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How do!

Felt it was time for a thread based entirely on opinion, where there are ultimately no right or wrong answers. And as the title suggests, it’s about dice and that.

In terms of context, dice seem to be a fairly, well, I’ll call it a sensitive subject, though sensitive is over egging the pudding somewhat.

To kick off, I’ll explain my preference for My Dice, and my Dice Rolling.

Much as I do like my fancy Dan dice, and own a fair number, I do prefer plain old D6. No symbols, just dots. Super easy to read, and no way to try to fudge your results. And I prefer uniform coloured dice for each roll. Recently, I’ve been trying to use a different colour set for each roll when resolving attacks. Example?

Black D6 for the To Hot roll
Red D6 for the To Wound roll
White D6 for the Damage roll.

Why? Just simply clarity for myself and my opponent. This way, anything previously rolled but not recovered from the board won’t confuse the result of the following roll.

Now that’s just Me Being Me, and it’s not a standard I expect in return, other than the dice being easily read.

But, when it comes to working out the result of any roll? Here I get far stricter. Just as I’ll give you a chance to look at the actual result before working out what’s what, I ask the same of my opponent. And, I expect the norm to be pick up your failures first, not your successes. It’s not that I don’t trust you Dear Reader, just that I’ve had opponents who roll fast and pick up fast, claiming as many dice as they can as successes before either of us could possibly have known.

And in terms of gathering enough dice for the roll? Please do break it down. I prefer groups of 5, as I find it easiest. So if I need, say 20 dice, I’ll gather four groups of five, and check you agree I’ve the right number.

There’s also I feel virtue in being absolutely clear about exactly what I’m rolling, and what I’m targeting. Not to mention how I’m working out how many dice to Chuck.

As for sharing my dice? I do get why others won’t, but it doesn’t really bother me (though, due to the Lager Lurgy, there’s a definite good sense not to share argument!)

Well. This turned out to be slightly more OCD then I expected! But let’s hear the takes of others. And remember, no right or wrong answers here!

*edit, changed the thread title a bit*

I too prefer simple, easy to read dice. Good contrast in colors so it's quick to glance at across the table.

And yeah, I will always walk through all the stats and modifiers involved, to announce what I need on whatever roll to my opponent and wait for their agreement. For bucket of dice systems like 40k/AoS, I'll roll all the stuff then start picking up failures, leaving anything I'm claiming is successful on the table so they're verifiable by my opponent. If I goof and pick up a successful die, then it's my penalty and I live with it. From there I usually pick up what's left and roll for wounds or whatever, following the same deal (announcing modifiers, etc.).

Mainly, I always make sure that my opponent can clearly see what I rolled, and knows what I was rolling for. I generally ask my opponents to show me the same courtesy. Luckily, I generally only play with buddies so this isn't too much of a problem, but in the rare times I'm playing in an event it usually likewise isn't a problem early in the game after I've shown that behavior first--I find most people will respond fairly well to "oh, yeah, ok, that's easy to do and nice that you let me know all that stuff" and will just start doing it too. If it is a problem with them appearing to fudge rolls and so on, then if I'm at an event I'll ask for a judge or something in as non-confrontational way as possible (I've only ever had to do this once). If it's a random pick up game in an LGS (years since the last time I did that, honestly), then I'll just find a way to quickly end the game and not play that person again.

What you just said - I've been doing that for as long as I started gaming. These are the obvious things one should do. I feel sorry that you have to play with/against people who don't play fair, though.

I never share my special dice. I just bring a pack of trash hooker-dice I give to everyone to use, who don't bring their own.

That is possibly the most awful, and yet funny description of dice I’ve ever read!

Sorry I pick out successes not failures as the successes are obviously a)luckier and b) precisely the right number rather than having to remember exactly how many. I like relatively simple dice but often use another dice colour for different weapons rolling them at the same time. This is to speed up play and I remember to state which weapons are which dice before I roll them. I also consider saying anything but a one to your opponent is cheating.

I expect that he "picks up the failures" to allow his opponent to see the successes. I try to do the same.

I then scoop up the successes and roll those, eliminating the failures before moving on again.

I generally announce my "X+" to Hit / Wound / Save before rolling. Gives my opponent a chance to correct me if I forget a rule like hard-to-hit or something like that. "Oh, right, camo nets... 5+ to hit, not 4+."


I have a *strong* preference for opaque, high-contrast dice with Pips, rather than numbers on them. At least for 40k / d6 purposes. I find "fancy" dice... for a game like 40k... to be irritating. No worries for RPG type games where you're running 1 or 2 dice at a time, but when rolling cups of dice at a time, I like to be able to see results from across the table.

I like to see a die make at least one full "roll" on the table, unless the die has been given a real good shake. Exceptions are made, like if you have a literal handful of dice to roll and a couple more or less drop down and sit I don't mind. If you managed to manipulate 1 / 15 dice rolled I feel that's impressive enough skill that I'll let it slide. But for a single or 2-die roll, I like to see at least one full rotation to be sure of a fair roll.

I prefer bright solid color dice with a clearly contrasting #s/pips. No crazy swirly /marbled things, no goofy slashes or whatever that you have to take a moment to tell what was rolled I prefer all the dice for any of my armies to match. Thus I don't have forces that use both red & blue dice etc. One case contains only red dice, another blue, that one has bright green.....

Depending upon who I'm playing, I'll walk things through the modifiers at least once.

I'll count out the total dice needed for the moment.
Then I'll roll 1/2 of them - mostly due to table space - so that they actually roll.
We'll look at the dice & I pull out any failures.
Failures get placed out of the way to one side, successes the other way.
Then I'll repeat the process with the 2nd 1/2.

Then comes the wounds/saves/etc/whatever. Same process.

well I pick out whatever there are fewest of. So if I roll mostly fails I will just pick up the sucesses to save time..

Its sort of embarrassing but I play exclusively with black & Yellow dice to match the colour of my army scheme coz I'm wierd like that.

I would however play with a symbol on the 6 dice if/when I can pluck up the courage to get in touch with chessex and make me my custom dice but its just not a priority right now. (as long as some are Yellow and some are black.. coz what you gunna do...)

What I hate most of all is small asss vomit colour dice + random asortment of dice some people use... Tracking those is a pain if they are all different colours which are ahrd to read. One guy in particular has these horrible purpleish/speckly dice bleeeugh...

Here's one for you - use of a dice tray (or box lid to serve as an impromptu dice tray) to both contain the little rascals and try to eliminate the "cocked die" phenomenon. Not to mention reducing the chance of a collision between miniature and dice.

Especially now we no longer need to roll things like scatter dice near a point something is scattering from, they tend to strike me as a cleaner, or more efficient, way of handling such things.

Ohhhhhhh, this is so in my wheelhouse of odd gamer behavior.


First: I don't like symbol D6 with the exception of Scatter die and Artillery die because the symbols are necessary. Everything else I own is pips only. I also own at least 4 colors of dice in my WFB dice tote and 4 colors in my 40K dice tote, both of which have dice the exact color of my main army for both systems. Sky blue to match my High Elves, and blue and red swirl for my Crimson Fists. I'm currently looking to nab some black with white pips for my Beastmen army, I've had gak rolls as of late...

Second: I buy bricks of Chessex dice in whatever color I like. I have to maintain the exact 36 I started with. One of my old hunter green set got lost when I was playing at my Armory and I couldn't find it. I stopped using the dice for the game, dumped the pile into my brother's indiscriminate pile of dice, and picked up a replacement brick of Golden Recon. I count all dice as I clean up post game.

Third: My opponents are strictly forbidden from touching my dice in game. At my old club my friend Joe was playing against me using the store's Tyranids and he hadn't brought his own dice, using the store's wicker basket of cacophony instead. Rather than walk the 5 feet it would have taken to get dice out of the bucket to resolve some rolling, he grabbed at least one of every color of dice I owned and rolled them. From that moment on I couldn't roll higher than 3 on any roll I made except LD rolls which landed box cars consistently. It was a laughworthy moment for all in the store except me. I wound up getting rid of all those dice and starting over again with fresh bricks. From that moment on I've never let anyone touch my dice. My brother did it once handing me back wound dice and the rest of the match was utter gak as far as rolling. I use wound counters now.

As far as what I pick out? Whichever is the least. If I score 3 hits out of 20 I will pick out the hits and sweep the rest of the dice aside.

Also, if I have some odd thing where I need to roll a LOT of specifically high rolls (ie. repeat 6's or whatnot) I will toss the die back in the pile, rub the pile so as to not get the same die again, pick up another without looking at the pile and roll it quickly onto the table. This seems odd, but one twerp at my FLGS in Ft. Wayne accused me of having loaded dice after I rolled 2 6's in a row, suggesting I let them bake in the sun to "cock" them.

 greatbigtree wrote:
I expect that he "picks up the failures" to allow his opponent to see the successes. I try to do the same.

I then scoop up the successes and roll those, eliminating the failures before moving on again.

Yes me too - pick up failures, leave the successes on the board. I have played against people a couple of times who have done the opposite, leaving only the failures, and it definitely felt a bit odd. Not saying that the person wasn't honest (although it's a lot easier to cheat doing it that way, if you wanted to) but the speed that people sometimes go with the dice, as though its a card trick, means it less likely you'll make a mistake leaving successes (or at least if you do they will be in your opponents favour).

The other annoying habit I have seen is someone holding the dice in their hand and almost hand-planting them onto the table, rather than rolling. Again I think you would have to be some kind of casino trickster to actually be able to choose what you want the dice to show, but it doesn't feel the 'right way' to do it

Hate the symbol dice. I will go as far as refusing to play someone if they are using them, especially the particularly obnoxious ones and especially after I had the displeasure of playing a Tau player who insisted on using the 8th Ed command/stratagem dice as his normal D6s.

As for the “no touching” thing brought up ITT? Nothing makes me more suspicious of you. If you don’t let me use your dice for whatever reason then you clearly have something shifty going on. Been burnt too many times there.

I have a bag of Dakka Dice that I use now for my 40k, they're pips with a big "DakkaDakka" in place of the 6 pips.

They're different colours but as my army has multiple weapon types, I generally keep things consistent and say "pink dice are X, grey dice are Y" and it smoothens the gaming experience out for my opponent so I'm not throwing a flurry of colours and hoping it sticks.

In terms of etiquette when going through misses and hits, failures are always removed first, then rerolls take place with eligible dice, then move on to the next phase. It's actually something I learned from an article here.

Regarding people using my dice, I don't like it, not because of luck or anything, but you shouldn't touch other people's things without asking first. I also hate people "helping" to pick out hits or misses as I'd rather do things myself and not rely on another person to be honest during a game of dice. Realistically, you should bring enough dice for yourself.

I have seen people use low contrast dice in the past and recently. GW releases army dice and they're so hard to read sometimes from 4 feet away and it makes it very easy for my opponent to pick up the odd extra hit or miss. I tried to use some GW dice in the past with the Dark Reaper aspect warrior symbol on 6s but they're small and low contrast so I shelved them for better and bigger dice that I could read quickly.

I'm okay with symbol dice so long as the icon is only on the 6. Some of the dice with icons on the 1 and 6 are just annoying. I feel like the necromunda dice have got things right. Like the bright silver orlock dice with the black pips, only the symbol on the 6. Some GW dice are better than others. I feel like AoS and 40k have gone too weird with the wacky dice. But specialist games have nailed it down, gorgeous dice all around.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Hate the symbol dice. I will go as far as refusing to play someone if they are using them, especially the particularly obnoxious ones and especially after I had the displeasure of playing a Tau player who insisted on using the 8th Ed command/stratagem dice as his normal D6s.

As for the “no touching” thing brought up ITT? Nothing makes me more suspicious of you. If you don’t let me use your dice for whatever reason then you clearly have something shifty going on. Been burnt too many times there.

Shifty, eh? What I WOULD do is let people use my WFB batch if I'm playing my 40K batch and vice versa. And by all means if it meant that much to some feltcher who wanted to accuse me of cheating I'll let him choose which dice tray I use and they can use the other. Doesn't matter, just don't want the ones I'm currently rolling to be touched.

Why not? I’ve shared my dice with loads of people.

If someone comes along and says “This is my special set that I use for leadership” or whatever; you’re immediately going to get some dodgy looks as I would question why, because if it quacks like a duck then it looks like weighted dice.

Because I don't want someone to roll successfully with MY dice. Those are mine and the sixes, as well as ones, belong to me only.
More so, if someone would drop my precious dice on the floor (I'm even scared to think about them chipping, getting lost, etc, etc), I couldn't really do anything. Just imagine how one should react if he would be responsible for losing/damaging my,say, Thousand Sons dice that now go over $50 on ebay and I would ask him to cover the damage by buying me a whole set, because it wouldn't be complete anymore.

I never fething said I only used them for special rolls. I said one significant superstitious experience followed by other minor ones made me believe in a dice jinx.

Let's make this perfectly clear from this point on: any further accusations of me cheating or being dishonest will be interpreted as a personal attack and reported accordingly.

I do remember the time we found a die someone had left behind. It had pips on it.... every side had 5 pips.

I thought it was an ingenious way to cheat. Sixes would draw too much attention, but 5's? A couple guaranteed 5's in every roll of the dice would be game changing but not draw too much attention.

We never figured out who it belonged to, but we had our suspicions.

Lord knows I haven't actually played a game with people i don't know in... who knows how long. But I'm not all that fussy. Ive always removed failures first because it just feels more right?

I just have a whole mess of dice of all different kinds right now though and I could see that bugging someone

Not sure if it's relevant to the current discussion, however I tend to stay away from the usual GW dice, they're cheap round cornered "Chessex" style dice. I went from those to using a set of Koplow clear red square corner dice and noticed a marked improvement in their "randomness". Less one's have been rolled at least.

I have noticed GW are starting to produce square cornered dice, but I'm not sure of their quality.

My gaming buddy and I also started using a dice tray (currently just the GW Know No Fear bunker/box) as we found dice were sliding or falling flat rather than actually rolling on our gaming surfaces.

Thought about building my own dice tower, but feel that's a step too far, plus I'm not sure where I would store it/carry it for transport, unless I make it flat pack.

I do like the idea of using multicoloured dice that Mad Doc Grotsnik has put forward, never thought of doing that, even though my gaming buddy and I do occasionally get confused over which die have been cast, but I haven't been able to find any Koplow square edged diced I like the colour of, besides the red one's I bought, in the UK/at a reasonable price.

Seems like most people are on the same page for dice rolling. I'm no different.

Roll in the open,
Declare what is being rolled for and applicable modifiers,
Pick up failures and allow my opponent to acknowledge the result before moving on.

For the dice themselves...
They need to be perfectly consistent in design. Meaning... All the same size. All pips or all numbers. Symbols need to be all 6's or all 1's.
I don't mind if the dice are different colors, but the pips or numbers must all be the same color. This is simply an aspect of visibility.

Speaking of visibility, I find that light glare can sometimes make dice with a polished surface and pips difficult to read.

My personal preference for dice is 12mm in size, matte finish with numbers.

I'm pretty easy going with dice.
I usually have a brick of dice in a pattern/color to match my army along with a small bag of random dice in simple colors (red and white or white and black) to mark wounds or CP or whatever.

I always remove failures then count the successes. If it's a really small roll or a really unlikely roll (roll 10+ dice needing 6's to hit) I might just count the small number of success and roll them separately with random dice to wound - speeds the game up and still leaves the dice facing for opponent's confirmation.

People occasionally touch me dice it's never bothered me. Most people never do it - it happens every once in a while when maybe a single attack wounds and the wound roll bounces over to my opponent they might pick it up and roll their save in the process of rolling it back over to me.

I don't mind symbols as long as they're only on one face. If they're my dice I want the symbol to be on the 6. I was actually going to buy the new Necron dice but I thought the price was insane and the symbol on 1 and 6 put me off.

My odd superstitious quirks - When doing a unit ability like "reroll 1's to hit" I'll use the same dice. When paying CP to reroll a failure I leave the failing dice alone (with its shame) and roll a brand new dice.

Oh... One more thing... Anyone who plays with casino dice can seriously feth off.

How picky? On level of 0 to 100 about 5. If dlce are partlcularly hard to read i would be doh but whatever.

Roll as fast as you feel comfortable. I have zero interest watching do you cheat or not(if you cheat then i already won in life anyway). Prefer speed as gw games require ridiculous amount of rolling. If it's not big deciding roll i might even be taking photos or checking rules/premeasuring stuff for next turn to ensure speedy process while you roll that 40 hit rolls, 60 wound rolls(yes. More wound rolls than　hit rolls ). If roll is big one that can change course like 2 bonereaper　catapults vs teclis i'm paying attention but not countin# individually that much. Quick glance shots is it "yes" or "gulp"

I used to have dice sets that matched my forces, but now I really do not care. If it has pips I will roll it. I am a dice whore that way.

However, I shy away from game systems that use custom and unique dice.

I wound up buying a brick that matched my shared Dogs Of War army on the spot for a game where I was playing them. Detailed it in a batrep. I'd like to do it for each force.

 Easy E wrote:

However, I shy away from game systems that use custom and unique dice.

Yeah, custom dice are somewhat of a turn off for me, too. Especially when the system still winds up being a "hit on a 4+" due to the distribution of faces. X-Wing was tolerable to me for a bit (though other issues with that game eventually had me drop it), and I'm fine with the Block Dice in Blood Bowl, but more and more I find myself getting quickly disinterested in a game that has custom dice.

Edit: Gaslands is a big exception though; the Shift dice (even though there's a chart to let you convert normal d6 rolls) are totally fun.

Custom Dice a turn off? Yes actually it always seems to me to be a way to make your game design more exclusive without more original design.

Ohh btw heres a top tip:

You can get thse chalk bags/pouches normaly used for bouldering/climbing. So basically it sits at your hip and you can take and drop dice in and out like a big pocket for dice admin.