That is the question.

Here's the thought- I have been wondering specifically about when individuals decide to reroll. I know the math for rerolls and know when it is statistically beneficial to do it, but fact of the matter is rerolls can be swingy. Even if you have a statistically good chance of the reroll helping you, there is always the chance it will do nothing, or in some cases hurt you.

I am looking for visceral table experience here on those type of rerolls. Where you have a middling roll roughly at the mean damage for your dice, so rerolling could end you better- or worse. What's the call in the moment? Is there a time you go for broke and reroll everything that isn't the optimal result to fish for higher than average returns statistics be darned, like trading a blue hit to reroll a red blank with leading shots? What about defensive rerolls?

I would love to hear peoples opinions- what goes through your mind as you lead up to the decision to reroll or keep it as it is. Do you crunch numbers? Is it a gut feeling? Does the decision change in extenuating circumstances like adding 1 more damage to your total means the ship is destroyed?

What about situations like:

Ordnance Experts on 4 blacks showing 4 hits, no crits or doubles?

Evade Reroll a single hit on a dice that could result in a worse outcome- Red single hit, blue hit (assuming no shields), black hit (need Mothma for this)?

Do you leading shots 4 Red hits even if you have wasted blue dice, like a third accuracy that isn't used?

I rerolled 2 damage with a bwing once and got the 3 i needed to end an arquitens on round 5. Won me the game and saved my flotilla. The later in the game the more I'm inclined to gamble.

With ships I was so unlucky with rerolls I dont even feel ordnance experts is worth it. In spite of knowing the odds. Overall I might replace all reroll upgrades with an additional bwing.

On another note there was a nice blog analyzing double bbc rerolls.

Either always reroll or never reroll. Dont mix, nobody wins at gambling.

What's the logic behind that Gink? Seems rather arbitrary?

and @Xeletor I think that is what I am getting at. Rerolls are great, but how do you leverage them to be worth the points rather than just adding more dice to the pool. OE for instance is pretty much an auto-include on black dice ships, but how do you use it to make it worth the 4 pts. Or is it because it's so few points it's a "Might as well take it" because there is nothing you could trade to that would be more beneficial.

7 minutes ago, BrobaFett said:

What's the logic behind that Gink? Seems rather arbitrary?

and @Xeletor I think that is what I am getting at. Rerolls are great, but how do you leverage them to be worth the points rather than just adding more dice to the pool. OE for instance is pretty much an auto-include on black dice ships, but how do you use it to make it worth the 4 pts. Or is it because it's so few points it's a "Might as well take it" because there is nothing you could trade to that would be more beneficial.

I bring them for insurance. I'm spending a few extra points to get my worth out of other spending. It's a dice warranty, but without the quality assurance. As someone who recently turned four black hits into one black hit with one fell swoop, I only reroll to correct to average results, unless I have a specific result I need, RIGHT NOW, ON THIS SHOT. (It must be capitalized like that.)

So in the future you would take 4 hits and leave it on your black dice? That is what I am looking for. It's a tough call. What makes you push for the Crit or increased damage and what makes you hold off and take the middling result.

Only reroll blanks ever? What about leading shots where the likihood is you will be trading 1 guaranteed damage on a blue dice for potential damage on reds? How much potential damage needs to be there for you to do that? 1 blank? 2? 3?

You can read "Thinking fast and slow" to see how much our brain sucks at statistics. It highlights why I end up hating OE in spite of having calculated the odds.

Objectively gunnery team can be good, to have twice the dice, albeit on different targets. But short range makes that almost impossible, so OE is the only good damage increase in that slot. Sensor team being another option, but more circumstantial and as exhaust.

For the black crits, OE increases the odds massively. Chance of a crit on 3 dice becomes chance of a crit on 6 dice. If you dont care about rerolling a 1 damage. Still I had many occasions where I had none. Thats why I dont get the jousting idea: fly in mc30, get one good shot, fly out. In my experience I need to ram to get 2 good shots to make mc30s worth it.

4 minutes ago, BrobaFett said:

So in the future you would take 4 hits and leave it on your black dice? That is what I am looking for. It's a tough call. What makes you push for the Crit or increased damage and what makes you hold off and take the middling result.

Only reroll blanks ever? What about leading shots where the likihood is you will be trading 1 guaranteed damage on a blue dice for potential damage on reds? How much potential damage needs to be there for you to do that? 1 blank? 2? 3?

For some context, the shot was likely to be the only black broadside Demolisher would get all game (poor positioning punished by Norra and Company), and I did have APTs I wanted to trigger at least once. I would also think this mental math will change slightly when you have Ordnance or Ion Cannon crit upgrades that give you additional effects on top of the damage. E.g. had I rolled a double and a hit on the dice, that would have been the same net damage after APTs, but with one to hull, and brace only able to reduce by one instead of two. It's a complex question (especially with non-damage crits like OP or NK-7, both of which increases future damage by an unknowable amount).

It needs to be evaluated on a shot by shot basis. What stage is the game at? Is a kill an option? Will it set up an easy alternate kill? All those factors play heavily into whether or not I reroll and get greedy.

Oh sorry, you mean the detailed decision. Sato mc30 long range black with acm: reroll until crit.

Normal mc30 close range, last shot on that ship and after only some red dice might hit it? Reroll everything except doubles. Or is it the First shot of the game, plenty to come? Only reroll blanks.

2 bcc? Vader and leading shots? First Reroll: everything except doubles. Second reroll: reroll only blanks. Someone calculated that, dont have the link.

Yeah, I've seen the reroll stats, just realized that a lot of times in games I am forced with a decision to either follow those statistics or risk for a desired outcome. Mostly it is fishing for crits in black dice because I tend to roll the 4 hit option quite a bit. Not rolling a crit for APT is a huge setback, it skews the statistics because of the extra damage associated with that face.

However it sounds like most people just follow the distribution, so that answers my question as well!

I think the way to decide if a reroll is beneficial is to look at the bigger picture - what are the benefits of getting that extra hit (or crit) and how much am I losing if a reroll produces a blank? For example if I see 4 hits on 4 black dice and I know that the opponent still has brace, I would reroll either 1 or two of those dice. More generally if getting that 1 or 2 extra damage would kill a ship I would go for a more risky reroll strategy. If not and its still going to be in the firing arcs, I'll be more conservative. So based on the situation on a board big variance can be beneficial or detrimental.

5 minutes ago, BrobaFett said:

Yeah, I've seen the reroll stats, just realized that a lot of times in games I am forced with a decision to either follow those statistics or risk for a desired outcome. Mostly it is fishing for crits in black dice because I tend to roll the 4 hit option quite a bit. Not rolling a crit for APT is a huge setback, it skews the statistics because of the extra damage associated with that face.

However it sounds like most people just follow the distribution, so that answers my question as well!

If I need a hit/crit on Admo to trigger APT, I will reroll any and all dice to fish for one. If I am playing against a Mon Mothma fleet (especially with Admo along) I am trying to get two hit/crits on my rolls. A Mon Mothma Admo will make you reroll one of the hit/crits and will probably burn the evade after that to Admo the other hit/crit. You need as many as possible!

If you have 4 hits, you have a 25% chance of getting a blank, and a 25% chance of getting a hit crit, (2 faces in 8 on the dice for each) and a 50% chance you neither go up or down, so a 75% (6 of 8 faces)chance to be no worse of or better, if however you need a hit crit for an ordnance upgrade, say for example, you have ACM that hit crit nets you 3 extra damage, so even if you roll hit/crit, hit, blank, blank you still break even, but you have good odds that your dice (75% chance) will remain as good or better.

Still this is not a game like Xcom where the fail chance increases by 1 per reroll, so to begin it is a 1-2, then a 1-3, then 1-4, then 1-5, in Armarda your chances based on face icons remain exactly the same on every throw, it is probability that is increasing or decreasing based on number of rerolls.

As others have said many other factors need to be accounted for, such as turn, damage, def tokens available etc, what else can be brought to bear on the target that round.

I generally only reroll blanks. Especially with red dice, after having, on multiple occasions, rolled red hits into red blanks when I should have just kept what I had. Double Turbolaser has been a fantastic upgrade for my rolling needs, as it, at worst, doesn't change anything, and at best, you get another 2-hit.

This isn't really dependent on the shot. If the dice are red, and there is a symbol that does something, I am not rerolling it.

It depends on the game, if I'm heading for a win I will play safe with the averages, if it's looking like I'm going to loss I will be more willing to gamble. after all if its the last round and you need 8 damage to kill a ship with your last shot with four blacks dice even if you get 6 damage you may as well buck the dice up and reroll even if the odds say you will get 4 damage....

4 black hits. Keep one reroll three.

Evading a red hit. Yes. He get 1 and the dice is 0.75 so go ahead.

Evading a blue hit. Getting a crit matters? Against Dodonna never. If not I usually do it, the chance of becoming a bit worse is the same of becoming really better.

Evading a black hit. Never unless it means a loss. If it goes bad it goes really bad (+1 damage and crit).

Leading shots. Only when the average of the rerolled dice is above the damage I am removing. To spend an wasted acc is good but reroll 4 damage for a 3 averages damage looks wrong for me. I only do it when I have other effects like Vader, TRC, etc. That could help me assume the risk.

On the other hand one of the biggest pleasure of this game is rolling huge dice pools (a strong reason to be imperial ) and rerolling dice just give me more pleasure so sometimes I just reroll and have fun. But during competitive matches in go with the odds.

4 hours ago, GiledPallaeon said:

I bring them for insurance. I'm spending a few extra points to get my worth out of other spending. It's a dice warranty, but without the quality assurance. As someone who recently turned four black hits into one black hit with one fell swoop, I only reroll to correct to average results, unless I have a specific result I need, RIGHT NOW, ON THIS SHOT. (It must be capitalized like that.)

Basically this - 'reroll to average' (+/- 1 standard deviation) unless the result you have is as good as nothing. IE., if you don't kill the ship you are firing at, it will wipe out two of yours when it activates. In this case, even if your initial roll was a bit ABOVE average...if it didn't get the kill, and you theoretically can kill the target with some roll...do the reroll to try for it.

...but this should only occur fairly late in the game. Otherwise, yeah, just re-roll to try to correct to average, and not otherwise.

7 hours ago, GiledPallaeon said:

I bring them for insurance. I'm spending a few extra points to get my worth out of other spending. It's a dice warranty, but without the quality assurance. As someone who recently turned four black hits into one black hit with one fell swoop, I only reroll to correct to average results, unless I have a specific result I need, RIGHT NOW, ON THIS SHOT. (It must be capitalized like that.)

That wasn't our game was it?

2 hours ago, Hystarr said:

That wasn't our game was it?

No, that was getting four damage (plus or minus an acc) on four blues I should have rolled as three and one instead of two and two (CF command on a Raider at medium range, for those keeping score at home). No, the game I had in mind was one I played at my FLGS, where a terrible idea and an intelligent opponent conspired to leave Demolisher at the whim of Norra and friends, and I decided to go for broke on her only broadside shot. I got broke.

The real answer is that it depends on context.

You have to ask:

• How much damage do I have on the table already?
• What is the expected value of re-rolls?
• What mitigation is available to my opponent?
• What would kill them?
• Is there any downside to the re-roll (e.g. always re-roll blanks).

So to give two real world examples:

1. If I attack with Demolisher, and throw 4 black, and get: hit, hit, hit, hit, hit/crit, I am unlikely to re-roll this in general because it's 5 damage; I rolled this in a game today and left it on the table. Adding one damage won't change that result if a brace is used, I have the hit/crit I need for APT. However, if I'm facing Admonition? They can cancel my APT trigger, so I might re-roll all four hits to fish for additional crits. If it's a situation where 7 damage plus APT showing on my roll would actually kill a ship outright (even post-brace), I might also re-roll.
2. If I have an attack on the table that does one thing, do I want to swap it? If I've thrown 4 blue and landed hit, hit, hit, accuracy with Saber Squadron, do I want to re-roll one of those? Against a squadron without defense tokens, I probably want to re-roll the accuracy. Against a squadron with more than one brace, it actually doesn't matter, and with one brace, I'd be foolish to re-roll because I can't get to 5 damage. If the other squadron has a scatter, I should probably keep the accuracy.

In my view, there is no hard and fast rule of when to re-roll (other than useless results: blanks for ship dice, crits vs. squadrons, etc.), other than you need to understand the context and what you need to achieve.

4 minutes ago, Reinholt said:

If I attack with Demolisher, and throw 4 black, and get: hit, hit, hit, hit, hit/crit,

I would stop right there cause it's an amazing result for a 4 dice attack

http://www.wwpd.net/2015/10/star-wars-armada-stats-101-expected.html

Pretty sure Cannot Get Your Ship Out, or Truthiness, or someone that was not Biggs did a great article on rerolling recently... I will link later if I run into it.

Dang, might be Biggs

http://xwingtactics.blogspot.com/2016/09/armada-dice-black.html

http://xwingtactics.blogspot.com/2016/09/armada-dice-blue.html

http://xwingtactics.blogspot.com/2016/09/armada-dice-red.html

Depends on what I'm attacking and what I'm armed with.

If I have a means to roll a die without changing the outcome yet the result can improve (lets say SW7 Ion cannons and I need an accuracy) then always go for it.

I have another time when rerolling is ALWAYS the smarter move, and that's when using Screed plus a ship rolling multiple black dice with Ordnance Experts. In this case, you reroll for as many crits as you can get until you have Damage = (crits >= (black dice - 2 + Screed)). for example, on Demolisher, you want to reroll to get 6 damage with a critical or 2 hit/crit results with spare dice to Screed into 6 damage. The reason for this is to maximize damage but also to maximize the chances that if any dice are removed or rerolled that you will keep or reroll into a black hit/crit.

For exsample: roll 4 black dice. 1 Crit/hit, hit blank, hit (4)

Ord Experts hit, blank hit: Crit/hit, Crit/hit, hit, blank (5)

Screed : Crit/Hit, Crit/Hit, Crit/Hit (6)