Played my first small game today. It’s fun. As I’ve mentioned a few times, it’s Dust Warfare, evolved and adapted to the Star Wars universe. That is beyond awesome, Dust Warfare was one of my favorite rulesets in 20+ years of gaming.

I hate that there isn’t enough dice to even play the base game. Rerolling and remembering hits and crits, etc was a pain. Also, surges seem unnecessary, I get that they add a small amount of character, but I could’ve just enjoyed hit and miss just as much. My Luke and Vader duel ended up very much in Vader’s favor much to my Rebel chagrin.

All in all though, it’s fun. Not groundbreaking, but good enough. A really good set of rules with a bit of annoying FFG rules wonkyness, but not enough to push me away. It being a small amount of releases every month and it being Star Wars will definitely keep me aboard.

1 hour ago, blkdymnd said:

I hate that there isn’t enough dice to even play the base game. Rerolling and remembering hits and crits, etc was a pain. Also, surges seem unnecessary, I get that they add a small amount of character, but I could’ve just enjoyed hit and miss just as much.

I agree they could have added more dice, but you don't have to keep the results in your head because every die has the same four results.

The surges aren't there to add character they are there to maximize variation. For example rebel troopers have a 50% chance to hit where rebel commandos(same weapon more training) have a 62.5% chance to hit.

1 hour ago, Orcdruid said:

I agree they could have added more dice, but you don't have to keep the results in your head because every die has the same four results.

The surges aren't there to add character they are there to maximize variation. For example rebel troopers have a 50% chance to hit where rebel commandos(same weapon more training) have a 62.5% chance to hit.

This. Surges let them cover a range of probabilities to hitting on a "7+ to a 2+" and blocking on a "6+ to a 3+" without an absurd number of custom dice while letting them have multiple kinds of non-blank face (Implenting surge to crit or deflect would be more complicated with conventional dice). It also makes dice pools with more varied probabilities to hit more practical (i.e. the AT-ST's main gun).

2 hours ago, blkdymnd said:

Played my first small game today. It’s fun. As I’ve mentioned a few times, it’s Dust Warfare, evolved and adapted to the Star Wars universe. That is beyond awesome, Dust Warfare was one of my favorite rulesets in 20+ years of gaming.

I hate that there isn’t enough dice to even play the base game. Rerolling and remembering hits and crits, etc was a pain. Also, surges seem unnecessary, I get that they add a small amount of character, but I could’ve just enjoyed hit and miss just as much. My Luke and Vader duel ended up very much in Vader’s favor much to my Rebel chagrin.

All in all though, it’s fun. Not groundbreaking, but good enough. A really good set of rules with a bit of annoying FFG rules wonkyness, but not enough to push me away. It being a small amount of releases every month and it being Star Wars will definitely keep me aboard.

Surges allow them to have two number models on each die type.

ie a white defense die is 1/6, white surge is 2/6, red def 3/6, red surge 4/6.

pretty much the same thing for attacks:

w = 2/8, ws = 3/8, b = 4/8, bs = 5/8, r = 6/8, rs = 7/8

double the number of combinations by using surges. Which is pretty sweet. It also allows Vader and Luke to have near parity (bs is only 1 less hit outcomes per 8 die rolls than red no surge)

Beat me to it, Derrault. I was in the middle of typing the same thing.

It's worth noting that every attack die has one crit. So natural crit chance is identical across different dice.

Which makes the Z-6 vs. Ion Gun an interesting beast. Against infantry, they have the same expected damage, but the volume of fire means that the Z-6 comes out ahead against cover or agile targets, since it's more likely to produce one of its expected 1.5 hits as a crit that can't be cancelled by cover or dodge. Of course, against vehicles, Impact 1 comes into play for the Ion gun, so it steps to the fore.