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If you're playing as demons and you can't even deploy without several dice rolls then yeah, that's going to happen.
Luck averages out. If you think you're unlucky you probably haven't played enough.
The other day my Devil Dog failed to hurt a Land Raider despite three turns of shooting. Every single penetration result was a 1 or a 2. These things happen.
I also had 5 plasma gun shots, all of them rolled a 1 to wound. These things happen.

Did you try burning a Snakes and Ladders board at an altar as a sacrifice to the Dice God? It may be the only way to improve your favour with him.

A Monopoly board works fine also, but never try it with a Mouse Trap board... I still have the scars.

It's unfortunate that you've hit such a long streak of "bad luck." Personally I find I'll have a bad night when playing D&D (be glad you're rolling poorly with d6s and not d20s), but I've never rolled so poorly for so long. I'm not one for superstition but it would probably be wise to swap out those dice.

I am truly appalled at the brutality and fright tactics employed against unruly dice.

Surely, to court the dice god's favour, you should first learn to give your dice the kinglike treatment they deserve. A gentle polishing with a pleasantly fragrant, high-quality polish to make them gleam twice a day. Soothing, recreation music sessions before and after the exertion of games. A proper abode with plenty of space, fresh air and an edyfing view; not squashed and crammed into some dark box, pouch or drawer with dozends like them and no room to breath. On sunny days, high-performance dice greatly enjoy a trip to the countryside, escape the tense atmosphere of competitive environments. Gentle bedtime stories of past and future glories are also highly appreciated. A mistreated, unappreciated die held in poor, inhumane condition cannot ever unfold its full potential. That much should be self-evident.

Bludbaff wrote:I just went looking for casino-quality dice...seems most places that sell them are ludicrously expensive, around $15 for five. Then I found this:

http://www.chipsandgames.com/16mmredcasinodice-setof200.aspx

I wonder if these are actually casino-quality or if they just stuck the word in there. It's not a bad deal even for lower-quality dice, but I don't know if I'd bother getting that many dice unless they were an upgrade. Anyone know anything about this site?

Those don't look square cornered or edged. Take a look at the yellow and green ones on the same sight. Also look at the larger sets of the red ones. The 500 or the 1000 ( here. )

Igenstilch wrote:

Mordiggian wrote:Get to know staristics; what is likely is not that which will happen. Find a chart of what's likely to show up (it's a little more complicated than you think), what truly is average. On every given die roll, expect that you are going to roll below average, because there's a good chance that you will. Warhammer is, among other things, a game of risk management.

I collected die rolls during Warhammer for my statistics class last summer. It took me a lot of time, so I'd be interested in hearing about your methodology.

I recorded every set of rolls I was to make that game, move through cover, to hit, scatter distance, etc. Lets say I had 13 saves to make at a 4+, I made 2, result is recorded at below average. At the end of the game, I marked each set of rolls as either being above average, average, or below average. Ending result for game 1 was 24 rolls below average, with 12 above average, and 2 average rolls. (below average for scatter dice being a higher then 7, as the lower number is more desirable)

I will be playing two games to day, And can keep record again. I'm thinking that I need to only record dice rolls in this pass / fail matter, as rolling 2-5's, 3-1's and 2-3's on a 4+ wont make much difference, just record 5 fails out of 7 on a 4+. Other wise my opponent would have to wait longer for me to record each step. Unless writting down every result would have a great impact on my results then expected. But then would I have to keep all rolls in catigories by my goal numbers? (2+. 3+, etc)

That's bad record keeping and will skew your results. The goal of the roll doesn't matter, just the number that the die comes up. Calling a high scatter a failure, and a low to-hit roll a failure means that although you might be rolling statistically average (4's, 5's, & 6's on the scatter and 1's, 2's, and 3's on to-hit or armor) you are calling it below average.

What you need to do, is record your actual die rolls (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6) over the course of a game and come up with percentages of each number. You'll probably come out close to 17% for each number.

Igenstilch wrote:

Mordiggian wrote:Get to know staristics; what is likely is not that which will happen. Find a chart of what's likely to show up (it's a little more complicated than you think), what truly is average. On every given die roll, expect that you are going to roll below average, because there's a good chance that you will. Warhammer is, among other things, a game of risk management.

I collected die rolls during Warhammer for my statistics class last summer. It took me a lot of time, so I'd be interested in hearing about your methodology.

I recorded every set of rolls I was to make that game, move through cover, to hit, scatter distance, etc. Lets say I had 13 saves to make at a 4+, I made 2, result is recorded at below average. At the end of the game, I marked each set of rolls as either being above average, average, or below average. Ending result for game 1 was 24 rolls below average, with 12 above average, and 2 average rolls. (below average for scatter dice being a higher then 7, as the lower number is more desirable)

I will be playing two games to day, And can keep record again. I'm thinking that I need to only record dice rolls in this pass / fail matter, as rolling 2-5's, 3-1's and 2-3's on a 4+ wont make much difference, just record 5 fails out of 7 on a 4+. Other wise my opponent would have to wait longer for me to record each step. Unless writting down every result would have a great impact on my results then expected. But then would I have to keep all rolls in catigories by my goal numbers? (2+. 3+, etc)

Does this mean you give the same statistical weight to a below-average roll that fails by one die, as you give to an above-average roll that exceeds by three?
I hope you can see the problem if you do that.

Iranna wrote:

Bludbaff wrote:

I hope you are trolling, but fear you are not..

Please, enlighten us with your own contribution?

Or would you rather prefer to continue to be be ignorant of others' suggestions and experiences?

Iranna.

Iranna, dice are random.
They might be faultily made and be weighted to a certain number, but they're certainly not influenced by your state of mind! you know that right? Saying how you expect a dice to fall influences it's actual roll is like saying magic is real. Or psychic powers are real. Simply not true.

Dear OP

If you feel you're rolling badly, it's because you are. But over time everything will average out. Keep playing, don' be disheartened and you'll find over the next few months your rolls are average on average....

As some others have said above, tracking your 'luck' in 40k is much more complicated than just checking off which rolls fail and which succeed. You might be rolling exactly average and still roll exceedingly poorly, depending on which dice roll high and which roll low; brute statistical analysis can't deal with that. Weighting is also an issue.

If you want to keep accurate records and analyze them usefully then yes, you really do need to write down the actual numbers rolled; or, at least, you have to note how many dice rolled low and how many rolled high, even when both cases were 'failures' or 'successes' due to the different requirements of the different rolls.

1. Suit up!
2. Pronounce more shh than usual.
3. ???
4. Profit

lunarman wrote:

Iranna, dice are random.
They might be faultily made and be weighted to a certain number, but they're certainly not influenced by your state of mind! you know that right? Saying how you expect a dice to fall influences it's actual roll is like saying magic is real. Or psychic powers are real. Simply not true.

Dice are not random, they're deterministic. How a person throws a die determines which number will end up facing upwards as soon as it leaves your hand; that's how people can cheat at dice games, even if the dice themselves aren't weighted at all. Iranna was making the point that, whether consciously or not, it IS in fact possible to influence how a die will fall, and THAT may be affected by the thrower's state of mind.

BeRzErKeR wrote:

lunarman wrote:

Iranna, dice are random.
They might be faultily made and be weighted to a certain number, but they're certainly not influenced by your state of mind! you know that right? Saying how you expect a dice to fall influences it's actual roll is like saying magic is real. Or psychic powers are real. Simply not true.

Dice are not random, they're deterministic. How a person throws a die determines which number will end up facing upwards as soon as it leaves your hand; that's how people can cheat at dice games, even if the dice themselves aren't weighted at all. Iranna was making the point that, whether consciously or not, it IS in fact possible to influence how a die will fall, and THAT may be affected by the thrower's state of mind.

I was assuming that the OP was throwing his dice properly. E.g. letting them bounce off a wall and bounce at least twice. You can cheat at dice games, but not when you're throwing 15 dice at once. And not when you don't place them into your palm in a certain way

Iranna wrote:Believe it or not, a lot of poor dice rolling can be psychological.

In your subconsciousness, you know the specific way to roll any number. While this does not mean that if you think you will roll a 6 you will, I tend to find that it makes it happen a lot more. Of course, this is all theoretical on my part.

So if you go into a game remembering how bad all your dice are and how they are destined to fail then they probably will.

Mentality is key, I think. Feel confident and you may be surprised with how well you do.

Iranna.

To me, this makes a lot of sense. I would agree, mentality plays a part, and I've found similar results.

The GW see thru dice are the most erratic dice ever, IMO.

Igenstilch wrote:What do you do when the dice just seem to hate you? When they consistently fail you? Changing dice didn’t help

I buy better dice. Note, that's not just "different" dice, I really mean better ones.

I had a year of playing with well-documented bad luck with a white-colored dice cube from chessex. Then I got so frustrated that I bought a new, blue-colored dice cube from chessex, and my luck somehow got WORSE.

Then I bought a set of Kopchow dice, and 4 expensive ultra-science-exact-standards Zontik dice. The first time I rolled the latter, it was for a BS3 Heavy 4 twin-linked weapon, and I got three hits, and one of the dice came up as a 5 or a 6 for vehicle penetration. It was so close to the predicted average, I almost cried...

Not all dice are created equal. Chessex, for example, is notorious to creating dice so much on the cheap, that individual dice tend to roll far from random, as their many impurities and poor manufacturing processes will have them strongly favor certain faces. In the chase of chessex in particular, they did nothing to counterweight the 6 side after they gouge out the pips, which means that that brand especially tends to favor rolling 1's. I recall seeing an actual study on this where a guy had his grad students spend a few off days making an industrial scale dice roller and threw a bunch of chessex dice in and tabulated the results, finding that with their particular 100 chessex dice they, on average, rolled ones nearly twice as often as any other number.

The way to handle dice that roll consistently in any one direction is to get dice that are more actually random. This means shelling out a few extra bucks to get a quality product, but if you're to this level of frustration, it's probably going to be worth it for you.

Sometimes you just have bad luck. Guest how many times my opponent as seized the Initiative on me? 8 of the last 9 games. Not even kidding. 3 different opponents. I've rolled highest for first turn and picked my table edge, setup and promptly got seized 8 times out of the last 9 games. Two games ago I didn't get seized and I was shocked. Obviously some hinky voodoo is going on!

cowmonaut wrote: Guest how many times my opponent as seized the Initiative on me? 8 of the last 9 games.

I feel your pain. I once went through a string of 6 games in a row when I had won the roll to go first and got seized every time. After that, I adapted my army to just going second. If I won the roll to go first, I deferred and did not attempt to seize.

I find that if I bitch about the dice then and there and have a laugh over it by what ever means, I usually don't get worked up and remain happier.

Grab a pen and some paper and play a little game against yourself and record the results of every dice throw. You might find out that your only noticing bad rolls.

I have had weeks of bad rolling even my opponents have been like man... I'm sorry. What I have found is that the more negative you get mentally the more negative the rolls not even rolling low, just rolling not what you need, for instance rolling leadership high and saves etc really low. Basically you feel bad then it will be bad so when I have my strings of bad luck I quit playing for a few weeks and do something else like model or paint then do something that makes me really happy and then play a game and I usually come back with above average rolls and it lasts a good while because I'm doing good I feel better so then for reasons unknown I keep being lucky. So my advice just take a break do something else you enjoy then when your gone for awhile you'll just bexcited to play and you should do fine.

This is one of the best forms I've ever read I love gamer superstitions

I was learning the fantasy rules at a GW and got shot by a cannon prayed to tazeech my chaos knights would live all 5s and 6s the dwarfen player look very pissed

It probably is psycological and you might not be shaking the dice enough...try using a cup...if that doesn't work find the hottest girl you can have her blow on them...and if that doesn't work, ask her out luck can't be all that bad.

If bad rolling techniques are to blame, I suggest buying a dice boot. No tricks, just drop your dice into the top and take 'em out when they hit bottom. I know a D&D group that had one suspected cheater suddenly give up the game after the group switched to using these.