Decisions vs Outcomes
“I got diced.”
You set up that perfect move, and your attack went cold. You get attacked by a hail-Mary shot and your ship explodes. That never should have happened, right? You just got bad dice.
X-Wing isn’t solely decided by variance, though – how else would the top players in the world show up on the final tables time after time? There are still maneuvers to select, targets to choose and actions to perform. What can be done, then, about bad dice?
The answer is simple: absolutely nothing. Despite our best plans, it is possible for an undesirable outcome due to a poor dice roll. However, “Blaming the Dice” is a common and dangerous mistake for players looking to improve at X-Wing. The decisions that a player makes are often conflated with the outcome of a situation and judged accordingly; that is, a player might do everything correctly, roll poorly and be disappointed with themselves due to factors beyond their control. Even more detrimental to improvement is the inverse: a player makes an error but is rewarded for it by a particularly lucky roll.
Both situations create a toxic mindset for a player looking to improve at the game of X-Wing. While the dice do affect the game state, you can make decisions that skew variance in your favor. To improve, you must learn to analyze those decisions independently of the outcome of the situation.
Build the Mindset
Let’s lay out the decisions that you can make before and during a game of X-Wing that could affect the outcome of any given situation.
List Composition: Winning engagements can happen before a single ship hits the table. A smart and effective squad list can set you up for success, while poor choices here can put you on the back foot for an entire game.
Positioning: Beginning with your deployment of asteroids, you control the exact position of each one of your ships on the table. There is no element of randomness to your maneuvers.
Modifiers and Actions: Your choice of Focus, Lock, Calculate, or repositional actions will directly affect the outcome of dice rolls. Choosing to reposition can forego your dice modifiers, but sometimes can be necessary to have a chance.
Targeting: Choosing a suboptimal target increases the effect of variance on the outcome of an engagement.
Now let’s lay out what is controlled solely by variance; what cannot be controlled directly by any player:
Dice Rolls: The result of a roll is never up to you.
Critical Hit draws: A properly shuffled damage deck is truly random.
The final missing piece here is, of course, your opponent. As an intelligent human, the choices your opponent makes will not be random, but you cannot control them either. This is what makes the game of X-Wing so exciting: the intelligent element that pits themselves against you to create the challenges that you must overcome.
You can, however, predict your opponent. This leads us into…
Making Decisions
The first step in the X-Wing decision tree is deciding what you want to accomplish. While the overarching goal is to win, for each given situation it is far more specific. For example, “Block my opponent,” “Kill Soontir Fel,” “Preserve points,” and “Get as many shots as possible while preserving my movement options for next turn,” are all targeted goals that apply to a specific turn-by-turn situation in X-Wing. Of course, the process of setting your goal is a decision in itself – nesting up and up the chain to achieve your win condition.
Once you have your goal in mind, it is time to consider what you can control and what you can predict. Remember, you cannot plan for random results, but you can predict them based on odds. Knowing what the dice are likely to roll is a powerful tool to inform your decisions but as we all know, outlier rolls will occur, and this possibility should be taken into account in your decision tree.
You can also predict your opponent, keeping in mind that they are likely following a similar process to your own. Accurately predicting your opponent’s goals, and the decisions they will make to achieve them, is an expansive topic for another time. By putting yourself in your opponent’s shoes you can predict what they are trying to achieve and plan accordingly to how that interacts with your own goals in a given situation.
Once you have your goal in mind and taken into consideration the controllable elements, as any predictions regarding your opponent as well as random outcomes you can finally make an informed decision. Decisions in X-Wing are made to maximize the odds of achieving your goals and to minimize detrimental random results. At every decision point, things such as your list composition, positioning, actions, choice of target, etc. are chosen such that you should achieve your goals if the elements that you cannot control “comply.” If this is true, that’s a good decision. A bad decision is any combination of choices that deliberately puts the outcome in the hand of your opponent, variance, or both.
This decision tree repeats itself for every new and relevant piece of information. If your opponent makes an unexpected maneuver, you might make different choices of action selection, target priority, etc. for a ship that moves after it based on the new board state and what that means for the dice odds. This is why high-Initiative pilots with repositionable capability are so powerful: you can make final decisions for them based on complete information rather than an incomplete picture of the final board state during the Planning Phase.
Of course, once you pick up a die, the final result is out of your hands. No matter what happens, analyze every decision you make over the course of the game and view it through the lens of what you could control rather than what you could not. Regardless of the results of any random elements, you can see with hindsight if your choices were ultimately correct in the pursuit of your goal – or if the goal you set for that situation was correct to begin with.
Examples
Generalized examples are difficult to come by for a topic that relies so much on context, so I will share a couple concrete situations from some past games of my own.
I was flying against a mixed Rebel list with Soontir Fel, two Strikers, and Lieutenant Sai. In the opening of the game, I wanted Soontir Fel to be on the flank with the Shuttle and Strikers – the “core” of my force, in an advantageous position to pour continuous fire into my opponent. As the opening progressed, my opponent moved to a position which indicated he was making a run at Soontir just as I was about to pass a debris cloud on the side of the map. This was advantageous to me, as it would allow Soontir to bypass – “Bait and Switch” – my opponent’s squad and get on the flank while my main force got into its own flanking position.
I dialed in a quick maneuver – 3 Bank – to gain some distance and go behind the rock. As predicted, my opponent turned toward Soontir although, with a clever barrel roll, was able to spread arcs wider than anticipated. When Soontir activated, his maneuver took him just behind the rock but squarely in the arcs of three enemy ships. In order to minimize Soontir’s chances of being killed, I boosted and barrel rolled out of all but one enemy arc – the X-Wing that had barrel rolled – leaving me at range 3, obstructed, of one unmodified enemy shot as opposed to range 2 of multiple modified shots. Thanks to the obstacle positioning, Soontir was then poised to quickly slash in from the flank.
When dice rolled, however, the plan fell apart: a hit and a crit from my opponent was answered by five blank green dice from Soontir, and with a Direct Hit drawn from the deck it was lights out for Fel on the first turn. A terrible outcome, considering Soontir placed no damage on my opponent to show for it. Was this a correct decision? Let’s analyze it:
I set my goal: to bait and switch with Soontir Fel, pulling my opponent into a disadvantageous position
I controlled my choices: Dialed in a maneuver to achieve this, and predicted my opponent’s turn
I acted on new information: Seeing my opponent’s unexpected rolls, Soontir set a new goal: “Minimize shots,” and I selected actions (Boost and Barrel Roll) to put myself in a position to minimize a disadvantageous random outcome
Variance was not in my favor: there was a 70% chance that no hits would go through, with the exact probability of the killer Direct Hit being less than 1%
I view this as a correct decision despite a negative outcome. Ultimately, the drive to kill Soontir allowed the Strikers and Shuttle a couple relatively unmolested turns to swing the game back in my favor and thanks to this positional advantage, I ultimately won a very narrow game.
Let’s take a look at another example, and pull from the (at the time of writing) most recent List Head-to-Head video.
My opponent, Adam, was flying a Resistance list with a tooled up Starfortress boasting Rose Tico and Veteran Turret Gunner – an action-efficient powerhouse in its forward firing arc, as well as two RZ-2 A-Wings and a T-70. I was flying Duchess, Vader, Vizier and an Academy TIE.
As normal, Vader moved in the opening to get in a flanking position. Adam had a slow opening and at the critical turn, maneuvered all of his ships such that the Starfortress was facing directly at Vader with an A-Wing and a T-70 facing in at an angle, creating a kill box centered around where Vader was about to move.
Thinking that Adam would turn in toward Vader (He has a sort of vendetta against that ship, for SOME reason…) I moved a TIE in position to block the A-Wing and T-70, which it did. I also wanted Vader to be able to pull off a Bait & Switch like Soontir in the previous example while also being able to fire on the Starfortress, my primary target which requires a lot of concentrated fire to bring down. I therefore dialed in a 3 Straight, thinking I might be able to use Supernatural Reflexes and Afterburners to react and get advantageous positioning if necessary.
However, I had failed to see the position Adam’s escorts would be in even if I blocked them: facing inward and overlapping arcs to fire at Vader. The Starfortress was set in such a way that I would be taking two Range-1 shots no matter where I went – at least so I thought. Using Supernatural Reflexes before I activated, I could have rolled Vader down towards the bottom of the board and then used Afterburners to dodge all my opponents’ arcs – however, I instead simply executed the maneuver.
Vader’s attack turned the whole thing around. He rolled, naturally, three hits and a crit to the Starfortess’ zero evades and Adam drew a Blinded Pilot out of the deck – ensuring that all of the attacks coming at Vader were unmodified and Vader eked out of that engagement with only one shield lost. A very positive outcome: Lots of damage on my primary target and Vader survived! But was this a correc series of decisions? Let’s review:
I set my goal: To Bait & Switch with Vader.
I made a choice that did not fit my goal: a 3-straight was too non-committal if I assumed Adam to turn in. a 3-bank would have certainly got him more distance and a better position.
I failed to act on new information: Not using Supernatural Reflexes and my suite of repositional abilities to full advantage to escape the killbox, instead choosing to gamble with a head-on approach.
Variance was in my favor: Vader’s incredible opening salvo saved me and put Adam on the back foot for the entire game.
I view this as a series of incorrect decisions, ultimately reinforced by good variance in my favor. I cannot look back at that and say that I made some sort of genius gamble because Vader was saved by a very unlikely roll and crit draw.
It is a good idea to look at each critical decision and analyze it with an objective lens, removing any outcome tinted by variance.
Taking Risks and Making Bad Decisions
This all sounds very dry and boring, and you’re correct: what would X-Wing be like if no one ever made bold choices or if all the dice came up exactly how we anticipated? Excitement comes from risky decisions and the tension when the dice hit the table. A risky decision is one that involves consciously putting your outcomes in the hands of variance. Top players don’t make the “correct” decision 100% of the time, but they don’t take risks without very good reason.
The seeds of a risky decision are planted in the goal that you set yourself to achieve. A decision that involves significant risk should accompany a goal that is unachievable without it – something that could swing the game significantly in your favor. This can sometimes be viewed as “playing aggressively” – making risky decisions to keep guns on target at the expense of modifiers or defense. If the possible result of a risky decision is unachievable without it and essential to your win condition, then it is a good decision to take that risk. It is usually inadvisable to take risks where a “safe” decision would accomplish the same goal.
If playing aggressively puts you at risk of poor variance, then playing defensively involves making decisions that always put you at less risk of poor variance: arc-dodging, or disengaging in a scrum, for example. There is always a time for a defensive decision, just as there are for aggressive ones. Playing aggressively can be a greater detriment to some ships than they are to others, too: the possible downsides for a block on Soontir after an aggressive maneuver are far worse than for Rey for example.
When talking about risk management, making a bad decision at the right point can make it a good decision. You can only analyze how “correct” a decision is in the context of what you are trying to achieve with them. When the outcome is in the hands of the dice – in the hands of variance – you must analyze the decision itself and not the outcome of that decision. Carefully balancing your choices to embrace or discard variance at the right moment is key to victory.
Original Article by Asa Graf, February 14th, 2019.
