# What am I doing wrong? 17 lance shots, one immobilized rhino?



## clever handle (Dec 14, 2009)

as the title says, I'm packing 17 lances (guess which army I'm currently playing...) at 1700 points and I'm consistantly failing to wreck armour. For every game I'm able to one-shot a landraider I have a dozen where entire rounds of shooting are unable to pry armor open to get at the squishy bits inside. I know that a large chunk of that has to be poor luck but it is consistant.

Math-hammer wise I should be pulling destroying 1+ vehicles per turn (73% chance to destroy 1+...)

Example: turn one I pump 17 lance shots into a valkery - highest result is a crew stunned. Turn two after losing a ravager & raider to return fire I'm now able to put 13 lances into the same god damned valkery - this time only a crew shaken - my opponent actually destroyed his valkery by scattering into it with a battlcannon...

My buddy has been using a rune priest w/ the no-fly zone power which effectively neutrilized my entire skimmer based army (guess who I'm playing yet?) & he's parked inside a rhino w/ a 9-body meat shield - I can't even get through the AV11 armor plating

I read lists posted with FAR less AT than I'm packing, how do you guys do it?


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## Aramoro (Oct 7, 2009)

Buy different dice?


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## Lord_Zull (Feb 15, 2011)

Bigger dice usually roll better (this works for me at least).


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## Djinn24 (Jan 12, 2008)

Sounds like you pissed the dice gods off.


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## clever handle (Dec 14, 2009)

as a note: My "main" army is slaaneshi CSM - my blastmasters blow the fuck out of tanks left right & center... fucking karma.

how many players get pissed off when they roll nothing but 5's & 6's to hit because they KNOW they're going to immediately balance out by rolling nothing but 1's & 2's for effect?


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## Necrosis (Nov 1, 2008)

You might want to try some melta lances. There not as good as melta guns but they might allow you to pop some vehicles since they are ap1.


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## ArmyC (Jan 22, 2010)

I think I agree with bigger dice.

Most know that the dimpled dice skew the roll toward a 1. I think the study rolled 21% 1's rather than the expected 17%.

If the dimples are the problem, then larger dice should smooth out that effect.

The alternative is to drill dimples on the 2 side and color them in. That way each die has 2 fives. It raises the average roll from 3.5 to 4. That has helped my rolls tremendously.


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## Zaden (Oct 21, 2008)

ArmyC said:


> The alternative is to drill dimples on the 2 side and color them in. That way each die has 2 fives. It raises the average roll from 3.5 to 4. That has helped my rolls tremendously.


Lol..is this a serious post? ..in the Tactics forum?


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## Sephyr (Jan 18, 2010)

One question: are you letting the enemy vehicles get cover more than you should?

Don't just unload lance fire on vehicles. Maneuver to get shots without the cover save whenever possible. And despite the lance rule, sometimes it pays to try and get a shot at weaker armor; S8 is not quite killy against AV12!


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## clever handle (Dec 14, 2009)

... If I'm going to go that far why not turn my ones into sixes? Make my archon invulnerable to everything except shiled breaker rounds


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## clever handle (Dec 14, 2009)

Sephyr said:


> One question: are you letting the enemy vehicles get cover more than you should?
> 
> Don't just unload lance fire on vehicles. Maneuver to get shots without the cover save whenever possible. And despite the lance rule, sometimes it pays to try and get a shot at weaker armor; S8 is not quite killy against AV12!


this is without coversaves. Those odds I gave in my OP are purely based on unobscured vehicles AV12+.


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## Cyleune (Nov 10, 2010)

I've had this same problem a few times before, but usually I'm good with about 15 DL's.

I've come to accept that the army of Dark Elves has really really really bad luck because with 15 Lances I manage about 1 or 2 vehicles a turn, while my Eldar army (which at 2k (same as DE) has 6 BL's) manage the same amount with less than half the firepower, and lower BS.


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## Jack Mac (Apr 29, 2009)

Welp, I don't hear anything wrong. However...do you spread out your fire? 
Switch targets once you cause any damage result strong enough to stop your current target annoying you next round.


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## DarKKKKK (Feb 22, 2008)

Dice are dice. They can hate you but you gotta teach the bad ones a lesson. Roll all of your dice and take out the 1s then roll them again and take out the 1s again and just keep going with that until you get down to that last dice that rolled a 1. Put all of your dice in a circle around that last dice and SMASH that dice with a hammer! Its making an example of it for the other dice. :mrgreen:


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## Fallen (Oct 7, 2008)

buy more dice, when one color starts to suck switch it up. i usually have to do this once a game. but i also make a "dead" pool of dice that dont make any 2+ thing.


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## TimberWolfA (Jan 12, 2010)

The first thing that you need to do is learn the essential rule of "Quit when you get a result." 

Let's say you shoot at a Valkyrie and get a 'Crew Stunned', DO NOT FIRE AT THAT VALKYRIE AGAIN IN THE SAME TURN (Oversimplification). The point is that that Valkyrie is no threat to you until after your next turn, quit while you're ahead. If you shoot at a vehicle until you get Shaken or Stunned (or Wrecked or Destroyed) and then immediately choose a target without a result on it this turn, you will do much better.

Example, you have 17 Lances and in a turn of firing those you score 5 Crew Shaken and 3 Crew Stunned results and you followed my rule. That's 8 vehicles not firing guns at you next turn. If you keep firing at that ONE Valkyrie, hoping to get a better result, then you have 1 vehicle not firing and seven more that shouldn't be firing, kicking your butt. When you're playing Dark Eldar, that's a bad idea.

Finally, if you manage to put a result on ALL of your opponent's vehicles and put a hurting on any footsloggers he has rolling around, you may then go back to trying to kill that ONE vehicle that you really wanted dead.

I'm giving away super secret 'skilled player' techniques here, but I don't care if I get kicked out of the club. They forgot to send my membership card anyway.


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## clever handle (Dec 14, 2009)

TimberWolfA, I'm familiar with the idea - and it's one I try to put to practice, but where I seem to be struggling is in the actual glance / penetrate roll - of course, anytime I get a damned pen I seem to roll a 1 or 2 but even getting there is the problem.

I know that once a tank isn't shooting I should leave it alone but I'm struggling with the getting there. Recognizing that I seem to be having horrendous luck with the dice rolls I'm really after some advice on what other players do to mitigate this issue. I've been playing DE for a while now and what I've found kind of ironic is the games where my "luck" is good are the games where I don't really need it - typically pick up games against poor generals / poor lists. But in games where I'm against a decent opponent with a decent list my "luck" seems to fall apart. It has as far as I can tell nothing to do with generalship - we're talking turn one, pitched battle here, I'm able to prioritize threats properly, work cover to my advantage, etc but DE more than any other army can win or lose a game in a single bad phase, and aside from packing in as many AT shots as I can (which with 17 lances/blasters at 1700 points I feel I've done succesfully) to allow for redundancy I'm not sure what I can do to recover. Tips?

*note* folks may _feel_ that buying multiple cubes of dice helps them out but aside from insignificant manufacturing tollerences any one dice from any one cube is just as likely to roll a one when you don't need it as any other. So the adage of using different dice is nothing more than superstition.

sample armylist


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## Fallen (Oct 7, 2008)

clever handle said:


> *note* _Removed by the Inquisition_


:grin: :victory:


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## ohiocat110 (Sep 15, 2010)

clever handle said:


> I've been playing DE for a while now and what I've found kind of ironic is the games where my "luck" is good are the games where I don't really need it - typically pick up games against poor generals / poor lists. But in games where I'm against a decent opponent with a decent list my "luck" seems to fall apart.


Any tabletop wargamer (except naturally lucky people, which I believe do exist) will recognize this phenomenon. Better opponents can squeeze out those extra modifiers, play ranges, and shape the battlefield to their strategy better than n00bs or even fairly experienced players. Those small modifiers and other intangible advantages are what provide them with that extra edge that appears as good luck. 

Some of it is also mental. Thinking negatively may not influence how the dice fall, but it may cause you to get distracted or lazy and miss opportunities or forget to enforce a rule. Note, I'm not saying "you" personally...this happens to me sometimes and probably to most competitive gamers. I placed second instead of first at a Battletech tournament last year because I got sloppy after I had a few bad rolls even though I was still in the game. I stopped following my strategy to just try and land hits, and in the process forgot to remind the other player he should have had a weapon explosion. I still could have won even though I was behind.

I'm not saying you're a bad player by any means, but those are the kind of things that show up as "bad luck" in a close game. If it's a competitive setting, push yourself to remain sharp and stick to your game plan even if things go wrong at first. You'll probably see your luck improve as a result.


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## Malferion (Mar 9, 2011)

i suggest a ritual sacrifice to the dice gods.
Buy some model that looks like a goat, paint a small red pentagram on your floor, place the model in the pentagram then smash it with a hammer. Then the dice gods shall be appeased and you will have divine favor in your future games!!


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## Masked Jackal (Dec 16, 2009)

ohiocat110 said:


> Some of it is also mental. Thinking negatively may not influence how the dice fall, but it may cause you to get distracted or lazy and miss opportunities or forget to enforce a rule. Note, I'm not saying "you" personally...this happens to me sometimes and probably to most competitive gamers. I placed second instead of first at a Battletech tournament last year because I got sloppy after I had a few bad rolls even though I was still in the game. I stopped following my strategy to just try and land hits, and in the process forgot to remind the other player he should have had a weapon explosion. I still could have won even though I was behind.
> 
> I'm not saying you're a bad player by any means, but those are the kind of things that show up as "bad luck" in a close game. If it's a competitive setting, push yourself to remain sharp and stick to your game plan even if things go wrong at first. You'll probably see your luck improve as a result.


This is a *very* big part of what people say is luck. Memory of events is much stronger for negative memories, and in general, people sometimes have a habit of lowering their gaming standards if they believe they're going to lose, making more mistakes, and so on. Keep your head up and stick to the plan, just as this guy said, sometimes it won't make a difference, but when it does, it *will* be satisfying enough to make you do it again and it will up your win count by a good margin I'd say. Also, placebo effect, if you believe you're going to lose against a good player, chances are you'll lose. Think before every match 'I can do this if I keep trying.' An idealistic perspective pays for itself, if you can keep it.


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## Orochi (Jan 28, 2009)

Buy smooth dice. All about weight and what not.


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## clever handle (Dec 14, 2009)

With dimpled dice that aren't engineered to counter the removal of material the 6 should appear more often simply because the opposing side - the 1 - has less material removed & is therefore heavier & when falling from a height more likely to be the side that settles down if dropped with any angular momentum.

*edit*
the discussion regarding mindset is of course spot on - after having a turn or two of absolute failure with lance penetrations I'm usually ready to throw in the towel but the times I don't I'm usually able to fight to at minimum a hard fought minor loss. Rarely do I find myself getting absolutely spanked - there have been games where my entire army has fired at 13 wounds worth of thunderwolves & failed to wipe the squad, only to sit back & watch the survivors power through a squad of wyches, AND my archon + incubi unit... that is disheartening... (couple that with the no fly zone power immobilizing 5/8 skimmers in a single turn...)

When I'm playing in my group's basement we frequently have to walk away from the gaming table to preserve our sanity. You've probably never seen guys who would be so good at axis and allies. I've had a game against the spacewolves player where in 6 turns neither of us saw the high side of a single dice - that is what prevented us from getting to turn 7.... unfortunately rockets can still destroy a raider rolling 3's...


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## TimberWolfA (Jan 12, 2010)

I'm completely on board with the mental picture thing. I've got a buddy who gets flustered when he plays and even if he starts getting lucky, he usually tanks his game with bad decisions after he starts a down slide. He's even a ton less fun to play with once he gets that way. I want to just call the game at the first sign of it.

I have to admit that I HATE glass hammer style of play. Win on T1 or go home is zero fun for me. Thus I won't touch Dark Eldar with a 10-foot pole (other than to mem. their codex and know their rules better than the guy piloting the army across the table).

I can only encourage you to be persistent and patient. If you can bring yourself to make the right decisions, no matter how much you want to blow up XYZ, and prevent your opponent from firing with his vehicles for all of turn one and turn two and turn three, you will eventually start blowing them up. You shouldn't have to worry about models getting into your lines because you play DE, the fastest most maneuverable army there is. At least that's how it's supposed to work. In practice, many armies have some deadly AV weapons on their Infantry models sitting in cover and you'll lose vehicles every turn until you've been outlasted.

I'd try a few of your ravagers with the alternate gun choice (name slipping my mind) (I just am not sure that they're getting their fair shake/workout, since they're still very good against light AV, with much better shot output) and, as sad as it seems to do so, take Trueborn squads of 3 with 2 Darklance and a Raider with Darklance. You'll have to lose your assault units, (which are awesome), but DE just don't need the EXTRA Anti-Infantry output.


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## LukeValantine (Dec 2, 2008)

Got to love human's, and their negative cognitive biases.


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