Been thinking about the math behind the squadron Lando(what? Lando gambles, what math you talking about?) And here's some thoughts on him

The attacking part of his ability is pretty straightforward. Always change that red to a 2 if it is not unless you need an accuracy. Lando tosses his cheat sabacc card(defense token)(it is a red token right?) and you get a guaranteed boost to damage

The defense part I'm a little iffy about, hence this post. Mathematically a brace halves the incoming damage of an attack. Blue dice are 50% chance to hit when used for AA, so Lando's defensive ability when he rerolls enemy blue dice(most common AA colour) is mathematically the same expectation as spending the brace for it's normal use. Against black AA dice(slightly less common) his ability is weaker than the normal brace use as the blacks have 75% chance to reroll back to a hit. Against red AA dice (rare) his ability is stronger since reds are very swingy(3faces of hits) in AA.

Ofc this has to be noted in the context of the squadron combat. In my experience most incoming damage to squads varies from 1-4 damage with the occasional 5+ when facing a FC anti-squad ball. Due to the round up ruling of normal brace use, the brace does not have a perfect expectation of halving incoming damage

1dmg > 1dmg (0% reduced)

2dmg > 1dmg (50% reduced)

3dmg > 2dmg (33% reduced)

4dmg > 2dmg (50% reduced)

Uncommon: 5dmg > 3dmg (40% reduced)

So it would seem, assuming an all blue dice attack on Lando, that he should use his defensive ability on odd numbers of incoming damage, as his ability would have better expectation than the normal brace. Ofc you could still use him to gamble your way out of 4dmg if you so choose.

Lastly, if using Lando pray you don't face Sloane ball else Sloane will just zap off his c̶a̶r̶d̶s̶tokens and make his ability useless haha

Could you both use his defensive ability and use another brace normally? Of course that would burn through your tokens pretty fast.

1 hour ago, JolliGreenGiant said:

Could you both use his defensive ability and use another brace normally? Of course that would burn through your tokens pretty fast.

The defender may not spend the same type of defense token during an attack.

43 minutes ago, The Jabbawookie said:

The defender may not spend the same type of defense token during an attack.

.... Not sure if it works that way or not.

The rules reference cleary states you cannot spend a single type of defense token more than once.

Quote

The defender cannot spend more than one defense token of each type per attack.

Also

Quote

Defense tokens can be spent as part of a cost for upgrade card effects. If spent in this way, a defense token does not produce its normal effect.

Meaning if you use landos ability, you cannot spend the other brace for that attack. Nor do you gain the benefit of braces effect.
Also no, you cannot circumvent this with Jan either. Again, only one defense token of each type per attack. That RAW.

Lando "cancels" Vader black HIT/CRIT like a baws!

(rolls another HIT/CRIT)

So an example of a TIE-Phantom shooting Lando with 4 blue dice and gets 3 hits and a useless crit. Lando could brace 3 damage into 2 or gamble with his special defensive reroll ability. Asking 3 blue dice to be rerolled could get you

0 Hits 1/8th of the time..... When to hold 'em,
1 Hit 3/8ths of the time..... When to fold 'em,
2 Hits 3/8ths of the time... When to walk away,
3 Hits 1/8th of the time..... When to run...

So overall 1 in 8 chance of doing worse than a brace, 7 in 8 chance of doing the same or better than a brace, and a 50% chance of exceeding the brace effect. All this assumes accuracies played no part i.e. you still have both brace tokens so if the enemy reroll an accuracy it isn't enough to lock your tokens out.

When the total amount of damage is an odd number braces are less effective so Lando's rerolls can often be superior. Obviously if Lando is on 2 hull then bracing three damage isn't an option so gamble away. You could also gamble on a single point of damage which a brace cannot. Double damage dice rolls like Vader Hit/crit or Z95 red dice can also be more effective to ask for rerolls rather than bracing but the reverse can happen with single hit red dice rerolls occasionally becoming 2 damage.

Lando's best rerolls has to be against ten Numb. Ask him to reroll just the blue crit to keep your nearby comrades free from splash damage . EDIT: shown below to be balderdash.

4 minutes ago, Mad Cat said:

     Lando's best rerolls has to be against ten Numb. Ask him to reroll just the blue crit to keep your nearby comrades free from splash damage.

Won't Ten Numb have spent his blue crit (since it's spend dice not crit effect) before Lando can try and get rid of it though?

5 minutes ago, Akhrin said:

Won't Ten Numb have spent his blue crit (since it's spend dice not crit effect) before Lando can try and get rid of it though?

I think Spend defence tokens happens before the crit effect and if there is no blue crit dice anymore in the pool then the crit fails.

This is why you can exhaust all your defence tokens when someone hits you with Overload Pulse as you know what's coming when the crit goes off so might as well brace & redirect now.

9 hours ago, Muelmuel said:

Against red AA dice (rare) his ability is stronger since reds are very swingy(3faces of hits) in AA.

That is not quit right. You are ignoring the double hit side of the red dice. While it is true that a red die has more dud sides, its expected damage (its damage EV) is still identical to a blue die due to its double hit side.

The math looks like this:

Blue die damage EV: ( 1 * (1/8) ) * 4 + ( 0 * (1/8) ) * 4 = (1/2)

What that means is: you have sides wich do 1 damage and wich have a probability of (1/8) (because the die has 8 faces) and you have 4 of those sides. You also have 4 sides of the dice that deal 0 damage. So the damage EV is 1/2

Red die damage EV: (1*(1/8)) * 2 + (2*(1/8)) * 1 + (0*(1/8)) * 5 = (1/2)

As you can see it is also 1/2. So whenever you roll a red or blue die you would expect the same outcome on average. It is just that the red die has a greater variance, meaning you have a higher risk but also a higher reward.

Lastly of course rerolling a red die that already has a double is better than rerolling a blue one with a hit. In general, the bigger the difference of the rolled result is from the damage EV the better it is to reroll that die.

8 minutes ago, Mad Cat said:

I think Spend defence tokens happens before the crit effect and if there is no blue crit dice anymore in the pool then the crit fails.

Yes, but Tens effect is not a crit effect. Its is a "While attacking" effect. So it has the same timing as for example Darth Vader and he resolves his effects before the enemy gets to his spend defense token step. So Tens effect should not be effected by rerolls.

LordCola has got it. Nun spends his blue die whike attacking, if it is showing a crit, to trigger his splash attack.

4 hours ago, Mad Cat said:

... if the enemy reroll an accuracy it isn't enough to lock your tokens out.

Accuracies need to be spent before the spend defense tokens step, so rerolling into an accuracy just saves you a damage. (Barring sw7 which don't apply to antisquad shots, IIRC)

I think you'll find that it ends up being used most often against flak (or 1 damage in general), and again at 3 damage (because as stated, there's a good chance of at least breaking even compared to the brace), but not as often against 2/4-damage hits unless it's absolutely an emergency.

Well... Do we have such a case anywhere in the game already? He's spending a defense token while defending, as cost of his card ability, but it's not actually the spending of a defense token as in spending the defense token while defending, to gain its effect, is it? I'm asking, because Admonition and Off. Lando both word out the restriction "While defending, during the Spend Defense Tokens step , ...", which squad Lando does not. Wondering if that line wasn't added here on purpose.

3 minutes ago, R4Pi3R said:

Well... Do we have such a case anywhere in the game already? He's spending a defense token while defending, as cost of his card ability, but it's not actually the spending of a defense token as in spending the defense token while defending, to gain its effect, is it? I'm asking, because Admonition and Off. Lando both word out the restriction "While defending, during the Spend Defense Tokens step , ...", which squad Lando does not. Wondering if that line wasn't added here on purpose.

If you spend something for an effect X, you do not also get default effect Y.

Because I happened to have it open (p. 5):

• If a dial, token, die, or other component is spent as part of a card effect’s cost, that component does not also produce its normal effect.

(this is standard FFG-speaky btw, they do this in their other games like X-wing as well)

I think my weird mind spitting out words didn't actually put out what i meant.

What i wanted to ask with my post is: As his ability is not the "normal" spending of a defense token and due to the lack of the "during the Spend defense Token Step" wording, is his ability restricted to the Spend Defense Token step?

I was wondering, because it's the first ability of a defending squad, that modifies the attackers dice. If one could use it not only during the Spend Defense Token step, it could counter Ten Numb. I do not think the ability does work that way. But could it?

15 minutes ago, R4Pi3R said:

I think my weird mind spitting out words didn't actually put out what i meant.

What i wanted to ask with my post is: As his ability is not the "normal" spending of a defense token and due to the lack of the "during the Spend defense Token Step" wording, is his ability restricted to the Spend Defense Token step?

I was wondering, because it's the first ability of a defending squad, that modifies the attackers dice. If one could use it not only during the Spend Defense Token step, it could counter Ten Numb. I do not think the ability does work that way. But could it?

You can only spend one of each type per attack. Doesn’t matter what you’re spending it for - a card effect, or itsregular effect, you can only spend a type of token once.

Note tgatvthis restriction is on the defender, because that’s why it’s different when Sloane spends one for you.

Now, you are right it is while defending, not during the defense tokens step. So you could reroll ten numb before he spends .... because it is a modify dice effect... I think, however, only If you’re first player.

From the RRG:

An effect that modifies attack dice can only be resolved during the “Resolve Attacks Effects” step of an attack unless another timing is specified.

And:

If both players have effects with the same timing, the first player resolves all of his effects with that timing first.

So you gotta do it before Ten spends! And hope he doesn’t just Toryn reroll a different blue to what he wants after you lock one down 😁

And of course, the restriction on not double spending tokens or multiples of a same type are per attack, notboer spend defense tokens step.

19 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

You can only spend one of each type per attack. Doesn’t matter what you’re spending it for - a card effect, or itsregular effect, you can only spend a type of token once.

Note tgatvthis restriction is on the defender, because that’s why it’s different when Sloane spends one for you.

I get that part, and I tried to explain in the second post that this is not the reason for me wondering. My question is: Can he use his effect outside of the Spend Defense Tokens Step?

Thx @Drasnighta as always pretty in-depth answer. That's the stuff i'm coming here for

Are you still editing?! 😂

1 minute ago, R4Pi3R said:

I get that part, and I tried to explain in the second post that this is not the reason for me wondering. My question is: Can he use his effect outside of the Spend Defense Tokens Step?

I was still editing, and still am 😁

There we go

Quote

3. Resolve Attack Effects:

The attacker can resolve attack effects as described below:

◊ Modify Dice: The attacker can resolve any of its effects that modify its dice. This includes card effects and the (concentrate fire) command.

◊ Spend Accuracy Icons: The attacker can spend one or more of its (accuracy) icons to choose the same number of the defender’s defense tokens. The chosen tokens cannot be spent during this attack

What @Drasnighta posted seems pretty clear until you look at what the "Modify Dice" step says above. It says the attacker can resolve effects; not the defender. So when can the defender resolve dice modifications? I think what Dras is saying is right, because the alternative is that Lando can modify dice during the Spend Defense Tokens step to resolve his "special use" of the defense token. However, it would also mean that accuracy could be used to target both braces and prevent him from using his ability. Plus, there is the problem that it doesn't explicitly say that Lando's timing is "During the Spend Defense Tokens step". So I think Dras is right, but they should modify the "Modify Dice" step to read "The attacker and defender can resolve any of their effects to modify attack dice..."

1 hour ago, RobertK said:

What @Drasnighta posted seems pretty clear until you look at what the "Modify Dice" step says above. It says the attacker can resolve effects; not the defender. So when can the defender resolve dice modifications? I think what Dras is saying is right, because the alternative is that Lando can modify dice during the Spend Defense Tokens step to resolve his "special use" of the defense token. However, it would also mean that accuracy could be used to target both braces and prevent him from using his ability. Plus, there is the problem that it doesn't explicitly say that Lando's timing is "During the Spend Defense Tokens step". So I think Dras is right, but they should modify the "Modify Dice" step to read "The attacker and defender can resolve any of their effects to modify attack dice..."

Don’t need to modify it.

Golden Rules applies.

IE, Lando, as a component, doesn’t need the rules permission to have his timing fit it - it just does, as that’s the timing.

An effect that modifies attack dice can only be resolved during the “Resolve Attacks Effects” step of an attack unless another timing is specified.

Doesn't say only attacker explicitly, so I guess in theory there could be possible for the defender to modify during this step...

...but it would be weird because of player order timing.

Writing for a friend.

Sound strange for me to use a defense modification during the step 3. Especially because it would cause some serious problems with the timing (first/second player, and not attacker/defender who can choose the order). Would be the first card that works this way, wouldn't it? I mean a defender of an attack modifing attack dice. I cannot remember of any other card that does this during the step 3 for the defender.

Would have been easier, when Lando had the wording of all other cards (use during spend defense tokens step).

It might be, that the text from him means that it is a spend defense token effect. Like giving the defense tokens another effect for the defender, beside the normal effect (brace = half damage). And in this case it could only happen during the spend defense token step.