What would you think if I told you that every thing you ever knew about Star Wars Destiny was a lie? Well my plan was to go down the Matrix Neo path, but I’m pretty sure I’ve already done that several times, so I just won’t give you a choice any more. Ctrl + W if you want to blue pill out of here from a PC, otherwise scroll down since you’ve chowed down on the red pill and want to follow me down this rabbit hole to see if anything comes of it.

If you haven’t been able to guess by the title or featured image, I’ve come to start to view Star Wars Destiny like a game of Yahtzee. It’s not exactly a game of Yahtzee, but I’ll explain soon enough. First, let’s look over how to play Yahtzee and the following picture should help immensely to clear up the base understanding of the game for those that haven’t played before. The score sheet for tallying is on the left and the rules are on the right. There are 4 columns for use of up to 4 players, so don’t let that confuse you.

Basically you want to roll well to score high and beat your opponent(s), but how you go about doing that is where the “skill and strategy” starts to come in. Star Wars Destiny has a very similar premise as Yahtzee except that we’ve been able to change what dice we are starting with and also mess with the opponent while they are trying to “score”.

Setup / Planning

In Yahtzee! everyone has a level playing field to start and their choices over the course of the game are really what dictates who will be the winners and who will be the losers. You may think that it is different in Destiny, but we all start with 30 points for team allocation and how you go about building your team is your choice (unless you don’t have all of the cards). Avoiding team building / deck building pitfalls is the name of the game here and there is a big distinctions to keep in mind.

How many dice do I start with??? This is the biggest pitfall that I commonly see people run in to. At face value, I’d say that we start with 4 value worth of dice and assuming that any main character is elite and we fill in the rest of the points with whatever fits, then we should still end up with 4 value worth. The dilemma is when people start going 3 wide with each character being a single die or Solo die EXPENSIVE character (12+) and elite support / middle character (11-16 ) to end up with 3 dice. Vader1 / Tuskan Raider put a lot of value on Vader’s dice making them about 1.5 value each to get us to 4, or Palpatines which are 2 value each in my book, and those are fine, but Solo each of Snoke, Aphra, and a 8 point character is pretty bad and you just start behind for no reason. Realistically that scenario is a bit weird because the Snoke and Aphra ability have value, but if you can start with 4 dice AND the ability then what the hell are you doing. Would you play Yahtzee with only 4 dice while the opponent had 5???… then why do you do it in Destiny??

You’ll also have color setups and whether to go Hero or Villain and the available card pool to keep in mind, but what you start with versus what your opponent’s get to start with are very important things to keep in mind. I myself live in 3 character (usually 5 dice at this point) land and I always associate it with the Gilbert Gottfried and the Land of the 3 named people. At this point i’m not sure if it’s become a permanent preference or just that I think it is the best way to win at the game. You should have a plan for the average game of what you’ll be looking to do / accomplish and don’t be looking at the nutter butter hitting max on your dice and call that your plan, otherwise you are a damned fool. You can reassess what you’ll likely do after seeing your opening hand post mulligan, but you really want to assume that you’ll be losing 1 die that hit max and then the rest of your dice averaging out well enough. Aayla Rey pre-nerf should’ve been thinking that they’ll get away with probably 4-5 damage and a resource roughly, unless you’ve decided to resolve shields or discard on Rey2. One of the easiest ways is to assume that each die is going to get you 1 value worth so that your dead dice and your 2’s even out in your calculations.

In Game Decisions

Far too often do I see players not consider how they will win the game. Usually speaking this comes up in Round 2/3 when things didn’t go so well in Round 1 and instead of formulating a plan and the best way out of the current predicament, they start to fold up mentally and give up. You can more easily look at the Yahtzee score card and see where you are falling behind and what risks you’ll have to take if you want to make a comeback to win, but even in that game where the goal is only to outscore your opponent you won’t see people take it into consideration and change what they are doing. Going for the Yolo-swag 360 no scope Yahtzee off of jank dice is sometimes the only thing you can do and if you don’t go for it, then you are sealing your own fate; 3% chance of winning is greater than 0% and it is imperative that you constantly check the board state and assess your future.

Realistically, it doesn’t usually boil down to such small percentages if you have the average plan in mind and are working towards it step by step whilst adjusting accordingly. We all like to remember that awful situation in Round 3 that we are in and the terrible decisions we had to make, but how often do we blame ourselves for being put in that position. In Yahtzee when you are down 70 points with only 3 slots to fill, you’ve already doomed yourself most likely, but it was your own choosing to go for a specific play earlier or fill in a specific slot with a 0. The same thing happens in Destiny when you decide to use your last reroll trying to squeak extra value from dice because you didn’t want to take that resource and disrupt and instead tunnel vision into the 4 damage you might be able to magically hit, which still won’t kill a guy. Sadly it isn’t until the next round that you realize you should’ve took the resource and played the Force Illusion which was the last card you pitched going for the gold.

The game is comprised of all of the small decisions you’ve made over the course of the game, so don’t treat it like you were just unlucky or the opponent was lucky, because those things tends to average out and it’s on you to try to skillfully increase your odds while preventing game overs when your opponent hits the nuts.

250+ Points

My hope is that you came away with some fresh eyes and maybe I’ll see you on the “New YAHTZEE” app working on your assessment of the situation and planning out your rounds. 250+ is about what you should be looking to come away with during every game of Yahtzee and knowing that much can help you better to understand when you are performing both below or above average. In Destiny, determining your average isn’t really done, but I’d bargain that most of the players who stay at the top tables consistently have a rough idea of what they should be doing each round, so definitely start looking into it if you haven’t before. A base idea is that you should be ending up with 1 value worth from every die so when we take into consideration an opponent mitigating one and that we should be hitting max value on probably one other die, that should put you in a safe average zone to work with. Video’d below is me playing a game of Yahtzee and explaining my choices and reassessing what I have to go for throughout the game. The theory here is reminiscent of the Losing Smart article that BobbySapphire did, so check it out if you haven’t read it already, and even if you had, read it again anyways since if you do things “correctly” then you’ll often find yourself in the upper right corner.

~HonestlySarcastc

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