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Ailaros wrote:
Terrain has no bearing on die rolls. None of those things you listed do. They don't effect luck at all.

At a tournament, the terrain available on the table you're assigned to is random. Better events try to normalize it, but I've been to tournaments where one player was assigned to a table with two small hills, and nothing that blocked line of sight, and another player was assigned to a table that might as well have been a cityfight table.

For those of you who don't believe luck has an effect in high level play, would you be willing to play a game where your opponent was allowed to pick the result of three dice rolls every player turn - to represent them getting lucky at critical moments and you getting unlucky at other critical moments? Against an opponent who was even close to your skill level, do you think you could play though this simulation of luck?

Yes. In a tournament, I've actually won the roll for going first, and then when my opponent complained about how it hosed him, I let him go first anyways and declined to roll steal the initiative.

But then, I'm not super hardcore about this game.

Against my playing group, we often do this...where we "run it back", same mission same deployment, but who goes first is passed to the other player.

Kilkrazy wrote:Good players minimise the effect of luck by calculating probabilities and choosing situations in which the balance of probability is on their side.

This doesn't eliminate luck entirely, of course. I think it just slants the blue line on the graph down a bit.

I agree with this. I just started an Ork army. Never played Orks in my entire life. I have so many extra ork models lying around from 2nd edition, gorka morka, and black reach that I went out and bought a couple of box sets and added to them and now I have a decent army. I still need more bikes though.

I look at the Ork army skill set, and the whole army has pretty much a BS of 2. But my current list (2250) 48 boyz in it all in truks, 15 lootas, 30 warbikes, 2 big meks with force fields, battle wagon, and 3 defcopters. I got some nobz in there leading boyz with boss sticks and such, and I can easily drop a few boyz out to add war gear for other purposes. So I can be up and in your face fast. I hit better in hand to hand combat and I got numbers.

So, I have a strategy, and I am playing to my army's strength, and having 30 war bikes, with 10 of them a nob squad can hit hard. As long as I don't make little mistakes and stick to what needs to be done I will probably do well every game, even if I end up losing. I like to keep it simple. Simple and straight forward strategy with a bit of trial and error. Every time I win by a large margin it is because my opponent tried to get smart and pull off a high risk low probability move. My last fantasy game against one of my buddies was a prime example. He marched his treemen around my flank towards me read hoping to trap me next turn and charge me from the front and the back. Since he had rank and file units in front of me and his light cavalry on my flank. Well, when I saw that I immediately marched in the opposite direction creating a huge gap. He spent the rest of the game chasing me. Had he engaged my throw away unit I tossed in front of the treemen he would have been held up for 1 turn, maybe 2 max as his treemen decimated my meat shield units.

That is what meat shields are for though, I don't expect them to live. They are there to delay the enemy from my main units which are scoring points, and doing whatever it is they need to do. Sometimes people get upset when their units die and they lose concentration. If you wipe out a whole unit in one turn, I need to change up but it isn't over. I can go to ground, hold objectives, call in reserves, and so forth. Units die, sometimes half your army can die and you can still win if you play the mission right.

Luck is the roll of the dice. That is it. For example, my Ork army listed above, shoots a lot of attacks in each shooting phase, and some are twin linked weapons. However, my to hit roll is a 5+ so I need those numbers assuming I am going to a have a 33% chance on every die I roll to get a hit, and I am rolling just over 100 dice per a shooting phase (48 boyz, 30 warbikes, 15 lootas on a wagon with D3 shots per a turn, 3 defcopters). This is also assuming that most of them live and they don't have good armor saves. That is going to average me about 30 actual hits or so, that is if I roll average. Since a 5+ on a D6 has a 33% chance of being successful. So, that is how I look at it, but I know you can roll like crap. I have seen it happen, to myself as well. However, your opponent is subjected to the same rolls. Now my armor saves suck like mentioned before, and a 6 on a D6 has a 16% chance of rolling. So every time I take a hit, from a weapon that has no AP I have a 16% chance of saving. Otherwise, most basic guns in 40K have AP5. So I gotta take that probability as well.

I am just now getting back into the hobby so I am rusty but I used to play in tournaments and campaigns back a long time ago. I am trying out lots of new tactics since the game has dramatically changed since 2nd edition in some regards. However, knowing your opponent is very key to winning too. You may be able to pull quick ones or low probability high risk winning moves against someone who knows you well. They will expect you to do something a certain way, or what not. I switch from mech/tank builds on my marines to just heavy troops and tactical marines all the time. I got a land raider, a predator, some razor backs and some dreads and I am know to beef up my tanks and use heavy firepower to win games, but the more I play 5th edition to me I think 40K has shifted away from just heavy support. So, I am going more and more assault tactics these days. The fact you can move, shoot and then assault the same units means you can really deal a ton of hits to them. The more hits cause more wounds and the more wounds will yield more failed saving throws.

I just play numbers and probability with a game plan and then adapt to the mission. If it is capture and seize just make sure even if I am losing contest every capture point. The thing that sucks for me the most right now is I don't know all the new codices that well like I used to back in the day. So, I am still getting surprised by certain things I had no clue of. That is just my lack of experience with the new rule system and should hopefully get better over time.


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Ailaros wrote:

scuddman wrote:Oh, well, if he's doing money matches, then his skill level will be higher than most others.

Why?

Why does the amount of money you wager on a game have any impact on how much luck is the determiner of a game? Moreover, why does wagering more necessarily imply more skill?

Were this true, craps or roulette would be an absolute science, rather than a game of chance...

this is an interesting point in my opinion. What does one wager in GW games? Well, if you can afford to buy all the big baddie models then your army may have an advantage. I mean the models do cost physical money and some builds can be very expensive, and who is to say once you become known for a certain build people don't build their armies specifically to counter yours? So, your ability to spend your own money is a factor in what you can field. Though in my gaming group we don't care about WYSIWYG models. I have used fantasy models before because they are same scale when I want to try out something new in 40K but don't want to buy it with out trying the unit in several games first. The fantasy models are also very distinct and can be easily recognized and I can declare what they are. In a tournament or even a pick up game at a local gaming store may not allow that.

Now craps isn't about luck, it is about strategy. I used to play craps a lot when I first became of age to gamble. I am rusty because I haven't played in a long time but basically you look at the odds and the money you are tossing down. I am not rich so I always played on the $5 table. I always bet on the pass line and doubled down if I had the chance. Then I would watch people roll and look for trends. The one time I won really big was this old man, as old as Moses, was rolling a hard 6 over and over again. After his 2nd time in a row rolling it I dropped money on a hard six. This had a very low probability but high payout if it happened. I knew the risk, and took it because this old man had just rolled two in a row. He rolled like 2 or 3 more and I cashed out just under $1,000 or something in literally like 2 minutes of dice rolling. I also never got greedy either.

Rolling dice in 40K should be taken in the same manner. Yes it is random and yes there is luck, but really you can have a strategy to dice rolls and you can calculate probability. I think the biggest luck factor in 40K is who gets to go first, who deploys first, and who's reserves come in first. Going first can be a game changer. I have seen all enemy tanks get taken out first turn by anti tank stuff.

I guess what I am trying to say is, that in every aspect of tabletop war gaming and in every game system, everything is a part of the strategy. Terrain, sides, who goes first, dice rolls, calculating average dice roll probability, figuring out average outcomes of what situations and so forth. However, rolling a dice is still luck in itself. Probability just means that most of the time you will get this average, but that doesn't mean every time. Most importantly it doesn't mean you will roll your roll at the proper time. You could be rolling 6s when you need 1s, or vice versa.

Redbeard wrote:

Ailaros wrote:
Terrain has no bearing on die rolls. None of those things you listed do. They don't effect luck at all.

At a tournament, the terrain available on the table you're assigned to is random. Better events try to normalize it, but I've been to tournaments where one player was assigned to a table with two small hills, and nothing that blocked line of sight, and another player was assigned to a table that might as well have been a cityfight table.

For those of you who don't believe luck has an effect in high level play, would you be willing to play a game where your opponent was allowed to pick the result of three dice rolls every player turn - to represent them getting lucky at critical moments and you getting unlucky at other critical moments? Against an opponent who was even close to your skill level, do you think you could play though this simulation of luck?

Sure. As long as I get double the points and am not restricted to a FoC. Would you let me take an extra queen on a Chess Board to show that it isn't luck that determines the winner? I don't see any real point to installing artificial handicaps in testing luck. Instead, it completely negates the THINGS that mitigate luck. Why would I need to take multiple ravagers when I know that the one I have will explode every vehicle it shoots at? And pass every flickerfield save?

I *would* and regularly do play at a point handicap. Just to hone my luck.

good luck happens. One of my freinds had an amazing day while mine was maybe below average. This was only one of a slew of rolls he made that day. I just had to immortalise it for him. How often someone has a day like this is debatable.
[img]

Now, if everyone always rolled exactly on average, this would be a relatively insignificant factor (such as the significance of luck in chess)

There is NO luck in chess. None. Not the slightest hint of this factor whatsoever. Chess is a game of skill, memorization of strategies and how to counter them, and the ability to read your opponent and the board.

I do NOT however want to imply that 40k is lacking in strategy. There is a great deal of strategy, but the factors that arise are more complex, something akin to schrodinger's cat... is it dead or not? Until you open the box it is both.

It is kind of like quantum physics. You cannot know the exact state of an electron, you can only know relative probabilities about the electron's position and velocity and the more you know about one, the less certainty you have about the other. You do not know what your Lootas will roll. You only know the probabilities that they can roll. There is a slim chance that they will roll three shots each, all will hit, all will would and your opponent will make no saves. (good lord that would hurt!) With Long Fangs there is a somewhat larger amount of certainty about the results. (Yes this scenario hurts either way but if I knew what was coming I would like the Lootas to be my dudemens over the Long Fangs).

In chess you always know the outcome if you pull a "Fools Mate" in chess. When you move your queen and take his bishop's pawn at F7 you WILL have a checkmate. There is no chance. Chess is lost by someone making a mistake, large or small and their opponent exploiting it. Deep Blue and Kasparov both made mistakes that caused them to lose games.

In 40k you only know that it is likely that your Assault Termies will rout the Penal Squad on the objective. There is a chance that they will rend the piss out of you and stand defiantly on the objective screaming like a bunch of loonies to win the game...
Even the best players will make mistakes and I think at the highest level of play the exploitation of these mistakes outweighs lady luck. But she is always there.

Craps and roulette are all about randomness but you can still have a great time playing craps and roulette. You can have a blast playing 40k BECAUSE of the fact that you never know for sure if the cat is dead until you open the box.

/Cheers mates

Redbeard wrote:But you can prove that is wrong.

If you roll nothing but 1's, and your opponent rolls nothing but 6's, you will lose the game. Try it some time. Short of your opponent being so completely inept that they never even try anything, you're going to lose all your models, in as many shots as it takes your opponent to roll them.

Such rolling, while absolutely an extreme case, must be considered one possible scenario. In other words, the impact of luck on games is provably greater than 0%.

So, call the impact of luck on the game X. The impact of all the player decisions on the game (list building, in-game choices, and so on), is 100-X. We can call this Y (as in X+y = 100).

But Y is made up of two components, player 1's skill, and player 2's skill.

Y = (a-b).

X + (a-b) = 100

But, if A and B are equally skilled....

X + 0 = 100

X, the impact of luck, is the only thing that determines who wins the game.

And, if A and B are pretty close...

X + (small delta) = 100

Then X is still representing a large percentage of the component of the game.

Even if you add some extra mathy bits, such as X + 5(a-b) = 100, equally skilled players still find that luck accounts for 100% of their game results.

The skill level difference between the two players has to get significantly large before the impact of luck starts to fade away.

Your equation assumes that assumes that the game is symmetrical, and it isn't.

In each turn, only one player takes all the active moves. He decides what to attack and how. The other player cannot countermove. All he can do is roll saves and hope for the best.

If the active player takes into account probability and makes moves which minimise the effect of luck, he can bias the game in his favour. He can pick formations that maximise the damage he will do, and minimise the damage the other player will be able to do on his active turn.

It would be interesting to see how much effect first mover advantage has in 40K. It is known that first mover advantage has a minor effect in Chess, which has completely equal luck for both sides.

Rabid Ferret wrote:There is NO luck in chess. None. Not the slightest hint of this factor whatsoever. Chess is a game of skill, memorization of strategies and how to counter them, and the ability to read your opponent and the board.

Sure there is. Luck is just shorthand for "things happening over which I have no control." In chess, that's your opponent's moves. In 40k, that's the dice and everything your opponent does.

Sure, you can influence how your opponent moves. You can influence the dice by having an item that grants rerolls. You can make a given target more attractive. You can make taking one piece more important than taking another.

But you don't control your opponent in chess. Therefore, there's luck.

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:There is NO luck in chess. None. Not the slightest hint of this factor whatsoever. Chess is a game of skill, memorization of strategies and how to counter them, and the ability to read your opponent and the board.

But you don't control your opponent in chess. Therefore, there's luck.

Er, no....

Dashofpepper wrote:

Redbeard wrote:
For those of you who don't believe luck has an effect in high level play, would you be willing to play a game where your opponent was allowed to pick the result of three dice rolls every player turn - to represent them getting lucky at critical moments and you getting unlucky at other critical moments? Against an opponent who was even close to your skill level, do you think you could play though this simulation of luck?

Sure. As long as I get double the points and am not restricted to a FoC. Would you let me take an extra queen on a Chess Board to show that it isn't luck that determines the winner? I don't see any real point to installing artificial handicaps in testing luck. Instead, it completely negates the THINGS that mitigate luck. Why would I need to take multiple ravagers when I know that the one I have will explode every vehicle it shoots at? And pass every flickerfield save?

Well, it's the opposite, actually. Your opponent would get to pick the rolls. It's not about handicapping, it's about proving your claim that luck would have no impact on the game.

We cannot create 'bad luck'. But we can simulate it. These die rolls that your opponent gets to pick would represent Murphy's Law - things going wrong at the worst time. If you're as good as you say, and bad luck has no impact on your game, you'd be able to play through these critical events without missing a beat. Without needing extra points or an extra FOC.

You win that game, you can definitively say that you played through the worst possible luck and still won. It's like the one time that Ghazgull charges something he should easily kill, but of the three saves he has to take, , and he dies before he swings. Just because that 1-in-216 event happens doesn't mean your decision to call the waaagh and charge was a bad decision, but it sure didn't turn out how you expected or planned.

You're saying that, due to your skill as the ultimate 40k warrior, you already planned for Ghaz to die when he charged those 10 grots, and that the rest of your army is in position to compensate for this loss. I'm not so sure.

What the "no-luck" proponents are saying is that you can mitigate luck. This is mostly true. You can play so that you avoid situations where getting unlucky will slay you. Instead of losing a LandRaider to a single shot, they don't bring LRs, they run MSU or horde. Instead of relying on a deathstar that could splat to a PBS, they don't take a deathstar. When they get hit by a run of bad luck, they're in a position where it doesn't mean the end of the game. This is entirely possible, and can really hep. I'll be looking to incorporate things like this into my game. No only do you not expect to get lucky, but you even expect to be unlucky.

However, they're missing the basic premise of this thread, and that is that the players are of comparable skill. With both players mitigating like that, luck still plays a factor even if it's small. If their skill levels are close enough and the mistakes they make are small enough, it will come down to who botches fewer rolls.

Dash, you claim that luck doesn't matter, and you also claim to win 99% of your games. Cool, good for you. However, you've also tried to downplay the idea that you're a lot better than your opponents. This is where you stop to make any sense. If you're good enough to have that winning streak, then you're obviously leaps and bounds over you opponents. They don't have to be dullards, but they're obviously not as good by a decent margin. Your data and experiences, then, obviously don't fit the criteria of "similar skill level" where this discussion of luck is supposed to be taking place.

If there's little skill difference and no luck difference, the only way you could be winning like this is if it were "God's Plan" and you were the chosen one, lucky you.

Have you ever played a game with someone (any game, really) often enough that your skill levels were equal, and you always knew your opponent's plays. Whether you were masters or not, you had equal skill levels, and winning always came down to one thing. Maybe that one thing was whoever bought Park Place first, or who went first. This is the similarity in skill level we mean, with a bit of leeway on each side meaning it's not a *single* die that matters, but a few handfuls. I play my brother-in-law's 'Nids often. I could conceivably see it coming down to how many turns it takes my blobs to eat through his Trygon, and whether they could still take on Genestealers (for example). It would depend on the dice to see if I got through those combats as expected, or even at all. Now, if you said a smart player would find a way around that combat, that's fine. But that would mean one of us got got more skill and disrupted the equilibrium.

I think it's quite plain that the situation Ailaros mentioned in the OP can happen, and does happen. What this thread should be about, then, is how to prevent that. We've gotten decent advice from the nay-sayers (though indirectly) to avoid situations where a little bad luck (on the order of a roll or two) can ruin the entire game. This will help us mitigate luck and become better players.

sourclams wrote:

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:There is NO luck in chess. None. Not the slightest hint of this factor whatsoever. Chess is a game of skill, memorization of strategies and how to counter them, and the ability to read your opponent and the board.

But you don't control your opponent in chess. Therefore, there's luck.

Er, no....

First, I'd appreciate it if you didn't make it look like I'm schizophrenic.

Second, do you really think that anything listed as being a part of chess isn't also a part of 40k, FB, or any other wargame?

edit: And just to expand, do you really think that 'luck' as a concept is limited to die rolls?

ElCheezus wrote:I think it's quite plain that the situation Ailaros mentioned in the OP can happen, and does happen. What this thread should be about, then, is how to prevent that.

Right, now that the theory is established and refined sufficiently enough for my standards, the question then becomes one of "so what?" What does it matter if the theory is true?

I would agree with what you say that it does sort of wreck the most competitive part of the game. Either, like Dash, you have to disregard the dice altogether, or at some point, eventually, you have to succumb to the slow, grinding, and increasing primacy of luck, the more you play (or always only play against worse opponents ). If the only way to have fun is to win a competitive game, then the game will get less fun, the more you go.

One of the ways to handle this is to change aesthetic away from solely competing, but I'd rather not get into my developing theory of the Tao of 40k at the moment. One of the other things you can do, as was just now mentioned, is to find ways to break up this equilibrium.

This might mean playing strange, non-standard missions, or doing strange things with terrain. This might also mean changing your definition of competitive. For example, you can win well enough when playing with the best list you possibly can, but what about when you don't? What if you disrupt the equilibrium by purposely lowering your own skill in the list-building part of the game? You've won with the best, can you win with the rest?

Thinking of the "so what?" aspects is what is absorbing most of my attention now, I think. Especially since there appears to be enough consensus on the abstract theory itself.

Redbeard wrote:
Well, it's the opposite, actually. Your opponent would get to pick the rolls. It's not about handicapping, it's about proving your claim that luck would have no impact on the game.

We cannot create 'bad luck'. But we can simulate it. These die rolls that your opponent gets to pick would represent Murphy's Law - things going wrong at the worst time. If you're as good as you say, and bad luck has no impact on your game, you'd be able to play through these critical events without missing a beat. Without needing extra points or an extra FOC.

You win that game, you can definitively say that you played through the worst possible luck and still won. It's like the one time that Ghazgull charges something he should easily kill, but of the three saves he has to take, , and he dies before he swings. Just because that 1-in-216 event happens doesn't mean your decision to call the waaagh and charge was a bad decision, but it sure didn't turn out how you expected or planned.

You're saying that, due to your skill as the ultimate 40k warrior, you already planned for Ghaz to die when he charged those 10 grots, and that the rest of your army is in position to compensate for this loss. I'm not so sure.

The existence of "bad luck" or "good luck" are random events. You aren't trying to simulate the creation of randomness, you're looking to take the random results out of a random event - by defining both the event and the result - which is why I said that doing so doesn't simulate good or bad luck, it just adds another dimension to the game.

Besides, this thread isn't about whether consistently high/low/chosen dice rolls can change a game. If I roll all sixes and you roll all ones for an entire game, of *course* I'm going to win. But that is not an approximation of lucky rolling either. I expect dice rolling to fall within a certain median of results. I expect that sometimes that median will be high, and sometimes it will be low (lucky rolling and unlucky rolling). I don't expect either of those to have a significant impact on my game.

Does lucky or unlucky rolling affect your game? Not if you don't let it.




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Ailaros wrote:
Right, now that the theory is established and refined sufficiently enough for my standards............. Especially since there appears to be enough consensus on the abstract theory itself.

I don't seem to be making much of an impact here, so I'll respectfully bow out.

I hope the dice gods look up on your chance to win more favorably in the future.

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:

Rabid Ferret wrote:There is NO luck in chess. None. Not the slightest hint of this factor whatsoever. Chess is a game of skill, memorization of strategies and how to counter them, and the ability to read your opponent and the board.

Sure there is. Luck is just shorthand for "things happening over which I have no control." In chess, that's your opponent's moves. In 40k, that's the dice and everything your opponent does.

Sure, you can influence how your opponent moves. You can influence the dice by having an item that grants rerolls. You can make a given target more attractive. You can make taking one piece more important than taking another.

But you don't control your opponent in chess. Therefore, there's luck.

"things happening over which I have no control." is not luck. If someone were to walk up to me and punch me when I was not looking I would not be unlucky. I could not control it but it is not luck. The guy was just crazy or a dick. Luck is not just 'things happening over which I have not control'.

Rabid Ferret wrote:

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:

Rabid Ferret wrote:There is NO luck in chess. None. Not the slightest hint of this factor whatsoever. Chess is a game of skill, memorization of strategies and how to counter them, and the ability to read your opponent and the board.

Sure there is. Luck is just shorthand for "things happening over which I have no control." In chess, that's your opponent's moves. In 40k, that's the dice and everything your opponent does.

Sure, you can influence how your opponent moves. You can influence the dice by having an item that grants rerolls. You can make a given target more attractive. You can make taking one piece more important than taking another.

But you don't control your opponent in chess. Therefore, there's luck.

"things happening over which I have no control." is not luck. If someone were to walk up to me and punch me when I was not looking I would not be unlucky. I could not control it but it is not luck. The guy was just crazy or a dick. Luck is not just 'things happening over which I have not control'.

If that guy who had punched you did so by choosing a random person then yes it would have been luck. If you had some sort of connection it is just out of your control. If I were to walk out of my house today and say at random give the 5th person I see a dollar out of my pocket, that would be luck. Obviously, so many factors are involved which bring up different probability.

A dice roll is luck, period. It is random. However, you can calculate probability of your dice rolls based on the percentages needed to succeed. If you are playing a horde army and you decide to get a heavy squad and give them heavy bolters instead of rocket launchers that can make a difference. You can calculate your average number of attacks you can get, what you need to hit and what you need to wound, and get a decent idea of how it may work out. However, that is if your opponent lets you unfold your plan as is.

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:

Rabid Ferret wrote:There is NO luck in chess. None. Not the slightest hint of this factor whatsoever. Chess is a game of skill, memorization of strategies and how to counter them, and the ability to read your opponent and the board.

Sure there is. Luck is just shorthand for "things happening over which I have no control." In chess, that's your opponent's moves. In 40k, that's the dice and everything your opponent does.

Sure, you can influence how your opponent moves. You can influence the dice by having an item that grants rerolls. You can make a given target more attractive. You can make taking one piece more important than taking another.

But you don't control your opponent in chess. Therefore, there's luck.

I think that you and I are looking at luck differently. In the context of games I am referring to random chance. In this case the moves of your opponent are not random. There is no chance aspect in chess. Every move and outcome is regulated by rules and movement choices. In 40k there IS chance and this is what is referred to in OP's post. Not the broader definition of luck but the truly random factor introduced by the dice.


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Crom wrote:

Rabid Ferret wrote:

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:

Rabid Ferret wrote:There is NO luck in chess. None. Not the slightest hint of this factor whatsoever. Chess is a game of skill, memorization of strategies and how to counter them, and the ability to read your opponent and the board.

Sure there is. Luck is just shorthand for "things happening over which I have no control." In chess, that's your opponent's moves. In 40k, that's the dice and everything your opponent does.

Sure, you can influence how your opponent moves. You can influence the dice by having an item that grants rerolls. You can make a given target more attractive. You can make taking one piece more important than taking another.

But you don't control your opponent in chess. Therefore, there's luck.

"things happening over which I have no control." is not luck. If someone were to walk up to me and punch me when I was not looking I would not be unlucky. I could not control it but it is not luck. The guy was just crazy or a dick. Luck is not just 'things happening over which I have not control'.

If that guy who had punched you did so by choosing a random person then yes it would have been luck. If you had some sort of connection it is just out of your control. If I were to walk out of my house today and say at random give the 5th person I see a dollar out of my pocket, that would be luck. Obviously, so many factors are involved which bring up different probability.

A dice roll is luck, period. It is random. However, you can calculate probability of your dice rolls based on the percentages needed to succeed. If you are playing a horde army and you decide to get a heavy squad and give them heavy bolters instead of rocket launchers that can make a difference. You can calculate your average number of attacks you can get, what you need to hit and what you need to wound, and get a decent idea of how it may work out. However, that is if your opponent lets you unfold your plan as is.

Again I think that in the context of wargames discussion we are referring to the influence of a random chance element. If you read into Game Theory the moves of your opponent are not an aspect of chance and in a given scenario there is an optimum move that they may make. If they move optimally it will result in a draw or standoff. This is possible in chess and tic tac toe. It is unlikely in a game that has a truly random element such as dice rolling.

Dashofpepper wrote: I expect dice rolling to fall within a certain median of results. I expect that sometimes that median will be high, and sometimes it will be low (lucky rolling and unlucky rolling). I don't expect either of those to have a significant impact on my game.

So that seems to be the issue. Variation within the standard deviation (which you seem to be describing) is normal, not either good or bad luck. It's when the dice roll out of those "expected" bounds that's luck. Well, assuming you "expected range" isn' 1-6, because that's obvious.

I don't seem to be making much of an impact here, so I'll respectfully bow out.

I hope the dice gods look up on your chance to win more favorably in the future.

That's because, as I said, your data is outside the scope, here. You obvious are significantly better than your opponents, or you wouldn't win as often. Basically, the difference in skill is large enough to overshadow luck, and you don't seem to notice that.

Rabid Ferret wrote:
Again I think that in the context of wargames discussion we are referring to the influence of a random chance element. If you read into Game Theory the moves of your opponent are not an aspect of chance and in a given scenario there is an optimum move that they may make. If they move optimally there is the possibility of an infinite draw or standoff. This is possible in chess and tic tac toe. It is not possible in a game that has a truly random element such as dice rolling.

No, even in randomness you can have stalemates. What happens if you and your opponent have the same dice rolls? The probability is that will most likely never happen, but it isn't impossible. The only true random element of 40K is the dice rolls. Otherwise every action performed is done with a reason and not at random. Unless you want to count some Ork things that are random, like weird boyz.

I think you are agreeing with. I was just pointing out that the random punch analogy was one that did not quite apply is all.

Crom wrote:

Rabid Ferret wrote:
Again I think that in the context of wargames discussion we are referring to the influence of a random chance element. If you read into Game Theory the moves of your opponent are not an aspect of chance and in a given scenario there is an optimum move that they may make. If they move optimally there is the possibility of an infinite draw or standoff. This is possible in chess and tic tac toe. It is not possible in a game that has a truly random element such as dice rolling.

No, even in randomness you can have stalemates. What happens if you and your opponent have the same dice rolls? The probability is that will most likely never happen, but it isn't impossible. The only true random element of 40K is the dice rolls. Otherwise every action performed is done with a reason and not at random. Unless you want to count some Ork things that are random, like weird boyz.

I think you are agreeing with. I was just pointing out that the random punch analogy was one that did not quite apply is all.

I was imprecise in my wording. I did not mean to say that a stalemate was not possible for a random game. They are.

I was saying that in games like chess and tic tac toe if both sides do not ever make mistakes there will always be a stalemate. If both players play optimally Tic Tac Toe will always result in a draw. In a game with random chance if both players play optimally a game will NOT ALWAYS result in a draw although a draw is possible.

@Dash

Bad luck is bad luck. But the question comes down to if your opponent can capitalize on your bad luck.

A few bad rolls do not mean much if your opponent does not make something out of them.

Everyone seemed to ignore my wall of text before, so I'll jump back in again.

ElCheezus wrote:Dash, you claim that luck doesn't matter, and you also claim to win 99% of your games. Cool, good for you. However, you've also tried to downplay the idea that you're a lot better than your opponents. This is where you stop to make any sense. If you're good enough to have that winning streak, then you're obviously leaps and bounds over you opponents. They don't have to be dullards, but they're obviously not as good by a decent margin. Your data and experiences, then, obviously don't fit the criteria of "similar skill level" where this discussion of luck is supposed to be taking place.

Perhaps the truest and well-thought out statement in the thread in regards to Dash. Though he has bowed out, I expect (and hope) that he'll keep reading. You have to understand, Dash, not one of us has one reason to not believe in your amazing record or your bad luck that you have brought up before. Your group has labeled it as such, and tournaments you've been to can vouch for your successes, even if no one believed either of those things. I do. I don't doubt your record one bit. Perhaps that's why we're finding it hard to understand.

Let's act on the assumption you are the best in the nation at 40K. So, we can assume you can bring a slightly better list, play slightly better, and mitigate/exploit bad/good luck slightly better than anyone else in the country, at the very least. Against someone like me, those advantages become enormous. You, being the best, undoubtedly play against the next best players you can find - the ones ranked 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, etc. You have claimed they are highly skilled opponents, capable of going toe-to-toe with you, making you work for every victory. At the same time, you have some abysmal luck on your rolls, with Dark Lances failing to do significant damage time and time again. Obviously, if you are playing someone with nearly equal skill, and if they have good or average die rolls, the advantage should, theoretically, be theirs. Maybe they don't capitalize on it all the time, but they should more often than twice in 58 tries, I think, if they are within the top in the nation.

Yet you are 56-2 with Dark Eldar. So obviously something isn't meshing.

The DE player in my group also had poor luck with his Dark Lances when they were 3rd edition. Despite this, he managed to beat over 50% of our group (myself included) more often than he lost, with several draws thrown into the mix. This is because he was significantly better than most of them, and marginally better than me (who he drew the most). He had bad luck, but his skill was able to overcome it, and through superior playing (in all aspects), he managed to squeak out draws or wins when dice were against him. And you're doing the same, but against people who, by your admission are significant challenges, who you cannot take lightly.

I think this brings up 2 possibilities.

One, his luck is not as bad as he claims, and goes more toward "average" than we expect. This is possible, and people may not even realize it as it occurs. It's very easy to remember the bad luck - I once had 6 Eldar Seer Council members with Fortune fly into dangerous terrain, only to have 2 die. That was on turn 1. I only lost 3 more the rest of the game, and I had two councils. Horrible Lances, Sisters charging into Tau, only to run 2 turns into the combat (happened to me - I charged in 8 vs 9 Tau), 3 Saves on 2+, failing all 3, Commissars executing Clergy members and running like girls (love your BRs, Ailaros) - we can all recount instances of bad luck. How many instances of great luck can we recount? Probably not as many. In my own case, I remember poor luck more than good luck, and it takes a great deal of positive luck for me to remember the instance a day or so after the game. I can't even remember a single Warhammer instance, but I can remember a raging first level Half-Elf barbarian with 6 hit points charging an undamaged Ogre by himself and killing it with a single blow (Critical hit with a Greatsword). So this is one possibility.

The second is that, despite playing the best, he continues to win again and again, counting his losses on one hand, while needing a calculator for the victories. Which means that, despite playing the best, they simply aren't as good as him, and his skill is superior enough to overcome the bad luck and claim victory. Not knowing Dash, or any other high Tournament player personally leaves me at a loss for which this could be, if any. Maybe Dash really has gone past the point where dice matter? I don't know.

I'm not trying to poke fun here or anything, and this is a serious post. I dislike singling out a particular individual, but this seems to be the main wrench in Ailaros' theory, which otherwise sounds very solid and factual to me.

EDIT: I complain about people ignoring my wall of text, only to put up...WALL OF TEXT MARK II! Oh, Einstein's definition of insanity, take me!

TheRedArmy wrote:I'm not trying to poke fun here or anything, and this is a serious post. I dislike singling out a particular individual, but this seems to be the main wrench in Ailaros' theory, which otherwise sounds very solid and factual to me.

Right. The most serious problem, as ElCheesus noted, is that, so far, Dash's only real contribution to the theory is:

Dashofpepper wrote:Ailaros, I think you have it exactly backwards.

With the only defense of his argument being "I've won tons of games, I'm awesome, listen to me!"

I don't doubt that there is a more thoughtful argument against this theory (ArtfcllyFlvrd has provided more than one), but just because someone says something doesn't mean it's actually meaningful to the conversation.

I was watching a game the other day, blood angels (mech) vs mech guard, 1850, both were good lists, the IG went first, BA reserved all 8 units, and failed init. Guard took a commanding posistion by turn two, entreched in cover, vehicles with excellent shooting lanes, perfect setups. Then the BA player goes, 1 raven, razorbacks, and a raider. He gets EVERY reserve in and they all come in and pop smoke. Then his strom raven which will be able to get it's cargo into combat in 1 more turn absorbs almost the entire shooting og the guard army, even with a pair of hydraflaks he managed a total of 2 stuned results, and a weapon destroyed. This game stands out in my mind. I think that really, luck averages out for most people, and thus we only remember the extremes of that luck. You have a game where you roll average and pull out a hard fough win, you don't remember the rolls just the game, when a game is really onesided and luck was the biggest factor, you will remember the dice more then the game. That being said, a good run of bad luck will still bone most people.

doubled wrote: I think that really, luck averages out for most people, and thus we only remember the extremes of that luck.

You know, I don't neccessarily doubt that Dash has bad luck, the reason being because I, myself, have well-documented bad luck. It's not that I doubt that Dash has bad luck, so much as, as do many others, I doubt that dash has both consistantly bad luck AND opponents of equal skill level simultaneously.

I mean, I can claim that I've had bad luck, but I also claim that I have a winning record due to sufficiently more skill than most of my opponents, on average. It's claiming to be unlucky AND winning most of your games AND playeing against opponents of equal skill, all at the same time, that doesn't make any sense.

Ailaros wrote:

doubled wrote: I think that really, luck averages out for most people, and thus we only remember the extremes of that luck.

You know, I don't neccessarily doubt that Dash has bad luck, the reason being because I, myself, have well-documented bad luck. It's not that I doubt that Dash has bad luck, so much as, as do many others, I doubt that dash has both consistantly bad luck AND opponents of equal skill level simultaneously.

I mean, I can claim that I've had bad luck, but I also claim that I have a winning record due to sufficiently more skill than most of my opponents, on average. It's claiming to be unlucky AND winning most of your games AND playeing against opponents of equal skill, all at the same time, that doesn't make any sense.

Precisely.

I have to agree with Dash.

Luck is perspective in this game. What constitutes "good" or "bad" luck is determined by one or two instances in a game.

An example would be a player losing 5 out of 6 marines on failed 1's and 2's. It looks like bad luck, but no one paid attention to the fact that in the previous turn his bolters hit an average amount of times, but all of the hits were 5's and 6's.

What makes it bad luck is the fact that the rolls were critical one way or the other when the margin for failure or success is high/low. No one thinks about it when a Bear Lord passes 4 invulns on 3++ and all 4 dice are 5's and 6's, but they are when a Demon Prince does the same on a 5++.

Luck is perspective. In 12 years of gaming, I can only say that I have lost one game due to luck. That was in 2004.

Ailaros wrote:\

Dashofpepper wrote:Ailaros, I think you have it exactly backwards.

With the only defense of his argument being "I've won tons of games, I'm awesome, listen to me!"

And because that's all you're capable of getting out of what I write, that's why I've chosen to stop trying to posit my opinion. There's no point trying to convince a block of clay that it can be a beautiful sculpture if it is convinced it will never be more than a lump of clay.

Likewise, you don't seem to have the ability to grasp higher tenets of 40k, and I'm not going to keep trying to convince you that you can get better if you refuse to believe so. I haven't seen much in the way of competitive players show up here, and when they have, they're agreed with me (Unless Hulksmash disagreed with me, but that might have been a different thread, and I don't remember if he agreed or disagreed with me).

Can't force evolution. Back to your superstitions. =D

Dashofpepper wrote: because that's all you're capable of getting out of what I write

Lol. The reason I don't understand your opinion is because I'm an idiot, and you're speaking a language too complex for comprehension?

You'll have to excuse me if that position isn't particularly convincing to me.

Dashofpepper wrote: Back to your superstitions. =D

-Nazdreg- wrote:Luck is very subjective.

Darkness wrote:Luck is perspective.

Actually, luck is both objective and easily understandable.

It's what we have statistics for.

I'm trying not to return your hostility. I really am.

If you don't understand Calculus because you've only gotten to Algebra....it doesn't mean that Algebra is the only math, it just means you haven't learned Calculus yet. I'm not telling you that you're stupid, merely that for you to hold your opinion about luck in 40k demonstrates that you just haven't learned Calculus yet.