Armada is a game of where sometimes you have to take a risk, but just like in all cases it’s probably best to make sure you are taking a risk that is worth its reward. We are just going to take a quick look and how to take the good risks in armada. We will look at average damage as that is something that is important to know when taking risks in this game, what the point swing potential is for taking a risk, and the quit while you are ahead thought of risk taking.
Okay so while looking at damage potential remember Reds do an average of .75 damage each 6 total damage a dice with 8 sides 6/8=.75 the same is true of blues, blacks are the only dice type that is different with and average of 1 damage 8 total damage on an 8 sided die 8/8=1. This is before rerolls, and we will talk about that in just a second but as is we are talking about an ISD-II 4 red 4 blue with some quick math we find its average damage is 6 before rerolls. So how do we factor in rerolls well it gets a little dicey (pun intended) to factor in the rerolls you have to be specific with what will be rerolled and when facing another player it will be difficult at time to say what they will reroll, but you generally have some ideas of what they will do.
Let me start off by say I am no math wiz this is stuff I had to research a bit to figure out but let’s look the above case and are opponent will reroll both blanks and accuracy on the reds to get more damage, but won’t reroll any blues with leading shots. If they are willing to reroll blanks and accuracy they get on their reds witch red dice have 3/8 sides that produce there blank or accuracy results meaning 37.5% of the time a red dice will give us one of thoughts faces so here is where some crazy math happens .75+(.375 x .75) I know it scares me too, but you take the % of chance to roll a face you would reroll and multiply it by the average damage then add the average damage to that number and you will have your new average damage from your red dice namely 1.03 damage we will just say 1 as the .03 is negligible (though it if its ever .25 or higher I would round up), so 4 reds and 3 blues ( they had to drop one for leading shots) its 6.25, now I would round up in the case to be safe to 7, then think would 7 damage kill me and you can make the calculated risk from there. If you are making calculations as to whether or not you are able to kill your opponents ship I would always round down to be safe. Always remember this is a calculated risk, and damage can spike like in the example above its possible to spike and get up to 12 damage so keep that in mind when making your calculations.
If you want to know more about odds and dice rolls all "never tell me the odds" jokes aside as knowing the odds can be quite helpful in knowing what risks to take; you should take a look at this on the cannot get your ship out blog.
So most risks in Armada if not all are along the lines of “if I do this will this die” like “if I activate my raider first will my Victory die” or “If I activate my raider first will his Assault Frigate die.” The calculations about average damage will help you make these calculated risks, but another piece of advice is to make sure you have all information when making a choice.
This seems like a no brainier, but make sure you check everything. There is nothing more frustrating than not seeing an upgrade your opponent had that helped mitigate damage so you were unable to kill it so the risk was worthless. Perhaps you thought you were at a different range so you would most likely survive one more attack but you come to find out you are closer then you though and your ship dies. This is good advice in all aspects of armada, but is practically true for when you are taking a calculated risk.
The last thing that you will need to consider is the risk worth it point wise. Like I said risks are nearly always if I do X will I kill Y or if I do X will Y die. So is it worth it to risk a 80 point ship to kill a 50 point ship no because if both die it’s still a net loss for you. Think about risks in terms of point swings, is it worth the risk of your 140 point ship for their 175 point ship yes it’s a net gain, even if you lose your 140 point ship. If you think of risks in terms of point swings you will generally always come out on top.
Sometimes you just have to take a bigger risk, but this is usually when you are up against the ropes in a game in a causal game this is no problem, but if you are playing in a tournament I would encourage you to look at larger pitcher this really is deterred by your tournament score, what round it is and how many more rounds are left to play. Would it be better to take your 3-8 or 4-7 loss and make up tournament points later, or do you need the win? If you are in a tournament to place in the top standings you generally need an average of 8 tournament points per round, in a 3 round tournament that is a total of 24 points I would say in most cases that is good enough to get you into the top 25ish% of players in a 3 round tournament. So it’s important to if you can gauge where you are and see if you need to take the risk now in-order to place well or if you can afford to cut your losses and do better next round it’s a personal choice and at more casual events it really does not matter, but if you are wanting to place well in higher events it is worth considering.
Hope this help you make better calculated risks in armada and until next time Have a great week!
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