Making the dice work in low model count armies

Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:

No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.

If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

**Karol**

catbarf wrote:
Karol wrote:
Bias or not, for elite armies rolling bad has more impact.

No, it doesn't. You're more likely to totally whiff six Guard lascannons hitting on 4s (~1.5%) than you are to whiff three Marine lascannons hitting on 3s RR1 (~1%).

Fewer dice with higher success rates roll closer to average than lots of dice at lower success rates. Elite armies are more reliable, not less. The failures just stand out more prominently because rolling snake eyes when you needed 2s feels worse than flubbing a couple of 4+ rolls.

You are wrong. the impact of missing stuff when weapons when you have more of them is smaller, when you are cheap and have more of those weapons. this is not just weapons by the way. Saves , units being destroyed etc. all have bigger impact on elite armies. If a custodes or GK player loses two squads, that is a big chunk of his army. Some with an army which was costed substentialy better will have an army that functions better.
The likelyhood of rolling a specific result matters less, then the number of dice being rolled and the number of dice you can roll. 3-4 dice per army, have to hit, wound and go through saves and any defence mechanics a lot more often for you to win a game, comparing to you playing an army with 4 or 5 times as many dice to roll. Even if they have a smaller chance to hit.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Well, with equal CP availability, low model count armies get more out of one-per-phase re-roll spends. And they typically have a much better BS across the board. This can insulate them from disastrous turns in which you just get nothing useful done.

I can't think of a signle stratagem in an elite army, which use for 1-2 turns would turn the game in their favour, majority of times, when playing vs a large model count army. Especialy when cheaper armies, don't need stratagems to have good results. There are a ton turns, when an elite armies can't do anything useuful, sometimes for an entire game. If the necron player starts the custodes or GK player will lose the game on points, bar somehow almost tabling the necron player turn 1-2.

**Tyel**

Rolling significantly below average is I think the same for every faction. I think Catbarf is right on the maths there. Saying "you are not BS3+ master race, you should expect to miss everything" is just weird faction snobbery.

Where I'd say the difference is in "taking damage".

Because you can have a unit with say good invuls, FNPs, Transhuman etc tank an opponent's entire shooting phase. Or it can fallover and die straight away. Which is doubly bad - because it not only isn't around to do stuff in your turn, but your opponent is now free to put damage into other things.

Obviously if you keep rolling dice you will eventually fail some saves - but the order those failures occur in makes a disproportionate difference as compared to some theoretical "average hammer" scenario.

This makes valuing defensive stats difficult - and I think its where GW often makes the most mistakes. Either valuing them far too high or chucking them in for free.

**wuestenfux**

So what can I do to make the dice work for me?

When you consider a whole game, you will roll evenly distributed unless you have faked dice. Take this as a weak version of the law of large numbers in stochastics.

I remember an RTT game where I played Necrons (15 Wraiths) and in the first round, I couldn't make any save for my Wraiths.
Had a few losses, but at the end everything went fine.

The only advice I could give you is to keep the faith in your play.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

LoreSeeker wrote:
So I did a few more test rolls to see if there was indeed confirmation bias at work, this time with Age of Sigmar rules.

I did ten test rolls for each of three groups, each of which costs 100 points in AoS and is the faction's standard infantry unit:
-5 Stormcast Liberators with double blades (one with a grandblade)
-5 Stormcast Liberators with double hammers (one grandhammer)
-20 Skaven Clanrats with rusty blades

As with the 40K example above, I didn't do any armor saves.

Liberators with blades
-Average Wounds: 4.6 (ranging from 3 to 7 Wounds per roll, with 5 Wounds being the most common result at 4 out of 10 rolls)

Liberators with hammers
-Average Wounds: 5.9 (ranging from 2 to 8 Wounds per roll, with 6, 7, and 8 Wounds being the most common results at 2 out of 10 rolls each)

Clanrats
-Average Wounds: 5.8 (ranging from 4 to 8 Wounds per roll, with 6 Wounds being the most common result at 3 out of 10 rolls)

Not quite sure what to make of all that yet (only did it a few minutes ago), but that's the data.

It's weird: I tried a few test rolls yesterday (results are no good for data because I forgot about the extra attack each squad leader gets), and the Skaven were all over the place - average of 4.7 Wounds, ranging from 1 to 10 Wounds per roll with 2 and 7 being the most common results (2 out of 10 rolls each). Yet they were a lot more consistent this time around.

The easier the qualifier roll, the more likely you are to thumb your nose at chance and statistics.

To shift the average, stuff like Liberstors only need to exceed expectation by one or two dice. Clanrats however will need more, due to how it all interacts.

Of course the more dice you roll the greater the potential for a real upset roll.

**LoreSeeker**

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
LoreSeeker wrote:
So I did a few more test rolls to see if there was indeed confirmation bias at work, this time with Age of Sigmar rules.

I did ten test rolls for each of three groups, each of which costs 100 points in AoS and is the faction's standard infantry unit:
-5 Stormcast Liberators with double blades (one with a grandblade)
-5 Stormcast Liberators with double hammers (one grandhammer)
-20 Skaven Clanrats with rusty blades

As with the 40K example above, I didn't do any armor saves.

Liberators with blades
-Average Wounds: 4.6 (ranging from 3 to 7 Wounds per roll, with 5 Wounds being the most common result at 4 out of 10 rolls)

Liberators with hammers
-Average Wounds: 5.9 (ranging from 2 to 8 Wounds per roll, with 6, 7, and 8 Wounds being the most common results at 2 out of 10 rolls each)

Clanrats
-Average Wounds: 5.8 (ranging from 4 to 8 Wounds per roll, with 6 Wounds being the most common result at 3 out of 10 rolls)

Not quite sure what to make of all that yet (only did it a few minutes ago), but that's the data.

It's weird: I tried a few test rolls yesterday (results are no good for data because I forgot about the extra attack each squad leader gets), and the Skaven were all over the place - average of 4.7 Wounds, ranging from 1 to 10 Wounds per roll with 2 and 7 being the most common results (2 out of 10 rolls each). Yet they were a lot more consistent this time around.

The easier the qualifier roll, the more likely you are to thumb your nose at chance and statistics.

To shift the average, stuff like Liberstors only need to exceed expectation by one or two dice. Clanrats however will need more, due to how it all interacts.

Of course the more dice you roll the greater the potential for a real upset roll.

I don't know what a "qualifier roll" means; never heard that term before.

I should note that the Liberators had a reroll ability (reroll 1s on to-hit rolls if you're using paired weapons), which helped out.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

Successful roll. Sorry for needless confusion.