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I guess this topic could go in dakkadakka general, but my gaming experience is mainly in 40k. So it would be hard for me to accurately compare these events to other game systems.

This last weekend I was at a 1250 tournament, and it ended so badly that I am thinking that it is a divine sign that I stop playing 40k. For those with little time or lack of care, you could probably skip the story and go to the last paragraph.

Over the past few weeks, I have played several 1250 games in prep for the tournament. Things started out fine, with my list playing normally against my friends. A few games later, I notice that I am rolling unusually below average. A few games played with IG, DEldar, and Demons (trying out different builds and armies to see what I comfortable with at that point size) give me nothing but major and minor losses. My friends start to notice as well (mainly because at this point I become a total a$$ about my dice rolls) that my rolling is terrible. One of my friends buys me a new set of dice (who owed me for something any way), and I purchase an additional set. So for the next two weeks I'm playing with new dice, and the same thing occurred. First few games I am rolling normally, then it takes a sudden down turn and I am rolling poor. My attitude pretty sour at this point, my friends assure me that I am not rolling as bad as I may think, and they want me to record all my rolls at the tournament.

Day of the tournament, I bring my demons (not a wise choice considering my history of rolling, but they are fully painted and there is a best painted army award), Hoping that my dice will average out and I will roll as normal. But I record the results any way. First game, turn one, my troops deep strike and scatter 10” off target straight to the table edge, 1 inch to close to the table edge for the unit size, and is lost in the warp (so ¼ of my armies cost gone). Soul grinder misses by 10”, hits terrain and is immobilized. Soul grinder dies to scout marine sniper fire (though it did get one lucky shot and down a storm raven). I go over my rolls for the match, majority of rolls are slightly below average. Second game I get my second wave, and I fail 13 out of 15 4+ invulnerable saves to my opponents shooting, and a squad mishaps back into reserve (had 8” clearance of everything, and only one enemy squad near by, scatter by 11” right onto that squad). The whole game goes as poorly as it started. Recorded rolls show that I roll below average 72% of the time, with 4% exactly average and 24% above average. Third game, I deep strike one squad near terrain by my enemies line, and scatter exactly 12” right onto an enemy squad, when they were 10” away, loosing them to the warp. Next troop scatters straight towards another enemy squad, giving them perfect fire and assault range. I loose 9 blood-letters to pistol fire, and the other 11 + skull taker to 10 basic marines and an emperors champion (who was in base with skull-taker. Skull taker got all his hits but rolled nothing but ones and twos to wound). The rest of my army comes in one unit at a time, scatters out into the wide open, and dies in one round of my opponents shooting. I finish the tournament dead last.

After recording all my rolls over the tournament. My results were 70% below average rolls for shooting, combat, armor, and movement rolls. For scatter dice, it was 90% chance to scatter 8 inches or more, usually out into the open, of if an opponent is with in 12”, right on top of them if deep striking. When I mishap, there was a 50% chance they are lost to the warp, 50% back to reserve. I try to prepare as best I could, leaving at least a 10” radius with 270 degrees I could scatter towards safely. But to no avail. To my surprise my soul grinder was shooting at mathematical average.

So my question is this, What do you do when the dice just seem to hate you? When they consistently fail you? Changing dice didn’t help, and using other peoples dice made no effect either. I try to be logical, thinking that eventually things will average out, that nothing I do will effect the roll of a die (out side of cheating and modifying the die, which I will not do). Or do I give into superstition, and start praying to the dice gods? .

Simply roll them a different way if this keeps happening. Change hands, change how you let go, ect ect.

Dice fail, they are random. I can attest to that. 5 TH/SS terminators getting shot by everything, no losses. But 5 bolter wounds? Lost 3 terminators...

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.

If the Dice are No good I proceed to throw them at something (or someone dice fights are fun XD) and buy new ones. I've found have to buy new dice about every 6-7 months or so.

It's 90% in your head. Sometimes you do just own bad dice, but I have dice that roll great some days and awful some others, and it's almost all in how I feel about the game. If I'm really into it I tend to make more awesome rolls, while if I'm not terribly interested in the game itself or having a crappy day my rolling tends to be pretty unimpressive.

Also, round edged dice are more 'unlucky' than regular ones. Something like an 18% greater chance to roll 1's.

Buy some proper casino dice if you want better rolls. Or at least get some square edged dice.

When my dice are bad they are executed by the commissioner that follows me around.

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.

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

Great White wrote:When my dice are bad they are executed by the commissioner that follows me around.

LOL I like that idea, I should keep a Commissar in my dice bag.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kaldor wrote:Also, round edged dice are more 'unlucky' than regular ones. Something like an 18% greater chance to roll 1's.

Buy some proper casino dice if you want better rolls. Or at least get some square edged dice.

I really should, any one know of a good place to get some in bulk?

Kaldor wrote:Also, round edged dice are more 'unlucky' than regular ones. Something like an 18% greater chance to roll 1's.

Buy some proper casino dice if you want better rolls. Or at least get some square edged dice.

WAT

I dance...

execute one of the offending dice in front of the others.
i suggest making a circle of your dice and place the worst offender in the middle about 6 inches away from any other dice.
don't allow it make an inspirational speech or it'll become a martyr for the bad dice. then take a sledgehammer and smash it bits.
the dice will either rally around the bad dice banner and take you down or submit to your iron fisted rule.
Suffice to say if all the dice suck, buy a new set and execute the old ones as an example to the new set.
PRO TIP: smash them all, any survivors WILL take vengeance..

I find if I drop each die one at a time, I get much better rolls.

Maybe its psychological, after all, the satisfaction of seeing the look on your opponents face is truly gratifying.

I always found that I get the best rolls with the Chessex dice-cube dice if I give them a cooldown period. Keep two separate piles, one of 'rolled dice' and one of 'unrolled dice' and move them from the second to the first until there is only one, then start over.

Jaon wrote:I find if I drop each die one at a time, I get much better rolls.

Maybe its psychological, after all, the satisfaction of seeing the look on your opponents face is truly gratifying.

I have an opponent that likes to do this. NEVER DO THIS, it annoys the hell out of people and will get fast and frequent cries for slow playing.

dralith wrote:

Kaldor wrote:Also, round edged dice are more 'unlucky' than regular ones. Something like an 18% greater chance to roll 1's.

Buy some proper casino dice if you want better rolls. Or at least get some square edged dice.

WAT

It's true. Can't be bothered looking it up, but the legwork has been done.

Kaldor wrote:

dralith wrote:

Kaldor wrote:Also, round edged dice are more 'unlucky' than regular ones. Something like an 18% greater chance to roll 1's.

Buy some proper casino dice if you want better rolls. Or at least get some square edged dice.

WAT

It's true. Can't be bothered looking it up, but the legwork has been done.

Basically what it equates to is companies want to make dice for as cheap as possible and when tumbling the dice to smooth the cuttings they end up destroying the actual balance of the dice. If you are buying GW or chessex dice you have what equates to about a 29% chance to roll a 1. So yes, you definitely need to get good dice. I had mine custom made to have the symbol of the inquisition on the "1" side. You can find some great quality dice easily enough online.

As for bad luck during games. I just recently played my Slaanesh demons list. An ENTIRE 1500 point army with rending. Everyone around normally comments that my demons roll their 5+ like they had stormshields. This game however I couldn't make a save to..well save my life. And in the game on turn 1 my seekers were charged by an enemy demon prince and rolled 4 rending wounds killing it. I didn't roll another rending wound the rest of the game and was tabled on turn 5. Oh, except the one time I had to roll 23 5+ saves on my 4 man unit of fiends. I rolled all but 9 of them. Because the dice gods wanted to rub salt in my wound and give me good dice on the impossible roll.

Oh and for those curious. Basically the test that was done was done as ASU, where a teacher there had his class roll 36000, GW dice, Chessex dice, square dice with pips and then casino dice. Both chessex and GW had the 29% chance to roll a 1. The square had a 19% and the casino dice ended at exactly 16.6% like dice should.

It is psychological, but not for the reasons that have been previously stated. If you are in a bad mood, you are more likely to remember the bad rolls, and the good rolls are more memorable when you're in a good mood. It's a form of confirmation bias. That said, many forms of manufacture for rounded dice yield dice with a disproportionate tendency towards 1s.

There is a guy at my local game shop that whenever he has bad dice will take that bad dice and put it in a vice, then line up all the other dice of the same color (so they can watch) and smash the bad dice with a hammer. The other dice roll 6's for about a week after that lol.

I can't really say much about myself having bad rolling. in fact most the time its pretty good (4 Necron warriors making 31 of 34 armor saves and two getting back up afterwards to name one) although one of my regular opponents (an ork player) can't seem to ever make the rolls that count. Although he does use GW dice so that could have something to do with it.

A few people have stated that it could be psychological, that I'm just noticing the bad rolls. If you read the entire rant, I point out that its been observed for about three weeks of games. With documentation for three games in a row at the tournament. With a bit of math to back it up. At the day of the tournament, I recorded every set of rolls, to produce my conclusion (I didn't record my opponents, just my own). I know for the first week it could have been a negative outlook on my games that brought me to only notice bad rolls. But after that, I really hope it wasn't psychological, and that I have other issues at hand. (cause if its all psychological, then I'm in worse shape then I though >_< )

Burn them! Burn them ALL in a fire!!


Or realize that there is no such thing as bad luck and keep rolling.

Buy new dice.

Stop blaming your tools.

Bad luck is superstitious claptrap.

The difference between luck and planning is that luck is usually all that saves you if your plans go awry.

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.

Jaon wrote:I find if I drop each die one at a time, I get much better rolls.

Maybe its psychological, after all, the satisfaction of seeing the look on your opponents face is truly gratifying.

For sanity's sake tell me you don't play orks or IG.
Heck, isn't rolling boatloads of dice among the prime satisfactions of ork playaz ?

IcedAnimals wrote:I had mine custom made to have the symbol of the inquisition on the "1" side.

That's so cool I feel mandated to ask you where you got this deal.

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?

How to Roll Citadel Dice

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)

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.