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I was in a tournament yesterday and after going through 3 games I started thinking about the reliability of failure that I seemed to have every game.

-All three games I rolled Strategic warlord table and all three times I got #5, -1 to reserves which was useless in two games and actually harmful in the third.

-I ran 2 Riptides and rolled for Nova charge a total of 6 times throughout the three games and had all 6 times fail.

-First time I shot a BS6 Riptide overcharge shot I rolled 2 1's in a row for the gets hot and a third 1 for the armor save. I ended up failing two other times out of several template shots, so honestly not that bad.

-I ran two Railcannon Hammerheads (And I will never run them again because of this) I rolled a 1 to hit with a BS5 hammerhead into rear armor on a dread. Second Hammerhead got the hit, but rolled 1 to pen (it's autopen but it's important to consider how low I rolled the entire game to pen). Second game I rolled 1 and 2 for both hammerheads to hit AV10 eldar vehicles. Third game I had two BS5 hammerheads that ignore cover (over three rounds) roll 1's three times with the remaining three shots getting 1, 3 to glance, and a 4 to pen which ended in a weapon destroyed for an Exorcist and removed the storm bolter. Then two shots into a hovering Vendetta which actually both managed to hit, but rolled 1 and 2 to pen. Every other time I fired I was using the template.

-I ended up charging Riptides into two vehicles. A hovering Vendetta in the third game and a hovering Stormraven in the second. Three smash attacks on the charge, two misses both times. The third hit against the Vendetta ended up with crew shaken and against the storm raven it was a glance.

-I had a commander with drones manning an Icarus Lascannon with Tankhunter. First game the guy got -1 to reserves but had a coms relay so he got both storm ravens. Fired the lascannon, and rolled a 1 to hit. Second game had no reserve units of note. Last game was actually harmful because he was able to unload into my tankhunter commander and kill it before the vendetta came in turn 4. I did end up getting a firewarrior onto the cannon before it came in, rolled a 5 to hit, and then 1 to pen.

The only reliable time I had against vehicles was turn two I ended up putting the PEN chip commander in with three suits, all with double missiles and unloaded into warwalkers and vipers with tank hunter.
I'm not superstious at all, but I honestly don't know how my luck always ends up so bad against vehicles. The last game I played before the tournament had me putting in 5 S10 railguns, 4 melta shots, and 6 smash attacks into one landraider before finally dropping it and only managing a single glance before exploding it with the last smash attack. In fairness I also managed to explode a LR first turn with a single railgun, so it probably evens out. I'm probably going to end up making a little log book of all my game results from now on to try and track this kind of stuff, but it seems like I always roll incredibly low to pen and roll 1's to hit with hammerheads even when bumped to BS5.

Played in a tournament yesterday where I had two of my Vendettas miss every single Lascannon shot for two turns in a row....

You didn't sacrifice enough to the dice gods before going to the tournament.

the last game I played had the opponent getting "hit!" results on his scatter dice 5 time IN A ROW.

I really need to spend some time grinding my luck stat.

Another thing I noticed is that I tend to make plenty of saves if I tell the dice what I need when tossing them. It's a habit I got into just to let my opponent know what I was saving with each throw for things like LOS and such. I ended up rolling well over a dozen 2+ saves on a commander without a wound. Maybe I should start doing the same for the tanks.

Well, I have three dice cubes. Two red GW ones, and a green chessex set. I swear, they have emotions. My red set is my primary, and are wildly inconsistent. They will roll very well sometimes, or just stink up the field. (I bought the green dice mid-GT after the reds rolled 5/6 ones). The green dice however will do everything they can to be statistically average. I don't get it. Not to mention, my dice are either on or off for entire games. No alternating turns or anything. If I roll bad turn 1, they're not budging.

I also think my green dice get offended if they're underused. They always roll bad the first time I take them out...

My Chaos Lord once spent an entire game beating the brains out of an Imperial Guardsman Sargent. It took him four turns to finally kill him and cost him 2 wounds. I even borrowed my opponent's dice and they didn't work either.

When I had a fully-fed Doom standing infront of a Tau gunline packed behind an ADL on the back of the table, and hia large blast would have hit 4 or 5 units, and he decided to scatter so far he almost hit my own warriors... and then he lost 3 wounds and got shot up very badly.

I played a 2000pt game last night against grey knights, he had 3 dreadknights vs my 3 riptides, 2 of his dread knights died enroute to my riptides only for his third to multi charge two of my tides, and be overmatched to 1 wound then for me to make all of my 5+ saves. Just for it to be killed by a Rapid firing fire warrior where he rolled double ones.
For the armor saves. He ended up killing the riptides the turn before it died but still, screw dread knights right?

Wait. How did a single dreadknight multicharge two units?

Playing Skave, turn one I cast Plague and hit one of his units. We roll to see if the spell continues.

Damnit, he can nominate the next target. Well, I should be out of range... except that apparently I measured wrong...

Okay that hurt. Let's see what happens now...

He can choose again...

End of the tale, more than half my army get's taken out on turn one, only for a few fleeing clanrats to cause widespread panic. Tabled on turn one without the opponent raising a finger....

Ouch. I played Skaven and know that spell is devastating when it goes off. Managed to kill off 2/3 of an entire skink army in one casting. But with Skaven everything is hit or miss...or hit and it explodes in your face and kills the unit next to it causing a panic check on two more units.

After a while, you just get used to it - it becomes normal to have to shoot an entire Necron army to kill a Rhino.

In one of my recent games I shot 3 AnniBarges at a Rhino......and got 1 HP off it. You just have to laugh when that happens!

Last weekend I played IG vs Dark Angels and Space Wolves.

On my turn I shoot a land raider with 3 melta guns. 3 1s come up. Next turn, my opponent casts prescience and gets snake eyes for a perils result. The power still works and a plasma gun shooter flips a 1. Re-roll. Another 1. Armor save. Another 1. On another part of the battle field a rhino rams a sentinel at S8. Penetration roll. Another 1.

So between 3 people we rolled 9 consecutive 1s.

Yesterday I watched 3 exorcists shoot at a wraithknight for 4 turns in a row and only manage 1 wound.

I haven't done prolonged studies where I recorded data, so my observations are most likely tinged with bias, but the surface of the table has a lot to do with how rolling is going to go. I have two sets of dice, one with rounded edges and the other with square ones. I usually do a few practice rolls to get an idea of how the table behaves. If the dice just land and do very little rolling, I will use my rounded edge dice. If normal rolling is possible I will go with the square edge. I think if the dice don't actually get a chance to roll the randomization doesn't happen as much.

I want to have a scientific way to make a decision about the dice, but honestly snake oil approaches are probably just as (or more so) helpful.

I have been considering getting a box in which to roll my dice to get a more consistent response. I'm not sure how to convince my opponents that I'm not trying to cheat them though.

bogalubov wrote:

Yesterday I watched 3 exorcists shoot at a wraithknight for 4 turns in a row and only manage 1 wound.

I load my Exorcists with nerf missiles!

The true killer was Celestine, sawing mercilessly at the Wraithknight's ankles!

The loaders were even lazy putting in nerf missiles. 4 or 5 of those nerf barrages consisted of 1 missile.

GW dice (as far as every single set I've touched goes for evidence, so not far given this is the internet) are biased to roll less threes and fours than normal, thus mucking with statistically average rolls, while providing limited quantifiable effects as people don't notice the boring mid-range numbers, or their lower occurence.

I'd do a study, and :science: it, but I can't fight GW's lawyers, and it'd be a hell of a waste of time if it was just poor machining (very likely)