no you dont understand.

people would have to buy the black defense dice. because theyre not in core sets or dice packs.

FFG is not going to make people go out and buy new dice just to add some miniscule amount of granularity to future hypothetical units that only applies when they have surge tokens...

that is ridiculous. it wont happen.

if they add a new dice type to the game I want that new dice type to add new mechanics to the game. otherwise it isnt worth the cost of buying it. especially since FFG can never seem to give you enough dice and you always have to buy them in triplicate.

14 hours ago, Jedhead said:

What I would actually like to see is a a way for surge tokens to interact with units that already convert surge, or at least a mechanic or ability that benefits units that already convert surges, allowing them to improve their defense. The rebels in particular are stuck at very crappy defense, and no amount of surge tokens can help this. Meanwhile, we rebel players have to watch the clones and droids eat up surge tokens like candy, and imperial shoretroopers follow suit. Unfortunately, nimble is not a sufficient defensive boost as it will not allow you to dodge the dang crits, and demands that you take a dodge action every round.

I guess all I am saying is that as a rebel player (many units already surge on defense, offense, or both) there aren't as many good uses for surge tokens, and this is particularly a problem on defense, where other factions essentially double their defensive value (droids), or end up with twice YOUR defensive value (stormies and clones comapred to rebel troopers).

#Feelsbadman

It should be interesting if rebel troopers can spend dodge/surge token to increase a defense dice result. There is no need to redesign the unit card. Just to introduce a new personnel upgrade that come with such a rule.

Or maybe, give access to a "training" call "low profile" as an upgrade card for every unit that can access to trainings (including rebel troopers trough personal upgrade)

But after all, every unit has a different role in every army and I can understand that the rebel troopers are not designed to survive under constant fire unless they spend there action to dodge in cover

14 minutes ago, Krakus said:

It should be interesting if rebel troopers can spend dodge/surge token to increase a defense dice result. There is no need to redesign the unit card. Just to introduce a new personnel upgrade that come with such a rule.

Or maybe, give access to a "training" call "low profile" as an upgrade card for every unit that can access to trainings (including rebel troopers trough personal upgrade)

But after all, every unit has a different role in every army and I can understand that the rebel troopers are not designed to survive under constant fire unless they spend there action to dodge in cover

The problem now is that they die even when they spend the dodge in cover. If they had outmaneuver and could dodge crits they would be completely fine in my book. Right now, the wealth of critical means there is almost always at least a crit or two slipping through, against which you will almost inevitably fail your rolls.

1 hour ago, Jedhead said:

The problem now is that they die even when they spend the dodge in cover. If they had outmaneuver and could dodge crits they would be completely fine in my book. Right now, the wealth of critical means there is almost always at least a crit or two slipping through, against which you will almost inevitably fail your rolls.

A new keyword could be introduced, a defensive version of Marksman: spend Dodge tokens to change dice results, from blank to surge, from surge to block. Could be too much OP?

Just thinking aloud.

With the introduction of surge tokens having black defence dice makes a lot of sense. Let me explain my thinking. When the game was originally developed and released, outside of a few exceptions, there was no way for a unit without a native surge on its unit card to gain the ability to surge. That being the case 2 types of defence dice could cover the 4 successful save probabilities, namely:

White with no surge = 1 in 6

White with surge = 2 in 6

Red with no surge = 3 in 6

Red with surge = 4 in 6

Without the existence of surge tokens each unit could be given one of the above probabilities simply by adding/omitting the surge icon on their card. This is kind of a blunt way of approaching saves and produces marked differentiation of units. It fitted with the the game as it was initially conceived and the limited number of units available at launch, but I think things could be done better.

The advent of surge tokens opens up a lot of design space to subtly differentiate more units if you also introduce black defence dice. A black defence dice would have the following probabilities of a successful save:

Black with no surge = 2 in 6

Black with surge = 3 in 6

There’s overlap with the probabilities of existing defence dice but that’s intentional and useful. It allows you to assign save probabilities to units that would normally be the same but that you want to slightly differentiate. You could for example boost some characters by giving them a non surge probability of saving that’s the same as a basic unit but that has the ability to benefit from surge tokens. For example, you could give Han Solo a black defence save with no native surge on his unit card. Under normal circumstances his chances of a successful save would remain at 2 in 6, but if he were given a surge token it would increase to 3 in 6 for 1 dice.

Alternatively you could use black defence dice instead of red defence dice on some units. Red defence dice are very strong especially when augmented by surge tokens. When I’m showing Legion to new players many comment on how strong Stormtrooper saves are in the game when they die so easily on screen. I must admit it does seem odd. With black defence dice you would have a way to representing that Stormtroopers wear armour but aren’t as resilient as Jedi. Give Stormtroopers a black defence save with no native surge and their probability of saving would ordinarily be 2 in 6. Less than a Jedi, which seems appropriate, and equal to a Rebel Trooper, which also seems appropriate (as all the grunts die a lot on screen). Give the Stromtroopers a surge token and they become better than Rebel Troopers, nicely representing their armour, but still a bit behind Jedi which fits the narrative.

I feel that the addition of black defence dice and the kind of changes that I’ve mentioned above would benefit the game by enabling greater differentiation of units. It could also help to make units on the tabletop feel closer to how they should based on the franchise's fluff.

6 hours ago, Khobai said:especially when the number of units that would use a black defense die would be entirely limited to new releases since all the existing units already use either white or red.

There appears to be a good chance that Legion will see either a full or partial reprint soon anyway so they’ll have an opportunity then to change dice on cards.

X-Wing and now Armada have done away with mini-American sized upgrade cards and have gone to a standard card size. I would expect the same from Legion. Plus, we have Skirmish Battle Cards still to be printed. It’s coming.

10 hours ago, Darth Sanguis said:

The dice are fine as are. That said, here’s a hot take:

having both the attack and defense mechanics use dice to determine results is super abstract and negatively effects the stability of the game overall. Dice inherently work on averages over samples taken. Having multiple points in the attack system that require extremely high numbers to average out creates imbalance at the individual rolls. They should abandon defense dice, develop defense tokens similar to other games they’ve developed.

Inb4 the collective crowd shout I’m going to take from the “the game is fine” crowd.

It’s my opinion, you won’t change my mind.

I wasn't gonna go hard on this idea, but fudge it, may as well extrapolate.

Not every unit has the same defenses. For instance, a group of well trained and heavily outfitted death troopers will obviously have better and different defenses than a group of ragtag rebel troopers. So where death troopers may use tactical movements and armor to brace and redirect attacks, rebel troopers may be more likely to evade or scatter an attack. First, lets look at the defense effects below which resolve in the order listed:


Scatter:
After you spend a scatter defense token, before suffering wounds your opponent may recohesion the minis around your leader mini leaving a minimum space of the width of the movement tool between them. Cancel all attack dice and suffer suppression equal to the number of hits/crits in the pool.

(should be redundant but this represents a unit scattering to avoid getting shot. Like in real life, it may avoid wounds but it will disrupt the effectiveness of that unit.)

Evade:
After spending an evade defense token, before suffering wounds resolve the following effect:
Range 4+ cancel a die
Range 2-3 cancel a hit result
Range 1 choose a die for opponent to reroll.
Melee no effect

(This action is meant to represent small movements by the unit as a whole to partially evade an oncoming attack .)

Brace:
After you spend a brace defense token, before you suffer wounds, recohesion the minis of the unit in base contact around the leader as best you can. If you cannot place directly in base contact with the leader place in contact with the next closest mini that’s in contact with the leader until all minis are touching. Reduce the wounds by half rounded up.

(The idea being the group tightens formation preventing the whole group from suffering wounds and tanking the shots on armor and bodies.)


Duck/Drop(redirect):
After you spend a duck/drop defense token you may cancel a die and suffer an extra suppression instead. (This unit’s speed is reduced by 1 to a minimum of 1 until a recover action is made or the end of the round).

(should be redundant but the idea here is that the group hunkers down either in cover or drops prone, sacrificing movement speed to avoid wounds)

Salvo:
If no other defense tokens were spent during this attack you may spend the salvo defense token. After spending a salvo defense token, before resolving wounds, if the defender has not attacked this turn they may roll an attack at the attacking unit. All weapons in this attack must be valid. You cannot use the fire support keyword off this attack. A salvo defense token cannot be spent on a salvo attack.

(this represents a unit pushing through an oncoming attack to laydown an attack of their own, it also means the unit is sacrificing defensive ability to push an attack)


The attack steps 7-9 would be simplified to something along the lines of:

7.) Spend Defense tokens:
The defender can spend one or more of it's defense tokens .

• Defense tokens begin the game on their readied side. When a readied defense token is spent, it is flipped to its exhausted side. When an exhausted defense token is spent, it is discarded.
• If the defender has 2 or more immobilize tokens it cannot spend defense tokens.
• The defender cannot spend more than one defense token of each type per attack.
• A defense token cannot be spent more than once during an attack.
• 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.
• Defense tokens refresh to their readied state at the beginning of the End step each round. Discarded tokens do not ready. Defense tokens may also be readied by a recover action.

8.) Modify results
The defender can resolve any card abilities that modify the defense tokens. Then, the attacker can resolve any card abilities that modify the defense tokens.

9.) Resolve damage
The defender suffers wounds for all remaining hit/crits in the pool.

5 hours ago, Dalae said:

A new keyword could be introduced, a defensive version of Marksman: spend Dodge tokens to change dice results, from blank to surge, from surge to block. Could be too much OP?

This is for sure coming and would be welcomed depending on where and who has access to it.

Armada style defense tokens would be a death knell for the game in my opinion.

I think the designers have figured out they've got to keep this streamlined and keep playing time for the game down. More tokens do not help this.

Drake doesn't add any credence to changing people's minds, in fact, his presence have the opposite effect that you want.

1 hour ago, buckero0 said:

I think the designers have figured out they've got to keep this streamlined and keep playing time for the game down. More tokens do not help this.

Trying to streamline a tabletop game is a great way to make it accessible, and a terrible way to balance it.


If all they're building this game for is players who aren't willing to invest in, let's be realistic, at most 5 more minutes of set up/tear down at a competitive tier, they've probably already failed.

1 hour ago, buckero0 said:

Armada style defense tokens would be a death knell for the game in my opinion.

We probably ain't gonna find a middle ground, but that's okay. I disagree. Using 2 separate dice rolls in any mechanic is clunky, just because Warhammer does it, doesn't make it good. Having played X-Wing, Armada, and Legion I think defense tokens would function infinitely better and that any complexity gained from 1 or 2 persistent tokens per unit, would be well worth avoiding the imbalance that comes with relying on 2 sets of averages over samples taken to balance a game.

1 hour ago, buckero0 said:

Drake doesn't add any credence to changing people's minds, in fact, his presence have the opposite effect that you want.

Psh my MAY MAYs are fire. lol

I just think changing it after the game has already been created as a certain way will cause problems. FFG is trying to create a 40k style game, clunky or not, i think that's what they are going for.

As much as the makers say they want balance, i don't know that they really do.

7 minutes ago, buckero0 said:

I just think changing it after the game has already been created as a certain way will cause problems. FFG is trying to create a 40k style game, clunky or not, i think that's what they are going for.

As much as the makers say they want balance, i don't know that they really do.

That's fair. Mid game change would be catastrophic. I've been doing tabletop games only for about 5 years now but from what I can tell table top gamers DO NOT LIKE change. lol

Yeah, I don't think balance was the goal, ease of access was.

6 hours ago, Darth Sanguis said:

If all they're building this game for is players who aren't willing to invest in, let's be realistic, at most 5 more minutes of set up/tear down at a competitive tier, they've probably already failed.

While i see your point and share it, the volume of tokens/cards and proprietary dice ffg uses in comparison to other systems has always been a sore point across all of it's star wars titles with a portion of the ( and non) playerbase.

Edit: thinking about it as far as new dice goes, that probably the biggest point on leaving it the way it is. For the minimal design space opened you risk provoking the "it's a cash grab!!" crowd.

21 hours ago, Darth Sanguis said:

I wasn't gonna go hard on this idea, but fudge it, may as well extrapolate.

Not every unit has the same defenses. For instance, a group of well trained and heavily outfitted death troopers will obviously have better and different defenses than a group of ragtag rebel troopers. So where death troopers may use tactical movements and armor to brace and redirect attacks, rebel troopers may be more likely to evade or scatter an attack. First, lets look at the defense effects below which resolve in the order listed:


Scatter:
After you spend a scatter defense token, before suffering wounds your opponent may recohesion the minis around your leader mini leaving a minimum space of the width of the movement tool between them. Cancel all attack dice and suffer suppression equal to the number of hits/crits in the pool.

(should be redundant but this represents a unit scattering to avoid getting shot. Like in real life, it may avoid wounds but it will disrupt the effectiveness of that unit.)

Evade:
After spending an evade defense token, before suffering wounds resolve the following effect:
Range 4+ cancel a die
Range 2-3 cancel a hit result
Range 1 choose a die for opponent to reroll.
Melee no effect

(This action is meant to represent small movements by the unit as a whole to partially evade an oncoming attack .)

Brace:
After you spend a brace defense token, before you suffer wounds, recohesion the minis of the unit in base contact around the leader as best you can. If you cannot place directly in base contact with the leader place in contact with the next closest mini that’s in contact with the leader until all minis are touching. Reduce the wounds by half rounded up.

(The idea being the group tightens formation preventing the whole group from suffering wounds and tanking the shots on armor and bodies.)


Duck/Drop(redirect):
After you spend a duck/drop defense token you may cancel a die and suffer an extra suppression instead. (This unit’s speed is reduced by 1 to a minimum of 1 until a recover action is made or the end of the round).

(should be redundant but the idea here is that the group hunkers down either in cover or drops prone, sacrificing movement speed to avoid wounds)

Salvo:
If no other defense tokens were spent during this attack you may spend the salvo defense token. After spending a salvo defense token, before resolving wounds, if the defender has not attacked this turn they may roll an attack at the attacking unit. All weapons in this attack must be valid. You cannot use the fire support keyword off this attack. A salvo defense token cannot be spent on a salvo attack.

(this represents a unit pushing through an oncoming attack to laydown an attack of their own, it also means the unit is sacrificing defensive ability to push an attack)


The attack steps 7-9 would be simplified to something along the lines of:

7.) Spend Defense tokens:
The defender can spend one or more of it's defense tokens .

• Defense tokens begin the game on their readied side. When a readied defense token is spent, it is flipped to its exhausted side. When an exhausted defense token is spent, it is discarded.
• If the defender has 2 or more immobilize tokens it cannot spend defense tokens.
• The defender cannot spend more than one defense token of each type per attack.
• A defense token cannot be spent more than once during an attack.
• 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.
• Defense tokens refresh to their readied state at the beginning of the End step each round. Discarded tokens do not ready. Defense tokens may also be readied by a recover action.

8.) Modify results
The defender can resolve any card abilities that modify the defense tokens. Then, the attacker can resolve any card abilities that modify the defense tokens.

9.) Resolve damage
The defender suffers wounds for all remaining hit/crits in the pool.

It's an interesting idea, but would require a total rework of the game. With the current dice pools, even reducing hits by half would mean a unit still takes 4+ wounds, effectively removing it from the game. And cancelling a die or single result is just laughable.

It would literally only be different if it had 5 blocks, more sides or new symbols.

I bet for a 'plot armor' dice for the goodies. Based in the lore, the possibility that Luke or Leia receive a single shoot is not feasible.

I read the thread,but It makes not sense. The two dices actually covers from 3+ to 6+, there is not space between. Yeah, there is a new mechanic that modify the chances during game now, but the dices still cover all the statistical chances. Another different story could be if the dices were D8 instead of D6.

42 minutes ago, Tris87TJ said:

It would literally only be different if it had 5 blocks, more sides or new symbols.

Incorrect. Read the thread, the difference has been explained.

Almost the same effect could be had by just giving a unit with white die with surge a keyword that allows them to spend a surge token to "improve" some amount of the die pool to red die with no surge. No need for a new color of die to introduce a similar effect.

49 minutes ago, Caimheul1313 said:

Almost the same effect could be had by just giving a unit with white die with surge a keyword that allows them to spend a surge token to "improve" some amount of the die pool to red die with no surge. No need for a new color of die to introduce a similar effect.

If they wanted to also replicate a 50% save that can't benefit from surge tokens (a black die with surge to block) they would also need to create a keyword that prevented a unit from spending surge tokens on a unit with red defense.

4 hours ago, costi said:

It's an interesting idea, but would require a total rework of the game.

It would require some modifications to be sure. Less in attack dice more in a suppression redesign I think. (at least the current way I designed the tokens).


There's a 10,000% chance these will never be adopted . lol So the rest below is just for argument sake.

4 hours ago, costi said:

With the current dice pools, even reducing hits by half would mean a unit still takes 4+ wounds, effectively removing it from the game.

Well, that really depends on a lot of things. The pools I've seen are pretty variable these days. Rarely over 6 hits unless it's a clone or special unit. The cover and the defensive capabilities on the unit are key. But realistically, all changing these mechanics out should do is remove outliers.

8-10 hits through heavy cover against a unit with red defense dice and no surges should suffer 3-4 wounds on average.

8-10 hits through heavy cover against a unit with a brace token will suffer 3-4 wounds.

It may need some fine tuning but mechanically the theory is sound.

4 hours ago, costi said:

And cancelling a die or single result is just laughable.

Again this depends on the cover and unit that's using the defense token. (For instance, should a unit with a brace have a evade, or a redirect, it may be key to keeping the unit on the board).

8-10 hits through heavy cover to a unit with white defense dice should suffer 5-7± wounds.

8-10 hits through heavy cover to a unit with an Evade will suffer 5-7 wounds.

These examples are at the higher end of damage output too. I rarely see damage peak over 6. At 3-4 hits through cover, evades and redirects would be very helpful.

On 8/16/2020 at 12:02 PM, Sekac said:

Well, sure there is. It's 2 blocks and a surge. 1 more shield than a white die, one less than a red die, definitely fits the description of "in between". It just doesn't open up much design space.

Whether or not that's a valuable addition to the game is the question. I dont think it's a need, but I don't think it would cause any harm either.

But no, you don't have to be ignorant of dice to wonder whether it's needed.

That’s a red defense dice without surges... it’s not needed. It’s absolutely not needed.

27 minutes ago, NeverTellMeTheOdds said:

That’s a red defense dice without surges... it’s not needed. It’s absolutely not needed.

As has been explained several times in this thread, it's a red die that doesn't natively surge and can't benefit from surge tokens .

Is it needed? No. But it's not the same thing. However, the same effect could be achieved with keywords instead of dice.

4 hours ago, Lochlan said:

If they wanted to also replicate a 50% save that can't benefit from surge tokens (a black die with surge to block) they would also need to create a keyword that prevented a unit from spending surge tokens on a unit with red defense.

Or just a unit keyword that means they can never get surge tokens or benefit from them in any way (Undisciplined perhaps?). It would also impact the attack results. Which while I'm on the subject, why is only defense die being brought up in the discussion of why a new die is needed? Why are attack die being left out of this discussion when they have a very similar limitation in regards to surge tokens.
It could also be built into the keyword of spending the surge token to convert from white die to red die as part of the effect (spend surge token, convert some number of white defence die to red, but cannot convert the surge icons on the red die), but I know the statistics are slightly off for the die conversion.
As you said in a slightly later post, a similar effect can be achieved with keywords. Which is far more likely in my opinion than adding another set of die for what I expect would be a fairly rare occurrence.

53 minutes ago, Caimheul1313 said:

Why are attack die being left out of this discussion when they have a very similar limitation in regards to surge tokens

Likely because there are many other methods of improving an attack pool and very few to improve defense rolls or make them more consistent.

Lots of offensive keywords out there, most fairly accessible, only a few defensive keywords, and they're often character locked.


Why does a dodge only cancel 1 hit if an aim rerolls two dice?

2 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

Why does a dodge only cancel 1 hit if an aim rerolls two dice?

Only? Depending on the die and surges, an Aim token often gets you less than one extra success, which is what the Dodge token guarantees.

Quote

Why does a dodge only cancel 1 hit if an aim rerolls two dice?

because dodge cancels a guaranteed hit

while rerolling two dice doesnt give you a guaranteed hit. especially if youre rerolling garbage white dice.

I also agree that defense saves are dumb. they add an unnecessary extra element of luck to the game that absolutely sucks. It wouldve been better if they just had a completely non-random armor/defense system instead of random defense saves. nothing feels worse than having a red defense save with surge that always rolls blanks. And that constantly happens to me.