9 hours ago, Shadowhawk252 said:

You’ve missed the core to his strategy. Any bx min saboteur can detonate any dioxis mine. With cad bane kablamo token and the high survivability of the 2 full bx units he’s going for a massive area denial list. It won’t just be 1 mine a unit to get placed. The way I would use that list is keep the strike team bx unit in the back behind los blocking cover, and have the other 2 just keep dropping bombs and being able to detonate one after every action. Dooku to push or scatter enemies into them. Bane to deal damage and further control. If played right it can be very nasty.

Going off number unless you positioned the bx droids poorly or your opponent exposed his units to focus them down early you should be able to easily get 2 mines out each with the full squads, maybe up to 4 each depending on dice. So anywhere from 4-8 mines out, that can do some serious damage to non cis players.
Biggest draw back to this list I can see is it will not be effective against other cis lists or vehicles.

@Shadowhawk252 is exactly right, I'm aiming for area denial. I can reasonably expect a single Dioxis mine to kill 2 minis, based off of the Fifth Trooper's Attack Dice Simulator - one from the explosion, one from the poison. With their Scout 3 and Scale, it should be very easy to get them emplaced where I want them to start defining the battlefield. The matches I play with my roommate tend to have lots of heavy cover and LoS blocking terrain in the form of buildings, which should hopefully mean that that their mines are more effective at reducing lanes of approach and the BXs are able to have heavy cover one way or another. The Deflector Shields, Situational Awareness, and heavy cover should mean they're able to shrug off five hits during the first attack. Seeing both of those units completely ignore the first five hits or three crits they take, without even needing to roll defense dice, will hopefully affect my opponent's morale.

Once those units fall, he's also correct that my strike team will be hanging out in the back, ready to detonate mines as needed. Given the opportunity, they also have some flexibility: they could push forward right away to emplace a mine or two, then retreat to safety; approach a flank or shut one down; etc., all the while permitting me to detonate a third mine at any given trigger. So long as 1 of them survive, all of the mines on the board are still a threat.

As far as orders go, both units can potentially have an order on three turns, while the Uplink on the B1s should ensure that at least 1 unit has an order every turn.
- Only 1 unit has an order: Fear, Surprise, and Intimidation ; I'm Your Worst Nightmare ; I Make the Rules Now ; Standing Orders
- Both units have orders: Double the Fall ; Push ; You Disappoint Me

My hopes are to combine that general strategy with Dooku and Bane's tomfoolery - the aforementioned Kablamo token, Force Push, Lightning scatter - in addition the the crap that Dooku pulls with his command cards to really mess with my opponent. I am also hoping that enough focus will be placed on them, not on the Dooks, so he can move up and start absolutely wrecking house, which is why he's built more offensively. I'm contemplating reversing Saber Throw/Aggressive Tactics with Force Reflexes/Esteemed Leader and keeping him with the B1's as he moves up and using them as ablative wounds.

Well, let us know how it goes, it has me very curious.

As to reasonably expecting each mine to kill 2 models, that assumes you can reasonably expect every squad to fail their save. That's what's swingy about it. Against red defense, half your mines will do absolutely nothing. Half the time, 2 wounds. So while it's never possible to do exactly 1 wound per mine, against red defense, you'll average 1 wound per dioxis bomb that detonates.

I think it's list that will depend a lot on your opponent's psychology. A puzzle to be solved if they can manage not to go on tilt.

On 7/25/2020 at 4:09 PM, Sekac said:

You're not correcting the math, you're just looking at it a different way. You're comparing the chances you would have to block an attack if you chose not to use the shield token to the guaranteed block of a shield.

If someone hits you 4 times and you decide to use 2 shield tokens, then the absolute ceiling for their damage is lowered by 2, no matter what the dice do.

It's definitely true that if you block 2 with shields, the math says you only lose 1 model with the 2 red dice you're rolling. Whereas, if you spent no shields and just rolled dice, you'd expect to lose 2. That's only a difference of 1 model after using 2 shields, and you conclude they're worth half a wound each.

But your expected results are subject to variance which will change your perceived value. For instance, you might completely blank out on the roll and lose 4 models. In this instance, using 2 shields would've saved 2 models. It's also possible you roll 4 blocks and nobody dies, in which case spending shields would have done nothing. So sometimes they're worth 2 wounds, sometimes 1, sometimes 0. It depends on what the dice would have done if we rolled the full amount, which is an answer we will never get.

It is mathematically true that spending 2 shields subtracts 2 from the maximum potential damage.

It is also true that using those shield tokens does not guarantee 2 more models live that otherwise wouldn't have . Which is where you're getting hung up. Expected results are based on averages, shields are there because an individual die roll may not be average.

So it's fair for you to conclude that shields are less valuable the better your defense dice are; my stance is 2 guaranteed blocks are better than counting the dice to roll average.

Effective wounds is a term used to describe durability of a unit. It is the average amount of hits needed to kill a unit.

But of course all your evaluations are correct. I'll take automatic cancels over rolling dice any day. The question is, is it worth 18 points? Really hard to tell.

8 hours ago, SailorMeni said:

Effective wounds is a term used to describe durability of a unit. It is the average amount of hits needed to kill a unit.

But of course all your evaluations are correct. I'll take automatic cancels over rolling dice any day. The question is, is it worth 18 points? Really hard to tell.

going to depend on how often you can effectively squeeze in recovery actions or shenanigans, and how well your red defense dice hold up.