The X-Wing Miniatures Game uses 8-sided dice. There are two types: red attack dice, and green defense dice.
Attack and Defense Dice faces
Dice Results[]
The results on the attack dice are as follows:
- Hit: If this result is not canceled, the defender suffers one damage.
- Critical: If this result is not canceled, the defender suffers one critical damage.
- Focus: These results have no inherent effect, but the attacker may spend a Focus token to change all focus results to hit results, or a force charge to change one focus result to a hit result in a given dice pool.
- Blank: This result does not display any icons. It has no effect.
The results on the defense dice are as follows:
- Evade: This result cancels one hit or critical result.
- Focus: These results have no inherent effect, but the defender may spend a focus token to change all focus results to evade results or a force charge to change one focus result to an evade result in a given dice pool..
- Blank: This result does not display any icons. It has no effect.
When an effect instructs a player to roll dice for a purpose other than resolving an attack, the dice results have no inherent effect.
Rules Regarding Rolling Dice[]
When a player is required to roll attack or defense dice, if he rolls too many dice, he must pick up all of his dice and reroll them. if he rolls too few dice, he must leave the roll intact and roll the required number of additional dice, adding the new results to the original roll.
If a rolled die is cocked (not level), that player rerolls that die.
Dice Modifications[]
Players can modify dice by spending various tokens and by resolving abilities. Dice can be modified in the following ways:
- Add: To add a die result, place an unused die displaying the result next to the rolled dice. A die added in this way is treated as a normal die for all purposes and can be modified and canceled.
- Change: To change a die result, rotate the die so that its faceup side displays the new result.
- Reroll: To reroll a die result, pick up the die and roll it again.
- Spend: To spend a result, remove the die from the dice pool.
Additionally:
- Dice modification occurs during the respective Modify Attack Dice or Modify Defense Dice step, unless otherwise stated.
- Although dice can be modified by multiple effects, each die cannot be rerolled more than once.
- If an ability instructs a ship to spend a result, it cannot spend another ship’s results unless stated otherwise.
- Canceling dice is not a dice modification.
- Rolling additional dice or fewer dice is not a dice modification.
Attack Dice Odds[]
The red attack dice have the following odds of being rolled:
- 3 Hit (37.5% chance)
- 1 Critical Hit (12.5% chance)
- 2 Focus (25% chance)
- 2 Blank (25% chance)
Defense Dice[]
The green defense dice have the following odds of being rolled:
- 3 Evade (37.5% chance)
- 2 Focus (25% chance)
- 3 Blank (37.5% chance)
Odds of Rolling Hits vs. Evades[]
Due to the higher number of "hits" (both regular and critical) on the attack die versus "evades" on the defense die, players have a higher chance of rolling either a hit or critical hit on the red dice (50%) than an evade on the green dice (37.5%).
If focus is taken into consideration, then a player rolling red attack dice has a 75% chance of rolling a hit, critical hit, or focus, versus a 62.5% chance of a defensive player rolling an evade or a focus.
Odds of Multiple Dice[]
The table below lists average expected number of hits/crits or evades for a given number of dice, with or without a focus token. Attacking with a target lock acts much like a focus except it has a slightly higher ratio of crits. Having both a focus and lock and other abilities can increase or decrease these chances further (see table lower down for focus + lock). The more dice you add, the more the odds tend to cluster around the average (making the min and max values increasingly unlikely).
These are of course only expected averages over the long term. Any given roll is under no obligation to produce expected results; player beware, dice are disloyal!
| Dice Count | Focus Token | Average Hits + Crits | Average Evades |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | No | 0.50 | 0.38 |
| 1 | Yes | 0.75 | 0.63 |
| 2 | No | 1.00 | 0.75 |
| 2 | Yes | 1.50 | 1.25 |
| 3 | No | 1.50 | 1.13 |
| 3 | Yes | 2.25 | 1.88 |
| 4 | No | 2.00 | 1.50 |
| 4 | Yes | 3.00 | 2.50 |
| 5 | No | 2.50 | 1.88 |
| 5 | Yes | 3.75 | 3.13 |
| 6 | No | 3.00 | 2.25 |
| 6 | Yes | 4.50 | 3.75 |
| 7 | No | 3.50 | 2.63 |
| 7 | Yes | 5.25 | 4.37 |
| 8 | No | 4.00 | 3.00 |
| 8 | Yes | 6.00 | 5.00 |
Attacking with Lock + Focus[]
If you have both a target lock and a focus token, this pushes expected hits+crits very close to the number of dice rolled.
| Dice Count | Average Hits + Crits |
|---|---|
| 1 | 0.94 |
| 2 | 1.86 |
| 3 | 2.81 |
| 4 | 3.75 |
| 5 | 4.69 |
| 6 | 5.62 |
| 7 | 6.56 |
More Info[]
If you want to know more about dice odds, or you want to know less about dice odds and just want to skip to the answers, there's lots of articles on the topic.
- Check out this program on AnyDice, which was used to produce the table above instead of calculating it all by hand.
- This calculator can tell you the damage odds in various scenarios, e.g. 4 attack dice with focus + lock vs a pilot with focus at range 3. It doesn't cover all abilities, but for basic focus + lock effects vs defense dice, it does the job very well.
- X-Wing Dice are not perfectly random. Check out this thread discussing the rigorous testing someone did on his dice with an auto-roller. The effects are not what people expect -- up to ~5% variance not 50%. ;) But it's pronounced enough to have a real effect on a tournament, if someone were to figure out their best dice and only bring those to gain a competitive advantage (which would be unsportsmanlike behavior). The proper response is to share a pool of dice so both players have the same variance, or both use the FFG dice app.