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Ok, so I was wondering if dice from a casino are a good investment or not in the game, and if so, how much should be paid for them?? I already know that you have to get the undrilled ones or they are off balance, but other than that, what else should I look for if I do get some?? Thanks for any help provided!!!

Casino Dice are expensive. Just look for "precision dice" on the internet and you'll find non-tumbled sharp dice that are good enough.
Casino Dice are special in that they're machined instead of moulded.

http://www.gamescience.com/
http://www.gamestation.net/

As for whether it's worth it, it's all up to you and what your goals are. The non-randomness of dice being rolled at the multitude that 40k demands is negligible. If you're going to be using those dice for "important" shots such as Lascannons, leadership checks, etc, then you should be expected to be fair and hand them over to your opponent to use occasionally.

Finally, some places discourage the use of Casino Dice because their heavy, sharp corners can heavily damage their foamcore terrain.

My opinion: not worth it.
I've considered getting Precision Dice though.

Yeah, casino dice are cool, and you can get them off ebay for cheap sometimes. The only bad thing about casino dice is that they chip on hard surfaces. So if you've got a soft felt covered table, then sweet; casino dice all the way. If you've got hard tables where you play; skip the casino dice, they are not meant to be used on hard surfaces.
I've got a bunch, but rarely use them for the chipping reasons.

I just wish they'd make smaller versions of Casino Dice such as the tiny moulded ones Chessex or GW sell. I don't like grabbing two handfulls of 3/4" dice to toss around.

Apart from potentially damaging terrain boards, they roll badly on normal surfaces, compromising the "truely random result" intention.
I would not use them whatever the price.

Not worth it.

1. They chip/scratch easily, throwing off your rolls.
2. People seem to think you are cheating if you are using them.
3. None of the great 40K players seem to obsess over their dice. In other words, its not the dice, its the player.

KGatch113 wrote:2. People seem to think you are cheating if you are using them.

Kind of ironic, but there's no helping some people.

Kroothawk wrote:Apart from potentially damaging terrain boards, they roll badly on normal surfaces, compromising the "truely random result" intention.
I would not use them whatever the price.

Dice aren't supposed to roll around a whole lot. Rolling around actually skews the results. Hence why good dice have sharp edges and Casino Dice are required to have them by law.
Although I agree, Casino Dice don't go well with Wargaming. Too big, heavy and dangerous (to terrain and models). Get precision dice instead.

I have them and I love them. When you roll them they bounce like twice at the most and slam down on a clear facing. They very seldom cock and they're very satisfying to roll.

And yes, casino dice have been proven repeatedly to roll closer to statistical averages and are much more fair. If you only roll them for certain things, then you are introducing unfairness again. Only get them if you are using them for everything and letting opponents use them.

I'd get them just because they are larger and I can physically see them better. However I acquired some similarly large dice recently so that need if filled.

I don't own them and likely never will. I'm not a huge fan of seeing them on the table top. I could care less about people's claims of randomness, etc.

My primary concern is the dice weight. They wreck havoc on models and the boards you play on. I've brought it up countless times to opponents at a GT game saying "i don't care you own them, roll them by your models." Every game i've had with them involved, my models usually end up getting hit, damaged, and chipped by casino dice. Its frustrating.

I put a lot of time into my armies, I ask for respect. My proposed recommendations, prepare to have opponents asked to share dice. I offer my dice to any opponent who has those casino dice, and explain the reason. If they decline, they are welcome to use those dice, but they will get the "are you serious" look if they bounce around into my models.

Personally would never bother with them.
Surely dice are dice and statistical averages (bar loading them) will always overide whatever benefits you think they may have?

So I'm a player of warmachine and as such use small amounts of dice when compared to the GW games (that I played in the 90's). A similar descusion occured on an other forum and I posted this:


Dice, the part we all rely upon in this hobby. I'm fascinated to see all the little quirks people have when then roll their dice. I've seen using one pair until they fail, then they go in a discard pile and a new pairing is created. Or as soon as a set roll extremely high they get discarded before they roll low on the next throw.

Anyways, on to other things. I'm slightly surprised that nobody has brought out the dakka article that is suppose to be from a university engineer. I say suppose to be as I have no proof either way and somebody over on the Focus and Fury (NSFW language) doesn't believe the article. So over on the pp forums themselves somebody has found this .pdf which I find has greater creditability than somebody who likes to swear over on forums. Pages 7 and 8 contain the results and the quote that the results "leave little doubt the dice results are biased." They also measured the dimensions of the dice and found that most had variations in lengths of sides.

So the GameScience Dice maker is right about other dice having poor quality and building a tower easily shows this to punters. The pdf I linked to also seems to say that having pips cut out doesn't affect the rolls as people think.* So we have the Dakka Dakka article saying that the pips affect the weight, the pdf saying it doesn't and the GameScience guy saying it's down to the imprecise manufacture of dice.

Personally, I can see that the imbalance of the pips removed weight or the imprecision of the sides could be the reason for the bias. What I do see is that cheap dice are not random enough for me. So I went and spent some money. I did my research and found that I had two main options, casino dice or backgammon dice as both these have to be fair as they are used for gambling. Both have to be thrown in a specific way though, be that against a wall in craps or in a dice cup for backgammon. As a dice cup is better for the environment of wargaming I went for the slightly more expensive route of backgammon dice. That said, I generally just throw them like normal as I haven't the skills to manipulate dice like some people.


*I'm unsure about this bit as I'm not practised in reading scientific papers. The quote is: "If the dice were biased in the manner Pearson assumed—namely due to pip-weight imbalance—we would expect the probabilities of the individual faces to follow a linear trend of -5, -3, -1, 1, 3, 5 for faces one through six, respectively. Fitting and testing for this pattern yields a p-value of 0.00005, allowing reliable rejection of the pip-weight-trend hypothesis." Can somebody confirm this for me?

yastobaal wrote:I'm unsure about this bit as I'm not practised in reading scientific papers. The quote is: "If the dice were biased in the manner Pearson assumed—namely due to pip-weight imbalance—we would expect the probabilities of the individual faces to follow a linear trend of -5, -3, -1, 1, 3, 5 for faces one through six, respectively. Fitting and testing for this pattern yields a p-value of 0.00005, allowing reliable rejection of the pip-weight-trend hypothesis." Can somebody confirm this for me?

Yes, that's a correct interpretation.

The Pearson article says (paraphrasing) sides with fewer pips are heavier and end up on the bottom. Since 1 & 2 are the fewest pips, we should expect 1&2 to end up on the bottom (therefore showing a bias towards 5s and 6s).

Labby showed (in his results) that there wasn't a bias towards 5s and 6s, rather (see p. 7) there's a bias towards 1s and 6s. One possible explanation for this is that the distance between the 1 & 6 sides is shorter (see p. 8), and therefore these sides tend to be more likely to show up.

Labby's explanation seems more plausable, and better supported, than Pearson's.

Casino dice cannot be randomized on a wargaming surface. Also, Casino dice can have their outcome directly influenced by rolling techniques which are easily done with single die or dual dice rolls, hence the cheating when people roll only important rolls on the special casino dice.

I have met an Iguard player who can roll 4+ with a 95% consistency with square dice and a rolling technique. Makes it rough when he can't fail a cover save.

If you are using Casino dice and want truly random results you must have a flat felt surface and either use a dice cup or a bank to eliminate influence from the roller. Since you see none of this in wargaming, I would rather the unknowable influence of unbalanced dice over the influenceable rolling of manipulated casino dice.

I would simply look for better quality board game dice and stay away from casino dice because casino dice on a wargaming surface is not random and is easier to cheat with.