So i have played Republic quite a bit lately and decided to take the Imperials out for a spin today. I am normally a Rebel player (waiting foe my scum and mercenary faction to be released).

Making saves is something i am not used to. (I did make some saves with Danger Sense on Cassian yesterday though @Tirion -)

Today with all red saves except 1 officer and a few surge tokens and dodge tokens for deflect on Darth Vader i made less than 17% of my saves. I was shooting about 1/7 or 1/8 on defensive dice. If i didn't have cover i think the game would have been over turn 4.

Despite all my complaining about dice, i have made some great white sice saves and attacks recently so maybe my dice are affected by humidity or barometric pressure changes?

RNG is RNG. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you don't. As long as you have fun playing or learn something for the future, it's all gravy!

9 minutes ago, Mokoshkana said:

it's all gravy!

Sometimes i just want meat and potatoes - no gravy!

I did see R2 and C3PO murder 3 Royal guard in one turn(same game). These same Royal Guard recently rolled 8 black dice and rolled 5 blanks and 3 surges.

It happens. The first (and only) time I used Boba Fett, a single Rebel Trooper squad with Z6 rolled 9 hits without any aims/surges on turn 1. Boba failed 5 saves and the game went downhill from there.

Yeah I've done that. I guess i assumed i would get 50+% blocks bc that's what mu opponents always did and that's about what i got wirh the clones. Boy was i wrong.

4 hours ago, buckero0 said:

Sometimes i just want meat and potatoes - no gravy!

I did see R2 and C3PO murder 3 Royal guard in one turn(same game). These same Royal Guard recently rolled 8 black dice and rolled 5 blanks and 3 surges.

My last game I shot at r2 with my saber tank with a beam canon for 2 straight turns. Rolled 10 hits between the 2 attacks..... My opponent rolled 8 of 10 blocks..... 80% on surge white dice.

Also welcome to the side of Truth with danger sense! Hahaha

I mean I have rolled 1 symbol on 9 white dice, 4 natural crits with a splitfire Z-6 killing 3 stormtroopers in heavy cover, rolled 7 blocks with Sabine and rolled 6 blanks losing my pathfinders round 1 by my opponents first activation.

Dice can be crazy, espechially t6 dice.

Defense Tokens > Defense Dice

For a while now I've been wanting to talk about the way defense works in this game but I know complaining about defense dice gets on some people's nerves here.

That said, it straight sucks to lose to RNG.

It's actually why I stopped playing X-wing. Too many times the defense rolls have tanked a game. It is frustrating. Legion is infinitely better . LoS, cover, dodges, various defensive keywords, it gives you options to mitigate depending on the defense dice. But I still don't feel like it's perfect.

I'm biased as heck, but I've always loved the Armada defense system. It gave you damage mitigation without complete reliance on RNG.

This is a house rule I was thinking about, what do you think?

Changes:

1.) Spend Defense Token(s) step added to the attack steps before the roll defense dice step, as follows: "The defender can spend one or more of its defense tokens."
1A.) Defense tokens begin the game on their readied side (green). When a readied defense token is spent, it is flipped to its exhausted side (red). When an exhausted defense token is spent, it is discarded and does not return this game.
1B.) Defense tokens refresh to the readied side at the beginning of the End Phase each round.
1C.) The defender cannot spend more than one defense token of each type per attack.
1D.) A defense token cannot be spent more than once during an attack.

2.) All troopers to use white defense dice (retain surge values).

3.) All trooper units that had red defense dice gain a Brace Defense Token.

4.) All troopers that had white defense dice gain an Evade Defense Token.

5.) Evade defense tokens may be spent to gain the effect:
range 4+ cancel two hits
range 3 cancel 1 hit or 1 crit
range 2 reroll a hit
range 1-melee nothing

6.) Brace defense tokens may be spent to gain the effect:
During the roll defense dice step, before the defender gathers defense dice, half of the hit and crit results on the attacker's dice are canceled, rounded down.

7.) Droid troopers do not get defense tokens

Obviously some keywords would need to adjust (high velocity comes to mind, as it would need to restrict defenses being spent to make sure snipers didn't get canned) and tweaks be made here or there, but I think this would reduce the swingy nature of defense dice.

So RNG on attack is okay but not defense? That makes zero sense. If you don't want RNG, don't play dice games.

RNG = something besides range?

Play the game however you want

I don't really care for armada that much but the same people made both games so they probably had to make them a little different

RNG stands for Random Number Generator. It comes from computer games but it essentially stands for randomness or luck.

I think Legion already has too many tokens, effects that cancel out effects, and exceptions to exceptions. RNG ruining our battle plans is all in good fun. It makes for good stories when my orcs all break on turn one and my snotlings save the day. If I wanted to match wits, I'd play chess.

10 hours ago, Mokoshkana said:

So RNG on attack is okay but not defense? That makes zero sense. If you don't want RNG, don't play dice games.

Well, ultimately my issue is that having two variables for the attack system creates some abstract and inconsistently swingy situations. I just reference the Armada system because it works very well. There’s variability in the attack dice (just as legion has) but also has static defenses leaving much less of the game up to RNG.

Attack dice are just as abstract as the defense dice, but as best I can tell they’re supposed to represent the number of successful shots taken, apply cover, dodges and so on, that should be the only point for variable, right? When you shoot at a moving target the shot is either hit or miss, so what do defense dice represent? Clearly is all a bit abstract. Which is fine. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with Legion, I play all 4 factions after all. I suppose they’re supposed to represent armor, evasion, training or battlefield chaos? Sometimes though, especially with how swingy the system is, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

1.) My first Imp Vs. Rebel game I ran an AT-ST, fully kitted. My opponent moved a group of fleet troopers into range 2 of it. When I drew the ATST I tapped general Weiss and opened up with 3 weapons, ended up rolling 9 damage total the unit was out in the open, no cover. They blocked all of it.

2.) during my first 3 games as rebels, I got close to tabled each time. Defensively, the dice under performed. I rolled (literally) 5 blocks over 3 games.

3.) one of my recent games as droids ended up shooting into a BARC that weathered 2 shots a round for 5 rounds. Upwards of 20 damage blocked.

These are just 3 accounts of my experience. Definitely anecdotal, and by no means enough to tear me away from Legion, but enough to highlight the inconsistency in dice.

The point of a defense token system is to give a similar effect to defense dice but maybe more consistent? I’ll admit it’s not perfect either.

Anyways, this was just a house rule idea. I’ve found over the years on the Armada forum that unpopular ideas are usually met with “then don’t play”. Lol but I like to discuss it anyways.

3 hours ago, Darth Sanguis said:

Well, ultimately my issue is that having two variables for the attack system creates some abstract and inconsistently swingy situations. I just reference the Armada system because it works very well. There’s variability in the attack dice (just as legion has) but also has static defenses leaving much less of the game up to RNG.

Defensive dice represent your ability to shrug off a hit. Whether it's the old "opposed STR roll", calculating what STR 3 needs to roll to wound T 4, or whatever. If I get shot by a .22, I am far more likely to stop attacking you than say, a bear is.

11 hours ago, TauntaunScout said:

Defensive dice represent your ability to shrug off a hit. Whether it's the old "opposed STR roll", calculating what STR 3 needs to roll to wound T 4, or whatever.

That could be.

I would say that the difference is the constant modifier isn't there. You can pay the points for a unit in Legion that have red defense dice but it doesn't get a constant benefit from that, it get's a higher RNG chance, but RNG can still fail. Where as using opposed checks similar to D&D and other RPG systems when you invest points they have a consistent effect. My Barbarian gets +7 on constitution saves. No matter what I roll I will always have that 7.

I would say that defense tokens could represent the same thing as dice thematically and would actually be closer to what you're suggesting as it would provide a consistent benefit.

11 hours ago, TauntaunScout said:

If I get shot by a .22, I am far more likely to stop attacking you than say, a bear is.

That's kinda my point. A bear isn't going to suffer from a random RNG fail if you shoot it with a .22. It's gonna do Bear things. Like get mad and eat the shooter. In the same way, a unit of 5 men wearing khakis and vests, standing out in the open shouldn't be able to survive a close range blast from a mounted grenade launcher, twin blaster cannons, and twin light blaster cannons, completely unscathed. lol

That's my thoughts on it anyways lol