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How do?

So just clocked the Idoneth Deepkin dice set. Looks nice, but has waves instead of numbers, a symbol instead of the 6, and a skull instead of the 1.

My first thought? Well that seems impractical. My second thought 'at least it's pretty'.

And it got me wondering as these things do where, if indeed anywhere, your line lies between pretty dice, and pretty distracting dice.

As you'll probably know, I'm mostly a Stay At Home Gamer, not someone into the organised side of the hobby. Yet I can often find it very confusing when my opponent is using multiple custom dice. Some have symbols for the 1 (mostly GW. Possibly only GW?), others have it on the 6. And whilst I don't mean to suggest anything underhanded by my opponents, I just prefer good old standard D6 of the same size when mass rolling. Stuff like Ld checks, where it's only a couple of dice, I'm good with whatever. All that really matters to me is that the pips and the sides have a suitably contrasting colour (no dark red with black spots, thank you), and you're not rolling a plethora of dice with different symbols.

I honestly don't know if I'm being a pain with this preference though. I mean, I appreciate it as much as the next gamer when my opponent has a mixture of coloured D6. Last opponent had lots, but could still pool them out to be 'all white dice Splinter Rifles, 2 pinks are Blasters, 2 Yellow are X'. Nice and easy to follow, and saves a bit of time. It's just the symbols throw me.

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?

Never prevented but I make sure all my dices are either regular or symbol at 6. Mixing symbol dices is too much trouble for mysef as well

Custom dice with just a different color and a single symbol are fine with me, as long as the other faces are just the normal dots.
I play with guys who use the Death Guard dice, and I really hate that. They're very annoying to read when you have 10 of these on the table.
The Deathwatch dice are also annoying, with their weird numbers (not dots, but somewhat cursive numbers circled, written in a too-fine line) and mix matched symbols.

We have a player who uses 3 of the recent Space Marines chapter dice.
Of one, the 1 is a skull, and the 6 is a skull with wings.
Another has the apothecary symbol, and something else on the other.
But, since there are only 6 or 8 of each, they get thrown in batches. Having to translate symbols into numbers is a pain.
Also, all the odd-numbered sides have a dot in the centre, and seeing the corner dots is difficult when in a pile.

So, some are nice, and others are not. I'd use them for wound tracking, and not rolling.

Those fancy dice are a pain to read at a glance, but I don't use them more because it's cheaper and easier to use the little regular dice when I occasionally have to roll 40+ dice.

I perhaps wouldn't take them to any competitive games; your opponent could quite easily mis-read the squiggles on the dice and start an argument.

I think that the Daughters of Khaine and Deepkin dice are the first examples of them trying to take feedback on the previous dice into account.

Both of them have some variation of a skull(Idoneth are a Thrall skull with their associated rune and Daughters is a snake skull) on the 1s while the 6 is a symbol relating to their leader/demigod(Idoneth get the rune of Mathlann and Daughters get the rune for Morathi). The other ones are pretty easy to see(Idoneth are going to have 'waves' for 2-5 and Daughters had standard pips) so I can't see a big issue like the Marine dice.

I use the big set of Admec dice they produced when they re-released Apocalypse. They have the AdMec symbol instead of a 1, and I've never had anyone complain about it, as long as you make it clear beforehand it should be fine.

I think something I've noticed before which I feel is to do with dice etiquette is how they're rolled. I've encountered players who have come up with unlikely numbers of successful FnP saves, and I noticed they tend to "toss" their dice rather than throw them. Wherever this is deliberate or not the result seems to be that the dice will tumble once or twice, then slide across the table, compared to a throw where they'll tumble multiple times. I reckon you could influence your rolls to a degree by doing this.

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!

Generally I think themed dice are a nice idea (and I try and finish off my own force with some which are suitable), but think it can a negative side. There are dice ranges that give some type of symbol on '1' and others on '6' and it can get confusing if those are mixed together. Have played before against someone who got out a sack of dice that must have had a dozen different dice sets in that they'd collected over 20 years, and everything from tiny (travel set or something) dice up to one giant novelty one that would floor a metal dreadnought if it bounced across the board and hit it. Trying to read all of the dice when you had a large volume rolled was pretty challenging.

I think something like that is fine for casual play, but don't think I would be too keen on something like that if I came across it in a tournament.

My rules of dice are pretty simple;

1) The dice must have nicely contrasting pips vs. the material itself. I can't fathom people buying dice like this:



There are loads of perfectly contrasting dice, why settle for stuff which becomes a nightmare to read during a game? Dice foul!

2) Avoid fancy dice if they're equally hard or silly to read, a trap that GW falls into. These are an example from Blood and Plunder...maybe attractive to some, but the opposite of quick and easy to read:



(they even changed the dice for their next Kickstarter, lol)

GW dice with roman numerals..."cute", but not useful.



Just...no...no GW.



Dice fouls!

3) Do not use a symbol on the '1', and the '6'...in fact skip the "failure" face whatever it is. Flames of War/Battlefront made this mistake back 10 years or more ago when they released custom faction dice for their WW2 line of armies, and the country's icon was on the '1' which was more or less a failure on every roll. Most games, like 40K reward a higher roll, lots of special effects key off of it...so keep your symbol as a sign of something good. Skip the skull on a '1' nonsense.

4) Holy crap, buy a set of dice. The simplest (and arguably most pedantic) dice foul...'bag o' dice'. Dice are cheap, like really cheap. round $5-6 shipped on eBay or Amazon in many cases. I should clarify this is just a personal pet peeve of mine, and less of a dice foul. Seeing guys show up with a bag of random D6 dice in a variety of shapes, sizes, ages, etc...makes keeping track of rolls a bit more difficult, particularly special weapons, etc.



No. Buy some dice.

I'm a bit of a dice geek. I like custom dice for most of my armies, games, etc. My preference is to purchase 30 D6 dice from Chessex, 10 of one colour, 20 of another. I do have custom army logos engraved on the '6' face. But my dice are easily read and consistent. For Christmas, B-days I'll often order friends a similar set-up for their armies.

 Elbows wrote:
Just...no...no GW.

That's the blighters. Horrible to read mid-game.

I think it's best to use plain dice with a high contrast, subtract misses/fails first, and make sure you roll where your opponent can see. If you're going to use a dice app, use it on a tablet, not a phone.

I have a couple of sets of custom dice (GC and DG) for 40k, as well as the aforementioned Blood and Plunder dice and some Warmachine: Tactics ones, but I usually just use normal dice during a game. Makes things easier on myself and my opponent. The custom dice just look pretty

 Skinnereal wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
Just...no...no GW.

That's the blighters. Horrible to read mid-game.

I own a set of those, but I tend to use the fancy ones to represent Command Points. Ditto on the Death Guard dice, they look ace, but roll like arse due to the rubber filling inside and are obnoxious to read.

My two current sets of army dice:

 Elbows wrote:
My two current sets of army dice:

Consistent, with logos on 6s and the 1s on show. Readable, too.

Eh Outside of the Black one the space marine dice arent that bad.

at least it isnt the fething tzeench one.

The Nurgle dice always throw me for a loop.

 Skinnereal wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
My two current sets of army dice:

Consistent, with logos on 6s and the 1s on show. Readable, too.

And 'normal' size. Which is nice. I don't know and cannot explain why it's nice. It just is.

Yeah, I'm not sure why, but I like 16mm better than 12mm, though I do like the Dark Imperium "oddball" size GW went with in the boxed set, maybe 14mm?

The bigger dice feel better to me, though I don't do any armies which need to throw 90 dice per unit. I can see where you'd want 12mm smaller dice for that kind of stuff.

I personally hate symbolled dice. I never know if its a 6 or a 1, especially skulls. Is that a 1 or a 6? Everything in warhammer has skulls, is this good or bad. Just use the normal dot dice. I would use Casino dice if they are smaller, but I have about 3 colors. I normally have 1 color for hits (blue) 1 color for wounds (white), and then a few off color dice (green) for special weapons.

I'm pretty happy with my Custodes dice - look decent and readable. I do spend 10 seconds telling my opponent before the game that a skull is a one and the Custodes symbol is a 6. Never been a problem.

I am contractually obligated to use Dakka dice myself:



A pretty little Dakka Dakka logo on the six side, the dice are easy to read and my opponents can use them as well.

I've got a friend with some D6s with Japanese numerals on; they're annoying.

Not as annoying as some of the Flames of War dice where they did one batch with the symbol on the 1, and then years later, another batch which were identical except for the symbol on the 6.

These days, I mostly use one of GW's cubes - 25 D6, a scatter and an artillery dice, and I can use the cube itself as a turn counter. That lives in the same bag as all the card deacks and counters, so I only need to lift my army, my iPad and one bag with all the bits in.

Gangs of Rome uses Roman Numeral dice, and includes the numerals into the mechanics - roll a die to move a mob; on a 1,2 or 3 it stays still, on a 4+ it moves that many inches in the direction of the point of the V.

Nice! Custom dice also help me from losing them...no confusion whose dice are whose.

I like fancy dice to horde (bright colours please!), but no so much to play with as they're often hard to read, confusing or both

and if they've got symbols on they need to be on one face only (I've played with folk who 'made a mistake' over which is the 1 and which is the 6 )

the worst is where folk mix sets of dice so some are symbol=6 and others are symbol=1, that's just plain bad form

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
the worst is where folk mix sets of dice so some are symbol=6 and others are symbol=1, that's just plain bad form

Oh yes, I know that one guy who does that. I tend to keep mine sorted or only pick from the same sets for my rolls. Chessex almost always have a fancy symbol on the "6" facing, so easy-peasy. Just keep the older GW dice away, when they had an annoying habit of putting the symbol on the "1" facing, argh.

 Primark G wrote:
The Nurgle dice always throw me for a loop.

Seconded. I can't stand those dice and have a super hard time reading them.

I feel like a jerk when I played against the dude at the local "questioning" all of his dice rolls. At a glance I couldn't tell you what number was rolled and was like "Are you sure that's a 4 not a 3?" Eventually I just ended up taking his word for it but I hate those dice.

The Nurgle dice would benefit from a brown wash or something to make the boils more easily readable. Or politely ask your opponent to not use them at all.

Great looking dice, but they roll poorly and are a pain to read off properly.

I only use dice with normal, clear dots. I have a couple of ‘special’ dice with symbols on the 6 but I usually only use them to track things rather than for rolling in big batches.

I’m fine with people using symbol dice as long as the symbols are all exactly the same. I played against someone using the DA dice the other day. All DA icons are 6, all skulls are 1, and although the rest of the sides use little sword icons, they are at least arranged exactly like regular ‘dot’ dice would be. After a few minutes I was fine reading them.

The issue always comes when they’re mixed in with other things, or all have different symbols on the 6 or whatever.

Or when the symbols for different things are all annoyingly similar (see the terrible Necromunda dice)