# Dice Rolling Techniques



## Calamari (Feb 13, 2009)

I've been milling around the T'interweb today and I came across this 40k blog. I know you're going to say "Win at 40k? Dice techniques? He's a cheater!". But no, this guy just talks about them among other things linky. Now he raises an interesting point while discussing the techniques that people can use and makes an important distinction between 2 types of rolling, natural and practised.

He argues that natural rolling is just your brain unconcously trying to influence the dice roll, mainly by repeating previous actions that have led to a disired outcome. Practiced rolls are the result of concious thought and, well, practice.

What are you thoughts in general about rolling techniques? Obviously praticed rolls are tantamount to cheating but where is the line drawn between the two?


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## General. Gray Wolf (Apr 19, 2009)

Personaly I think a dice is random (unless fixed) and its always going to be random no matter how you roll them or what you are thinking at the time. I think its more the case of the person thinking "Ok this is going to be the best roll ever" then the person rolls alot of 6's is just luck really.
As for techniques I just roll the dice so they dont go all over the place! :grin:


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## Inquisitor Einar (Mar 6, 2009)

If you're holding dice in a certain manner, or roll them in a certain manner that actively influences how they roll and what result you get, you're cheating. Dice rolls should allways be utterly random.

The only legal form of dice influencing is to pray to the dice gods!


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## KhainiteAssassin (Mar 18, 2009)

Einar, then even touching the dice as a player you techniquly are cheating, since no matter how you hold the dice or throw them, your influencing how they come out.


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## Inquisitor Einar (Mar 6, 2009)

Not really.. I meant actively using physical actions to influence the randomness of the dice. ( ie, holding all the dice in your hand with all 1's up, then quickly turning them over and smacking them on the table so they don't have room to properly roll, giving you lots of sixes )


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## Bubblematrix (Jun 4, 2009)

Do you all "call or leave" when a die bounces onto the floor or off a table? as in:

"I call keep" to keep the roll - then scrabble around to not disturb the roll, or "I call leave" to make the roll not count and reroll onto the table?

I yelled "keep or leave" to a player the other day and they looked at me like I was mad, I've always been taught (and taught in turn) that it is bad luck not to?

And rolling to influence the outcome is wrong and is cheating.


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## Calamari (Feb 13, 2009)

Thats not realy rolling though is it Einar? :laugh:

Have a look on the blog, he tells you how to conciously influence the scatter dice.

The thing is, just by knowing about these techniques you are likley to start using them without realising what you are doing.


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## TerranRaida (Jul 28, 2009)

i've accepted that my dice hate me, and have totally unreliable rolling patterns

"ok, i need to make 5 5+ saves...oh look...all ones...well, gotta make that leadership test, i have leadership 10....what are the odds of 2 sixes..." also, scatter dice seems to like sending my shells back my way...


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## KarlFranz40k (Jan 30, 2009)

The idea of unconsiously rolling with a pattern wouldn't work anyway because every time you pick up the dice they will be in a different order.

However in my gaming group I used to have a problem with whiney players who claim a reroll every time the dice is stopped by, say, a tank. Obviously if it hadn't hit the tank the result would be different, but thats all part of the random-factor of dice-rolling. Although we do now reroll any floored dice, no matter what the outcome.


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## silverstone08 (May 6, 2009)

ok well in the store i play in the only common rule apears to be if it hits the floor reroll the dice. some player will check "cooked Dice" by placing another on top and if it rolls off then they reroll that dice while others will if its easy to tell take the result that is shown while some me included will just reroll obvious "Cooked Dice". 

another thingh i have noticed is that some players pick up the dice and simply drop them, meaning the dice might bounce once or twice and give a result quite often the same as what the dice were when they were in the rollers hand. the other way of rolling i find thats common and the way i do it is to take the dice in your hand and sort of throw them onto the table vegas crabs style whick menas that the dice give a much more random result. 

on the note of hitting terrain buildings etc where i play most players take the result no matter what is hit unless it is rolled off the table as mentioned previously or if the "dice is cooked".


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## Schizofen (Mar 11, 2009)

I'd be interested to know how people roll, say, an Ork assault phase and NOT bounce dice off scenery and models. I tend to resort to just picking up the huge handful and dropping them fairly carefully, not to influence the result but just to make sure it's easy to find them all when they've landed...


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## The Son of Horus (Dec 30, 2006)

Generally, there's a part of the table where there's no action, and the rolling can be done there. If it hits some terrain, it's not a big deal. If it ends up cocked (i.e., resting on the corner of the dice rather than lying on one face), the practice here is to re-roll the die in question. 

If somebody's cooking the dice, it's usually pretty clear that they're cheating. The solution then is to either call them on it, or just mess with them (which is my solution-- it is a game, after all. Why let them ruin the fun?). It seems absurd that there's thought going into the rolling of dice, but I kind of understand why there is. Ultimately, just roll the bones, and don't try to do anything special with them. Just pick them up, give them a couple shakes (remember, if you shake it more than twice, you're playing with it...) and let them roll. There's no need to toss them or throw them or anything-- just let them fall out of your hand relatively close to the table (but far enough that they still roll a bit), and they won't go scattering all over the place and you'll get a random roll each time.

All that being said, I do have four bricks of dice that are identical-- Chessex 'fire' patterned bricks of 36. Now, I don't need that many dice, but I'm superstitious, and I rotate them each week, so they don't get "rolled out" of luck or whatever. So having some thought as to why the dice gods act the way they do is probably worthwhile, I suppose.


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## Cocakoala (Apr 27, 2009)

If im rolling alot of dice then I hold them in 2 hands and sort of drop them on the table to stop them from going all over the place. This usualy has some dice ontop-of each over so I I reroll the ones that are ontop. Im not trying to cheat but it may seem like it in the way that they dont actualy roll that much. I also reroll ones on the floor.


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## Col. Schafer (Apr 15, 2008)

I just roll them normaly (a few shakes, as much direction as I can get away with considering the area for more olling as oposed to droping) but if its somthing like my CCS's armor save, I do it with style! Sometimes like a craps dice, somtimes I bounce it as hard as posible on the table (if the table is tough at least) half the time I end up with ity on the floor, but when it lands on a 6, its just an epic moment.


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## Prepirate1 (Jul 29, 2009)

I blow on mine.....


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## cafel (Dec 21, 2008)

People who try to rig the outcome of their rolls are being an ass and are ineffective. On something very flat and uniform like a craps table you can try to do practiced throws to gain a statistical advantage, but on a gaming table there's too many bumps and objects which foul up anything but the most blatant of attempts.


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