10 hours ago, Jeff Wilder said:

I mean, overwhelming numbers helps in Risk, too, in that you have so many waves to send in.

No one expects 37 million-to-1. That's something like the entire attacking army being lost in a massive earthquake chasm.

FYI: 2 defenders have a better chance to beat 30 attackers in Risk than 2 defenders in Axis and Allies have vs 10 attackers (assuming hits on 1 or 2 for all).

The odds of 2 artillery successfully defending (even to a draw) vs 30 incoming artillery is one in 2.7 * 10^54.

To put in context.... that would be like successfully flying through an asteroid field 15 times in a row (3720 to 1), and then rolling a natural 6 on a d6.

Axis and Allies distributions are nothing like Risk. :-)

A bad day of X-Wing still beats a great day @ work! :)

Best solution is to not get shot? For example, you mentioned a 5 dice Harpoon onto thweek? thweeks ability is to always move last, should have been able to not be in arc in the first place to receive that 5 die Harpoon.

Like there are games where I also get salty at dice, but after the game or the next day I realize, hmm, I shouldn’t had put myself in that position to begin with and I get over it.

23 hours ago, Jeff Wilder said:

This is insane. If you could be in a position where you would win if you could do 1 damage with two modded 4-die attacks against AGI-1, it would be literally foolish to turn that down. You should pray for that situation. In every game. And if you find yourself in that situation, on the wrong side, but win anyway, you just got immensely lucky.

This is the problem with the fallacy of overestimating skill versus luck in X-Wing ... people get wrapped up to just absurd lengths.

(If anybody thinks that 4-straight with Han in 2014 wasn't incredibly lucky -- i.e., the kind of coin-flip that decides the entire outcome -- then your opinion on this is -- wid' all due respec' -- meaningless.)

That 4 straight with Han wasn’t luck. You’re taking away any credit to the player. I also play Han a ton and my play style is modded after that game and stay as close to the rocks as I possibly can. I know if I’ll hit a rock or not, it had nothing to do with luck at all. It’s experience with the ship and knowing where your ship is going to land turn after turn.

Just now, Tbetts94 said:

That 4 straight with Han wasn’t luck. You’re taking away any credit to the player.

No, I am absolutely not. Paul himself said he wasn't sure it would make it.

Skill: Knowing it was close enough to be worth the risk, given how bad his position was otherwise.

Luck: Actually making the maneuver, allowing the boost, which allowed great position.

Your response is yet another case of assigning all of the result to skill, and none of it to luck. And that's exactly the type of blindness I'm talking about.

10 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

No, I am absolutely not. Paul himself said he wasn't sure it would make it.

Skill: Knowing it was close enough to be worth the risk, given how bad his position was otherwise.

Luck: Actually making the maneuver, allowing the boost, which allowed great position.

Your response is yet another case of assigning all of the result to skill, and none of it to luck. And that's exactly the type of blindness I'm talking about.

Sure he wasn’t 100% on it, but it took the skill and experience to make that decision like you said. So there was skill involved and the sentence “If anybody thinks that 4-straight with Han in 2014 wasn't incredibly lucky -- i.e., the kind of coin-flip that decides the entire outcome -- then your opinion on this is -- wid' all due respec' -- meaningless.” Makes it seem you’re not giving ANY credit on skill and all on luck. X-Wing has luck in it, but it’s the good players that know when to rely on luck and when not to.

On 5/29/2018 at 11:09 AM, Woobyluv said:

Well, for me, crappy dice are the norm. In fact, at my last tournament, I went 0-5 dropping the sixth match. I was so mad that my dice weren't working at all that I haven't and won't play 1.0 games anymore...ever. I would love to see a redesign of the dice to at least reduce the chances of total/near total blank outs. I won't get what I want though, so I'll try 2.0 and if the crap luck continues, I'll just sell my collection and retain my sanity.

What was your list?

25 minutes ago, Tbetts94 said:

Makes it seem you’re not giving ANY credit on skill and all on luck. X-Wing has luck in it, but it’s the good players that know when to rely on luck and when not to.

That because you've been conditioned to hear, "Wow, that was lucky," as, "Wow, that player has no skill." It's not what's being said. IMO, many players deliberately conflate the two statements because "I played well, had some luck, and won" just doesn't seem to them as prestigious as "I played well, so I won."

On 5/27/2018 at 8:23 PM, ficklegreendice said:

Huh, you were banking on green dice to come through with even average results?

You really didn't have a chance

When i read the thread starter and noticed he was talking about abysimal evade dice, i would have bet my house that YOU would have the first post, saying something like...

Meh... green dice are fickle.

Dayum i was so right! ?

15 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

That because you've been conditioned to hear, "Wow, that was lucky," as, "Wow, that player has no skill." It's not what's being said. IMO, many players deliberately conflate the two statements because "I played well, had some luck, and won" just doesn't seem to them as prestigious as "I played well, so I won."

No, I’ve just been use to playing against players who complain about dice during and after games when they’ve clearly been outplayed to take the blame off of themselves for the loss. When they say, “my dice sucked” (which is essentially what your OP is) but they could have just played better. For instance you mentioned in the OP that you were to aggressive with Fenn, if you played that round better you wouldn’t had needed luck. Or the next round with Thweek, if you’re playing Thweek better he wouldn’t had taken a 5 die Harpoon and needed luck.

Just now, Tbetts94 said:

[ "Just fly perfect and never roll dice." ]

...

Never mind. The conditioning is just too strong.

On 5/29/2018 at 6:39 PM, Jeff Wilder said:

I mean, overwhelming numbers helps in Risk, too, in that you have so many waves to send in.

No one expects 37 million-to-1. That's something like the entire attacking army being lost in a massive earthquake chasm.

Nonono

What no one expects is the Spanish inquisition!

7 hours ago, Tbetts94 said:

No, I’ve just been use to playing against players who complain about dice during and after games when they’ve clearly been outplayed to take the blame off of themselves for the loss. When they say, “my dice sucked” (which is essentially what your OP is) but they could have just played better. For instance you mentioned in the OP that you were to aggressive with Fenn, if you played that round better you wouldn’t had needed luck. Or the next round with Thweek, if you’re playing Thweek better he wouldn’t had taken a 5 die Harpoon and needed luck.

I'm pretty sure 99% of the X-Wing games played until now could be played better. How many games have you played or seen have been completely flawless.

One doesn't exclude the other though. Even if you could have played better, it's entirely possible to play well enough to put yourself into an advantageous position only to be betrayed by dice. Sometimes it just happens.

7 hours ago, Hobojebus said:

Nonono

What no one expects is the Spanish inquisition!

I so need a triple TAP squad in 2.0 (painted red, of course)

Our chief weapon is surprise....surprise and concussion missiles.......surprise, concussion missiles and supernatural reflexes....amongst our chief weapons.....I'll come in again.

No chance? Here’s no chance- I’m playing in a store monthly this weekend, and I’ve never played X-Wig competitively, and have only played 3 games in the last 3 years (all last weekend). Triple T-70 inbound!

What’s a harpoon? ?

4 hours ago, emsgoof said:

What’s a harpoon? ?

8 hours ago, LordBlades said:

One doesn't exclude the other though. Even if you could have played better, it's entirely possible to play well enough to put yourself into an advantageous position only to be betrayed by dice. Sometimes it just happens.

Exactly. (And, just to be clear, I was not in an advantageous situation in either of the two scenarios I detailed in the OP. But "winning, then screwed" wasn't the point of the post.)

Again, the problem with over-emphasizing the effect of skill over luck in X-Wing is that it leads to situations exactly like you describe, where one flies very well, but nevertheless does lose the advantage (or worse) due to variance. The reasons that always saying "fly different, so you don't need dice" is a problem are that (1) it's impossible to play X-Wing diceless, and (2) it leads to situations, as we saw earlier in the thread, where someone focuses on changing what he did well, just because he ended up on the wrong side of variance. It's not a blindness that's unique to X-Wing, but in X-Wing there has developed a certain results-oriented group-think that definitely makes it more pervasive than I've seen anywhere else, outside of "semi-skilled amateur" poker.

On 5/30/2018 at 3:21 PM, Tbetts94 said:

What was your list?

I was so mad I scrubbed it from my squad builder app, but went like this:

2 Alpha Class Starwings, Rho Squadron, Deadeye, OS-1 Title, Harpoon Missiles, ASlam

Alpha Class Starwing, Lt. Karsabi, Predator, XG-1 Title, Harpoon Missiles, ASlam, Mangler Cannon, Linked Batteries

Set up with ordnance carriers and have karsabi set off the poons. I received numerous compliments on my flying ability with the ships, the dice just would not perform. In every game, I positioned for Alpha strikes, that by the odds should have netted me 1st round of engagement kills, but did not in even a single game. So, I'm done with 1.0