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I was playing NOVA mission 3 tonight against a good friend and long time chaos daemon player. We've been practicing for NOVA this week and we're on round 3, the relic. I was running a SW/SM list with drop pod melta, a stormfang and a grav star (3 cents, tig and TDA rune priest). He was playing Nanavati's list from Adepticon which is similar to a build he's run against me for the past year. Top of 3, game was close, I was rolling for invisibility. I threw 4 dice at it because he had saved 8 to deny and I wanted the odds in my favor. Here's where it all went to
1. I rolled a perils
2. I rolled a 1 on the perils table
3. I rolled 11 and failed Ld, killing tigurius and doing D6 str9 AP1 hits to his unit
4. I rolled a 6 for the amount of hits (I had 2 cents and rune priest at full wounds)
5. All 6 hits wounded
6. Cents took the 4 which wiped them, rune priest rolled double 1s on his 5++ save attempts and also died

I lost 460 points of models (at the full 9 wounds) to bad dice rolls without my opponent doing anything other than standing there and watching. Even after all this in turn 3, I only lost 8-6. I had 4 primary points and 2 secondary points (slay the warlord), he had 6 primary points and 2 secondary points (linebreaker). Do I have the worst luck ever? Can anyone top this string of 6 separate dice rolls, all with the worst possible result, back to back, resulting in the most important 25% of my army dying instantly without any player skill involved from me or my opponent? More importantly, is this bad game design? Should something like this even be possible? It isn't in any other game I've ever played. Tomorrow, the search for a new set of dice begins...

The dice giveth and the dice taketh. Treat ur dice like you treat testicles. Treat them gently and with care , they will be good to you. Abuse them and you will be in a world of hurt

That is terrible luck, but it is just a game! Take it for the funny bad luck it is, high five your opponent, and ask them "same time next week?".


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Bafaltin wrote:
*snip* (metaphorically)

Be careful with your use of words!

Man that sounds bad, but you win some you lose some. Next time bring different dice

I walked straight to the dice counter as soon as that happened, I didn't even want to finish the game with them. They only had 1 set left but the owner said a shipment will be in tomorrow between 12-2. I will be there waiting on the new shipment to pick out another set. I'm not sure what I did to anger these dice but apparently they will not forgive me. Also during this game I had 2 separate times where I rolled ones on 3 out of 3 dice, and another time where I rolled 7 ones on 16 dice. Actually I'm not sure if it's the dice because I'm famous in my local meta for rolling like this, usually in the most important moments of close games. When someone has a particularly bad roll, someone else is always quick to ask if they borrowed my dice, if I rolled for them, etc.

I can say that I've had similar happen, sadly. DW knights with a termie librarian, rolled perils on 2 dice for psychic shriek, 5 wounds, failed 3 of my 3++. And honestly, I think it is a reasonable part of the game. I really like the background of 40k, and I like the idea of warp powers being risky to use. It's literally the smallest chance that you'll fail that bad, but it's always there reminding you that your OP deathstar has risks involved.

And yes, I am known as "that guy" at my store. My rolling is literally the absolute worst, for just about any game I play. It's literally part of my reputation that I make some sort of statistically "impossible" failure with my rolling, usually in the form of getting no hits for turns at a time with my heavy weapons and power fists.

At the same time, it's funny how lucky I am opening up random packs like Magic and Heroclix stuff, as I can reliably pull something that's worth several times what I pay. The luck gods make me lose games, but they make up for it by improving my luck elsewhere (and making me decent money!).

Yeah, that's pretty unlucky. Perhaps next game you'll throw nothing but gold. I'd burn the dice with fire.

Didn't one of the top 8 games at LVO end up with someting similar? Frim what I heard a Draigostar was winning and then wiped themselves out with perlis while gating to clean up some scouts off an objective.

 Toofast wrote:
Actually I'm not sure if it's the dice because I'm famous in my local meta for rolling like this, usually in the most important moments of close games. When someone has a particularly bad roll, someone else is always quick to ask if they borrowed my dice, if I rolled for them, etc.

The term you're looking for here is "confirmation bias". You roll dice just like everyone else, any feeling that you have worse luck than average is simply the result of remembering the interesting outcomes that fit your "unlucky" image and forgetting the boring times when your dice are average.

It's not bad game design, you as a player decided to use an OP combo (centstar) and put all your eggs in the same basket, sometimes the eggs break

That's the problem when you concentrate too many points in one unit, sometimes it goes very wrong.

I was playing against a friend, and had managed to kill one marine in a tac squad, but needed to get the squad off an objective to win the game. It wasn't looking good, because all I had was a big squad of necron warriors, but it was do or die.

So I rolled my attacks, and in the end caused nine wounds. I was like, 'feth, even if I somehow kill enough to force an LD check, they're probably still going to make it.'

Then he rolled his armor saves, and failed ALL of them, which is something like a 1/200,000 chance.

*edit*
So to clarify, I put 9 wounds on 9 marines, and they all died due to failed armor saves.

3 games in a row my SAG big mek rolled one's. On two of then it was the first turn.

Playing against my friends eldar with GK.

Turn one NDK shoots WS with psycannon. 4 hits, no glances, no pens besides 1 (rending). He misses his serpent shield 2+ roll. Then a 6 is rolled on the damage table. Boom goes the serpent.

I felt bad for that one.

I agreed to play a 2 v 2 with a friend and realized too late I was on an all melee team against Decuricrons and Eldar if that counts

Sure can 500 pt game Grey Knights vs Dark Eldar. His terminator squad got wiped by a sniper haemy and a 5 man warrior squad. Failed his last termies charge. His strike force charged my archon and his blasterborn and got wiped out in overwatch and died to the Dracon's Agoniser in assault.

Never had that much bad luck in one go. Worst I've had is 2 complete games in a row of Feugan the Burning lance missing every shot with his fire pike only needing 2's (he did hit a few on the reroll for Bs7). He is now Feugan the Rubber Lance for evermore.

I think I will play party pooper here though for your example and say the GW random stuff gets old and is their games worst quality. Way too much of it.

 rhinosaur wrote:

I think I will play party pooper here though for your example and say the GW random stuff gets old and is their games worst quality. Way too much of it.

I couldn't agree more. Playing against chaos daemons a lot really emphasizes that. Ok I'll end my shooting phase, time to roll 87 dice to see what happens because FORGE THE NARRATIVE! "Oh your 200 point psyker is now a daemon prince because reasons" HUH?!

My thought pattern was like this:
"Lets move these sniper drones closer as they can't target every enemy model just yet, and that terrain will give them cover for any return fire. Worse case situation, a 1/6 chance of a failed dangerous terrain test and a 50/50 armour save should mean a loss of maybe one drone so there isn't much risk."

7 Dangerous Terrains and 6 failed saves later...
Trust my 'once in a life time odds' to be a negative outcome!

I once said to myself, "Hey, 1 land raider can survive 2 squads of ten necron warriors behind +3 cover." As you may have expected my berzerkers had to foot slog the rest of the game.

Yeah I did the perils thing. With frickin Lorgar. Unimpressed

First time I tested my homebrew canoptek HQ unit, it died to one of those dark eldar guns that turn you to glass in turn 1. 's about it for horrendous bad luck, unless you count the time I was messing about with a Courtstar and got mishap-redirected six times in three turns with it.

 Toofast wrote:

 rhinosaur wrote:

I think I will play party pooper here though for your example and say the GW random stuff gets old and is their games worst quality. Way too much of it.

I couldn't agree more. Playing against chaos daemons a lot really emphasizes that. Ok I'll end my shooting phase, time to roll 87 dice to see what happens because FORGE THE NARRATIVE! "Oh your 200 point psyker is now a daemon prince because reasons" HUH?!

Oh come on, Warp Storm is not that bad. It definitely does not involve 87 dice or turning anything into a daemon prince.

Speaking of Warp Storms, here's my bad luck: Two of five warp storm results in one game were "random instability test on 3d6". First round: 305 point Lord of Change gets chosen to roll and loses 5 of 6 wounds, somehow managing to not get knocked out of the air. Two turns later, he gets chosen again but manages to pass. Had I not scraped by the grounding test and round 2 with Tzeentch, I would have lost a 305 point psyker because reasons.

 Toofast wrote:
I was playing NOVA mission 3 tonight against a good friend and long time chaos daemon player. We've been practicing for NOVA this week and we're on round 3, the relic. I was running a SW/SM list with drop pod melta, a stormfang and a grav star (3 cents, tig and TDA rune priest). He was playing Nanavati's list from Adepticon which is similar to a build he's run against me for the past year. Top of 3, game was close, I was rolling for invisibility. I threw 4 dice at it because he had saved 8 to deny and I wanted the odds in my favor. Here's where it all went to
1. I rolled a perils
2. I rolled a 1 on the perils table
3. I rolled 11 and failed Ld, killing tigurius and doing D6 str9 AP1 hits to his unit
4. I rolled a 6 for the amount of hits (I had 2 cents and rune priest at full wounds)
5. All 6 hits wounded
6. Cents took the 4 which wiped them, rune priest rolled double 1s on his 5++ save attempts and also died

I lost 460 points of models (at the full 9 wounds) to bad dice rolls without my opponent doing anything other than standing there and watching. Even after all this in turn 3, I only lost 8-6. I had 4 primary points and 2 secondary points (slay the warlord), he had 6 primary points and 2 secondary points (linebreaker). Do I have the worst luck ever? Can anyone top this string of 6 separate dice rolls, all with the worst possible result, back to back, resulting in the most important 25% of my army dying instantly without any player skill involved from me or my opponent? More importantly, is this bad game design? Should something like this even be possible? It isn't in any other game I've ever played. Tomorrow, the search for a new set of dice begins...

I just played a game where my whole 1850 army couldn't kill a 5x2 man suicide sterngard. This included 2 cleansing flames on both units. He made like 60 saves and failed 4. Games like this get out of hand real quick - they do happen though.

I've never once passed Cypher's special 4++ on 3D6... After failing it 3 times in row, my local GW store told me I was never allowed to use him ever again...

Or my Sallies vs. a friend's Sisters at a local tourney just before 6th droped... Across 5 turns, I managed an impressive;
1. Tiggy & my Epistolary dealt 3 wounds to themselves through Perils. The Epistolary killed himself by boxcaring twice in a row.

2. Tiggy missed every single attack vs. St. Celestine, then promptly took 4 wounds in return, (with one wound remaining), and rolled 4, 6, 6, 6 for his 5++ invuln save. (Force Dome which periled on double 1's!)

3. Lascannon gunner went a perfect 0-4 shooting at the Exorcist sitting in a nice, wide open field.

4. Dreadnought auto-penned an Stunned Rhino 3 times... and rolled triple 1's for damage results... then ate a melta to the face!

5. I passed maybe 15% or so of my armour saves all game!

6. Had a chance to surround & krak grenade + Melta bomb a Rhino full of Dominions at one point with a 6 man Assault Squad... only problem was 4 of them would require Dangerous Terrain tests. Rolled triple 1's yet again, then promptly followed that up with a 1, 2, 5 for their saves.
The 4 auto-hitting Krak grenades meanwhile managed to score a single Glancing hit which did nothing... the Melta bombs rolled snake-eyes and did nothing as well!
The Assault Squad then lost a single Marine to the Sisters next Shooting phase, failed their Moral check, and fled only 5", leaving them within 6" of an enemy unit and thus unable to auto-regroup...

7. By game's end, I had a single Combat Squad w/meltagun in a Rhino left to me... I had killed a whole whopping, 2 Crusaders, 2 Arcos & 6 or so Sisters.

And this my friend is why I bring my bad dice to the table, to remind the others what would happen if they don't behave."they get melted in the oven if they roll badly...",

I heard joke once: Man goes to forum. Says he's depressed. Life seems random, and cruel. Says he feels tossed about in an unpredictable world. Forum says: "Treatment is simple. The great daemon - Fateweaver - is in town. Go see him. That should settle you down." Man bursts into tears. "But forum..." he says "I am Fateweaver." Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains.

I can top that, no problem!

Turn 1:
Drop pod with 10 sternguard gets placed right next to the enemy, only way to mishap is to scatter of the board, which is only possible in one particular direction about 8 inches away.
Guess how the dice rolled..... Then on the mishap table a 1 is rolled! 265points down the drain!

Drop pod nr 2 with tigurius and 9 sternguard, actually manage to hit the table! Then your exact same scenario followed.
1. I rolled a perils
2. I rolled a 1 on the perils table
3. I rolled 11+ and failed Ld, killing tigurius and doing D6 str9 AP1 hits to his unit
4. I rolled a 6 for the amount of hits
5. All 6 hits wounded (6 sterns die)

A grand total of 562 points gone, and my opponent hasn't even taken a turn!


(The rest of the squad got intercepted down, so more losses even.)


GOOD GAME, WELL PLAYED.

Those dice do give and take equally.


I known times where Be'Lakor dies on turn one due to failing his 2+ cover save, in fact it's happened to me twice.

Then again, I also remember my 5 man plague marine squad hitting a charging Terminator squad with 4 plasma shots on overwatch and killing 4 of them. Or the time my biker champion beat up a bloodthirster in close combat.

 Dark Riku wrote:
I can top that, no problem!

Turn 1:
Drop pod with 10 sternguard gets placed right next to the enemy, only way to mishap is to scatter of the board, which is only possible in one particular direction about 8 inches away.
Guess how the dice rolled..... Then on the mishap table a 1 is rolled! 265points down the drain

I had something similar happen the game before. I had a terminator rune priest in a pod with sternguard. I put them 11 inches from the edge of the table. I rolled a 12 and arrow pointed directly at that table edge. I rolled a 1 and they all died. We were playing a NOVA mission and my opponent had chosen warlord, first blood and marked for death as his secondary objectives. My marked squad and warlord were in that pod and that was first blood, so he had 6 points before either of us had fired a shot. Later in the game I had my grav cents advancing and he shot them with str4 AP-, did 3 wounds, they each had 1 left. I rolled triple 1s and they all died. I'm guaranteed at least 1-2 moments like this every single game.

In 6th I had two hammerheads in a local tournament.
Every single turn they fired at vehicles. Game 1 had dreads, drop pods, and some pot shots at Stormravens.
Game 2 I believe it was Eldar. War walkers and some fast open topped skimmers.
Game 3 was against SoB with two exorcists.
It wasn't until round 3 turn 4 where I actually managed to take off a HP and wreak an Exorcist for my Hammerhead's first vehicle kills of the day or even doing significant damage to them.

This is why I no longer take Hammerheads