Decimator

For upgrades: Autothrusters is awesome for a ship with boost. It makes high evade ships more dependable.

For choosing when to focus or evade: evade if you need the ship to live(or rolling more than 3 defense dice) and focus when you need it to have a decent chance on a defense roll as well as correct an attack you see going through.

Hope that helps!

http://sozin.pythonanywhere.com/game?id=11297

That's the Lady Luck records from my game on Vassal last night vs Waylanger. I was pretty salty at the beginning because Poe at r3 with a focus & autothrusters took damage from a TIE fighter & Attack shuttle, and lost 3 shields and a damage - but then took no damage for the rest of the game.

I'm trying to say it balances out, and dash was consistently rolling 3 hits - so you get them either way.

It's also worth noting that only getting single mods opens you to this kind of frustration. There's a reason why 'rerolls and focus' is the gold standard of mods for this game. If you don't have both, you have a much higher chance of ending up with useless red results.

I've seen it time and again where people have turtled up behind focus/evade instead of being aggressive with focus/TL, and then complained because their reds got blanks, but my double modded reds overwhelmed their 2 dice focus/evade defence. If you roll badly at range 3, consider not bothering to spend your tokens, because maybe having a chance of forcing one damage through is probably not worth the tokens. Instead, save them for defence, or ideally use a TL and save it for the next engagement.

The best defence is a strong offence and the strongest (generally available) offence is rerolls and focus. I mean, just looking at your list above, imagine if your Snesor Cluster had been Weapons Guidance. Now you can deal with one of those blank dice.

If you're missing key upgrades and you're not playing in tournaments, most groups will be fine with you proxying. If you are playing tournaments regularly, then you're going to find this kind of frustration until your collection expands a bit, or you can borrow stuff. It doesn't matter where the cards come from, as long as you have them. IN particular, maybe talk to someone who's done a bunch of tourneys in the last few months and see if they can give you an alt-art Predator. I know for my part I have several more than I'm likely ever to use at once.

Games can go badly. I roll average dice, but they always seem to fail at the worst times and get good when it no longer matters. Timing can be brutal. The other night I landed Fenn Rau and Talonbane Cobra at Range 1 of a Contracted Scout. Both had focus tokens and both were slinging 5 dice a piece. Even on average results, the JM5K should have been down to half health after the exchange. The result? No damage on the JM5K. I rolled 1 hit, 1 focus, and 3 blanks with Talonbane, used focus, and he rolled 2 natural evades. Rolled 1 crit and 4 blanks with Fenn, he rolled an evade. Unfortunately, we all remember the edge cases because they seem to sting just a bit more. We usually don't remember when we barely caught the opposing ship in Range 1 and proceeded to 1 shot it off the board with a Crit, Hit, Hit, Focus, Focus roll that turned into 5 hits. Or the time that Fenn went toe to toe with another Fenn and rolled 4 natural evades against his 5 hit attack and the title made it so he shrugged it off with no damage. Edge cases are to be expected in a game of dice, it does happen. This is why craps is still a game in Vegas. If the "average" result were the only result, no one would play because the house would always win (it still does, but it's because it knows the averages and just puts the line on them slightly in their favor). It'll come around at some point and you'll have a game where you can't miss and the opponent can't touch you. This is our lot in life with this game.

Fly casual, and most importantly, remember to have fun, even when the dice are making that hard.

Red blanks are the worst.

Dealing with green blanks are easy. Don't roll green dice. Get out of arcs and stay alive.

But when you line up that perfect modified shot and still come up blank. That sucks.

you remember the bad rolls a lot more. I always think I roll more blanks than anyone. So, I got Horton and gave him TLT and Engine Upgrade. First time I ever flew him. So, I was boosting and firing with TLT. Rolled 18 red dice (three TLT attacks) not a single blank red dice, and since I was boosting, I had no focus, lol. Three eyes, 1hit eye eye, etc. Was crazy. Finally on my 4th TLT attack, and Hortons last attack as he was on 1hull, I finally got 1 blank I could reroll with his ability. I was never so mad about not rolling blanks.

Just keep playing, dice even out over the long run.

The pendulum is swinging the other way now; my dice are suddenly red hot, and my opponents' are stone cold. Although, last nights first rolls about gave me a tic: rolled r1 w/ Turr Phennir + Target Lock + Focus...4 blanks followed by 4 blanks. Next up (same target), the Inquisitor + Target Lock + Focus, rolled 3 blanks followed by 2 blanks and a hit. I sat for a minute staring at my feet, thinking "What. The. Hell?" Taking a big breath, I rolled 3 at r2 on the same target, "Quickdraw" + Target Lock, and rolled 3 crits. No. Just no. I should have taken that ARC turn 1, but no. All three of my ships shot at it exclusively for 2 turns: 31 attack dice, including Target Locks and Focus to zap 3 shields and 6 hull. Sad. I flew far too aggressively after that, rolled crud for defense, lost "Quickdraw" turn 3...completely FORGOT about Turr Phennir's special ability until the late endgame. And still won?

WTH?

Maybe just burn that set of dice and buy more?

Yep. It happens. The general rule we (mostly jokingly but not really, if you know what I mean) quote around here is that your green dice will roll blanks when you need evades or foci and foci when you need blanks or evades (autothrusters for example). Dice are dice. They are random and fickle. I had a string of bad luck for weeks, but last tournament my opponent was forcing me to reroll with an Astromech he had, and I would reroll from a hit to a crit or a focus to a hit consistenly the whole game. I did not do incredibly well, but for once my dice were HOT! It was driving him crazy and we had a few laughs over my ridiculous dice luck. My evades were coming too, it was just a matter of well played games by my opponents. They all came down to the last turn in 3 of four games. I can tell you, it frustrated him to no end to chase a limping ship that kept regening around the board when I kept rolling exactly what I needed and made it a very close game. It happened the whole tournament which ended up being four rounds due to turnout and how the stats lined up.

It cracks me up when people change dice from a pool they have to the side after a few turns of rolling badly. Sure there are badly balanced dice out there, but it makes me chuckle when an opponent will switch dice in an out after rolling all blanks. The worst part is when they switch dice, still roll badly, and then switch the old ones back in. Dice are random - it happens. You will streak and ebb and flow. It's part of the excitement of x-Wing for me. I even had an opponent slam some dice into the trash once in frustration - I kept my mouth shut but I thought that was a little overboard in the anger management area ha ha.

Dont worry, I guarantee unless you somehow hit the lottery and managed to get only very badly balanced dice, you will also have games where the opposite happens. It's part of the charm and frustration game.

But in my experience green dice let you down much more often, mainly because as I believe someone above me pointed out, the attack dice are weighted more heavily for success, which makes sense to keep the game focused on offense and quick moving.

Im not saying there are not cases where dice are badly balanced, but more often than not when we have tested dice we were frustrated with, we found they were fine. They are streaky and fickle by nature.

I could tell you some crazy stories about things I've witnessed people do and heard third hand when they obsess over bad dice rolls, and it has never made a difference. I love the joke "get good at rolling dice" but I do know a magician and sleight of hand master who REALLY can manipulate dice to an extent. He works catching people cheating at craps in fact. I truly doubt I've played someone with those skill sets in X-Wing yet, but I admit I have walked away grumbling that I wish I had a camera so I could replay the match for my friend so he could analyze it for cheating. Really though it's sour grapes. I'm not saying I've been hustled by a dice shark. It can sometimes feel that just as it can feel that your greens are incapable of rolling eyeballs and evades.

Last night, with Target Lock + Focus at Range 1, rolled 4 blanks, then rerolled 4 more blanks. Fine, still have Focus for defense...

And rolled 3 blanks. But, I retaliated with "Quickdraw"'s special ability...and rolled 3 blanks.

14 straight blanks. I'm just about done.

3 hours ago, Alekzanter said:

Last night, with Target Lock + Focus at Range 1, rolled 4 blanks, then rerolled 4 more blanks. Fine, still have Focus for defense...

And rolled 3 blanks. But, I retaliated with "Quickdraw"'s special ability...and rolled 3 blanks.

14 straight blanks. I'm just about done.

What are the odds....

(1/4)^8 * (3/8)^6 = 1/65536 * 1/360 = 1/23,566,350 [360 was rounded: actual figure used for end]

At least it's better than your odds of winning the lottery

Where did (3/8)^6 come from? It should be

(1/4)^11 * (3/8)^3 = 1/4,194,304 * 27/512 = 1:79,365,079

I think you do have better odds at the lottery. ? Might want to buy a lottery ticket. ?