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So I see people talk about "loaded dice" quite often in this community, sometimes jokingly, sometimes suspiciously of other players. But my question is, has anyone actually ever seen someone use them in 40k? If so was it in s tournament, where they'd be a cheater and a fethhole, at the flgs, where they'd be tfg, or even in a friendly game, where they are just stupid. But seriously, is this a real problem? Or just dakka being dakka?

Well, I won't be calling anyone out because it's rude and I have no proof.

But I do have a mate with translucent dice that are hard to read at a glance so when they say 'rolled x' and picks up the dice to continue, it's hard to confirm what was said. I guess it doesn't help his case that's he's known for bringing tough lists in every game.

There was an article on here about Games Workshop dice. 25% of the time you're probably going to roll a one, lol.

I've been playing for almost 9 years now and I have never seen someone use loaded dice.

I've never seen them being used, but there's a guy who's been banned from playing in our group that I've never met who did.

I've heard about them being used in some card game tournaments but never heard of anyone using them in a 40k game. Strange though you'd think this game would be more prone to it. Then again ever since GW completely dropped the competitive scene, I guess there's been little incentive for people to cheat like that (especially when a lot of units can be just hilariously unbalanced without cheating anyways).

It's a personal pet peeve when someone does the following:

1.) Uses dice that are exceedingly hard to read. Even if they're taking the time to pick out the misses and leave the hits on the table before scooping up the hits and rolling to wound, etc. I like to be able to look and get a mental count of what kind of hits and wounds I am looking at so I can be counting my dice for saves out and prepping to roll them in short order.
1.a) This really gets under my skin when the opponent is a fast scoop ninja who rolls, glances, and then picks up all the dice claiming 'X' number hit or wounded. Negative, ghost rider. I have literally told some of my previous opponent that they need to roll the dice and make sure of their hits. None of this fast and loose crap. It's one thing if you're in a hurry and trying to squeak that last full game turn in before the FLGS owner starts to give you the stink eye for making them stay past closing time, but if you're not pressed for time, take that time and ensure your rolls are up and up.
1.b) I use the chessex dice with printed numbers on them, rather than pips. Black dice with red numbers, good contrast, easy to see and read from distance, and there's no question regarding if I hit or didn't on 3+ or 4+, etc. They're also slightly bigger than your average pip dice so that makes them easier to see/read as well.

2.) Rolls where I cannot see the roll result was and someone just says "I hit" or "I passed whatever test/check". I personally will pause, let my opponent walk around to where they can see the dice before I ever touch it. Or, if it's an opponent I've played many times, will ask if I can move the dice without changing the resulting rolled facing to show them the roll. Most of my regular opponents/friends know this and just let me move the dice over. to an open area if it rolled over where they couldn't see it. It's common courtesy.

That all being said, I've never knowingly personally run up on someone using rigged/fixed dice in a casual or tournament setting. However, if it came out or was discovered that a person was cheating that way, I would only agree to play them if they used a brick of dice I brought/owned, or we both rolled from the same dice pool that again, i brought or owned. They don't agree to that stipulation, no game.

Just my opinion on that. Take it easy.

-Red__Thirst-

Real loaded dice are pretty easy to spot, you'll get caught for it when you keep rolling sixes.

A greater problem IMO is the GW dice - they seem to roll 1-2 and 5-6 more often than 3-4, making anyone with stats or armor in that range perform worse than they could.

Dice often get accidentally swapped around, so you end up with some unusual ones in your dice bag sometimes.

I was playing a game against a friend not long after we had played at a local tournament, when we realised that one of his dice had a 3 on two facings. Someone had drilled a small indentation on the 2 facing, and painted it white so it looked like a 3.
I guess someone really wanted their bolters to hit.

Spetulhu wrote:
Real loaded dice are pretty easy to spot, you'll get caught for it when you keep rolling sixes.

A greater problem IMO is the GW dice - they seem to roll 1-2 and 5-6 more often than 3-4, making anyone with stats or armor in that range perform worse than they could.

If you roll 6 or perhaps 12 dice, a pretty common attack in 40K, it's not at all unusual to get one, two or three 6s, and it's not impossible to get even more.

If you want to use loaded dice, you use the type that is biased towards a 6 rather than always rolling 6. You add a couple of them to your handle of 6 or 12, and this pushes you chance of a 6 from 1/6 to 1/5, or 1/4 if you want to cheat hard. If you're rolling only three or four dice, add one loaded one.

It's not likely anyone will notice that bit of bias but over the course of a whole game it is going to give you an edge. It's like the second 0 on an American roulette wheel. It's practically unnoticeable but over the course of hundreds of plays the average adds up to an extra winning margin.

I've never noticed anyone using loaded dice, though as explained above, the clever way to do it makes it nearly unnoticeable. Actually I believe nearly everyone playing the game is pretty honest, and doesn't cheat.

I've known a couple of dice ninjas -- people who roll and scoop very quickly, or use almost unreadable dice, and somehow nearly always get the roll they need, or don't rattle the dice to randomise them.

I always shake my dice in a cup. It should be a standard thing, a cup or a dice tower, to properly randomise the dice. It's not even a question of cheating, it's just proper randomisation of the elements of the game that are supposed to be random.

Never seen them in use

Years ago when we used multiple dice from different systems we had one clear dice that always seemed to roll high, it belonged to me but if it was loaded I wasn't aware of the fact. We always shared the dice anyway but that one got lobbed. Other than that I've never known anybody use a loaded dice.
People scooping their dice up quick before you get a chance to check the dice results however happens alot

I played against a Guard player that kept rolling insanely well with Scatter (he dropped I think four pie plates that night and got hits on all of them. That is a (1/3)^4 chance, or 1/81 chance), but I don't think his dice were loaded, he just had an uncommon occurrence with the dice occur. The probability of it happening isn't exactly high, but by no means is it beyond the realm of possibility. That same night, my brother rolled an improbably high amount of 1s(entire units of Deathwing were erased). Sometimes crazy stuff happens.

I really don't think that this game is so competitive that someone would resort to loaded dice. Not when the game is already stacked in certain factions' favor. If winning was that important, there would only be Eldar, SM, Necron, and Tau players and GW would have discontinued every other line because they were mystified that they weren't selling.

My wee brother used two loaded dice in Risk once.

Huron black heart wrote:
Years ago when we used multiple dice from different systems we had one clear dice that always seemed to roll high, it belonged to me but if it was loaded I wasn't aware of the fact. We always shared the dice anyway but that one got lobbed. Other than that I've never known anybody use a loaded dice.

Dice are never perfect.

We made some custom (chessex) dice with our club logo on it and I've had complaints from time to time that it rolls more 6s than they should.

At that point I just offer the opponent to use mine for any roll, or if he'd let me use his instead.

For the record I don't think they're really that unbalanced, only that the custom 6-face tends to get stuck in people's memory (especially after a good roll)

Those bombardment dice that came in the big box with the mechanicus 1-face also tend to roll a lot of 1s.

Casino dice are as near perfect as is practicable given the cost of production engineering needed to improve them any more, but they come with various problems.

Gamescience dice are a lot better made than the cheapo Chessex type or the GW dice sets.

However an easy solution to the problem of imperfect dice is for everyone to use the same set of dice, and roll them in a cup or tower. Then any bias is applied equally to both sides.

''I really don't think that this game is so competitive that someone would resort to loaded dice. Not when the game is already stacked in certain factions' favor. If winning was that important, there would only be Eldar, SM, Necron, and Tau players and GW would have discontinued every other line because they were mystified that they weren't selling.''

I disagree, I think cheating is in some people's nature. But saying that I still haven't heard of somebody using loaded dice, cheating in other ways however, perhaps the start of a new thread...
: )

I know someone who was bought dice as a present by his wife, never checked them and only months later discovered that some of them had only 1,2 or 3 and other only 4,5 or 6...........

Poor guy was horribly embarrassed............we all knew it was a honest mistake as he's such a nice guy and I only noticed cos we were both using the same dice and happened to look at them.

Kilkrazy - please, not cups /towers. THe noise is unbearable after a while!

Possibly just bad experiences at BB tournaments, when you have 100 players rolling ver quickly it gets....loud. That and the table service drinks may not help...especially day 2...

'Loaded Dice' don't roll normally. You would be able to spot them pretty easily.

 Frozocrone wrote:
But I do have a mate with translucent dice that are hard to read at a glance so when they say 'rolled x' and picks up the dice to continue, it's hard to confirm what was said. I guess it doesn't help his case that's he's known for bringing tough lists in every game.

That's why I use casino dice when I play. Not only are they more likely to roll average, they are also easy to read for both myself and my opponent.

Spetulhu wrote:
A greater problem IMO is the GW dice - they seem to roll 1-2 and 5-6 more often than 3-4, making anyone with stats or armor in that range perform worse than they could.

It's due to the rounded edges. It makes for inprecise rolling. Google 'precision dice' and you will see a lot about them. Luckily for us there is a multi-billion dollar industry that uses precision d6 dice (Gambling) so getting good quality precision dice for cheap is easy.

jouso wrote:
Dice are never perfect.

These dice are the closest you will find to perfect. They are far more perfect than any other out there.



Now the problem with casino dice is that you can chip up your board while playing. I've found they work great with FrontLine F.A.T mats. I also use the box that inserts into my tablewar as a dice box to roll in when I'm playing on a board without a F.A.T. mat.

Also casino dice are designed to be wanged the length of a craps table.
They're way too easy to cheat with on a wargaming table and I won't play against them.
Cheating has advantages over loaded dice as you can pick whatever numbers you like.

Almost all molded dice are "loaded" in some sense. Look up the lecture/sales pitch for "game science dice" if you're curious.

I actually decided to individually test my dice to confirm some of his assertions and found that, indeed, my 'symbol' dice were off by a pretty big factor (usually biased towards 1s or 6s pretty heavily) and my multi-color dice were also heavily weighted one way or another, due to the mixing of materials. Taken as a whole my dice were fairly fair, but I swapped 'em out for some high quality casino dice and they roll FAR more average results, the difference really was amazing.

I would not hesitate to say that nearly everyone's dice are 'loaded' inadvertently one way or another.

 Mr Morden wrote:
I know someone who was bought dice as a present by his wife, never checked them and only months later discovered that some of them had only 1,2 or 3 and other only 4,5 or 6...........

Poor guy was horribly embarrassed............we all knew it was a honest mistake as he's such a nice guy and I only noticed cos we were both using the same dice and happened to look at them.

Sounds to me like some ended up with a good set of D3's

Instead of casino dice, there's precision backgammon dice.

 Alex Kolodotschko wrote:
Also casino dice are designed to be wanged the length of a craps table.
They're way too easy to cheat with on a wargaming table and I won't play against them.
Cheating has advantages over loaded dice as you can pick whatever numbers you like.

Do you mean just dropping the dice without rolling it? It's pretty obvious when someone is doing that, as the video showed.
That's the same as someone picking up the dice before their opponent has had a chance to read successes. If you see someone doing that, talk to the TO and get them kicked from the event.

Never seen it. I see a lot of people rerolling fails when dice are just the tiniest bit cocked, who never seem to reroll successful rolls cocked the same though.

 labmouse42 wrote:

 Alex Kolodotschko wrote:
Also casino dice are designed to be wanged the length of a craps table.
They're way too easy to cheat with on a wargaming table and I won't play against them.
Cheating has advantages over loaded dice as you can pick whatever numbers you like.

Do you mean just dropping the dice without rolling it? I think it's pretty obvious when someone is doing that.
That's the same as someone picking up the dice before their opponent has had a chance to read successes.

The razor edge on casino dice prevents excessive rolling, so you can influence the result by how you load the dice in your hand with a gentle roll. That's why you have to throw the dice against the far wall of a craps table.

 JamesY wrote:
Never seen it. I see a lot of people rerolling fails when dice are just the tiniest bit cocked, who never seem to reroll successful rolls cocked the same though.

I don't mind either way, so long as it's consistent.

Arson Fire wrote:
Dice often get accidentally swapped around, so you end up with some unusual ones in your dice bag sometimes.

I was playing a game against a friend not long after we had played at a local tournament, when we realised that one of his dice had a 3 on two facings. Someone had drilled a small indentation on the 2 facing, and painted it white so it looked like a 3.
I guess someone really wanted their bolters to hit.

I had a misprint Chessex die that i got from a scoop of dice at GenCon. It had 2x 3's and was missing the 2. I used that dice in D&D for a while before I ever noticed. I put it in my misfit dice bag with my weirdo dice (d30, d24) so I wouldn't use it. I think i threw it away.

 Ghaz wrote:

 labmouse42 wrote:

 Alex Kolodotschko wrote:
Also casino dice are designed to be wanged the length of a craps table.
They're way too easy to cheat with on a wargaming table and I won't play against them.
Cheating has advantages over loaded dice as you can pick whatever numbers you like.

Do you mean just dropping the dice without rolling it? I think it's pretty obvious when someone is doing that.
That's the same as someone picking up the dice before their opponent has had a chance to read successes.

The razor edge on casino dice prevents excessive rolling, so you can influence the result by how you load the dice in your hand with a gentle roll. That's why you have to throw the dice against the far wall of a craps table.

You can also bring dice that are small, hard to read and pick up your success instead of your failures.
The dice don't prevent cheating. They just give you more random results if you actually roll them.