Another "moan" thread, sorry...but I'm genuinely curious to see if anyone agrees with me.

After playing Xwing for over a year, I decided to try out Imperial Assault on the side, and quickly realised what had always bothered me about Xwing : the dice. You can do everything perfectly, be range 1 and out of your enemy's arc, with a focus...and roll blanks. "That's why you should take a target lock". Agreed, but at the root of it all, you can roll and reroll blanks. I get that attacks can be evaded or not be as powerful as they should be "in theory" (due to lack of modifiers), but being able to completely blank an attack because your lasers didn't fire anything never made any sense to me, especially at range 1. I have no issue with a player evading an attack by rolling evades or having the modifiers to completely dodge the attack, but having an attack blank out on you (outside of crit conditions) is a disappointing possibility. Luck obviously plays a big role in xwing, and the best players are always in positions where they don't rely on luck, but i'm sure everyone has had at least one "squib" attack (all fizz but no bang).

I find Imperial assault has a far more gratifying attack system, in which every attack will always do damage. The only issue is range, which is again decided by the dice rolls, BUT you have dozens of ways to boost the range, so the only way to miss an attack is by being overzealous and trying to shoot from further away than possible when you know your figure needs to be X spaces away to guarantee a hit : this is more a gamble strategy than "pure-dice-luck-****-you-dice-gods", so you know who to blame when you short out on range! So to cancel an attack, your opponent must block all damage, or roll the mythical "dodge" symbol, which is a 1/6 chance...fair. The game is therefore much more evenly paced, constant hits but frequent evades.

So, back to the problem of having your lasers somehow decide to not fire anything...what if range 1 attacks were structured differently. Rather than having an extra dice, your range 1 bonus is being able to turn all blanks into eyeballs. That way, your only excuse for not hitting your target is because you weren't focused (basically, the pilot wasn't concentrating); but at least the obvious advantage of being at range 1 = having your target RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOU is respected and it is impossible to miss if you are focused/"concentrating"

I know this is pointless because the game can't change now and i'm possibly the minority/only one who thinks that these issues are bad, but it really does dampen the fun of the game when you are confronted with a "nope" moment and nothing can be done about it.

Would the game be so different if there were no blanks on red dice? And perhaps more 1 more evade on green dice? Anyway, curious to hear your thoughts...

Well you see, when you are shooting a fast moving veichle when you're in a fast moving veichle ... it is kind of hard.

2 minutes ago, AwesomeJedi said:

Well you see, when you are shooting a fast moving veichle when you're in a fast moving veichle ... it is kind of hard.

HA yeah perhaps i just don't have enough experience flying starfighters...

In my opinion, while the RNG can screw you, it is one of the major elements of "tension" in the game, and managing the odds of said RNG one of the core skills. I think the X-wing system does a very good job of giving players the ability to manipulate the odds in their favor, while not becoming TOO deterministic. Every move in this game has some risk attached.

The key, in my mind, is to learn how to let go when the dice really do screw you. Because they surely do sometimes. Try to find some positive aspect of the loss that you an be proud of, like a brilliant maneuver or a time when you perfectly foresaw your opponent's play, and focus on that instead. But that's just, like, my opinion, man.

16 minutes ago, Gingerleo said:

I find Imperial assault has a far more gratifying attack system, in which every attack will always do damage.

Man I super disagree. While no sides of the attack are blank there's still really garbage results which not only feel bad but also require you to think for a bit to figure out how ****** you are. Additionally there's that **** 'dodge everything' result on the white die which is some bull if I ever saw it.

7 minutes ago, fiesta0618 said:

In my opinion, while the RNG can screw you, it is one of the major elements of "tension" in the game, and managing the odds of said RNG one of the core skills. I think the X-wing system does a very good job of giving players the ability to manipulate the odds in their favor, while not becoming TOO deterministic. Every move in this game has some risk attached.

The key, in my mind, is to learn how to let go when the dice really do screw you. Because they surely do sometimes. Try to find some positive aspect of the loss that you an be proud of, like a brilliant maneuver or a time when you perfectly foresaw your opponent's play, and focus on that instead. But that's just, like, my opinion, man.

I completely agree, I think my only problem is feeling so elated at having performed said brilliant maneuver (a rare occasion in itself), only to see the attack fall short and screw me over XD but it certainly adds tension, and i never leave an xwing game bored or unfazed, which i guess in itself is a good selling point !

6 minutes ago, nigeltastic said:

Man I super disagree. While no sides of the attack are blank there's still really garbage results which not only feel bad but also require you to think for a bit to figure out how ****** you are. Additionally there's that **** 'dodge everything' result on the white die which is some bull if I ever saw it.

There are def garbage results (wouldn't be fun to just have massive attacks), but at least it's SOMETHING! And the feeling of knowing for certain before you even roll the dice that you will have at least something to work with is just that little bit more satisfying in my mind than the dread of rolling blanks...

2 minutes ago, Gingerleo said:

And the feeling of knowing for certain before you even roll the dice that you will have at least something to work with is just that little bit more satisfying in my mind than the dread of rolling blanks...

But that's not really true. If they roll the dodge result then nothing happens. Sure you may have a surge you can maybe do something with, but not always.

This is just the nature of dice games, while you can always do something to minimize the dice screwing you over, there will always be times when no matter how good your tactics, or how well you execute the dice will screw you over.

I get that it sucks, and to see the best laid plans fall short because of that cursed cube just blows...

But you just have to accept it and move on. It's like last night playing bloodbowl, the other guy had been moving down the field slowly but surely. I managed to knock the ball out of his hands a couple times, but it always bounced somewhere he could pick it up again before I could. Gets to turn 8 and he has to make a break for the endzone, but the only player he has that can make it is a centaur (He was playing Chaos Dwarfs) but has to make 3 go for it's. Rolls the first one and gets a 1, rolls sure feet and... gets a 1, game over, I win.

At that point you just have to laugh and shake hands.

An X wing dogfight simulates minutes if not seconds of engagement. Clearly SW universe ships don't have computers to predict where the enemy pilots will go, so they are relegated to the equivalent of WW2 dogfighting. Get close, and hope you can put some guns on target. With microgravity just to make things more confusing.

In a ground fight, you're moving slowly if at all so it's a lot easier to hit something.

On a 3 dice attack, the probability of triple blanks is 1.5625%. And the chance of rolling 3 blanks, then rerolling all of those to blanks is 0.024414062%. It's basically nonexistent, so long as you have mods. And that is the key. Get those dice mods, and then your dice should only screw you over a few times. That's well within acceptable chance.

14 minutes ago, ThalanirIII said:

On a 3 dice attack, the probability of triple blanks is 1.5625%. And the chance of rolling 3 blanks, then rerolling all of those to blanks is 0.024414062%. It's basically nonexistent, so long as you have mods. And that is the key. Get those dice mods, and then your dice should only screw you over a few times. That's well within acceptable chance.

I should probably add that I play many games on vassal...where the statistics seem to go on a coffee break and anything is possible! But I agree, small chance...

17 minutes ago, VanorDM said:

This is just the nature of dice games, while you can always do something to minimize the dice screwing you over, there will always be times when no matter how good your tactics, or how well you execute the dice will screw you over.

I think this is the pill i am having trouble swallowing...if that's the nature of the game, then so be it! I will learn to love and accept my xwing dice god overlords. Oh how they giveth and taketh away...

Think i just needed a rant and a small debate!

Managing probabilities and potentialities is part of the minis game genre. XWM is part of that.

I personally love the take Wyrd did with this in the game, Malifaux. You have a deck of playing cards (with extra stuff on them) that are use for randomizing attack effectiveness etc. However, you also have a hand of cards that you can play to supplant the random flip. It is like rolling a pool of dice and keeping them on the side to supplant some dice rolled in the game. Along with keeping randomness in the game (which I like), it also provides a whole other level of play as players can build crews that affect their own or opponent's hands.

It might be cool to have a Yoda with a similar ability: at the onset of combat roll a g or r die. The result may be swapped in for another die cast this round.

X-Wing's natural dice curve is awful, honestly. The expected values for most rolls are close enough to 1 that without modification, most attacks do nothing far too often to make maneuvering feel rewarding. The need for modification itself isn't the worst thing in the world, but the action system is too limited to give the game any depth when modifications are applied. That's why we've seen so much work gone into free actions and rerolls, but I do really wish the core combat math was better.

I have recently started playing Armada and I think FFG re-evaluated their dice mechanics in both Armada and IA. I think if they were to release X-wing today it would include different dice like in Armada. I hate dice and I had some really bad dice/luck with them and after I got rid of some really badly balanced dice mine have been much more on mean.

sozin.pythonanywhere.com for checking that Vassal's dice aren't crazy

48 minutes ago, LunarSol said:

X-Wing's natural dice curve is awful, honestly. The expected values for most rolls are close enough to 1 that without modification, most attacks do nothing far too often to make maneuvering feel rewarding. The need for modification itself isn't the worst thing in the world, but the action system is too limited to give the game any depth when modifications are applied. That's why we've seen so much work gone into free actions and rerolls, but I do really wish the core combat math was better.

100% agree. This is the biggest issue in the game - they took the Wings of War movement system and simplified/improved it beautifully, but then pasted on a stripped down combat system that has too little granularity.

I would have loved for X-wing to have different dice like in Armada but that ship has long past sailed. The dice system we have is not bad just to limited by the low numbers. With higher numbers each ship could feel a little different.

3 hours ago, Gingerleo said:

Would the game be so different if there were no blanks on red dice? And perhaps more 1 more evade on green dice? Anyway, curious to hear your thoughts...

YES, it would be very different. If you want to take the blanks off red dice then why don't we also take all of the blanks off of the green dice as well? You want to get rid of most of the randomness on one side so what are you going to do for the other side unless you are hoping to COMPLETELY alter the EXPECTED results?

Just because you have a terrible roll does NOT mean you missed because you took a poor shot. It just means that the "gods of random events" weren't in your favor and the miss can be explained in any number of ways. When an attack is made there are two sets of random variable to consider and even if you minimize the randomness it is still a random result.

Would X-Wing be better if only one side of an attack had to roll the entirety of the random event. If EVERY ship had an automatic defense roll so the attack either hits it or misses it or inversely all attacks had a fixed value so defense was entirely upon the Defense. You can debate that question however you like but X-Wing is designed for randomness on both sides.

I come from a predominantly d20 based RPG background and what X-Wing is essentially doing is having players make random attacks against random defenses. Now I know that in d20 games I was never a fan of such a wild swing where there is a random spread of about 40 points in the results but some people seemed to like that BS. There are times that no matter how poor the defense was the attack could still miss yet at other times the defense roll was high enough that attack would rarely overcome it. At least in X-Wing that randomness is often a handful of d8s vs. another handful of d8s; rolling more dice should greatly even out the expected outcomes while the d8s give a smaller range per die. If I go back to DnD 3d6 and 1d20 produce the same average result but the 3d6 has a range of 3-18 with a standard deviation of 2.958 while the d20 has a range of 1-20 with SD of 5.766 which causes a lot more swing.

My poor z95 had a hell of a time in my game last night.

Had a range 1 shot with focus that got 3 blanks. A concussion missile shot with chips and focus that only got 3 hits after modifying thanks to rolling hit blank blank blank. Then had a range 2 shot with TL and focus that only got 1 hit thanks to getting a blank and rerolling it to a blank.

This game is so awesome, there's really even builds that cater to those that don't like dealing with dice results and want to just fly:

2x Lothal rebel/accuracy corrector/autoblaster turret

Gold squadron pilot/autoblaster turret

Nigel is spot on with Imperial Assault, only now after a few years are there enough units and cards that can negate the horrible "full dodge" is skirmish actually fun to play. Yes, all blanks (twice even) suck. But they happen, so do all crit rolls! I've seen a couple and those are much more memorable than the blanks.

I don't think the game would be much different without blanks on attack dice, and with an extra evade on greens. Dice mods will still reign king and guarantees like Palp or Fearlessness would still be good. And ships like Omega Leader and Old Teroch would still drive people nuts when flown well. Changing the dice would just change the balance of action importance, evades might just get better and more green dice ships would be better than 0 or 1 agility ships. You'd have to revamp the whole system.

In Star Wars everyone misses 99% of the time. Especially Imperials...

It's a dice game so you should be prepared for rng to screw you sometimes. I don't see why u like the imp assault better?

I have only played the campaign but there is several times where you rol a bunch of surges but no damage or a bunch of damage and no range or the opponents defence is just crazy. Then of course it can be so important to kill something before it can activate wich can be avoided in X-wing by dodging arcs.

Back to X-wing, attack dice with focus have 6/8 faces that are hits and if you roll 8 you will get someting except for some really unlucky times. rolling 3 dice with focus and only getting 2 damage is something you should be expecting, you can't get full hits all time. Then if you get multipile modifiers you can pretty much ignore rng. Target lock + focus that gives you lower than 50% hits are super rare. I do agree that it happens, I got 2 hits with a conc missile that had guidence ships last game night and sometimes i roll 3 hits and a crit on 4 dice will having no mods.

I'm not attacking you but I have played with so many new players that curse their dice luck when they get bad results while being stressed or having no mods. If you roll 4 red dice with no mod you should never expect more than 2 hits cause that is the statisticalresult.

The following is presented as a thought experiment, not a serious rules change proposal:

It would be interesting if the game had been designed back at the beginning so that range bonuses add a *result*, not a die. So, at Range 1, you add 1 <hit> result to your attack. At Range 3, you add one <Evade> result to your defense.

With a guaranteed result from range bonuses, you'd have much higher consistency on those non-range 2 rolls. It could go a long way to reduce dice frustrations. Similar mechanics that give guaranteed results are already well-liked, such as Guidance Chips which makes your discarded missile or torpedo less likely to be wasted on a bad roll.

This would also make range control even more important.

46 minutes ago, jocke01 said:

Then if you get multipile modifiers you can pretty much ignore rng. Target lock + focus that gives you lower than 50% hits are super rare.

The issue is just that out of the core rules, getting multiple modifiers is really, horribly inefficient and limiting to what ships can do.

I lot of games are dice games, this is one. The dice is part of its flavor, uncontrollable randomness. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you plan, no matter your best upgrade to your ship there are still things beyond our control. That is part of X-Wing.

It's like comparing an Ameri-Game to a Euro-Game. X-wing, an Ameri-Game, emphasizes theme along with ace pilots and factions like Rebellion and Empire. Originally the factions had unique abilities though that has diminished somewhat. The game is defined by your ships, pilot ability, upgrades, then luck. Mother of defying the odds, luck.

Euro-Games often had general rules and most things are an abstraction. No luck at all but more of a strategy game with meeples, colored wood squares for food, water and gold. More of a race of best resource management.

Dice is part of X-Wing. Some like the randomness and it gives even the last ship fighting a swarm a chance. Not a big one but a chance nonetheless, you won't often find that in a Euro-Game.

12 minutes ago, Ken at Sunrise said:

Dice is part of X-Wing. Some like the randomness and it gives even the last ship fighting a swarm a chance. Not a big one but a chance nonetheless, you won't often find that in a Euro-Game.

I liked the randomness in X-Wing. If two people built decent lists (defined as "lists that don't use "trap cards," like the generic E-wings or Expose or Saboteur), the more skilled player would usually win ... but not always. There was a not-insignificant chance (say, 20- to 35-percent) that a less-skilled player would win, based on randomness that both players were participating in. Players rarely felt that they simply had no chance in the game based on what ships went down on the table.

Unfortunately -- from my perspective it's "unfortunately" -- X-Wing has changed. Now every list that doesn't have hyper-action economy and reliable attacks of four red dice (or more) has become a "trap list." X-Wing -- especially in tournament play, but to some extent in any competitive play -- has become a bifurcated game, with some people embracing the reliability of hyper-actions and hyper-attacks, and many or most people still just putting together a decent list.

A "decent list" simply doesn't have a realistic chance of beating a hyper-"A"s list, because the decent list is still rolling and modifying dice as the game has been from the beginning, but the hyper-"A"s list has moved past that. Nowadays, players often know which list is 90-percent-plus to win based on what ships go down on the table.

I'm not going to say that everybody needs to mourn the change. But I do, and it's my opinion that the change is slowly strangling the game.

30 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

I liked the randomness in X-Wing. If two people built decent lists (defined as "lists that don't use "trap cards," like the generic E-wings or Expose or Saboteur), the more skilled player would usually win ... but not always. There was a not-insignificant chance (say, 20- to 35-percent) that a less-skilled player would win, based on randomness that both players were participating in. Players rarely felt that they simply had no chance in the game based on what ships went down on the table.

Unfortunately -- from my perspective it's "unfortunately" -- X-Wing has changed. Now every list that doesn't have hyper-action economy and reliable attacks of four red dice (or more) has become a "trap list." X-Wing -- especially in tournament play, but to some extent in any competitive play -- has become a bifurcated game, with some people embracing the reliability of hyper-actions and hyper-attacks, and many or most people still just putting together a decent list.

A "decent list" simply doesn't have a realistic chance of beating a hyper-"A"s list, because the decent list is still rolling and modifying dice as the game has been from the beginning, but the hyper-"A"s list has moved past that. Nowadays, players often know which list is 90-percent-plus to win based on what ships go down on the table.

I agree fully that the pool of "trap" cards has grown as power level has increased, but I'm not sure I agree with you regarding the extent of it, or that "decent" lists, flown well, have any worse odds than before against the top.

Just yesterday, in a friendly local event I attended, the final matchup was Quickdraw, Backdraft, and Jax, versus Swarm Leader Vessery, Omega Leader, and 2x Comm Relay Epsilons. Both solid lists, containing no "traps," but not strongly defined by hyper-action economy or monstrously large attacks. Vessery, with his free Evade, free TLs, and Swarm Leader extra reds are the only real example here (and the Vess list went down in flames in the final). But those pilots had defeated Rey/Ghost, Kanan/Biggs, and Mindlink Fenn /Torp Scouts to get there, lists which are undeniably in the hyper-action, hyper-attack realm. And from what I saw, they did so fairly handily in each case.

The humble TIE pilots just flew better. And that still matters a whole heap.