One of the most obvious elements to the game of X Wing are the dice. There are two types, attack and defense, each one serving different purposes. You may read those first two lines of this page and think “I know what dice there are.” Generally speaking, most players do. What many players do not know, however, are the statistics behind the dice.

To start with, attack dice are red and feature the following sides:

Crit – Hit – Hit – Hit – Focus – Focus – Blank – Blank

You will notice that, without any modification, an attack die has a 50/50 chance of giving you a damage result. Flip a coin and you have the same odds. Having a focus increases your chances of getting a damage result to 75%, as those focus results could get turned to hits.

Rerolling dice and/or having a focus token change your odds to hit in different ways. Having a focus, as noted, increases your odds of getting dealing one damage to more than 70% if the defender does not have a focus token.

Now, defense dice are green and have the following sides:

Evade – Evade – Evade – Focus – Focus – Blank – Blank – Blank

Unlike the 50/50 chance of damage results on red dice, defense dice only have a 3/8 chance to roll the evade. Having a focus increases that to only 5/8. Because you have an equal chance of rolling a blank as you do an evade, defense dice can be inherently fickle. Rerolling defense dice, either with or without a focus token, gets changes you odds slightly, but defense dice will always be on the losing end of equally modified dice exchanges

Just a simple comparison of attack dice and defense dice tells you that the game is intended to end with ships getting eliminated. Even on equal dice without modification, the odds say that damage results will overwhelm evade results. And that’s before adding modifications of any kind, comparing numbers of dice, including times when one side is shooting and the other is not, etc.

Ultimately, having multiple modifications to your dice is a good way to get desired results. Having modifications does not, however, guarantee that every die you roll will give you the results you want. Because of the law of averages, for every time you spend a lock to reroll three blanks into three hits, you will also reroll three blanks into three blanks. Modifications help to mitigate your odds, but guarantee nothing.

For those who want to examine the mathematics more closely, check out the X Wing Probability Calculator.