I am starting to get a little bit troubled by the way rerolls are spreading in the game. The way it has been transforming is really bad for all the white defence characters out there. Rerolls on attack dice is strong, but now we have a fem strong units that can choose to reroll the defence dice.

For the white dice, it has allways been a part of the ”deal” that the dice is on avreagera weaker then the black but then you add one chance in six to take no damage at all. But with weequays and now Ahsoka in the house, i feel like there are rouge times ahead for our white defenders.

Feels like its starting to be difficult to make the dodges stick...

5 minutes ago, Ram said:

I am starting to get a little bit troubled by the way rerolls are spreading in the game. The way it has been transforming is really bad for all the white defence characters out there. Rerolls on attack dice is strong, but now we have a fem strong units that can choose to reroll the defence dice.

For the white dice, it has allways been a part of the ”deal” that the dice is on avreagera weaker then the black but then you add one chance in six to take no damage at all. But with weequays and now Ahsoka in the house, i feel like there are rouge times ahead for our white defenders.

Feels like its starting to be difficult to make the dodges stick...

And thank goodness for that. Good riddance to X man in my opinion.

You must have missed out on the two year long "x-man" Wars...I mean debates

In all seriousness though, the designers have said something to the effect of - the dodge is great for narrative experiences (I.e. Campaign - remember that time we won the mission because of a clutch dodge!) but not good for competitive environments when it can have a very swingy bad experience (for both the dodger and the misser). So I'm not surprised that they are little bit by little bit adding in ways to counter some of the dodge results if you want to include them while not wholesale making it so every dodge in existence will never happen.

We'll hear both sides of the argument in this thread, probably. It all depends on what your vision of what a dice-based tactical strategy game should be. Here's mine: Players should have the ability to mitigate bad rolls.

Having attackers reroll attack dice and use other methods to improve their attack results is a needed component in this game. If you've ever played JK Luke, you know how crappy some of his rolls can be with Blue/Green/Yellow.

The problem with the white die is that more than 2 DODGEs will swing the game without any actual skill from the person rolling it. Personally, the first time I roll a DODGE, I celebrate; after the 2nd time, I apologize to my opponent. It's not fun.

Forcing figures reroll defense dice is the current way to mitigate DODGE for attackers. But, as @Ram pointed out, it feels unfair in the other direction, since your 1/6 chance of a spectacular defense now gets reduced to 1/36... and your chances to get a blank after rerolling the DODGE is 1/6. For mitigating the White Die Reroll Disaster, there are a few options: Command Cards for the target (On the Lam, Brace For Impact, Stealth Tactics, etc.) or for adjacent Guardians (Bodyguard, Guardian Stance, etc.), figures that distribute BLOCK TOKEN in the new HotE wave and changing your play style with that figure to ensure it has enough distance and cover from enemies.

It'll be tough modifying the dice rules in a way that everybody likes. The best attempt I've heard so far is from @frotes:

Quote

Dodge

Add 2 BLOCK and 1 EVADE to your defense results. Then roll the white die again and add the BLOCK, EVADE and DODGE results to this die's results. This roll is not considered rerolling the die. You may continue to roll the white die and add results for each additional DODGE you roll after the first.

Blank

Add 1 EVADE to your defense results.

Attacker's -1 DODGE

When an attacker applies -1 DODGE to an attack, it removes all BLOCK and EVADE results from a die with at least one DODGE result.

This hasn't been tested AFAIK, but it would be interesting to see if it works appropriately with both figures like JK Luke and Vinto.

28 minutes ago, cnemmick said:

We'll hear both sides of the argument in this thread, probably. It all depends on what your vision of what a dice-based tactical strategy game should be. Here's mine: Players should have the ability to mitigate bad rolls.

Having attackers reroll attack dice and use other methods to improve their attack results is a needed component in this game. If you've ever played JK Luke, you know how crappy some of his rolls can be with Blue/Green/Yellow.

The problem with the white die is that more than 2 DODGEs will swing the game without any actual skill from the person rolling it. Personally, the first time I roll a DODGE, I celebrate; after the 2nd time, I apologize to my opponent. It's not fun.

Forcing figures reroll defense dice is the current way to mitigate DODGE for attackers. But, as @Ram pointed out, it feels unfair in the other direction, since your 1/6 chance of a spectacular defense now gets reduced to 1/36... and your chances to get a blank after rerolling the DODGE is 1/6. For mitigating the White Die Reroll Disaster, there are a few options: Command Cards for the target (On the Lam, Brace For Impact, Stealth Tactics, etc.) or for adjacent Guardians (Bodyguard, Guardian Stance, etc.), figures that distribute BLOCK TOKEN in the new HotE wave and changing your play style with that figure to ensure it has enough distance and cover from enemies.

It'll be tough modifying the dice rules in a way that everybody likes. The best attempt I've heard so far is from @frotes:

This hasn't been tested AFAIK, but it would be interesting to see if it works appropriately with both figures like JK Luke and Vinto.

Agreed. In a close game a timely dodge can decide the whole thing which doesn't feel fun for either people imo. It's to a point where strategically you have to use your decent attacks against units with black dice unless you can force a reroll. Luke or IG whiffing an attack is devastating because of how many points you dump into them. Not such a big deal if a single Trooper or whatever misses one.

In an interview the designers said, that in their test games, the dodge roll just cancels on of the attackers dice of the defenders choice.

I like that rule.

Oh ig-88 you can lose that green die at range 3 you bloody clanker!

16 minutes ago, DerBaer said:

In an interview the designers said, that in their test games, the dodge roll just cancels on of the attackers dice of the defenders choice.

I like that rule.

Does it feel better to miss due to insufficient accuracy?

There are still cards you can use to mitigate accuracy loss, and you could use surges for accuracy.

2 hours ago, a1bert said:

Does it feel better to miss due to insufficient accuracy?

Haha, that's the whole rub of this thing, right? Getting DODGE feel significant without making it too powerful.

I do like the simplicity of removing one attack die with a DODGE. The attacker can avoid miss by Accuracy issue by making sure the figure is close enough or SURGE/Command card modifiers. But it still doesn't necessarily solve the issue of having 3+ DODGE rolls swinging a game.

If we're keeping it simple, maybe DODGE should be "for this attack, the defender suffers no STRAIN or Harmful conditions, and no more than X DMG". Where X is either 2 or 1. That's pretty significant but doesn't save a white die figure completely.

13 hours ago, a1bert said:

Does it feel better to miss due to insufficient accuracy?

It does feel way better with a 3 to 4 dice attack, that does not miss, but just does less damage.

And it does feel way better with melee attacks, that still do some damage.

Good points!

Yes, I did miss a lot of the x-man debate. I am pretty new to this game. My general view is that the white die is pretty much crap and I cant see any real thematic in making the force users suck on defending really. I can perhaps appreciate it on some Spies and perhaps the odd smuggler, but not on blast deflecting machines like Luke and the Inquisitor. Pretty much five out of six sides are crap and the last one is awesome. With the attack dice count going up and with frequent rerolling, canceling one surge is not really all that awesome (not bad in any way, but not awesome) and not being able to generate more then one block is pretty bad. So with forced rerolls on the defence die, the white die is, i would say, pretty much total crap.

The solution of giving for instance luke more hit points hten chewie... Well. Dont get me wrong here, I love the game in every way (except ug:s ). My "complaints" are more of an analytic form with a drop of thematic thrown in for the fun of it. It is a lot more in the form of "this is the consequence" then "this is wrong, i will quit *run away crying*".

Defense dice are as good as the amount of damage they block. The black die is more consistent, the white die is more swingy. When your figure dodges one of Vaders attacks for like 8 damage, the white die is great for you.

Just taking the averages: Against eStormtroopers' attacks both dice are equally good, against harder hits the white die is better, against weaker hits the white die is weaker. In general the white die is weaker against attacks, that can reroll the defense die.

Or to put it that way: The white die su*ks against Junk Droids but is great against Jedi Luke, Hater Vader, IG etc...

It depends on your local meta, how good it really is.

5 hours ago, Ram said:

Good points!

Yes, I did miss a lot of the x-man debate. I am pretty new to this game. My general view is that the white die is pretty much crap and I cant see any real thematic in making the force users suck on defending really. I can perhaps appreciate it on some Spies and perhaps the odd smuggler, but not on blast deflecting machines like Luke and the Inquisitor. Pretty much five out of six sides are crap and the last one is awesome. With the attack dice count going up and with frequent rerolling, canceling one surge is not really all that awesome (not bad in any way, but not awesome) and not being able to generate more then one block is pretty bad. So with forced rerolls on the defence die, the white die is, i would say, pretty much total crap.

The solution of giving for instance luke more hit points hten chewie... Well. Dont get me wrong here, I love the game in every way (except ug:s ). My "complaints" are more of an analytic form with a drop of thematic thrown in for the fun of it. It is a lot more in the form of "this is the consequence" then "this is wrong, i will quit *run away crying*".

3 out of 6 sides are awesome. The surge cancel/block are really strong rolls as well. There is really only one bad side with the blank. If that was bumped up to anything else then the entire dice would be better than black.

This is when the math becomes kind of fun. The value of the White die will vary greatly based on max damage output of the attacker as you say (average damage prevented will be dependant on the max damage output of the attacker(s)). However, it will also depend greatly on the surges of the attacker. With increased number of dice rolled, the number of surges will typically rise. As such, even if you roll to prevent one surge, there is a pretty good chance that you will still suffer the strongest surge of the attacker. So the White dies strength/weakness will depend quite a bit on the strength of the second surge ability of the attacker. That may well be the difference against the black die rather then actually preventing the primary surge.

Preventing secondary surges can be devastating too. Especially with some of the long range shots being taken right now killing a second surge that someone was planning on using for accuracy basically amounts to you killing their stronger damage surge. Not always going to pan out like this but it defintely happens.

14 hours ago, DerBaer said:

In an interview the designers said, that in their test games, the dodge roll just cancels on of the attackers dice of the defenders choice.

I like that rule.

Last time I heard they were using a card deck instead of attack/defence dice, but anyway, it's nice to know that the design team is still doing their internal testing on an entirely different game to the one they are actually designing...

I don't see how the dodge is thematic. Like how exactly are you avoiding this attack when you're not moving? At least "On the Lam" or a mechanic like that makes sense. I like the idea of it cancelling a die (maybe the one with the highest range value so like you're trying to dodge out of range?), not a whole attack.

I used "Cross Training" on elite Jet Troopers at our recent Nationals. I used to always roll the black die until my guy was on his death bed, hoping for a dodge. Then I realized that it was way better just ALWAYS rolling the white die just to get that chance of rolling a dodge. I have to say I would NEVER roll a black die again with a cross-trained trooper. So for 1 point, I get a 16.7% chance of completely negating all attacks? A dodge is pretty huge in this game now.

On 10/13/2017 at 7:08 AM, NeverBetTheFett said:

I don't see how the dodge is thematic. Like how exactly are you avoiding this attack when you're not moving?

Ducking and pivoting let you avoid attacks without actually changing your geographic location. Also if you're thinking thematically, you shouldn't really be imagining all the characters are standing still until it's their turn to activate. All the characters would be in motion without stopping, the turn-based nature just makes it so that you are only focusing in on one character's movements at a time. White die characters are usually small or fast and lack armor which makes their target profile smaller. I'm glad they took away Chewie's dodge result from a thematic angle as well as gameplay balance, I just couldn't figure out how the white die worked thematically with him besides it representing plot armor or something.