I've lost every match for the last eight weeks. Nothing has even come within a pube of close, I get absolutely clobbered every time. The most "fun" I've had was at the end of a 2v2 game where my lone, lowly Epsilon on 2 Hull outmaneuvered an E, Y, K, and two Xs for five turns, but the end result was inevitable, and that was the only time I or anyone else can remember my dice not being wet ****.

My dice simply **** the bed every game until it's way too late to matter. I'm so ******* frustrated, and I have nowhere else to vent.

Seriously thinking about chucking it all in the trash.

Dude change ships.

And change dice. ?

I'm liking because I can relate.

What are the main things you're flying against in your friendlies?

So here's the thing I've learned myself and observed over the years. When people complain about consistently *** dice (over more than just a single set of games) it's because they're not flying well.

This can manifest in not taking enough dice modification (focus tokens are king), a lack of focus fire, or poor engagements which lead to a weaker weight of fire at crucial times. It's impossible for someone to be 'cursed' and their dice to 'always crap out' and it's incredibly more likely that they are not following good principles around engagement, focus fire, and dice modification. I was playing a guy recently who after some bad rolls with his greens would put them in 'time out' and kept switching off sets until his ships were all dead. He had a few bad defense rolls certainly but he also did not take a focus token a single time that I can remember, and many of his rolls had multiple focus symbols crying out for him to love them. Dice modification would have saved him but he instead decided to blame the 'cursed dice'.

Sure you can have a game that truly was lost because of the dice, that happens, but there's almost always something you could have done better to help make those dice have a better chance. At the end of the day this game does come down to hinging on dice fairly often but you have a lot of power to enable your dice to have the opportunity to perform.

12 minutes ago, Alekzanter said:

My dice simply **** the bed every game until it's way too late to matter. I'm so ******* frustrated, and I have nowhere else to vent.

I guess 'git gud' is not the kind of advice you want to hear, but seriously - any good list shouldn't be at the mercy of dice every game. Either you're remembering all the failures but not the good dice (in which case you don't have an issue) or you want to look at either your lists, or your dice. There's a reason that ever since Howlrunner in wave 1, dice modification has been the aim of the game. You'll win more games purely by having those TLs, or those focuses, or because you took predator instead of expose.

And to answer those who say that thematic != good, Wedge with Predator, R2-D2, Proton Torps, Integrated; Wes with VI, R3-A2, Proton Torps, integrated; Ahsoka, VI, Captured TIE, Sabine's TIE, EMP Device, Rey. That's season 4 of Rebels right there

I am going to say that, I fully believe it is possible to be cursed by the dice gods. I have had over a decade of poor dice rolls, spanning many a different game. The number of natural ones I have rolled in a row has bucked the odds.

My suggestion is, before throwing it all away, try playing sonething like Heroes of the Aturi Cluster.

While dice gods are indeed fickle, playing a game while frustrated will lead you to making mistakes, often where the only way to prevail is to rely on chance. Take a breather from the game, play another way, or something else for a bit.

Alternatively, you can try flying squadrons where your dice don't matter Something like a Falcon with C-3PO and the Evade title, or a Ghost with TLT and Accuracy Corrector.

24 minutes ago, That Blasted Samophlange said:

I am going to say that, I fully believe it is possible to be cursed by the dice gods. I have had over a decade of poor dice rolls, spanning many a different game. The number of natural ones I have rolled in a row has bucked the odds.

So, first, the bolded part: it hasn't. It's bucked the odds for you , but given the number of gamers actively rolling dice, somebody has had "the absolute worst dice." It could be you. It probably isn't, but it could be.

Second, and related, it's entirely possible to have had terrible dice consistently. It is not possible to have terrible dice consistently (barring the dice being actually biased.) It's a subtle distinction, but it's one well worth internalizing.

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My suggestion is, before throwing it all away, try playing sonething like Heroes of the Aturi Cluster.

A genuinely excellent idea. HotAC will revitalize your affection for X-Wing.

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While dice gods are indeed fickle, playing a game while frustrated will lead you to making mistakes, often where the only way to prevail is to rely on chance. Take a breather from the game, play another way, or something else for a bit.

This is 100-percent true for me. When my dice are terrible, I get frustrated. When I get frustrated, I fly worse. When I fly worse, I have to rely more on dice. And it snowballs.

Dice luck is real. It happens. Don't listen to people who tell you that X-Wing is 99-percent (or even 85-percent) skill. X-Wing (at this point) is 35-percent lists (including list-building) and match-ups, 45-percent tactical skill, and 20-percent luck.

Yes, you do see similar performances from many highly regarded players, but -- just for example -- those high-performing players put tremendous effort and resources into analyzing the meta and finding and building lists that leverage as many broken cards to be as powerful as possible. That is "skill," but it's "list and match-up" skill, not on-the-table tactical skill. I know several players in the Bay Area meta at least as good, tactically, as the players who frequently make cuts at the big tournaments, but these Bay Area players just aren't willing to do what needs to be done before tournaments in order to perform as consistently well. (And that's not a judgment against them, BTW ... if anything, I admire the really good players around here who don't treat X-Wing like it's their entire life.)

Nigeltastic said it all. You can on occasion lose a game due to poor dice, but there absolutely is no such thing as "my dice hate me and I only lose because of them", and you would be wise to ignore all commenters who say "yes these inanimate objects can turn against you". It's a silly phenomenon that comes with this hobby, but it's totally, utterly false. If you don't believe me, roll out your dice 500 times, and document the number of times you rolled each result. Guarantee your dice are fine unless for some reason you have some faulty dice, in which case the issue is the dice itself and not you, as any roller would have issues with the dice.

There are wayyyyyy too many controllable factors outside of dice for a player to lose every game because of their dice. I hate to say it, but players who blame dice are often the worst off because they don't seek to improve in the aspects of the game they can because they instead choose to believe that they can't do anything to change their plight.

Here is a list of some things you can do to get better-

- Ask your opponent for honest, non-dice based feedback on your play and list. A lot of times, an opponent will say "ya those were some rough dice", but I find players say this as a way to kindly navigate the intricacies of opponent to opponent relations after one of the players has been dismantled. Unless someone asks, most players aren't going to open the post-game talk with "Do you understand what it means to focus fire? I can teach you." or, "Your target priority was incorrect from the get go.". Let them know you want no filter and want to know exactly what you did wrong.

- Give yourself time to be acquainted with a list. I played a game the other day where my opponent made crucial mistakes, like forgetting to decloak and on another occasion running into his own ship on a key engagement in which his ship would have got off an ordnance shot otherwise. Needless to say, the game was heavily in my favor from start to finish. But despite these obvious mistakes, my opponent chose to instead blame his cold dice (and they were cold to be fair) instead of identify that his mistakes and unfamiliarity with the list were what made the game so lopsided (which compounded the fact that he was flying a less than optimal list already). Even if your dice are cold, that doesn't mean you LOST because of them.

- Build lists to minimize variance. If you don't consistently have modifiers on your attacks and defenses, you wont see success. For example- I have a list with Jess, Tarn with M9-G8, and 2 Snap Shot/Juke Awings. On nearly every attack, and often on defense, my ships have a modifier, and often multiple. And that isn't even an example of a premium list which minimizes variance. Other examples include the powerful effect of Attani lists allowing for focus + another action on their offensive powerhouse ships, or ships with a system slot equipping FCS to allow for a guaranteed reroll on a target until it is destroyed, or Expertise and K4 giving full mod attacks on every green maneuver. If you try things like this and are STILL convinced your dice are against you, try something where your dice literally should not play a role, such as a Ghost with TLT and accuracy corrector or something similar.

- Practice Openings, including obstacle placement. In that same game I mentioned earlier, my opponent gave me easy shots on his ships by staggering his 3 ship build to allow me to blast one of his ships before he fed the other 2 into my formation. I knew I was going to take a strong attack at first, but it mattered little when I knew I was going to kill or cripple his ship in return and gain an immediate advantage. And then in another game, when he would have been able to focus fire with his 3 ships who were all higher PS, he turned his lead ship AWAY from my ships. I was delighted, as that was his heaviest gun. It gave me very easy target priority, and that ship was easy clean up in later rounds. If he had more practice with what openings are effective and which are not, he would surely have been able to have a more effective initial approach.

-Watch Worlds, Regionals, System Opens, etc on youtube or Twitch. Between rounds, identify what you would do in the situation of player A and player B, and then when they do something different, identify why they have done that and why it was likely a better option than what you would have done. And although these high level players do make mistakes, it is often best to assume they made the best move unless it is clear they did not. Also take note of their list and why it works. Don't copy the list, but dissect the purpose of each pilot and upgrade to understand what you can be doing in list building to replicate that sort of success. My guess is you will almost always find that list minimizes variance in some way.

You gotta stop stressing out about your dice dude, dice gods don't like that! Clear your mind and you will have hot dice again..

I had so hot dice in my tournament yesterday that one of my opponents for very frustrated..

Yoyoyo!

As a fellow Imperial and FO player, I can relate. Sometimes, we just have bad luck and rebels beat us when they shouldn't (like everytime we build a death star...)

So, let me suggest to you some ships that you should fly which are hilariously fun and Imperial while mitigating some bad dice:

Tempest Squadron Pilot w. Cluster Missiles, Accuracy Corrector, TIE/x1, Guidance Chips (Take TL and Evade actions)

Scrimitar Squadron Pilot w. TIE Mk II Engines, TIE Shuttle, A choice of two of the following: Systems Officer or Fleet Officer or Operations Specialist

"Zeta Leader" w. Wired and Comm Relay

Zeta Specialist w. Fire-Control System, Sensor Cluster, Special Ops Training and Light weight frame.

And because I'm such a badass list builder, these together form a 100 points list if you take Systems Officer

I have collected millions of dice rolls from this game over on Lady Luck (sozin.pythonanywhere.com). The conclusion I reached a few years ago after statistically correlating dice variance to game result is that, generally, he who rolls the most red dice wins. Usually if you are rolling more red dice you are flying better (getting into positions where you are shooting and your opponent is not). A second conclusion I reached was that strong dice luck early is more consequential than strong dice luck late -- which makes sense, if you can burn down a ship early then you can snowball that edge into into victory (by chucking more red dice).

2 hours ago, Arma Quattro said:

Dude change ships.

And change dice. ?

to say like... Jumpmasters?

Fly a list that doesn't rely on dice or necessarily good flying, such as Herigator with Accuracy Corrector and C3PO paired with Ahsoka.

While I'm loathe to actually blame dice, there's moments where I entirely question them. On many matches, stretching over a time period of several months, with many different players at my FLGS (so actual friends, not just randoms) have an ability to roll Crit/Hit/Hit repeatedly while I roll Focus/Blank/Blank for my attack in return (with an inevitable TL coming up as Hit/Focus/Blank). We'll use the same set of dice, so that there's no chance of it actually just being *my* dice that are jerks, I'll use the same ones they repeatedly roll C/H/H on and I'll still pull out a F/B/B on them, only to have them roll C/H/H again when they roll. It's somewhere between annoying and vaguely amusing at times. But I have, on more than one occasion, lost a game simply from the dice being jerks. Repeatedly and with no real explanation outside of pure randomness.

So I'm keen on anything that can turn blanks to hits (or even a focus) and rely on modifiers from there to get hits.

Nobody understands your frustration more than I do. I recently had a string of luck over two games that I'm fairly sure should happen about one time in 14 million. Wasn't my dice abandoning me, it was my opponent's green dice. It was truly unreal. My opponent should have walked out of the second game and purchased a lottery ticket right then and there.

Here's a pretty nasty version of Ghost/TLT that gives almost no f***s whatsoever about dice. The Ghost can statistically expect close to 3 hits every time it shoots, so it's actually better in some ways than the Acc Corrector versions of the Ghost TLT. Use M9-G8 to target lock the Ghost and then purposefully stress yourself out. Ezra plus the reroll will get you lots of extra hits. You'll never take actions with the Ghost but you should hit with most of your TLT shots. Reinforced Deflectors can amount to MANY shields over the course of the game depending on what's shooting at you. If you fly prudently, the only thing that can really give you trouble are low-red-die swarms. The ultimate counter list is 4 Tie Advanced with Acc Corrector and Cluster missiles, but nobody ever plays that. You'll eat 2-3 ship lists alive. The only way to hurt you without eating 4 damage in return (plus more from the Y-Wing) is for them to get into range one, out of arc. If they miscalculate and bump you (or bump you intentionally), they'll take stress and it will ruin their next pass. If they end up in arc, they'll eat your primary shot with a reroll + crit conversion. It's so nasty you may feel dirty after playing it... I do, particularly because quad TLT Y-Wing lists are an NPE for me and this is very similar, but without many of the weaknesses of that list.

Chopper (Pilot) w/
-Hera
-Ezra
-Reinforced Deflectors (it's good, trust me)
-Tac Jammer
-TLT
-Title

Zeb (Pilot) w/
-Autoblaster Turret
-Title

Gold Squadron Pilot w/
-M9-G8
-TLT
-Vectored Thrusters

2 hours ago, haslo said:

Alternatively, you can try flying squadrons where your dice don't matter Something like a Falcon with C-3PO and the Evade title, or a Ghost with TLT and Accuracy Corrector .

this.

When i feel like my green dice are being crap, I bring Ghosts and Decimators. When I feel like my red dice are being crap, i bring Han Solo or IG-88 or even AccuracyCorrector Advanced, just so I can ignore dice for a while. Or, you know, switch to bombs and let the other guy's hot dice kill him.

This topic needs @ficklegreendice 's sage advice.

2 hours ago, MaxPower said:

Tempest Squadron Pilot w. Cluster Missiles, Accuracy Corrector, TIE/x1, Guidance Chips

If dice are the problem this will fix it. My regular Rebel adversary hates the Advanced because of this build. I paired it with Proton Rockets for a change today and the five dice attack was satisfying.

You've got to recognise that X-wing is an extraordinarily popular game and, like all populous systems, it has its outliers. There's bound to be a few people that get the bad end of the luck spectrum, even for weeks on end. It's not some personal vengeance the dice have against you, it's pure, unbiased luck.

Don't quit the game, but I'd say you should do one of the following:

1. Take a break. Maybe you're burned out. Go play a diceless game for a while.

2. Fly this:

Bandit Squadron Pilot (12)

Lothal Rebel (44) x 2
VCX-100 (35), Accuracy Corrector (3), Twin Laser Turret (6)

Against this:

Starkiller Base Pilot (32) x 2
Upsilon-class Shuttle (30), Fire-Control System (2)

Starkiller Base Pilot (36)
Upsilon-class Shuttle (30), Fire-Control System (2), Hotshot Co-pilot (4)

And recognise that dice are not that important in this game, and you can build lists that work around your bad luck, if you're willing.

Microwave one dice as an example to the others.

Alternately, there's some great advice in the posts above

RoV

The best die roll you can ever make is the one you didn't make at all.

Terrible dice? Look into arc-dodgers, Decimators (which can arc dodge, for that matter!), Regen Poe, and Ghosts.

If you still keep losing... well, it's not the dice when there ain't no greens being rolled, right? Once you learn how to keep them alive, you'll have a much better appreciation how to keep the higher-agility stuff going too.

The Officers' Club

Major Striden (43), w/ Accuracy Corrector (3), Rebel Captive (3), Systems Officer (2), and Counter-measures (3), and...

Captain Oicunn (57), w/ Marksmanship (3), Weapons Engineer (3), Gunner (5), Mercenary Copilot (2), and Anti-pursuit Lasers (2).

100/100

Both are PS 4, mitigating large-base maneuver gaffs. If Oicunn doesn't bump, his action is Marksmanship. If he does, Striden will get Oicunn his Marksmanship through Coordinate; taking the Dauntless Title would give me the choice of taking stress, and I don't want that option. Otherwise, Striden performs a green maneuver and passes two target locks to Oicunn, then takes his action. Mercenary Copilot has two benefits: the first being crits at r3, the second (less obvious) being a minor nuisance/threat that deters the enemy lingering at r3, especially once their shields are down. With luck, this brings them closer. Not a bad thing, but they won't want to get too close (r1) due to the risk of bumping or getting bumped by Oicunn. Gunner is a "failsafe" against crud reds. Striden can shake an early target lock and (possibly) mitigate incoming fire during the first pass, and we all know the penalty for shooting at him while he's carrying Rebel Captive. The Upsilon will be putting out 4/5 reds; I honestly think Accuracy Corrector will be better than Fire Control System, guaranteeing at least two hit results even if the dice come up blank.

Striden is the weak link, but if he's the focus of attacks, then Oicunn can retaliate with impunity. There's 28 shields/hull to chew through. I actually think target priority will be tough. Go after Oicunn for the MoV, or Striden. Oicunn's TPW can keep up the pressure, I just have to play smart, especially with Striden.

I'll be practicing maneuvers all week, possibly get a game or two in as well, maybe even a "practice" game against myself, in preparation for our Store Championship this upcoming weekend.

Almost pure offense, little to no greens. It may even be fun to fly. Any advice, tweak suggestions, criticisms?