A Little History

I am not the first to bring attention to this problem. In fact, the very reason I wanted to write this post in the first place was because I enjoyed the discussion surrounding two posts from late 2016. I highly encourage you to read both of these articles. I will attempt to summarize their arguments below, but allow me to apologize if I miss any points or themes in them that you believe should have been highlighted.

“X Happens: In Defense of the Dodge Result in Imperial Assault”

Written by Joe from the Jodocast (an excellent Star Wars gaming podcast), this article, as seen in the title, defends the dodge result in a three ways. First, Joe contends that the dodge result is not unbalanced. He writes, “[y]ou have to look at the other dice in the game, as well as the figures that get access to the white die and their stats. All of these things factor into why the Dodge isn’t broken.” His second argument in favor of the dodge result is that it creates very emotional moments. “The Dodge creates memories. The stronger an emotion, the more it’ll stick in your brain after the game.” And finally, he points out that the dodge is meant to be unpredictable and should add a little bit of whimsy to the game. “It’s like Ewoks… No matter how seriously you take Star Wars, you have to remember it has some silly elements.”

“The X-Files”

Written by Stephan from Boardwars.eu (another excellent site with a great podcast), is a response to Joe’s article, arguing that the dodge result is bad for skirmish. He first notes that the memorable nature of the dodge is great for campaign, but bad in the competitive environment of skirmish. He states, “regardless if the dodge gets rolled or not, one of the players will feel exceptionally bad. Either the roll cancels a full attack, or the defender relies on the dodge to come up only to be disappointed.” Stephan goes on to further draw attention to the problem with trying to mitigate the dodge result – it is an all-or-nothing situation. “[T]ools focus on outright removing the result… [so] the white die is getting weakened to a degree where it is a liability.” Stephan closes his piece out by suggesting a a fix: have the dodge result “add 2 blocks and 1 evade and then have the defender reroll the die and add any results to the total,” keeping the strength of the result but allowing some degree of interaction.