Hey All,

I recently read about some methods of reducing randomness in casual games, and I'm interested in what people think.

Method 1: Dice Deck

Set of 8 die result cards:

• Attack: Blank Blank Focus Focus Hit Hit Hit Crit
• Defense: Blank Blank Blank Focus Focus Evade Evade Evade

You have two Dice Decks (red and green) made up of at least 4 or 5 sets of the above (32-40 cards), or as many as 8 sets (64 cards).

Roll : Draw cards equal to the number of dice rolled. Each card is a die result.

Reroll : Discard x cards, draw x cards to replace them.

Modify : Place dice on top of those cards to override its result: "I spend a focus to change these to hits (places a hit result die on each evade card)"

High Variance per roll still exists (e.g. blanking out or all hits/evades), but each result you get changes what you can expect. A blank-out means later you'll roll better. Natties means you'll roll worse later.

People mentioned also tossing in a couple of joker cards that instruct the player to shuffle the dice deck, so they can't get the deck too low and accurately predict what's coming.

Method 2: Double all dice counts, shields, hull

As expected, this method is super simple on the surface: roll double the number of dice requested, and all ships have double their normal number of shields and hull. Rolling/rerolling dice in attack/defense is always double the requested number. Other rolls (e.g. console fire) should probably remain unchanged.

Crits may be tricky to balance... double hull makes crits and crit chains potentially far more effective... Also you likely need a 2nd damage deck to cover all that hull.

Method 3: Roll double dice, Pair for Results

I read about this here but I'll try to summarize quickly:

Roll : Roll double the number of dice requested. Pair like dice (blank with blank, hit with hit, etc) to produce Dice Results. Pair remainders rounding up (e.g. blank with focus -> focus, focus with hit -> hit, hit with crit -> crit, blank with crit -> crit, etc).

Reroll : Remove x dice results (after pairing) and roll double that number of dice. Pair off the newly rolled dice as above to produce new dice results.

Modify : Simply change one of the die results to the required result.

Essentially you're rolling double dice without doubling shields or hull.

Optional rule to tweak the odds and game length: Attack dice round up, defense dice round down.

Another method that's probably terrible :

Method 4: Roll 3 times, choose middle

Roll the dice 3 times, take the middle raw result (before mods). Crits count as 1.5 hits or evades when comparing ties in total hits+crits or evades. Focuses count as half a hit or evade.

If two rolls produce the same value, then that's what you pick. Rerolls and all other dice mods happen normally after this initial roll & select.

Example 1: blank-blank-hit, blank-hit-hit, blank-hit-hit: Choose blank-hit-hit.

Example 2: blank-focus-hit, blank-hit-hit, blank-hit-crit: Choose blank-hit-hit.

Example 3: blank-blank-blank, blank-hit-crit, hit-hit-hit: Choose blank-hit-crit.

Right from the get-go, I can tell natural crits will be far less common. And the method is complicated... with focuses and crits added to the mix, it's tedious to order the 3 rolls. I'd avoid this method simply because its selection mechanic is terrible.

Method 5: Roll 3 times, Veto & Choose

Roll the dice 3 times. Your opponent vetos one roll, and you choose from the two remaining rolls. Rerolls and all other dice mods follow normally after this initial roll.

I don't know how best to do the math on this one and determine how it affects the results, but it does add extra tedious steps (and require more dice) so that's worth noting. That said, it avoids the **** of method 4: you and the opponent make quick decisions on the best roll and move forward.

Questions

So how do each of these measure up as replacements for the current system?

Do any of them hurt specific ships, e.g. making agility-based ships (like TIEs) too delicate?

Do any of them make specific ships too powerful, e.g. well-modified agility ships that are only hit on high variance rolls? (e.g. fragile aces, TIE swarms)

Edit: So people are being pretty rude by not answering the questions and just taking cheap shots at me, throwing strawman arguments my way, etc. If you don't want to answer the questions, don't reply. Your sarcasm and eye-rolling lulz attitude are not needed. I'm asking questions about how this would alter the game because I hear about these methods a lot, and I'm very curious about the actual effect this would have on the game. Please respond to that and keep your condescension out of the conversation, or just don't reply to the thread.

The dice deck would greatly change the probability unless you had a dice deck for each dice needing to be rolled. It would eliminate the possibility of "blanking" on five green dice, which has happened to me.

randomness is your friend, not your enemy

It's not your dice, it's you.

Game Theory requires randomness. Without it, it's not really a game, it's Calculus and Statistics.

10 minutes ago, Wolfshead said:

The dice deck would greatly change the probability unless you had a dice deck for each dice needing to be rolled. It would eliminate the possibility of "blanking" on five green dice, which has happened to me.

Yea, that's what I worried about. But to do that you'd need a dice deck for rolling 1 die, 2 dice, 3 dice, up to 6. And that's aggressively complicated: for 4+ dice the decks become huge. And you'd need that for both attack and defense dice (or list both dice colors on each card). It quickly becomes nonsense.

But if you could stick to just two decks, I'm curious about where that takes the odds.

4 minutes ago, svelok said:

randomness is your friend, not your enemy

Not really... X-Wing is a positioning and strategy game, but it's also still a dice game. Really good or really bad rolls can throw the best strategy out the window, so I'm curious about how casual players and/or FFG might adjust the randomness closer to the center. I've talked to players who were really surprised 2.0 didn't double the dice counts and health of ships to pull away from the high variation of 2-3 dice.

3 minutes ago, Chumbalaya said:

It's not your dice, it's you.

Cute, but you're not offering anything in the conversation.

Just now, Youngblood1969 said:

Game Theory requires randomness. Without it, it's not really a game, it's Calculus and Statistics.

Yea, but low dice counts result in wider variance. This is a thread about increasing the dice count to converge closer toward average results, fewer wild swings.

I'm a big fan of the dice-deck style of Catan. Helps ensure that the dice results stay fairly close to the bell curve, that there isn't a freak game where 9s show up all the time, and 6s almost never. My personal favorite variant of that is to "burn" off 5 cards, to flummox counting. With an "eight-die-shoe" of 64 cards, maybe it'd be better to burn like 8 or so.

However, Catan is a very different game. There, I think balance and closer adherence to the bell curve of the 36 combinations on 2d6 feels a lot better.

//

I know I've mused about the possibilities in X-Wing, but I don't know if ultimately it'd be that much fun.

Still, if you want to try it, go for it. The larger the shoe, the closer it'd be to the purely uncorrelated results of dice, but probably close enough.

That said, I'd of course love a mode like this in FlyCasual, where it could be handled automatically. It'd just be interesting to see if it feels any different.

//

Doubling really benefits defenders throughout. Defending against TIE Fighters (focused attack, no focus on defense)

• TIE Fighter: 5.264 attacks to kill, vs 6.389 under double.
• HWK-290 (messed up the health for an X-Wing >P ) : 6.195 attacks regular, 6.774 double.
• Rebel YT-1300: 11.586 regular, 12.785 double.
  • On the Falcon, this is about equal to adding a Shield Upgrade.

//

Doubles-and-Pairs I really hate. That's going to up the average in ways that are probably really hard to math out, but it also is just wicked complicated over-the-board. Just so much hassle.

13 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

I'm a big fan of the dice-deck style of Catan. Helps ensure that the dice results stay fairly close to the bell curve, that there isn't a freak game where 9s show up all the time, and 6s almost never. My personal favorite variant of that is to "burn" off 5 cards, to flummox counting. With an "eight-die-shoe" of 64 cards, maybe it'd be better to burn like 8 or so.

However, Catan is a very different game. There, I think balance and closer adherence to the bell curve of the 36 combinations on 2d6 feels a lot better.

//

I know I've mused about the possibilities in X-Wing, but I don't know if ultimately it'd be that much fun.

Still, if you want to try it, go for it. The larger the shoe, the closer it'd be to the purely uncorrelated results of dice, but probably close enough.

That said, I'd of course love a mode like this in FlyCasual, where it could be handled automatically. It'd just be interesting to see if it feels any different.

//

Doubling really benefits defenders throughout. Defending against TIE Fighters (focused attack, no focus on defense)

• TIE Fighter: 5.264 attacks to kill, vs 6.389 under double.
• HWK-290 (messed up the health for an X-Wing >P ) : 6.195 attacks regular, 6.774 double.
• Rebel YT-1300: 11.586 regular, 12.785 double.
  • On the Falcon, this is about equal to adding a Shield Upgrade.

//

Doubles-and-Pairs I really hate. That's going to up the average in ways that are probably really hard to math out, but it also is just wicked complicated over-the-board. Just so much hassle.

Thank you for the serious reply! The first few responses had me worried I was just going hear sarcastic/unhelpful replies that didn't make any honest effort to contribute to the conversation or answer any questions.

Yea, Fly Casual/TTS/Vassal could do dice-decks much more easily than the physical world. And a diceroller app with a dice-deck option could cover real tables pretty well, though you'd want to clear that with your opponent of course.

Sounds like the Doubling method would make swarms that much meatier, e.g. TIEs, Vultures, Beef. That's bad IMO. Aces would also get a bump in defense that would probably make them OP.

I like the doubles-and-pairs method conceptually (it's doubling dice without doubling health) but haven't tried it on the table yet so I'm not sure how inconvenient/trivial the change would be. And yea, it's pretty hard to math out the expected results... but I'd err on rounding up for attack and down for defense just so ships aren't meatier as a result. It's just hard to walk through what that would ultimately do for aces and other delicate ships, vs beef boats etc.

53 minutes ago, Wolfshead said:

The dice deck would greatly change the probability unless you had a dice deck for each dice needing to be rolled. It would eliminate the possibility of "blanking" on five green dice, which has happened to me.

That is the point of this exercise isn't? It is an effort to make X-wing "low luck."

1 hour ago, Wazat said:

Questions

So how do each of these measure up as replacements for the current system?

Do any of them hurt specific ships, e.g. making agility-based ships (like TIEs) too delicate?

Do any of them make specific ships too powerful, e.g. well-modified agility ships that are only hit on high variance rolls? (e.g. fragile aces, TIE swarms)

The problem to me is that X-wing has mechanics built into the game for altering the dice. Getting the benefits of these mechanics is one of the fundamental skills of the game. These mechanics have costs and changing the variance changes their values. Changing the variance reduces the cost of missing your actions and not getting target locks or focus tokens. And if you hate force tokens now...

All of these alter the game because the game is designed around dice being the flighty minions of Fortuna it is their nature to be.

Fortuna is a fickle goddess but you have to accept her flaws and capriciousness and shoulder your burden of performance and the consequences of not meeting it. One must accept also the even more unpleasant fact that even meeting your burdens might not result in her benevolence.

If you seek a game without luck, might I suggest a nice game of Chess?

1 minute ago, Frimmel said:

If you seek a game without luck, might I suggest a nice game of Chess?

Thanks for the strawman argument. I'm getting tired it. It's almost like you uhh... didn't read my post? At all? Except you seem to understand with your previous comment:

1 minute ago, Frimmel said:

That is the point of this exercise isn't? It is an effort to make X-wing "low luck."

I want to lower, but not eliminate, the strength of luck on the game. Frankly, with this game's massive emphasis on strategy and positioning, the sway the dice hold on games feels very unfortunate to me; I don't want to eliminate luck, just reign it in. Variance is very high with 1 - 3 dice, and people talk about solutions but I've never seen them implemented. I'm genuinely curious what these methods actually do to the game . People rant on Reddit and around the table about doubling the dice to reduce the variance all the time, but I don't know what the ultimate result is.

Your phrasing choices in your post give the impression you just want to be crappy to me, not answer my questions. Which is pretty crappy of you and the others who posted before you. Treat me like I'm a person, not a punching bag. Either answer the questions in the thread, or don't reply.

2 minutes ago, Frimmel said:

The problem to me is that X-wing has mechanics built into the game for altering the dice. Getting the benefits of these mechanics is one of the fundamental skills of the game. These mechanics have costs and changing the variance changes their values. Changing the variance reduces the cost of missing your actions and not getting target locks or focus tokens. And if you hate force tokens now...

This to me is where you're being at least somewhat serious in your response, which I do appreciate. It's just unfortunate you followed up with very cheap and unnecessary jabs and strawman arguments.

Looks like dice mods could get stronger as the dice are more consistently pulled toward average results; whoever has the best-modded dice may benefit greatly from any of these changes. Evade, focus, force/calculate, etc are stronger on defense when you blank out less and your opponent rolls max hits less frequently, for example. That might make it too hard to push damage through on highly defensive ships, or make it too hard to shed damage on low-agility ships. Might make Reinforce more or less useful, depending on where the typical mods take attack and defense results.

I'm curious if FFG considered doubling dice and explored the options for second edition, but concluded it would take too many changes to core concepts or alter the game's experience too much.

Another method that's probably terrible:

Method 4: Roll 3 times, choose middle

Roll the dice 3 times, take the middle raw result (before mods). Crits count as 1.5 hits or evades when comparing ties in total hits+crits or evades. Focuses count as half a hit or evade.

If two rolls produce the same value, then that's what you pick. Rerolls and all other dice mods happen normally after this initial roll & select.

Example 1: blank-blank-hit, blank-hit-hit, blank-hit-hit: Choose blank-hit-hit.

Example 2: blank-focus-hit, blank-hit-hit, blank-hit-crit: Choose blank-hit-hit.

Example 3: blank-blank-blank, blank-hit-crit, hit-hit-hit: Choose blank-hit-crit.

Right from the get-go, I can tell natural crits will be far less common. And the method is complicated... with focuses and crits added to the mix, it's tedious to order the 3 rolls. I'd avoid this method simply because its selection mechanic is terrible.

Method 5: Roll 3 times, Veto & Choose

Roll the dice 3 times. Your opponent vetos one roll, and you choose from the two remaining rolls. Rerolls and all other dice mods follow normally after this initial roll.

I don't know how to do the math on this one and determine how it affects the results, but it does add extra tedious steps (and require more dice) so that's worth noting.

59 minutes ago, Wazat said:

Another method that's probably terrible:

Method 4: Roll 3 times, choose middle

Roll the dice 3 times, take the middle raw result (before mods). Crits count as 1.5 hits or evades when comparing ties in total hits+crits or evades. Focuses count as half a hit or evade.

If two rolls produce the same value, then that's what you pick. Rerolls and all other dice mods happen normally after this initial roll & select.

Example 1: blank-blank-hit, blank-hit-hit, blank-hit-hit: Choose blank-hit-hit.

Example 2: blank-focus-hit, blank-hit-hit, blank-hit-crit: Choose blank-hit-hit.

Example 3: blank-blank-blank, blank-hit-crit, hit-hit-hit: Choose blank-hit-crit.

Right from the get-go, I can tell natural crits will be far less common. And the method is complicated... with focuses and crits added to the mix, it's tedious to order the 3 rolls. I'd avoid this method simply because its selection mechanic is terrible.

Method 5: Roll 3 times, Veto & Choose

Roll the dice 3 times. Your opponent vetos one roll, and you choose from the two remaining rolls. Rerolls and all other dice mods follow normally after this initial roll.

I don't know how to do the math on this one and determine how it affects the results, but it does add extra tedious steps (and require more dice) so that's worth noting.

Too much work. At this point, it'd make more sense to just bust out the damage calculator from GateOfStorms, and have every roll do the expected value.

1 hour ago, Wazat said:

I want to lower, but not eliminate, the strength of luck on the game. Frankly, with this game's massive emphasis on strategy and positioning, the sway the dice hold on games feels very unfortunate to me; I don't want to eliminate luck, just reign it in. Variance is very high...

This is what I mean by "low luck." Reduction in the variance of the dice. You want to create an acceptable to you level of dice variance in the game. Reducing the variance in the design of X-wing creates a very different game. A game occurring in a different space than all of the game pieces it will be using was created in. A reduction in the sway the dice hold on games is trying to push the game with dice closer to Chess or Go where there are no dice. There is no getting around that in what you are trying to do here.

Just now, Frimmel said:

This is what I mean by "low luck." Reduction in the variance of the dice. You want to create an acceptable to you level of dice variance in the game. Reducing the variance in the design of X-wing creates a very different game. A game occurring in a different space than all of the game pieces it will be using was created in. A reduction in the sway the dice hold on games is trying to push the game with dice closer to Chess or Go where there are no dice. There is no getting around that in what you are trying to do here.

I don't know what to say to you... I disagree entirely with what you're saying about my intentions, but there's no way to discuss it with you. I'm here to discuss the options and learn what happens in the scenario where they're implemented. I want to know why these methods fail so I can take those reasons into other discussions, let alone understand for my own benefit. You're just telling me I'm wrong to ask because it changes the game -- no detail or explanation, no exploration. You keep wildly misrepresenting why I'm here and what I'm doing, perhaps because you really believe it. So where could we possibly go from there? You either don't understand what's happening here, or you have your back up and you're doubling down on the strawman argument.

Leave the conversation, you're contributing nothing but toxicity.

1 hour ago, theBitterFig said:

Too much work. At this point, it'd make more sense to just bust out the damage calculator from GateOfStorms, and have every roll do the expected value.

Yea, "too much work" is likely going to bedevil most options, and bad effects on game balance may kill the rest. Actually, balance may be doomed to kill every such effort.

Taking it to the extreme reveals the ultimate problem: The worst option is for every roll to always do its average expected value (decimals and all); that hints at a problem that arises as we push the expected range a bit more toward the center (and which you described earlier): ships get more spongy, and some ships are unkillable by common fleets.

Exact expected value favors dice count, making certain ships a bit untouchable on defense, for example (and also requiring recording partial damage video-game-style, but let's ignore that; we'll imagine an app is tracking it). A swarm of unmodded TIES will never hit Soontir because they each roll an average of 1 hit, while Soontir rolls an average of 1.13 evades. This signals the core problem of shrinking the variation even slightly: the game relies on the more extreme low/high rolls to break past defenses of agile ships. Exact expected value on green dice acts like the damage reduction in games like D&D, Paper Mario, etc, or 1st edition's reinforce. X-Wing's attack values & health aren't designed for a damage reduction game. It looks like the closer we push odds toward the center, the more problematic this base defense value becomes. Maybe that's what Frimmel is thinking, but he's more focused on telling me it's wrong than talking about why and how it goes wrong.

Interestingly, Focused TIEs each deal .37 more than untokened Soontir, which results in unmodded Soontir's death after exactly 9 shots. That's just a 3-health ship. Vader at 5 health (ignoring his force and tokens) takes about 14 shots from focused TIEs to die. An Aggressor with 8 health takes 22 shots. Soontir, the IG-2000, and especially Vader will each shed additional damage beyond that with their own dice modification, lasting a bit (or a lot) longer. Worse: Soontir and Vader are very squirrely and won't allow that many ships to have arc on them over the course of a game. They probably could get away with jousting a swarm in this scenario, but they wouldn't want to give away half points and wouldn't need to try, given their mobility. And the few modified shots the attacker gets on them will deal consistent but superficial damage. So this videogamey "everything has a set damage" scenario results in very spongy aces that arc-dodge most shots and don't care about they shots they do take, just as one consequence. 2-dice swarms become rather terrible. (Low-agility ships are less of a problem than aces... an unfocused 8-health Y-Wing against focused TIEs dies in 8 hits: same as Soontir, except it can't dodge arcs.)

(and all of this ignores crits, but I imagine you could count crit damage received and flip a card once it reaches 1.0. Never mind that though, it's a silly scenario just for exploration and we may not need to examine crits to get the main point.)

Back to keeping things random, but shrinking its variation: If we look at halving the variance, that makes agile ships overall more spongy (TIE takes 5.264 attacks to kill now, but 6.389 under double dice, likely worse by other variance reduction ). Readjusting the rest of the game (dice counts and/or health) to account for that is a lot of work. Which further piles on the evidence of why FFG would reject these options when reassessing and redesigning the game for second edition. As the game is designed, and keeping it still recognizable, FFG really needs wide variation or TIEs, Vultures, Z-95s etc are too weak in a match against high-agility ships. Even if we came up with a new dice system that was easy, this is why it wouldn't mesh well with the game we have. The game is crutched to begin with to need that wide variation with low dice counts, and the occasional game thrown by dice luck is an unavoidable consequence of that design.

It has been interesting looking into these methods. People talk with such certainty that we could just implement some system to make luck a more mild force in the game, but it helps to know not only that it's complicated, but why . It'll be nice to be armed with these answers next time I'm in a conversation like that. Fewer games thrown by crazy dice is a worthwhile goal and I encourage discussion, but I've concluded it's realistically it's probably not very achievable in the game we have.

Thanks @theBitterFig , this has been fantastic!

Have you played Armada?

There are no defense dice. Each ship (and most unique squadrons) have a limited set of defence tokens to spend on mitigating damage. No tokens left equals a dead ship very quickly.

A Scatter token negates an attack entirely. A Brace halves the final damage. Part of the skill needed to play Armada lies in knowing when to spend your tokens. You get to use each one once per turn - but you can spend each a 2nd time at the cost of never using it again.

So, variance is much reduced. An agile ship gets more defense tokens that remove damage at long range, but dies to close range shots; a sturdy ship has more health and more total tokens generally. There are a lot of options and nuances, which greatly affect how each ship behaves.

I think, if you wish to reduce variance, you need to move away from having 2 sets of dice entirely.

9 minutes ago, Gilarius said:

Have you played Armada?

There are no defense dice. Each ship (and most unique squadrons) have a limited set of defence tokens to spend on mitigating damage. No tokens left equals a dead ship very quickly.

A Scatter token negates an attack entirely. A Brace halves the final damage. Part of the skill needed to play Armada lies in knowing when to spend your tokens. You get to use each one once per turn - but you can spend each a 2nd time at the cost of never using it again.

So, variance is much reduced. An agile ship gets more defense tokens that remove damage at long range, but dies to close range shots; a sturdy ship has more health and more total tokens generally. There are a lot of options and nuances, which greatly affect how each ship behaves.

I think, if you wish to reduce variance, you need to move away from having 2 sets of dice entirely.

That's cool to know! I never played Armada before.

5 hours ago, Wazat said:

That's cool to know! I never played Armada before.

TTS or Vassal work well, if you wish to risk getting into another game?

It's much better balanced than x-wing, but this might be linked to how slowly products get released!

14 hours ago, Wazat said:

Actually, balance may be doomed to kill every such effort.

Didn't you call me "toxic" for saying that in the post before? I said:

15 hours ago, Frimmel said:

Reducing the variance in the design of X-wing creates a very different game. A game occurring in a different space than all of the game pieces it will be using was created in.

And you said:

14 hours ago, Wazat said:

You either don't understand what's happening here, or you have your back up and you're doubling down on the strawman argument.

Leave the conversation, you're contributing nothing but toxicity.

I've been trying to be diplomatic in saying, "You're wasting your time." It is your time to waste though. You're right that I should get out of your way as you go through a lot of song and dance to convince yourself of what you already know. Good luck with that.

8 hours ago, Gilarius said:

TTS or Vassal work well, if you wish to risk getting into another game?

It's much better balanced than x-wing, but this might be linked to how slowly products get released!

I might try it out at some point, especially with Vassal or TTS making that possible without buying in first.

About how long is an average game?

I like the luck factor. It adds excitement to the game. Dice variance was removed near the end of 1.0 and it resulted in a different game. Double modding dice is the best way to reduce variance. If you want to reduce variance look at 1.0 and it will help you figure out how to do it.

5 minutes ago, Wazat said:

I might try it out at some point, especially with Vassal or TTS making that possible without buying in first.

About how long is an average game?

On TTS or normally?

Normal games take 2 hours ish. Slower when you first start because of all the dithering you tend to do.

Online, so far, games are slower (3 hours) because you need to re-learn your movements and therefore the dithering times increase again!

I wrote a Noob's Guide to Armada on TTS, which the module creator kindly linked to in his description, but it assumes you know how to play Armada itself. I'd recommend getting taught how to play by someone who already knows.

What time zone are you in? I'm in the UK.

29 minutes ago, freakyg3 said:

I like the luck factor. It adds excitement to the game. Dice variance was removed near the end of 1.0 and it resulted in a different game. Double modding dice is the best way to reduce variance. If you want to reduce variance look at 1.0 and it will help you figure out how to do it.

1.0's end was certainly an interesting experiment. We have stuff that's started down that path now (e.g. Jedi that are usually double-modded), but not nearly as strong, and I really hope we don't power-creep our way there all over again. The largest problem IMO was that these double mods were not given out equally, so some ships/pilots languished and others were automatic winners in the meta game. (edit: and ships with fewer dice can't make near as much use of double mods even if they have them, which harms things like Z-95 swarms, B-Wings, etc)

And I suspect double mods are more appropriate on attack than on defense. Strong attack moves the game forward, while strong defense can make it impossible to make headway against a foe. They need to be close to equal with advantage to attack, or inequal with advantage to attack.

Then there were Auzitucks with Expertise and Tactician, which were strong on attack and defense with few weaknesses, until FFG added Harpoon Missiles, which were unholy powerful in their own right... oh what a mess. If double mods are the solution, they've got to be available to everyone, which again is a major change to the game that'd be hard to rebalance. But I know a lot of tournament players preferred the certainty of the top-meta lists in 1.0 and I get why. Second Edition was rebalanced toward more variance because that was the original design of the game (and so many ships were balanced around that), and because the heavy-modded lists had made a bad name for themselves.

25 minutes ago, Gilarius said:

On TTS or normally?

Normal games take 2 hours ish. Slower when you first start because of all the dithering you tend to do.

Online, so far, games are slower (3 hours) because you need to re-learn your movements and therefore the dithering times increase again!

I wrote a Noob's Guide to Armada on TTS, which the module creator kindly linked to in his description, but it assumes you know how to play Armada itself. I'd recommend getting taught how to play by someone who already knows.

What time zone are you in? I'm in the UK.

Very cool. I'm in the US (Mountain Time), and it's tricky to figure out when I'll be available. I think what I'll do is read up on Armada and learn the basics first, before I involve another person. I sometimes like to learn at a glacial pace so I'm certain I'm comprehending.

3 hours worries me though -- that's 2 - 4 X-Wing games. It may be more than I can devote to a game in a single sitting too, 3-hour time blocks usually get chopped up by other obligations at home/work. And I get antsy after an hour or two.

BTW top respect for writing a Noob's Guide. Those things can be life savers for new players. We should probably do something like that for X-Wing, for both physical and online play.

I think the actual method for dices is really acceptable.

In all my games, I have learned that you will NEVER but NEVER get good results if you simply hope to get good dices. Obviously, you have to put yourself in attack position, but in most of the games that I have played, I can think of a moment, a maneuver in the game that would have changed the game much more than blanking dices, or a thing that I have done that was a game changer.

Of course, if I get Soontir destroyed by a hit-crit from an academy pilot while rolling 5 blanks, it's frustrating. But it doesn't happen on a regular basis to make a change in dice rules.

Personnally, I think that the best choice suggested way would be a dice deck. But it's not as good as regular actual dices.