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Rybrook wrote:
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

I suppose it's just to add a bit more flavour to the game in general. I bought the big box of AdMec dice when Apocalypse was redone and when I started collecting AdMec a while after, I found it to be a nice small addition to them.

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

They look pretty, that's it. Dice that match the army just look nice, I don't think anyone would have more of a reason beyond that.

On topic, I personally think that the GW dice are more often than not very very impractical for the scale of game they promote, but in a smaller sized game they're not nearly as bad. When you aren't rolling dozens at a time (which you likely will in most cases) a lot of them are still pretty confusing to tell, like those godawful Tzeentch dice. For every Sylvaneth, Blood Angels or Dark Angels dice set (which are all great looking dice sets) you have the Aspect Warrior, Death Guard or Tzeentch sets. It's just too hit and miss from a practicality perspective to make a community adopt it on a large scale, and when you're rolling handfuls of them, it gets confusing really quick (and slows down the game drastically). Other companies have some bad examples, but by and large they're acceptable for the scale of game and number of dice rolls

For a first example, I play the Batman Miniatures Game, and a few of my group have special dice that are somewhat similar to the more incriminating GW ones when it comes to symbols, but the dice themselves are dead simple to read. Take their Batman dice set:

You have black dice with yellow numbering (super visible) and a Robin themed crit dice that's red with yellow lettering (distinct enough, not as much as the black/yellow, but still very visible). In game, you'll only ever need 2 of these sets maximum, so rolling a pool of them is still easy to determine, despite the symbols on the dice not being distinct numbers. On the dice themselves, you have small bats (or Rs for the crit) for numbers 1-5, and are in the same positions as a normal dice, so they are pretty easy to distinguish, even at a glance. The 6s are where the big symbols come in, although they're big and distinct so you know you've rolled a 6 when you see them. Their other sets are the same deal, with high contrast between the die surface and numbering, with pretty easy to define symbols on them.

As a second example, I'll use Infinity. It uses d20s, although you'll only ever be using 5 of them in a game at any given time (and they're packed in sets of 5 for this reason, you only ever need one set).

They do special sets of dice for every faction in the game (and a couple of the fluff factions if players are so inclined), all of which are somewhat elaborately designed, but very easy to read in game. Symbols on the 1 as opposed to 20, something you're more inclined to want to happen in Infinity (basically, you roll below a skill after modifiers. If you're BS13 at a -12 to hit, you want to see that 1. 20s only come into it with saves, so a lot less rolls than the 1). The colours themselves are for the most part very easily picked out, the exception being the PanO dice set (blue and white) and from personal experience, that colour contrast is apparent enough that they're still easy to read (again, because you'll only ever use 5 tops)

For tournaments I usually have a dice tray, and reroll anything that bounces out. Casual games whatever I just roll on the table and rarely reroll anything cocked unless it’s Really up on its edge. The whole set a second die on top to see if it’s cocked is extra stupid. If someone tries to pull that, ask them how they know which side to set the second die on.

 AduroT wrote:
The whole set a second die on top to see if it’s cocked is extra stupid. If someone tries to pull that, ask them how they know which side to set the second die on.

Agreed. A dice is only cocked if you honestly can’t tell which side is more up. If it’s obvious which side is the top side, it’s not cocked. Cocked dice should be really rare!

We do it the other way round. If the dice is not lying flat on the table, e.g. half way on a movement tray or on some terrain piece, it is considered as cocked.
Reason: Discussions have occured over what is "obviously" the top side.
I fully agree with you, 9 of 10 cases it is clear, but the way we handle it we never had an argument.

Shouldn't need more than a glance to see the result. That is all.

For cocked dice; my preference is how we used to do it in ancients. It's cocked if it isn't on the table surface; i.e. If it lands on ANYTHING (including a sheet of paper) then it's cocked. Possibly a bit strict, but very simple and clear too.

I once had a big double handful of dice to roll, so I just poured them onto the table from a few inches up. Then my opponent insisted I re-roll them with more force. I didn't make a fuss because it's not worth it, but honestly I'd say that's far worse etiquette, and kinda rude.
You're insinuating I'm cheating just because you don't like how I roll my double handful of dice? Feth off.

I'm a fan of the Ultramarine dice - I don't see the problem with the roman numerals, and the chapter symbol on the 1? FANTASTIC! Ultramarines are often re rolling those 1s anyhow by stratagem or aura ability and I like that as a reminder. Otherwise a couple of cubes of high-contrast matching dice are a must as well. I also use the GW Ork dice with the Gork or Mork on the 1, though those are mostly just for flavor as 20 dice are nowhere near enough dice for the WAAAGH!

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
I once had a big double handful of dice to roll, so I just poured them onto the table from a few inches up. Then my opponent insisted I re-roll them with more force. I didn't make a fuss because it's not worth it, but honestly I'd say that's far worse etiquette, and kinda rude.
You're insinuating I'm cheating just because you don't like how I roll my double handful of dice? Feth off.

That is a bit petty, even as someone who prefers a good chuck. After all, rolling a bucket o’dice is fun - and with that many, there’s no way you could’ve rolled them in a favourable way, even if such a thing is possible with fewer dice.

I can't stand dice with symbols, and I certainly think dice with more than one symbol (say 1 and 6 as skulls, the 6 with wings?!?!?) are ridiculous. I am paranoid, sure, but some people take the WAAC thing much farther than we like to think. In your own gaming group, no problem...outside it...well, I have played people at the old FLGS that will roll, tell you four sixes, and pick the dice up. Have I had time to really recognize if that skull i saw had wings or not? So, yes, totally against it. Give me pips or clear numbers.
Anecdotal evidence on "Beware" of the bag O' Dice person. This is my own experience so I am certainly not accusing everyone who brings the bag o' dice. Ok done with the disclaimer. If you are not aware, most D6's are NOT balanced (as in Las Vegas gambling balanced). Therefore any given set will in fact have some dice that turn up certain numbers more often than random chance says. Therefore two comments on the random dice thing: A person can, by sitting at home and rolling his dice over and over determine which ones roll high more consistently than others. (and if you think I am making this up...there are multiple threads on this and other forums about it, and I am not talking about "doctored" dice, but from the factory)

A: Watch for the guy who rolls the same die for all his invuln saves on characters.
B: the bag O' Dice guy. At my local gaming store back in the day we had a player who had 20 dice e rolled, all of different colors different sets etc. I happened to know this person and he is uber competitive. He had gone through multiple sets of dice, rolled them thousands of time, and picked out the 1-2 that rolled high from each set and combined them into his "winning" set. He was known far and wide (ok, among the 20 or so players) for ridiculous consistent 5-6 rolling. He would refuse completely to roll any complete set of dice, and would only use his "lucky" dice.

Just a really long time gamer (30+years, you see a LOT) sharing.

edwardmyst wrote:

the bag O' Dice guy. At my local gaming store back in the day we had a player who had 20 dice e rolled, all of different colors different sets etc. I happened to know this person and he is uber competitive. He had gone through multiple sets of dice, rolled them thousands of time, and picked out the 1-2 that rolled high from each set and combined them into his "winning" set. He was known far and wide (ok, among the 20 or so players) for ridiculous consistent 5-6 rolling. He would refuse completely to roll any complete set of dice, and would only use his "lucky" dice.[/list]

Just a really long time gamer (30+years, you see a LOT) sharing.

That seems super dodgy. I would just refuse to play him.

Yeah. There’s getting genuinely lucky with the dice you’ve bought as a set, and there’s deliberately seeking to tip the odds in your favour.

I mean the arseache of the effort involved suggests they’re probably not much fun to play against for a variety of other reasons. If someone is willing to go that far for an advantage, I very much doubt any other action is beyond them if they think it’ll get them the win.

One final thing that winds me up? People that make game ending rolls (usually saves) one by one. I know it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference, but it still gets on my tits.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Yeah. There’s getting genuinely lucky with the dice you’ve bought as a set, and there’s deliberately seeking to tip the odds in your favour.

I mean the arseache of the effort involved suggests they’re probably not much fun to play against for a variety of other reasons. If someone is willing to go that far for an advantage, I very much doubt any other action is beyond them if they think it’ll get them the win.

One final thing that winds me up? People that make game ending rolls (usually saves) one by one. I know it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference, but it still gets on my tits.

This, plus people who have two such pools of dice, one for rolls needing to roll high and another for rolls needing to roll low.

Even if the dice are not fiddled and only slightly tilted towards the desired result, its just the approach of the thing.

The only benefit is its a very quick way to see in advance what sort of game to expect

I guess I'm in the minority but I really like the GW Adeptus Astartes Dice. They're interesting and with four colours/themes make good wound markers too...

leopard wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Yeah. There’s getting genuinely lucky with the dice you’ve bought as a set, and there’s deliberately seeking to tip the odds in your favour.

I mean the arseache of the effort involved suggests they’re probably not much fun to play against for a variety of other reasons. If someone is willing to go that far for an advantage, I very much doubt any other action is beyond them if they think it’ll get them the win.

One final thing that winds me up? People that make game ending rolls (usually saves) one by one. I know it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference, but it still gets on my tits.

This, plus people who have two such pools of dice, one for rolls needing to roll high and another for rolls needing to roll low.

Even if the dice are not fiddled and only slightly tilted towards the desired result, its just the approach of the thing.

The only benefit is its a very quick way to see in advance what sort of game to expect

In Warmachine this was ruled to be cheating. You had to use the same dice to hit (roll high) and make morale checks (roll low).

I wonder how much people will hate me when I show up to play with a bag of 40 idoneth deepkin dice...

I just wouldn't

They're pretty, but I'd say they don't even serve particularly well as wound markers.

I like normal dice with no symbols on any face, but I do have different coloured dice in the bag for when needed, (ie white are the bolters, red are the heavy bolters)
That being said, having been a gamer for several decades I have loads of unique dice types, picked up at events or from various mundane games. They get used for turn markers/wound trackers/victory points tally/objectives etc.
I'd prefer my opponent did the same thing but I wouldn't say anything if he did use a trendy or uneasily read dice type. Each to their own and all that.

The essentials for me are a big bag of identical dice with no special markings, preferably in black and white. A few other colours for special weapons and shiny/unique dice for wounds or command point counters.

I do have a soft spot for dice with a marking on the 6, mostly because of battle reports on YouTube.

I'd rather an opponent do the same, or just use my dice. Sharing one set of dice gets rid of every issue in my opinion.

Being a Necron player, I'm hella tempted to order some custom Chessex dice with 'PEW!' for the 6. Suits Tesla, something I've always used a lot of since it's introduction.

Pew pew pew pew pew pew pew pew!

I don’t think I have any terribly hard to read dice although the Zochihedron did take a little bit of getting used to, but that was a more a novelty purchase back in the day. I’m more than happy to share my dice but totally respect other people’s wishes if they want to keep their own dice for their own use.

Use a dice tray or rolling tower, I once saw an online vid of some blokes playing and they were basically rolling their greasy dice straight at the other sides front line. That really fethed me off, respect other people’s minis and the time they took to paint them!

Ive got blue Tabletop tactics dice from my Tzeentch & World Eaters and I use my Green Tabletop tactics dice for my Salamanders and Isengard (they're a very dark green).

I love them, they're a marbled affect with gold pips and the TTT symbol on the 6.

i think fancy dice are less an issue than gaming the dice rolls. while i rarely see it at my local stores, i've lost count of the number of times i've seen it on battle reports. When it happens I just close the video. I don't enjoy watching people cheat.

Dice towers keep everyone honest and should be used more often.

As far as fancy dice, as long as they are consistent and known in advance, sokay, dumb, but whatever.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

One final thing that winds me up? People that make game ending rolls (usually saves) one by one. I know it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference, but it still gets on my tits.

We have a guy who does this on occasion. . . however!!!!! I must point out that he does this whilst staring directly at the one guy it actually pisses off. Usually turns it into a big laugh, honestly.

As far as dice go, I'm typically using a cube of GW dice or other for my games. I've found the DG ones to be pretty good, they aren't difficult to read, and for me, they roll either high or low (as in, I get 1s and 2s, or 5s and 6s. . . theres very few 3s and 4s). The one thing that gets us is that they don't roll. We have a small tray which is used for rolling, and the nurgle dice just sorta plunk down.

Next "special" set I have is the Dark Reaper dice. They also have a decent spread when rolling the whole thing. The one thing that does get me, is that we tend to have to squint just a bit to read the damn things. the reaper symbol on each side can kinda make things weird.

Otherwise, I've been using the standard pipped dice with a skull on the 1. These roll for days on certain surfaces (as in sit there spinning forever like a coin, instead of a couple pops and then settling on a side), and they go very streaky for me as well.


Ohh, one thing that bugs me, just from a dice "superstition" aspect, is when you have a pile o' dice right by you, and I go "ok, you have 6 armor saves to make" you go and grab my dice to roll them. Now, if we're on a cramped table and you say "mind if I just roll these?" I'm most likely gonna say OK, but to just do it?? That irks me a bit.

Oh right that reminds me

one thing that does burn me pretty bad is when people start rolling dice behind a giant LOS blocking thing.

I ususally walk over to see the roll and its less of an issue if the table is full and there is no good place to roll but if there is a clear open field then there is no real excuse.

I seem to be in the minority on this one, but any promotional dice I get with the symbol on the six side go into an oubliette bag and never come out.

I find a single symbol meaning a result of 1 more consistent with the other sides of the dice, and thus quicker to mentally process than any kind of logic that "Six = good. Army symbol = Hooray. Army symbol = Six".
As much as that might be second nature to some people, given how tired I can be by the end of an long event day where I've had to get up at five in the morning just to get there on time, sometimes I need to keep things as simple as possible.
(I have had a few events where I'm getting sluggish to even add together a simple 3D6 roll by the last game).

In any case, my two favourite logo dice sets (the dice set GW released for Inquisitor, and one from one of my gaming groups) both have the logo on the ones side anyway, and mixing and matching in other dice that do it the other way around would just make things stupidly difficult.

~~~~~

Also, because of a catastrophic misreading of a rulebook years ago, I always roll D3s not by halving a D6, but by rolling a D6 and subtracting 3 from any result of 4+.
As it's more compatible with dice that are actually marked up as D3s (because a roll of 1, 2 or 3 is always a result of 1, 2 or 3, you never roll an actual D3 and then have a brain fart by halving it), I've never seen fit to change the method.

(Fortunately, I don't tend to play with the kind of people who'd get shirty about me not doing it exactly the way they do).

I am a big fan of limiting myself to dice with pips and a nice symbol for the six, at least for games where a six is something special. My favorite dice are the 10mm ones that came with the prepainted Rackham games AT-43 and Confrontation:Age of Ragnorok. Jet black with bright red pips, and a nice dragon symbol for the six. Absolutely dead easy to read when rolling masses of them.

Dice that are too marbled or covered with filigreed designs are too complicated to focus on. Never mind the horrible ones my wife bought me once, which are clear with white pips. They are absolutely impossible to read, as you see all the pips on the other sides through the face you are looking at, plus the table underneath, lol.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Oh I definitely insist on a proper chuck when rolling your dice. Not a fan of the 'gently roll, then simply flip the hand down on to the board'.

I know it almost certainly makes no difference....but just give them a proper chuck instead, yeah? Dice Towers and rolling trays absolutely count as proper chucking!

You are correct to insist on a "proper chuck".

Just sayin'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1dTadFlyDE

There are tons of versions of this video out there. Note how he says he can't cheat at craps because they make them throw the dice across the table. While that is a bit much for a wargame... I think something more than he does should be required.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
But enough about my bizarre ramblings. Where, if anywhere, do you draw the line? Have you ever refused to let someone use certain dice, beyond suspicion that they're rolling awfully well?

I encountered a rather interesting specimen. Guy had a set of dice where half of them had a skull on the 6, the other had a skull for a 1. I wasn't sure how he could tell them apart, but sure enough- people playing against this 'skilled individual' started talking about it and soon enough, he was confronted. Asked to dump his dice bag in the little plastic box, refused. Asked to leave after that. Said he'd take his business elsewhere. And one call ensured 'elsewhere' was going to have to be at least an hour and a half away.

Other than that, there's some Eldar dice that I just can't read from a distance.

I have only asked someone not use the Nurgle dice. I've seen them 'rolled' and just land flat. A guy was even showing how that they could be tossed easily to land and skid into the dice pan.