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Elbows pretty much hit my view on dice.

Although, my son has a tin of Tyranid dice he uses exclusively - I keep forgetting if the symbols shows on the 6 or 1 mid game.

I personally prefer to use 6mm Chexxex dice, keyed to my army’s color - though I have a default “blood red” set I use if I can’t locate my army’s dice.

The one absolute rule I have? “Don’t touch my dice or I’ll ‘effing bite yer arm off”

Haven't played GW in ages, but I do use army specific dice for FoW and TY. I try to have one main set and some secondary dice in a different color. All mine are with the old BF ones with icon on the 6 or from Dice of War (www.diceofwar.com.au) whose are also icon'd on the six.

I have multiple sets of dice that I break out into blocks of 5-20 to make it very easy it grab the appropriate dice for a roll. If an opponent dislikes a set of dice I put them back in their container and continue on with the other remaining dice sets they find agreeable.

 Dynas wrote:
I personally hate symbolled dice. I never know if its a 6 or a 1, especially skulls. Is that a 1 or a 6? Everything in warhammer has skulls, is this good or bad. Just use the normal dot dice. I would use Casino dice if they are smaller, but I have about 3 colors. I normally have 1 color for hits (blue) 1 color for wounds (white), and then a few off color dice (green) for special weapons.

that's why I stick with symbol on 6. If I find out I have dice with symbol on 1 that goes to garbage bin. Symbol is okay BUT it needs to be consistent. And symbol on 1 makes no sense. Your army logo is what you WANT to see. You don't generally in games want to see 1's...

I hated most all of the Warmachine dice from Q Workshop for being way too busy with the art surrounding the number, but the Khador set was particularly bad due to the 2s and 5s.

Fancy dice depends on the game for me. If it's a game where you're pouring dice out of a bucket and you need to be able to quickly count results, stick with clear contrasts like white on black.

If you're only rolling a small amount at a time, say, half a dozen? Sure, get some nice decorative dice. I know I've got some nice faction specific D20's for Infinity that I love using, but I'm only rolling 5 at most, and more commonly 2 or 3. Easy enough to check the numbers on decorative dice when you only roll a few. Though those dice still have good contrast - light tan with black details, or black/dark grey with white details.

I have a so called bag of dice, plain white 12mm x60 I think
I have 2 scatter, 1 ordnance and 4 sustained fire or d3 whichever suits the game

I was looking to get poly dice for wound markers but a pen and paper do wonders

Chessex small dice, the ones that come in a brick of 36. I have a mass of different colored ones of those. The colors mirror my armies, but there are no weird symbols. I don't want weird symbols to cause confusion on the table. Hell, people can't even agree on the actual direction of scatter dice, you think they will maintain track of squigglies instead of numbers?

Seems we've reached a genuine interwebular consensus of opinion!

Now, about the actual rolling.

As I've already mentioned, I like a good chuck when rolling, space of course allowing. I want to hear that glorious clatter. No namby-pamby rolling unless there's genuinely little space to roll in (model safety comes before the clatter). Dice Towers and rolling trays both qualify as a Proper Chuck.

The picking out of results. If you've just chucked the bucket o'dice, do us a favour and pick out your failures, yeah? That way if I can't keep up with your 'weeding out' of dice, there's no actual reason for you to claim dice that aren't what you should be weeding. This preference dates back to one particular opponent. They'd chuck, and immediately start grabbing dice for the next roll. As in 'there is no way on earth you could possibly have actually looked at the results' immediate grabbing. They were an unpleasant opponent for myriad other reasons, but that one sticks!

These are my procedures, and almost always what I see on the table.


Remove failures. Totally agreed.

Roll the Scatter as close to the object moving as humanly possible.

If it can't stack, then the die is cocked.

The next few are my superstitious habits.

If I have to roll a succession of 1's or 6's, I will switch out the die every time it's successful. The only time I can guarantee I roll consecutive 1's is when I'm shooting plasma, and taking a save with the same die.

I never let my opponent touch my dice. EVERY time I have, and I do mean EVERY time, my luck goes completely to pot. I keep one of those plastic red measuring sticks next to my dice at all time, and it's never used to measure, if you catch my drift.

Never been fussy about people using my dice, but equally, not something I'd be difficult about. Though I do so with the specific right to get suspicious if you're using worryingly reliable dice for critical rolls. Not the same bunch of dice, the same specific dice.

I too switch out 'hot' dice for 'cold' ones. Don't want those sixes to overheat now, do you?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The more I think about it, the more I realise just what a fuss pot I actually am for 'proper' dicing.

For instance. When I'm collecting up my dice for a roll, I'll group them together, so if I'm Rapid Fire 1 within short range with 10 Immortals, I'll set out 10 sets of 2 dice.

I don't even know why I specifically do this, and very oddly it's not something I insist my opponent follows. Guess it just feels right to me - like I'm taking pains not to roll too many in as transparent a manner as I can manage.

Oh, and 'weeding'? Lift of failures as first mentioned, then any 'exploding' results. So 6's, or 5's with a +1 to hit.

So for Tesla? Let's say I've got my +1 to hit. I'll assign dice to each model to ensure I'm starting from the right base amount.

Then, give them a proper chuck. Let the dice settle, weed out failed to-hits, putting those dice to one, clear side. Then 'weed' the results of 5 and 6 (because Tesla Zapp). Count up the number of regular hits, assign two extra dice next to each 4 or 6, then batch roll to wound.

It sounds more longwinded than it actually plays out.

Oh, and finally? Clear down all dice following each complete resolution. Nothing more irritating than a rogue result and a very genuine 'hold on, did I just roll that one or not?'

I don't think that's bizarre at all. Quick and efficient dice rolling, which is clear for both you and your opponent is always good. I do prefer a good large dice tray if possible for rolling. At home, I have two rather large trays I got from the store - not even sure what they are, some kind of leather serving tray?

They look like this, more or less:



Maybe 12" wide, and 18-20" long. Great for rolling, even stupid amounts of dice. I have two on hand for rolling dice when the table is too cluttered to roll effectively.

 AduroT wrote:
I hated most all of the Warmachine dice from Q Workshop for being way too busy with the art surrounding the number, but the Khador set was particularly bad due to the 2s and 5s.

My wife got me those dice for Christmas one year. I use them for command points but gave up rolling them - half the time I can't even tell what number came up.

Have you seen the dice towers?

look kind of cool and save the need for a re roll when you drop the dice on the table hoping to get 6's without actually rolling

In addition to rolling easily readable dice, I also always reroll "cocked" dice.
I set this expectation with my opponent before the game as to avoid arguments about what's "not cocked"
I don't enforce this for my opponent, but I think it's a courtesy for me to tell them that it is how I am going to roll.

If it doesn't lay flat, I reroll it. Easy. Consistent. Faster than arguing.

I'm currently using the custodes dice.

Gold with black pips makes it super clear to read and even though they use symbols for the 1 and 6, it's a skull and custodes symbol which is easy enough to read.

Funnily enough, two players I game with regularly use both the death guard dice and ultrasmurf dice, and complain about them all the time. The death guard dice are far to fiddly to see, while the ultrasmurf one's have the 6 in roman numerals and the ultrasmurf symbol as the 1.

Majes me laugh!

Yeah, GW nailed it pretty well with "some" of the dice, and others are crap. The Blood Angels dice look pretty well sorted (nice size, decent pips, several different colour options, etc.).

Rybrook wrote:
Have you seen the dice towers?

look kind of cool and save the need for a re roll when you drop the dice on the table hoping to get 6's without actually rolling

The one time I tried to use one it was 'commented' that the dice tower was probably rigged....

Added it to the list of dice stuff I don't bother with any more like D3 dice.

Hey now, I've got some D3 dice I only use them in specific instances (I use them to roll for my Obliterators weapons, etc.).

I trust my opponent to throw and read their dice honestly. I have no real interest in spending my time trying to read their dice or verify their results. If their dice covered in stars, smiley faces and rainbows and they understand how that converts to 1,2,3,4,5,6... and are confident they can read them quickly without error, that's good enough for me.

They do their operations, and tell me what game state changes I need to react to and I'll do so.

Hmmm.......

People complaining about nurgle dice and Ultramarines dice....

Have you seen howling banshee dice? Go look them up on GW webstore, and be relieved you don't have to try and read them from across a 6'x4'.

Yep, they're awful. It's a shame too because GW really seems to miss the easiest and most obvious answer; a simple dice for each faction with the faction icon on the '6' face...keep them in stock (none of this limited production crap). Maybe include 16-20 dice with some of them being an opposing colour.

When I saw the Aspect Warrior dice I shook my head. No one plays an Aspect as an army...why not use the five famous Craftworlds instead? It seems GW occasionally go out of their way to make bad dice no one is going to really use in a game. Some make sense, but most are really poorly thought out.

 McMagnus Mindbullets wrote:
Hmmm.......

People complaining about nurgle dice and Ultramarines dice....

Have you seen howling banshee dice? Go look them up on GW webstore, and be relieved you don't have to try and read them from across a 6'x4'.

Yep its bad

so are these



who though this was a good idea.

TZEEEEEEEENCH!!!!

Whoa...those are easily the worst I've ever seen from GW, lol.

As impractical as many of GW’s dice are, they are very, very pretty!

And I’ve nothing against pretty dice. Just, think twice about using them for general rolling.

 Elbows wrote:
Hey now, I've got some D3 dice I only use them in specific instances (I use them to roll for my Obliterators weapons, etc.).

I have two because I used them extensivly in WMH. I played three games with them and was accused of misrepresenting the dice every time.

"Ok these are D3 dice, they only go up to 3. "

*Rolls and gets a 2*

"2 Damage."

"You mean 1 damage. You cut the value in half"

"It's a d3. It only has 1,2 and 3. You don't need to cut the value"

"Where the feth is the 6?"

"There isn't a.."

"We can't trust these. They aren't normal d6. Warhammer is a d6 game"

*sigh*

I was eventually pulled by the organizer and told D3 dice were banned 'per the BRB'

Jumping back into this discussion, I can't stand the lengths people go to to claim a cocked die just to get a re-roll. Someone at the FLGS I used to go to was guilty of this; we normally go by the rules of "if you can place another die on top of it, it's not cocked", yet this guy would re-roll misses if the die wasn't perfectly flat on the board. If there was a 2mm high rock on the board, he would reroll the miss.*

*Notice I specifically mentioned misses, funnily enough his hits and wounds were never cocked, must be some special uncockable die he was using ¬¬

It is irritating when it's clearly very selective.

A poster above has probably the right idea. Start of the game, declare 'I'll be re-rolling any die that doesn't land flat'. Whilst some might feel that's just for the re-roll advantage, it sets expectation, and does of course include successes.

I like the Custodes dice. you are hitting on 2+ and have a 2+ save. So you only need to look for ones and sort them out. and since the dice have a big skull instead of a one it is very easy and quick. It takes 1 sek. of looking at a roll of 20 and you now how many fails you rolled.

I don’t get it, what’s the idea behind the fancy dice?

What’s wrong with the regular dice, call me old fashioned but if I were to play a game and my opponent was to use them I wouldn’t have a clue if they were cheating without inspecting their rolls