2 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

Idk ive (rarely( won by dice before

It's adifferent kind of suck bevause youre still not really playing a game just craps, but hey better him than me

My two matches in my SC v scouts basically came down solely to dice. First i got ****** over by an immortal rau amd x7s that couldnt roll nonblanks for ****, and next game Backdraft decided he wouldnt be taking ****

But sometimes it comes down tobplayers not realizing what luck Is

Had a final match in a local tournie v vader cheri amd i try to burn cheri but Ryad (predator + focus) has a ramge 3 obstructed **** on vader

Vader had no mods due to tl +focus on braft and then acted surprised when Vader lost his shields

Is ficklegreendice a little bit drunk perhaps?

I had 3 games this weekend at a store championship where my opponent won due to dice. In one, his HLC Dash was rolling 4 hits natural EVERY time it shot. This was well noted through all his games. His Miranda TLT wasn't that hot though.

In the other two, it was down to just one Defender, and those Defenders just could not roll less than 3 evades and 3 hits. When fully tokened up (like they were), even a fully tokened Fenn couldn't punch through, as even with TL and Focus, I could barely get 4 hits on average.

While a few piloting mistakes were made, they were not game-costing mistakes. Those three came down to dice and dice alone. Sometimes they're hot, sometimes they're cold.

I've lost games where I've identified the exact move I made that cost me the game (the biggest mistake ever was not pushing with a Poe to focus because I thought I was outside of Range 3 after boosting behind a rock).

And I've had games where I've had Zuckuss roll nothing but hit-hit-hit-crit (with another crit when getting in range 1) for every game, and they were natural rolls.

Someone who just says "git gud" or that blaming dice means you're a bad pilot....is someone that's a blithering idiot who has either never actually played any game involving dice including X-Wing, or is so blind that they must have to get around with a seeing-eye dog and a cane.

45 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

Biggest problem with xwing re dice is that the range of values is so narrow that it's so extreme

Armada sports far more ships rolling far more dice, making it FAR more difficult to get consistently hot or shite dice

Consistent hot or consistent **** dice happen so rarely in X-wing they're not the 'luck' issue IMO.

The way I see it,most often game changing luck in X-wing occurs in the shape of a clutch dice roll that goes into a statistically unlikely direction. Stuff like one shotting Soontir at range 3 through a rock or (occurrence from my last game) a Rey with Focus and Finn failing to finish off a 1 HP Quinn Jast in arc at range 1.

I think it depends on the person. If you have a close relationship and/or if the person is willing to accept advice then maybe you can explain some things that may help them in the game. I've had conversations with newer players where they stated it was the dice. I would then ask them actions they took and explained a focus/target lock/etc could've help them instead of boosting/etc with their probability. Other times, I've played there were instances of just plain bad luck of dice for the other person (Eg. 5 Green dice rolling blanks for a shot at a cloaked phantom at range 3.). If the person isn't receptive then I wouldn't even bother.

If you're the type of person getting irked over someone complaining about dice, even though it's the other person's game play then either offer suggestions or don't bother.

1 hour ago, Calibri Garamond said:

Is ficklegreendice a little bit drunk perhaps?

Train phone tired bored

I have a simple solution for this, I don't talk to those jerks who blame the dice for everything. I simply avoid them like the plague. It's cool to take note when the dice actually had an effect, but that is not the kind of people you are talking about. So avoiding the unreformable is imho the best course of action.

11 hours ago, DR4CO said:

Being specific tends to help. It really is useless to give them a simple "fly better", but if you can politely point out that their 40-point ship spent 4 rounds out of the fight trying to sneak through rocks while you chewed up the rest of their fleet, it tends to go over a bit better. Holding yourself to the same standard is also important, to set the example, so it's good you're doing that already. And try to stay positive: congratulate them for the good moves, as well as pointing out the poor ones.

It won't be immediate, but it will payoff eventually. One of my locals used to complain about his dice all the time, but this weekend I was astonished when it was he who declined to blame the dice or the poorly timed PS0 critical, and instead pointed out the move that allowed Norra to escape and regen, when she otherwise could have been blocked at range 1 of a very angry Bossk.

This.
Yeah, dice luck happens, but criticals are more often pure luck based and decide games, while the dice often just make a lost game shorter or a winning game taking longer to finish. They rarely change the outcome. Sure, maybe it was unlucky to get two homings in one turn and lose your star viper, maybe statistic said that you had a solid 66% chance of survival, but if you would not make that boost your autothruster would have activated twice, you would have had one extra focus token und evaded 4 damage more on the same rolls. (real game example) So even on such bad rolls, you usually can blame yourself for relying on dice luck instead of better maneuvering.

1 hour ago, TheRabidAardvark said:

I had 3 games this weekend at a store championship where my opponent won due to dice. In one, his HLC Dash was rolling 4 hits natural EVERY time it shot. This was well noted through all his games. His Miranda TLT wasn't that hot though.

How does this matter when Dash rolls with dice mods 80% of the time 4 hits anyway? (and 98% 3 or more hits ;-))

1 hour ago, TheRabidAardvark said:

I had 3 games this weekend at a store championship where my opponent won due to dice. In one, his HLC Dash was rolling 4 hits natural EVERY time it shot. This was well noted through all his games. His Miranda TLT wasn't that hot though.

Those are some lucky dice man. Reminds me back in my college discrete math days. Have 50/50 chance for each dice getting a hit with a critical roll. If remember correctly, the probability of rolling 4 hits in a row is:

.5 x .5 x .5 x .5 = 0.625 or 6.25%.

3 hours ago, TheRabidAardvark said:

Someone who just says "git gud" or that blaming dice means you're a bad pilot....is someone that's a blithering idiot who has either never actually played any game involving dice including X-Wing, or is so blind that they must have to get around with a seeing-eye dog and a cane.

Yes, blaming the dice means you're a bad pilot. Good pilots understand that variance happens and choose not to dwell on it, and instead look for things that were actually within their control. Unless you can honestly say that you played the game 100% perfectly, there will be something more constructive to take away from a loss than "the dice gods hate me".

17 minutes ago, DR4CO said:

Yes, blaming the dice means you're a bad pilot. Good pilots understand that variance happens and choose not to dwell on it, and instead look for things that were actually within their control. Unless you can honestly say that you played the game 100% perfectly, there will be something more constructive to take away from a loss than "the dice gods hate me".

Again, the counter-fallacy.

The statement that blaming the dice "means you're a bad pilot" is, itself, the statement of someone with a lot to learn.

Just for example, few people have the time to get in more than a few games a week with a selected list. (Personally, outside of tournaments, I'm very fortunate to even be able to play three other games. Almost always less.) When testing and refining a list, the ability to recognize when a game is a statistical outlier can be the difference -- in either direction -- between "this list is worth continuing with" and "I need to scrap and start over." People who have been conditioned or shamed into never recognizing or admitting when the dice are skewed significantly one way or the other will waste a lot of valuable time.

Sometimes dice are to blame. (Or, as in the case of a recent game in my favor, should get all the credit.)

On one hand, you have people that always blame (or credit) the dice. These players don't understand probability, and their play will suffer for it.

On the other hand, you have players that have been conditioned or shamed to never blame or credit the dice. These players also don't understand probability, and their play will suffer for it.

The goal is to recognize significant variance, because it will happen ... and when it does, an aware player can look deeper and extrapolate useful things from the game anyway. An unaware player can't.

Although this train of thought is quickly devolving from blunt opinion to rude opinion, this is about right. Being able to understand the dice luck is important. Note the dice. But don't blame the dice for any of your poor mistakes, even ones you cannot fathom.

As a way of keeping things fun, you should almost invariably NEVER complain about being dice screwed after losing a game to an opponent. Thank them for the game, you can note the dice were not on your side, but also recognize and respect their play. It always leaves a unneccesary sour taste to hear someone complain about how they only lost to you cuz the dice weren't bad. And here you have 3 or 4 different mistakes you can point out, except for the fact that they're taking it particularly unwell for a middle aged man.

I've only seen games lost to me based on dice only perhaps once or twice out of a hundred games, where I obviously played poorly and they rolled like crap. In reverse, including personal bias, I feel like I've only lost about 10 games out of 100 or so based on PARTIALLY on bad luck: See, its really obvious I'm biased.

Sometimes its a combination. But remember, don't blame the dice. Let it go. And for the love on Vader's underpants, don't be that miserable, whiny, Western, far-too-old-for-this-behavior manchild.

4 hours ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Again, the counter-fallacy.

The statement that blaming the dice "means you're a bad pilot" is, itself, the statement of someone with a lot to learn.

Just for example, few people have the time to get in more than a few games a week with a selected list. (Personally, outside of tournaments, I'm very fortunate to even be able to play three other games. Almost always less.) When testing and refining a list, the ability to recognize when a game is a statistical outlier can be the difference -- in either direction -- between "this list is worth continuing with" and "I need to scrap and start over." People who have been conditioned or shamed into never recognizing or admitting when the dice are skewed significantly one way or the other will waste a lot of valuable time.

Sometimes dice are to blame. (Or, as in the case of a recent game in my favor, should get all the credit.)

On one hand, you have people that always blame (or credit) the dice. These players don't understand probability, and their play will suffer for it.

On the other hand, you have players that have been conditioned or shamed to never blame or credit the dice. These players also don't understand probability, and their play will suffer for it.

The goal is to recognize significant variance, because it will happen ... and when it does, an aware player can look deeper and extrapolate useful things from the game anyway. An unaware player can't.

Of course there will be variance; it's a dice game. But the problem is that when people decide that the dice were at fault, they proceed to switch their brains off and pretend that they were the only cause behind the result.

If you can look back at a game and say you placed the rocks correctly, deployed correctly, approached correctly, picked your targets correctly, maneuvered correctly, and your list worked the way it's meant to, then you may chalk the game up to dice. But 99 times out of 100 you'll be able to look back and say "Yeah, the dice were unkind, but I did myself no favours here and here." That's how you get better, not by throwing out a whole game because of a few dice swings.

Quote

Biggest problem with xwing re dice is that the range of values is so narrow that it's so extreme

Armada sports far more ships rolling far more dice, making it FAR more difficult to get consistently hot or shite dice

But also far easier to get "that one roll that shouldn'ta happened".

It's probably the biggest thing to note: a timed game of X-wing might be...what? half a dozen turns (I honestly don't know!), with maybe three-four attacks exchanged in most (but not all) of them.

Add in the fact that one point of damage in X-wing is a huge deal (compare to 'killing one extra member of a 20 man unit' in Age of Sigmar or 40k), and the fact that it's not how well you roll, but how well you roll in excess of your opponent's rolls that defines the result. That's why what are on the face of it fairly trivial increases (like reroll one die out of three) can be huge.

Armada also has the "defence" half of the mechanics (tokens, shield management) entirely within the gift of the defending player, and not at the mercy of dice. You know how many tokens you have, what they'll do, and what rate you'll regain shields.

Want to learn how to not get screwed by dice? Play with them pre-screwing you.

Use a custom rule. Any time you roll attack or defense dice, don't actually roll.

• Set the first die to a blank.
• Set the second to a focus.
• Set the third to a normal evade/hit.
• If you have more dice, cycle through the series again.

Treat this as a roll, not modifying, in all ways. Apply mods normally from there.

If you can win with this, you'll mop up under normal rules.

19 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

^

this.

Also, there's no guarantee that modification will affect/improve dice results. Dice are dice.

I saw a guy at the Euros roll a five dice, focused Miranda homing missile and after spending the target lock for rerolls, they still only had the grand total of one hit. Dice are a thing, bad luck is a thing, it happens.

While it's nice to note these things CAN happen, they're really not even worth mentioning as an event, because here are the probabilities of such an event:

If such an event happened, so be it. But you want to know how often it happens? Less than 1% of the time. So guess what? It probably hasn't happened to you, and even if it does, theres not really a reason to cry about it to your opponent, because you made all the right choices and 1% of the time it didn't work out.

But more often, you're hitting for 4-5, and merely forgetting about it.

Rephrased: there's no reason to cry about dice - either you brought a ship hat can't mod, didn't take mods, or experienced some exceedingly rare outlier. Regardless, either it was your own fault, or you saw some really cool probability hat won't happen again for a looooong time, and out can simply move on with your life.

9 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:

While it's nice to note these things CAN happen, they're really not even worth mentioning as an event, because here are the probabilities of such an event:

0	9.5367431640625e-7
1	0.00007152557373046875
2	0.0021457672119140625
3	0.03218650817871094
4	0.24139881134033203
5	0.7241964340209961

If such an event happened, so be it. But you want to know how often it happens? Less than 1% of the time. So guess what? It probably hasn't happened to you, and even if it does, theres not really a reason to cry about it to your opponent, because you made all the right choices and 1% of the time it didn't work out.

1% is pretty big given the amount of dice rolls in X-wing. Let's assume 4 ships shooting each other for 5 rounds (a pretty conservative estimate for a game IMO). This produces about 20 attack and 20 defense rolls, 40 rolls in total. This means something that occurs 1% of the time can reasonably happen once every 2-3 games (of the top of my head about 70% for a 1% probability event to occur over 120 rolls).

Which means not only it has happened to you, but if you're a regular player (2-3 games a week) it IS happening to you in a weekly basis.

However, a lot of the time it doesn't matter. Rolling 3 natural evades for example is unlikely, but if it's only opposed by 1 hit on the red dice and you had focus/evade anyway, it's not affecting the game at all.

23 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:

While it's nice to note these things CAN happen, they're really not even worth mentioning as an event, because here are the probabilities of such an event ...

To paraphrase a great man:

“Mathematicians have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually happening are a million to one. But X-Wing players have noted that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”

Or, as Han puts it:

"Never tell me the odds!"

It's all very well mathing out the probabilities like everyone's favourite Goldenrod; but that's of no use or comfort to anyone when it actually happens.

6 minutes ago, LordBlades said:

1% is pretty big given the amount of dice rolls in X-wing. Let's assume 4 ships shooting each other for 5 rounds (a pretty conservative estimate for a game IMO). This produces about 20 attack and 20 defense rolls, 40 rolls in total. This means something that occurs 1% of the time can reasonably happen once every 2-3 games (of the top of my head about 70% for a 1% probability event to occur over 120 rolls).

Which means not only it has happened to you, but if you're a regular player (2-3 games a week) it IS happening to you in a weekly basis.

However, a lot of the time it doesn't matter. Rolling 3 natural evades for example is unlikely, but if it's only opposed by 1 hit on the red dice and you had focus/evade anyway, it's not affecting the game at all.

Getting one hit isn't one per cent. it's 7 in 100,000. It's not vanishingly unlikely but it's certainly 'stretching the bounds of probability' unlikely. For every ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND times you roll that combination of dice with rerolls and mods, you get exactly one hit a little over 7 times.

1 hour ago, thespaceinvader said:

For every ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND times you roll that combination of dice with rerolls and mods, you get exactly one hit a little over 7 times.

False.

You could roll that combination of dice a million times and never see it happen. Or you could roll it ten times and see it happen twice. That's how random chance works.

10 minutes ago, FTS Gecko said:

False.

You could roll that combination of dice a million times and never see it happen. Or you could roll it ten times and see it happen twice. That's how random chance works.

Insert the words 'on average' somewhere in there, if you weren't already doing that...

6 hours ago, DR4CO said:

If you can look back at a game and say you placed the rocks correctly, deployed correctly, approached correctly, picked your targets correctly, maneuvered correctly, and your list worked the way it's meant to, then you may chalk the game up to dice. But 99 times out of 100 you'll be able to look back and say "Yeah, the dice were unkind, but I did myself no favours here and here." That's how you get better, not by throwing out a whole game because of a few dice swings.

There are two questions being conflated in this thread:

- What does it take to become a better player?

- What is courteous behaviour at the table?

The first question is never about dice (although it is certainly about probability!). Dice can be good or bad, but since you can't change what they roll, there is no way to improve them. You can make a choice for a list with a high variance or a list with low variance, and either has some advantages (most competitive players choose low I think) but the dice still do as they please.

The second question is more about what someone 'should' do. DR4CO used the word 'may', but that only makes sense with regards to norms of behaviour. Don't act like a duoche and at a certain point, blaming the dice again and again makes you look like one. In my book, however, mentioning bad luck once or twice does not, especially if you did, in fact, suffer from bad luck.

I tend to 'allow' players to blame the dice, because egos are fragile, and there is no point in going through a whole list of rock placement, deployment, target approach, target priority, maneuver choice and listbuilding just to find an excuse that is supposed to make the loser gorge in self-flagellation. It's okay, blame the dice if you feel the need to, just don't do it ad nauseam . I mean, look at the best professional athletes in the world; they always blame factors outside of their control when they lose. People need that, and it doesn't make you a bad person or a lousy player.

Edit: deliberate misspelling

I love how pointing out a 1% chance became "see! It'll happen all the time!"

On average, it happens 1% of the time. If you are consistently losing games on the 1% margin, it's still you.

1 hour ago, Verlaine said:

There are two questions being conflated in this thread:

- What does it take to become a better player?

- What is courteous behaviour at the table?

The first question is never about dice (although it is certainly about probability!). Dice can be good or bad, but since you can't change what they roll, there is no way to improve them. You can make a choice for a list with a high variance or a list with low variance, and either has some advantages (most competitive players choose low I think) but the dice still do as they please.

The second question is more about what someone 'should' do. DR4CO used the word 'may', but that only makes sense with regards to norms of behaviour. Don't act like a duoche and at a certain point, blaming the dice again and again makes you look like one. In my book, however, mentioning bad luck once or twice does not, especially if you did, in fact, suffer from bad luck.

I tend to 'allow' players to blame the dice, because egos are fragile, and there is no point in going through a whole list of rock placement, deployment, target approach, target priority, maneuver choice and listbuilding just to find an excuse that is supposed to make the loser gorge in self-flagellation. It's okay, blame the dice if you feel the need to, just don't do it ad nauseam . I mean, look at the best professional athletes in the world; they always blame factors outside of their control when they lose. People need that, and it doesn't make you a bad person or a lousy player.

Edit: deliberate misspelling

Basically, this.

18 hours ago, Analogkid said:

"In god we trust, all others bring data." -Edward Deming

Beyond what everyone has already said about tokens and modifications, dice follow the law of averages. Unless they have imperial data that shows their dice are consistently bad then they need to accept that over all the rolls of a game/tournament dice will equal out. Sometimes in a crucial moment they will be better or worse, sometime over a span of rolls, but in the end the dice are just.

The law of averages is not a statistical principle. The Gambler's Fallacy being a particular application.

If I record all of my dice rolls over a day and they are within expected results that means nothing. I could have, for example, always rolled good green dice to match my opponents good red dice and bad green dice to match my opponents bad red dice. In this situation my dice have "equaled out" as it were but I've been incredibly lucky.

Context is everything when analyzing a random event to determine how lucky or unlucky you have been. Everything that has happened previously is irrelevant.

24 minutes ago, MrParsons said:

The law of averages is not a statistical principle. The Gambler's Fallacy being a particular application.

If I record all of my dice rolls over a day and they are within expected results that means nothing. I could have, for example, always rolled good green dice to match my opponents good red dice and bad green dice to match my opponents bad red dice. In this situation my dice have "equaled out" as it were but I've been incredibly lucky.

Context is everything when analyzing a random event to determine how lucky or unlucky you have been. Everything that has happened previously is irrelevant.

This.

Also, randomness is 'clumpy,' so you absolutely can super blank out on greens or reds multiple times in a row... but it's ALSO unlikely to occur again.

And NONE of this changes your general strategy outside of a few edge cases.

(One edge case, for example, is playing whisper. I personally played to limit the number of times she could be 'one shot' if she were to blank, and flew her expecting to blank out at least once per game. That said, she DIDN'T blank out once per game, but when she did, I was neither surprised nor screwed, nor did I get salty when it happened. If you're going to get salty about dice, don't fly whisper).

Dice luck has two factors. One is total dice, and one is situational.

Take my game tonight. I won the game thanks to having a bit better overall dice, but it was the situational dice that really made the difference.

I shot at fenn 3 times when he had 4 dice to roll, once range 1 (not able to use title though), once range 2 obstructed, and once range 3.

All 3 times he had a focus, but he rolled 8 blanks between the 12 dice (though one was changed to an evade for thrusters). On the flip side I had a range 3 obstructed attack earlier in the game on inaldra where I had 2 hits, and he rolled 4 out of 5 evades. So he not only rolled more than average but also rolled more than he needed. If that roll was swapped with one of fen's rolls he probably wins the game.

On 26/06/2017 at 7:48 PM, Yearfire said:

Lately I've become more and more irritated by some players tendency to complain about dice and bad luck in their games, and in general try to explain their results by talking about bad luck or good luck, when dice modifications, or lack of such, has a lot to do with it. I can be both against me or someone else, but when some people talk about their games, they make it sound like the only thing deciding the outcome of a game is luck.

My question is how do you deal with it in a friendly manner? If I loose, I (for the most part) have no problems saying against it: it wasn't bad luck, but some gameplay mistakes, but it's harder to tell someone who just lost that it was their own fault. I you don't want to just say "fly better"/"git gud" and show them the middle finger, what do you guys usually say?

I think everyone has been through that phase with their first game. Just shrug it off, tell them crap happens and YOLO.

There's another way though if you're observant - some players tend to drop their dice onto the mat, tell them to roll harder, put a bit more effort into it. At least if they think they're putting effort it won't feel so bad (this is the same philosophy behind Pillsbury putting that "crack an egg" step into their cake mix recipes, read up on it)