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Another thing too that people miss, especially about how small the numbers are here, is that it's easy to overestimate how improbable something is.

It's easy to look at a group of terminators who pass 12 armor saves in a row, or the same terminators who fail 2 out of 6 rolls they need to make and think about just how crazy the luck is that would make that happen.

But it's usually not that crazy. Especially when you play a bunch of games of 40k. Something that only has a 1% chance of happening, but can show up a few times a game creeps up into "sockingly likely" territory after a couple months of play.

I knew someone who always played coteaz, and he got the initiative seized on him every other month or so. 1/36 drops down to 1/6 after you play 6 games, and 1 in 6 chance can happen 1 in 4 times and not be THAT far from expected.

It seems easy for people to assume that dice will always roll statistically and anything off from the average is insane luck. In the case above, though, he rolled for initiative only about 50 times that year, and 50 is not big enough to fall properly under the law of large numbers.

 Ailaros wrote:
Another thing too that people miss, especially about how small the numbers are here, is that it's easy to overestimate how improbable something is.

It's easy to look at a group of terminators who pass 12 armor saves in a row, or the same terminators who fail 2 out of 6 rolls they need to make and think about just how crazy the luck is that would make that happen.

But it's usually not that crazy. Especially when you play a bunch of games of 40k. Something that only has a 1% chance of happening, but can show up a few times a game creeps up into "sockingly likely" territory after a couple months of play.

I knew someone who always played coteaz, and he got the initiative seized on him every other month or so. 1/36 drops down to 1/6 after you play 6 games, and 1 in 6 chance can happen 1 in 4 times and not be THAT far from expected.

It seems easy for people to assume that dice will always roll statistically and anything off from the average is insane luck. In the case above, though, he rolled for initiative only about 50 times that year, and 50 is not big enough to fall properly under the law of large numbers.

This, all the time.

"Whaat? How'd my Chapter Master fail his 2+ save. That's so dumb. He had a 2+ save, how'd he die?"

"Well, I shot literally all the things at him, including my demolisher cannon."

"This is ridiculous."

Some people have dice that roll high, some people have dice that roll low.

My dice rolls weird. as in, anything that should NOT happen all that often, happens quite alot.

Ralai will suffer an average of two wounds per game due to gets hot rolls, the ECPA riptide will fail a pair of NOVA checks (1/9 change to fail one), BS5 railheads tend to miss about half the time, and 2+ armor saves are failed about 25% of the time.

On the other hand, fire warriors rout out wytches in CC and proceed to run them down, a commander gets charged by a khorne chaos lord and proceeds to punch him to death unharmed, a pair of gun drones takes down a necron wraith in overwatch and another in CC itself, etc ,etc...

Either my tau think they are the holy warriors of khorne, or tzentch is messing with me. no other explanation.

How do I deal with it? By saying that those marines were the crappy ones the captain didn't like, that they really liked stubbing their toes, or if they're living, that they are the elite squad. Honestly, I just roll with it, we all have our times where we defy statistics (on both sides).

You know, stuff like static electricity sometimes affect the way how dice are rolled. There are a couple of wayz to roll a number you need using a few tricks. It might happen unintentionally. But, for example, if he stores his dice in a box with all of them having identical positions (there are people who LOVE order), than the odds of rolling a certain number is not 1/6. That's just physics.

But the most likely explanation is just human mind. You're focusing on one aspect and tend to ignore the whole picture. He rolled good when he needed and that won the game! And next game he made such rolls! WOW, there's something in it! And in fact rolls above average are 10% of the time, close to average are 80% of the time and worse than average are another 10% of the time. People tend to remember just what they focus their mind on. That's the concept of 'miracles' and 'lucky X'. If you bother with actual statistics, you'll probably notice it.

The only mathematical sound way to deal with this is to play more Most people misunderstand statistics in the way that they think that every sample is supposed to follow the statistical description of the population. But in statistics there are things like confidence intervals to describe the reliability of an estimate. Also you need a certain number of repetitions for statistical descriptions to apply.

It is always possible that you roll a D6 30 times and roll 30 6s. But if people start to complain about statistics tell them to do it again right away.

 koooaei wrote:
You know, stuff like static electricity sometimes affect the way how dice are rolled. There are a couple of wayz to roll a number you need using a few tricks. It might happen unintentionally. But, for example, if he stores his dice in a box with all of them having identical positions (there are people who LOVE order), than the odds of rolling a certain number is not 1/6. That's just physics.

I doubt that you could engineer something like that intentionally, with just passive static buildup, but now I'm wondering about it. I might have to build an ion gun and charge up a couple dice now.

My high rollers DO have curious superstitions about keeping their dice on particular numbers. Of course, so do I and I don't have the luck they do. I'm guessing it's more likely that because chessex dice simply aren't precision machined and thus are prone to individual but consistent bias.

Pretty sure static electricity will have zero effect on how dice roll. Unless you had some very light polyester dice and rolled them on a wool covered table to take advantage of static cling.

I've had whole games where I made less than 25% of my 3+s.

I've had whole games where I made more than 75% of my 4+s.

That's just how dice and lots of games work. Still fun to point out the inconsistencies. My Dire Avengers are clearly more survivable than my Marines!

Look at the last WHFB game I had. First turn, snakeeyes for magic. My Phoenix now has a 6+ invuln. And makes 3 of 3. Next turn, it gets a 4+. Fails 1/1, and dies (cannon). Clearly, a 6+ is better than a 4+. Or dice are crazy.

Once, I was in close combat in a close-run game. Mad Dok Grotsnik vs. a Guard Heavy Weapons Team.

5 to hit.
6 to wound.
Opponent failed armor save.
Opponent failed FNP.
Dead.
(I took off 2 wounds with plasma cannon fire early-game.

Sometimes you should remember you're not playing Mathhammer.

Two games against the same opponent, once I rolled all 6's twice (about 6 and 7 dice), next game, months later, I fail an absurd amount of 2+ saves with both Dragon Princes and Silver Helms.

Another guy around here seems almost incapable of passing 3+ rolls.

I've had some crazy moments.

Full 30-strong Death Company assaulted my Tomb Stalker and Scarabs once (I was using a homebrew formation that makes them a single unit). He wiped out the Scarabs (predictable), but failed to hurt the Stalker. The Stalker then had to make thirty No Retreat! saves after only managing to kill two Death Company.

Passed every damn one. Thirty 3+ saves in a row.

Almost as impressive as the bulk of my army WBB-ing (3e codex, it was still current at the time) two turns in a row after being knocked down to a single model from five different squads by Damocles Rhino orbital bombardments. Again, something like forty five 4+ rolls passed, then the same again the next turn.

My dad used to call his dice rolls sometimes, back when he was gaming at a strategy club at college (incidentally, that's where he met my mom). When he did, he was never wrong.

I've done a similar thing once. Four damage results to be rolled on my Rhino back in 3rd edition. I forget how many were glances and how many were pens. I picked up the four dice, and just got a feeling that the Rhino was going to survive. I might've even said as much out loud. And then I rolled, and it survived, although it couldn't move or shoot or anything.

More recently, in the games I used to play against my mom, I could just tell when I was going to roll a string of ones. It usually happens when I need to roll a single die a bunch of times in a row, like for Run rolls for a bunch of units or something like that. And it always seems to be with a white GW die. Dunno if it's the same one each time, but when I have to roll a bunch of single die rolls and I end up re-using a white GW die, I roll a lot of 1s. It got to the point where I started asking if I could add in some filler dice that wouldn't count for anything, just so it wouldn't roll as badly.

I love orks because they are so cheap that bad dice rolls don't usually affect the game as one unit getting pummeled usually isn't critical. If it is then you're not playing them right!

I have a 5 man GK purg squad hit by 2 full groups of 20 Necron Warriors each. It was 51 wounds when all was said and done. I was about to just remove them when i said let me just roll to see how dead they are. My opponent laughed and said sure. I rolled 51 3+ PA saves didn't miss one. My opponent called everyone over to see the roll. That 5 man purg squad with 4 incinerators kill all 40 Necron warrior next turn bc/ they were all bunched up behind and aegis. He surrendered after that.

So what I am saying thighs that shouldn't happen can and it is just part of any dice game.

I have always been fascinated by the great gaps of probability from dice rolls to dice rolls. Seeing someone make 30+ power armor saves, is always something to observe.

On the flip side of that, is also watching the epic failures of dice rolls as well. Watching a Tactical Squad of 10 Marines open up with 20 shots and missing every of the rolls, is hysterical. Watching a Psyker suck themselves into the warp, on their first roll of the game, 3 games in a row is too fricken funny.