X-Wing: (Mis-)Using Leverage
ChahDresh re-learns an important lesson in humbling fashion.
As usual, every card I reference can be found on Yet Another Squad Builder. If I lapse into jargon and use terms you don’t recognize, let me know in the comments below and I’ll fix my mistake
I’ve been writing mostly theoretical articles of late (I’m sure you’ve noticed). Partly that’s because I dig that stuff. Partly it’s because my ability to get games in comes and goes. Accordingly, if I go through an extended dry spell, I end up having to relearn lessons I should already know. That’s what happened this past Saturday.
The list I’ve been favoring of late is a Tarn-Nien-Norra list (and we know all about my love of Nien Nunb). It’s flexible and the pieces fit well together, but as it isn’t exceptional in any particular regard (not super tanky, super killy, or super evadey) it’s somewhat unforgiving of mistakes.
My opponent, in this particular game, was flying a super-tanky Chewbacca backed by a high-damage Lothal Rebel. My plan going in was to knock out the Rebel quickly before it did too much damage, then overwhelm Chewie. My preferred end-game in this situation (if I had to lose some of my ships along the way) would be Norra versus Chewie, mostly because Tail Gunner would shut down most of his defensive shenanigans. So, like an idiot, I allowed him to focus fire on Norra early. In the second round of combat, Norra was down to five total health, holding a focus token.
Norra shot first, and turned up a hit and an eyeball. And there, I agonized. If I turned the eyeball in that circumstance, it was very likely to deal damage. Or I could keep it for defense (which was the actual reason, during activation, I’d opted for the focus)… except that it wasn’t great odds I’d ever use the focus on defense, what with Norra only tossing a single defense die. Right?
I burned the focus token to push the damage through.
I was wrong to do so.
There is a classic fallacy that’s easy to fall prey to, here– judging process based on results. I’ve seen this sequence many times: Player A gets a clean shot. He takes a target lock rather than a focus token, then rolls all eyeballs on the attack. Player B, trying to be a good sport, says with chagrin, “Should have taken the focus token, huh?”
Wrong
That’s not how these things work.
There was no way Player A could have known ahead of time that he’d roll all eyeballs. He took the strongest offensive action available to him. He made the correct choice, and was made to look foolish by the dice. That doesn’t mean next time he should take the focus token. It means he should do the same thing next time, and, over time, his average performance will be higher. It’s cold comfort in the moment, but we remember more sharply when things go contrary to plan than when they go according to plan.
Anyway, the important thing to remember is that the right choice is not defined by what dice results came up in one particular game; the right choice is defined by what dice results were likely, AND by what those results would have meant for the game.
Back to my Humbling
I was partially right in my thoughts about spending the focus token there. The probability that I would roll no eyeballs on those two defense rolls is north of 56%; the probability that turning the eyeball to a hit would result in damage was basically 100%.
The trouble was that the percentages weren’t the only thing that mattered. What mattered, and what was the real reason this was a misplay, was the matter of leverage.
Putting through one more damage on Chewbacca there was rather unimportant. I was putting most of my focus on the Rebel, so nothing that happened with the roll on Chewbacca would cause me to change my larger approach and suddenly go after Chewie. If I couldn’t get a favorable end-game with Chewie, he’d be too tough to kill almost regardless of how much health he had going in. (Which, eventually, is what happened.)
On the other hand, having the focus token available in the 43% chance I turn an eyeball on defense with it would have been extraordinarily valuable. If Norra had escaped that turn of shooting, she would have been able to get away from her pursuers, regen with R2-D2, and reengage later to enormous benefit. The complexion of the game would have been far different. Even if the focus token hadn’t been the difference between living and dying and merely the difference between getting away with one hull and two, that extra hull on Norra (behind her shenanigans and regenerating shields) would also have been very, very valuable.
My mistake was in misunderstanding the leverage of the situation.
The one extra damage from the focus was, in the grand scheme of things, unimportant, and far less important than the real possibility that the focus token would be the difference between Norra escaping (and me winning) and Norra dying (and me losing). Choosing the percentage play was the mistake.
That one misuse of a token wasn’t the sole difference between victory and defeat. I flew like garbage for most of the game, and my opponent gleefully took advantage of it. Most of those mistakes are somewhat more obvious/less useful than this one, though. (“Don’t accidentally bump yourself three turns in a row” would go without saying, one might think.) If nothing else, I take solace in the fact that I’m not too rusty to realize what my mistakes were, even if they’re things I should have known all along.
~Tell us about your last big mid-game mistake and what you learned.
