The Ultimate Condemnation of WH40k's Rules

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**Pouncey**

Many years ago, probably during 5th edition, I learned of that scientific study where a Professor effectively proved that GW and Chessex dice are inherently unfair through 36,000 rolls of dice from 4 different brands.

Naturally, I set out to acquire some better dice for my games. I went to a local gaming store to order some dice from a catalog, and I ended up talking to the owner of the store working the counter about the study that led me to his store in the first place. He'd also heard of it, so we talked about it for a bit, and when I tried to buy some of those board game dice that were more fair than GW dice but not as expensive as casino dice, he asked if the dice were for Warhammer 40k. I said yes, because it was the only tabletop game I played of any sort. So he replied to me, something very similar to, "You don't need to buy new dice. If you're playing Warhammer 40k, you're not the kind of person who cares enough about game balance to need fair dice."

That's a pretty rough situation for your game's balance when people are saying things like that to convince customers not to buy stuff from them.

I didn't even argue or disagree, and immediately picked up 2 sets of Chessex dice off the shelves that looked pretty and bought them, since I like pretty dice.

I have never regretted my decision to buy inherently unfair dice for WH40k that have screwed me over a lot in my games by making my melta weapons roll 1s up to twice as often as they should be, over insisting that my dice be mostly fair when I play WH40k and buying some standard board game dice instead.

Also, that was during 5th edition. Things have gotten a LOT worse since then in terms of game balance.

**Kaiyanwang**

GW is pretty sloppy in general. They sell you everything as a premium, but they cut corners where possible.
Just think about their glue. Call that a glue is borderline criminal.

They have an edge on miniature quality (and even then, the recent concepts are dumber and dumber).

The low rule quality is related. They just exalt a fanboy to rule writer. But the guy is suddenly a Demon Prince from being a Marauder, without passing through Chaos Warrior, Chosen, Exalted Champion, Chaos Lord, and all the experience needed to go through that.

I suspect they pay them peanuts, the rule quality is a big giveaway.

I mean, just look at Chaos books. Rehashed, low quality fluff, few sloppy formations and BAM new book. The original codex is so bad, people cling to that, too.

The biggest issue is the fanboys. You just cannot argue because there is no way to create a critical fanbase, all churned out is bought and "excellent" until the system collapses like happened to WHFB.

**ZebioLizard2**

The low rule quality is related. They just exalt a fanboy to rule writer. But the guy is suddenly a Demon Prince from being a Marauder, without passing through Chaos Warrior, Chosen, Exalted Champion, Chaos Lord, and all the experience needed to go through that.

This isn't new at all really, if the Chaos Gods want you promoted they will promote you. One of my favorite tales of one is of a Noblewoman who managed to bind Greater Daemons to her soul to infuse her life and live longer and Slaanesh promoted her to Daemon Prince by the end as an insult to those Greater Daemons who failed and of her own inner potential.

**MarsNZ**

I think the most damning thing about the state of 40k today is that you can predict the outcome of 80% of games by just looking at the opposing lists.

Second has to be the endless monthly release of books which are largely devoid of anything that hasn't been copy-pasted from elsewhere. Occasionally they'll include a gimmick formation with bonuses that should have been included in the original faction release (Cadian Battle Group is a fine example). GW taking a page out of Apple's playbook with planned obsolescence. Lately the releases are accelerated, which, looking at how the End Times was handled, leads me to believe a lot of these books will be worthless in 6-12 months.

**malamis**

MarsNZ wrote:
I think the most damning thing about the state of 40k today is that you can predict the outcome of 80% of games by just looking at the opposing lists.

Second has to be the endless monthly release of books which are largely devoid of anything that hasn't been copy-pasted from elsewhere. Occasionally they'll include a gimmick formation with bonuses that should have been included in the original faction release (Cadian Battle Group is a fine example). GW taking a page out of Apple's playbook with planned obsolescence. Lately the releases are accelerated, which, looking at how the End Times was handled, leads me to believe a lot of these books will be worthless in 6-12 months.

The problem lies I think with there not being an R&D department so much as 'writers on payroll'. The CBG for example hadn't been invented at the point of the AM codex... because they hadn't realised that formations are A Big Deal when it'd be immediately obvious that free bonuses are worth building armies around, and the better ones worth buying armies for.

On the flip side...

Do you really want to turn your dudesmen into Magic:The Gathering where everything is razor edge balanced against everything else, and the random chance factor is the only possible hope of winning even a slightly unfavorable matchup?

40k can and should be improved, but i'm wary of it turning into something incompatible with the necessary time investment to be rewarding.

As an aside, regarding the dice balance (in the engineering sense) is the complaint that they're innately favoring specific rolls due to their design, or that individual dice favor one result more than others?

**Fenrir Kitsune**

Design Studio is a sales dept for a toy company, a wise man once said.

**lord_blackfang**

The study found that "GW dice" and similar Chessex type dice roll 1s about 26% of the time rather than the expected 16.6%.

**malamis**

lord_blackfang wrote:
The study found that "GW dice" and similar Chessex type dice roll 1s about 26% of the time rather than the expected 16.6%.

I'd honestly expect it to be the inverse, sine the center of gravity is closer to the '1' side in pitted pip dice

**Pouncey**

Kaiyanwang wrote:
GW is pretty sloppy in general. They sell you everything as a premium, but they cut corners where possible.
Just think about their glue. Call that a glue is borderline criminal.

They have an edge on miniature quality (and even then, the recent concepts are dumber and dumber).

The low rule quality is related. They just exalt a fanboy to rule writer. But the guy is suddenly a Demon Prince from being a Marauder, without passing through Chaos Warrior, Chosen, Exalted Champion, Chaos Lord, and all the experience needed to go through that.

I suspect they pay them peanuts, the rule quality is a big giveaway.

I mean, just look at Chaos books. Rehashed, low quality fluff, few sloppy formations and BAM new book. The original codex is so bad, people cling to that, too.

The biggest issue is the fanboys. You just cannot argue because there is no way to create a critical fanbase, all churned out is bought and "excellent" until the system collapses like happened to WHFB.

I've been gone for a while.

Did you guys forget Finecast was a thing for a while? Surely it merited a mention, if only by just stating its name and nothing further, after the mention of "miniature quality".

Automatically Appended Next Post:

malamis wrote:
lord_blackfang wrote:
The study found that "GW dice" and similar Chessex type dice roll 1s about 26% of the time rather than the expected 16.6%.

I'd honestly expect it to be the inverse, sine the center of gravity is closer to the '1' side in pitted pip dice

All I know is that I think some of my GW white dice are so badly biased toward 1 when it's the only die being rolled it may as well be loaded, because when I fire meltaguns I always use white dice, and whenever I fire like 5 in a row from different units, very often I miss all 5 with four 1s and one 2. It's gotten to the point where I start asking my opponent, whenever I have to roll a single white die for any reason, if I can include a small handful of what I actually call "ballast dice" of a separate color that have no purpose other than to improve the odds of my single meltagun hitting its target to something reasonable.

I'm a perfectly sane, rational person with pretty much no superstitions and a decent understanding of probability that I understand random results will have streaks and gaps instead of being perfectly even. And the frequency with which I have rolled a single white die and it turned up a 1 is enough to start making a person with a decent understanding of probability and pretty much no superstitions invent a concept of "ballast dice" where you roll extra dice that mean nothing along with the one die that does mean something, under the hypothesis that those extra dice improve the odds of the single die to have a favorable result, and it actually does.

And usually people who want to cheat by manipulating the number of dice they roll with a special way of rolling to improve their odds of a favorable result try to justify rolling one die at a time, not take a situation where they legitimately are only rolling one die since they're firing a squad's only meltagun at a tank, and start including other dice in that roll to improve the odds of the one die that matters having a better result. And the fact it actually works is bizarre!

**Kaiyanwang**

Pouncey wrote:

I've been gone for a while.

Did you guys forget Finecast was a thing for a while? Surely it merited a mention, if only by just stating its name and nothing further, after the mention of "miniature quality".

Yes, you are right. Is even worse than I want to depict it, and I am far from being a fanboy.

**master of ordinance**

The quality of GW's rules can be compared as to a gilded gak. Yes, it may be covered in gold and shiny bits, but at the end of the day it is still a turd, and when you pick it up you try to handle it you will soon find this fact out.

**nou**

Pouncey wrote:

All I know is that I think some of my GW white dice are so badly biased toward 1 when it's the only die being rolled it may as well be loaded, because when I fire meltaguns I always use white dice, and whenever I fire like 5 in a row from different units, very often I miss all 5 with four 1s and one 2. It's gotten to the point where I start asking my opponent, whenever I have to roll a single white die for any reason, if I can include a small handful of what I actually call "ballast dice" of a separate color that have no purpose other than to improve the odds of my single meltagun hitting its target to something reasonable.

I'm a perfectly sane, rational person with pretty much no superstitions and a decent understanding of probability that I understand random results will have streaks and gaps instead of being perfectly even. And the frequency with which I have rolled a single white die and it turned up a 1 is enough to start making a person with a decent understanding of probability and pretty much no superstitions invent a concept of "ballast dice" where you roll extra dice that mean nothing along with the one die that does mean something, under the hypothesis that those extra dice improve the odds of the single die to have a favorable result, and it actually does.

And usually people who want to cheat by manipulating the number of dice they roll with a special way of rolling to improve their odds of a favorable result try to justify rolling one die at a time, not take a situation where they legitimately are only rolling one die since they're firing a squad's only meltagun at a tank, and start including other dice in that roll to improve the odds of the one die that matters having a better result. And the fact it actually works is bizarre!

Back in a 2nd ed day we used to constantly roll dice during an oponent turn and "sort" dice this way. There were two "schools" of this - some players sorted dice that had most 5 & 6 results on them as "those lucky", but some players chose those with recurring 1 & 2, as "those were bound to result in something higher soon". Both methods had exactly same rate of succes

If your method could be in fact proven to be a scientific observation, not a mere psychological bias of "remembering succeses due to some rituals", there are some physical and probabilistic phenomena, that could explain such results. Most likely it is a result of a variant of relatively simple paradox of Monty Hall problem: if your white die is in fact loaded, then hitting it with another die after it has settled on it's most probable side with just enough force to flip one side, will alter it's result to one less probable. Or it can be something more elusive, like e.g. a result of resonant feedback between "uneven" dice and the table - the same phenomenon which makes metronomes to synchronize their beating (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v5eBf2KwF8) (this can be falsified if the result of your observation is independent from the surface type of the table (the solid table/cloth/neoprene matt etc). An exaggeration of this would be to throw havily loaded dice on a vibrating drum membrane: with just right vibration all dice would flip up to show the same result)).

**Pouncey**

Pretend this post never existed.

**Stormonu**

Sounds like the spiel from the Gamescience owner, Lou Zocchi. I've spoken to the man personally, on a couple of occasions - listened to his discussion about biased dice (in person) at least twice. He presents a good argument, has a fair amount of proof to back it up, but in the end ...

I don't care. As much dice get thrown about in 40K, the randomness evens out.

But it still stands that the 40K rules are bad. There are plenty of 40K games that are lost or won before the first die - even the first model hit the board.

**MarsNZ**

malamis wrote:

Do you really want to turn your dudesmen into Magic:The Gathering where everything is razor edge balanced against everything else, and the random chance factor is the only possible hope of winning even a slightly unfavorable matchup?

Is that how Chess works? No, skill is a factor that your false equivalence totally ignores.

**Ratius**

Well, what I did was sit down at my dining room table with a single scatter die, closed my eyes, and just started shaking the die in both of my hands, which were closed enough to stop it from bouncing out, but open enough the die was moving around in there a lot. While continuing to do so, I repeated in my mind the term "dead-on" over and over and over, referring to the direct hit marker present on two of six faces. Eventually, at some random moment, I would feel a sudden sense of utter and total peace and calm, and at that moment, I would roll the die without any special hand movement, just the way an ordinary roll would be. And the die ended up with the direct hit symbol up.

Then I did the same thing 14 more times consecutively, and each and every time it would end up with a direct hit symbol up. At this point I considered it proven to myself that I could do it, though the math tells me the odds of 15 consecutive 1 in 3 chances all being the same (3 to the fifteenth power) means the odds of this happening by random chance was 1 in 14,348,907. I know the die was not loaded, as I tested this after those 15 consecutive direct hits by just rolling it a few times normally with no attempt whatsoever to control the results, and it was able to roll scatter symbols.

In my next Warhammer 40k game against friends, I then tried to make use of my ability to make dice roll the way I wanted them to. So I started the process as always, dice in two cupped hands, eyes closed, repeating the number I wanted in my mind. Three seconds into it, I realized they probably knew I was trying to cheat by now, and my anxiety spiked so I just rolled it without waiting for the sense of peace and calm. At that moment I knew it was, at best, a novelty that could never win me any games or money at a casino, because my anxiety would prevent me from being able to do it. And I gave up ever doing it again, never tried it since. Also they don't let you roll dice like that at all in casinos.

How did I learn to do this?

Well, one day I decided to try to see if it was possible to make dice roll the way I wanted them to. So I went and got some of my dice out. And you already read the rest of the story.

The fact you cant replicate the result using your mind powers kinda sums up how much a complete fluke the original test was (if true at all being honest).
Sorry dude, dice are random.

**carldooley**

If you have such a problem with dice, a solution. Bring ten. Your opponent brings ten too. Combine them. Then play your game.

**jreilly89**

carldooley wrote:
If you have such a problem with dice, a solution. Bring ten. Your opponent brings ten too. Combine them. Then play your game.

This. I've never had someone ask, but if anyone accused me of actually cheating, I'd say "Okay, let's use your/my dice only". Then whatever bias the dice have affects both people fairly.

**carldooley**

jreilly89 wrote:
carldooley wrote:
If you have such a problem with dice, a solution. Bring ten. Your opponent brings ten too. Combine them. Then play your game.

This. I've never had someone ask, but if anyone accused me of actually cheating, I'd say "Okay, let's use your/my dice only". Then whatever bias the dice have affects both people fairly.

I usually get accused of using loaded dice. My response to such accusations has always been, 'Would you like to use them?' Sorry, just because I like to use pirate dice doesn't mean that I'm cheating.

**Grimgold**

The most damning condemnation of GW's rules is watching battle reports and counting how many rules they get wrong. I don't want to call anyone out but I watched a rather well produced batrep from someone with hundreds of them under their belt, where they made half a dozen goofs with necron and eldar rules. Stuff like thinking destroyers were the wrong unit type, treating ghost arcs as fast, moving around (instead of thru) obstacles with wraiths, warp spiders wounding on toughness instead of initiative, and forgetting morale modifiers in CC. There were probably more eldar errors I missed since I'm not as good with their rules.

These are guys who do this for income, and have probably played hundreds of games, and still can't remember all of the rules. We drastically need to reduce the number of rules in the game, To some manageable amount.

**MagicJuggler**

Personally, I think most special weapons/rules are at least somewhat internally consistent within their own books. Plasma Weapons are generally AP 2 and Gets Hot! Lightning weapons do either Tesla or Haywire but seldom both. For the most part, since esuch weapons are exceptions to the rules, keeping track of them isn't necessarily that mentally taxing.

It's cross-codex that things get sillier. Take acoustic weapons for example. Chaos gets Sonic Blasters, which are basically a cover-ignoring Salvo gun. Eldar get Vibro-weapons, which simply do more damage based on the number of hits. Skitarii get Transonic weapons, which are AP 2 on the second round of a combat. Genestealer Cultists get Seismic Cannons, which use Conversion Beamer-like variable strength and an odd variant of Bladestorm...

Egads!

**Pouncey**

Ratius wrote:
Well, what I did was sit down at my dining room table with a single scatter die, closed my eyes, and just started shaking the die in both of my hands, which were closed enough to stop it from bouncing out, but open enough the die was moving around in there a lot. While continuing to do so, I repeated in my mind the term "dead-on" over and over and over, referring to the direct hit marker present on two of six faces. Eventually, at some random moment, I would feel a sudden sense of utter and total peace and calm, and at that moment, I would roll the die without any special hand movement, just the way an ordinary roll would be. And the die ended up with the direct hit symbol up.

Then I did the same thing 14 more times consecutively, and each and every time it would end up with a direct hit symbol up. At this point I considered it proven to myself that I could do it, though the math tells me the odds of 15 consecutive 1 in 3 chances all being the same (3 to the fifteenth power) means the odds of this happening by random chance was 1 in 14,348,907. I know the die was not loaded, as I tested this after those 15 consecutive direct hits by just rolling it a few times normally with no attempt whatsoever to control the results, and it was able to roll scatter symbols.

In my next Warhammer 40k game against friends, I then tried to make use of my ability to make dice roll the way I wanted them to. So I started the process as always, dice in two cupped hands, eyes closed, repeating the number I wanted in my mind. Three seconds into it, I realized they probably knew I was trying to cheat by now, and my anxiety spiked so I just rolled it without waiting for the sense of peace and calm. At that moment I knew it was, at best, a novelty that could never win me any games or money at a casino, because my anxiety would prevent me from being able to do it. And I gave up ever doing it again, never tried it since. Also they don't let you roll dice like that at all in casinos.

How did I learn to do this?

Well, one day I decided to try to see if it was possible to make dice roll the way I wanted them to. So I went and got some of my dice out. And you already read the rest of the story.

The fact you cant replicate the result using your mind powers kinda sums up how much a complete fluke the original test was (if true at all being honest).
Sorry dude, dice are random.

What makes you think I can't replicate it? I never even tried to replicate it at any point.

**malamis**

MarsNZ wrote:
malamis wrote:

Do you really want to turn your dudesmen into Magic:The Gathering where everything is razor edge balanced against everything else, and the random chance factor is the only possible hope of winning even a slightly unfavorable matchup?

Is that how Chess works? No, skill is a factor that your false equivalence totally ignores.

Because Chess is even *remotely* comparable to 40k? You really want to compare a game with mutually identical armies to 40k, when, for example, Eldar can play with the equivalent of a board full of queens?

Hell even in Chess it's been long held that White starts with an advantage which is down to chance or pre-arranged preference.

**tneva82**

Ratius wrote:

Sorry dude, dice are random.

Good dice yes. Bad dice while random not even distribution. If it was 100% random every result would be 1/6 times. Bad dices have different distribution.

**nou**

Grimgold wrote:
The most damning condemnation of GW's rules is watching battle reports and counting how many rules they get wrong. I don't want to call anyone out but I watched a rather well produced batrep from someone with hundreds of them under their belt, where they made half a dozen goofs with necron and eldar rules. Stuff like thinking destroyers were the wrong unit type, treating ghost arcs as fast, moving around (instead of thru) obstacles with wraiths, warp spiders wounding on toughness instead of initiative, and forgetting morale modifiers in CC. There were probably more eldar errors I missed since I'm not as good with their rules.

These are guys who do this for income, and have probably played hundreds of games, and still can't remember all of the rules. We drastically need to reduce the number of rules in the game, To some manageable amount.

In this particular case this is not a result of having too many rules, but trying to play every army there is. I really despise watching "three color" ITC battle reports, because those guys don't even remember proper names for units in some cases, let alone rules for them. It takes dozens of games to trully understand, to a point of "muscle memory", how each faction work and it's units interact with each other. Now if you try to play every faction, you will have to literally play non-stop for this level of understanding ever-changing WH40K landscape. This is most obvious after new faction/rules are released - such early battle reports are usually worthless in showing what are the true pros and cons of such faction, because they are played with "default strategy" aplicable to "broad type" of such faction.

Of course, one can opt for return of 3rd ed simplicity and (relative) invariance between factions, but that is personal taste, not an universal desire of community.

**tneva82**

Pouncey wrote:
What makes you think I can't replicate it? I never even tried to replicate it at any point.

Well try to replicate it. Multiple times. Report the result. Otherwise your story is just that. A story. Validity is of dubious value.

**nou**

tneva82 wrote:
Ratius wrote:

Sorry dude, dice are random.

Good dice yes. Bad dice while random not even distribution. If it was 100% random every result would be 1/6 times. Bad dices have different distribution.

Just to name things properly: non-fair dice are also random. You can have any curve of probability you desire built in random test of any kind. You even utilise such curve distribution in WH40K with 2d6 rolls. Even distribution is just one case of randomness. Only a dice loaded so much, that it always land on one side is not random.

And in this particular case, he was referring to "mental manipulation" of dice roll results, not dice themselves.

**Pouncey**

tneva82 wrote:
Pouncey wrote:
What makes you think I can't replicate it? I never even tried to replicate it at any point.

Well try to replicate it. Multiple times. Report the result. Otherwise your story is just that. A story. Validity is of dubious value.

Wouldn't you just call me a liar anyways?

Automatically Appended Next Post:

nou wrote:
tneva82 wrote:
Ratius wrote:

Sorry dude, dice are random.

Good dice yes. Bad dice while random not even distribution. If it was 100% random every result would be 1/6 times. Bad dices have different distribution.

Just to name things properly: non-fair dice are also random. You can have any curve of probability you desire built in random test of any kind. You even utilise such curve distribution in WH40K with 2d6 rolls. Even distribution is just one case of randomness. Only a dice loaded so much, that it always land on one side is not random.

And in this particular case, he was referring to "mental manipulation" of dice roll results, not dice themselves.

Besides, dice are only random in the sense that the human brain is unable to predict the result, and even casinos force people at Craps tables to roll a particular way so the result is as unpredictable as possible, to prevent people from rolling in a special way to skew the results in their favor.

Even in WH40k, we consider it cheating when people use a special way of rolling to get results in their favor.

**Xenomancers**

I play with tenzi dice. for about 10 bucks you get 40 large dice in 4 different colors. They roll true also.

GW dice roll 4's and 1's at hugely disproportionate rates.

**ERJAK**

MarsNZ wrote:
malamis wrote:

Do you really want to turn your dudesmen into Magic:The Gathering where everything is razor edge balanced against everything else, and the random chance factor is the only possible hope of winning even a slightly unfavorable matchup?

Is that how Chess works? No, skill is a factor that your false equivalence totally ignores.

white wins 56% of the time in professional games. The near perfect balance of the rest of the game makes first turn advantage the be all end all