# Dice Winning/losing the game



## jigplums (Dec 15, 2006)

Ok so another thread derailed into how dice win or lose the game. I'm of the opinion that in most circumstances this is rubbish. Sure they have an affect but people often make outragous claims that they failed every roll whilst there opponent made all theres. 

An example i played a game on sunday. My chaos lord charged hitting once with 6 attacks and spikey bits and killed 1 marine. next turn he hit once and killed 1 marine with 5 attacks and spikey nits. My bloodthirster charged termies and hit once out of 6 dice wounded once and my opp made his save. Next turn hit once, wounded once opp made save. On the first turn i fired 6 lascannons and 3 str8 tankhunter shots at my opps vechiles. I got one hit[which blew up a pred]. Turn 2 i fired 6 lascannon shots at termies they made 4 out of 5 inv saves. My obilts: first took a wound from overheating twin-linked plasma and failed save, then failed a save vs single bolter. second got shot by an assault cannon and took 2 wounnds, rolled snake eyes.

I won the game by 600+ vps

Dice do have a factor in the game, of course they do but i good player stacks things heavily in there favour and has a back up for when things go wrong, they out manauvre the enemy and leave them with reduced los and make targetting decisions for the enemy. They use the right weapons for the job at hand and dont waste shots on stuff with poor priority choices.


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## blessed knight (Feb 27, 2007)

Dice rolling can really balls up carefully laid plans. Sometimes you will fail your key rolls.

Played Bloodbowl the other day and a bit tough ogre threw a block against a star player halfling.
I rolled double skull. i went down.
he then rolled a serious injury on the ogre.
Dead.

but luckily i had an apothecary so i got to re roll the injury...

... still dead.

I'd stacked the odds in my favour. (2 dice block) which failed due to unlucky dice, then the halfling got through the armour and injured him then he died twice.

So on 2 dice i rolled.
double skull. (spectacular failure)
then he rolled 11 on 2 dice to break the armour.
the he rolled 12 on 2 dice to injure him.
then rolling a D6D8 he rolled 66 on the D6 twice killing the ogre.

You just cannot plan for back luck like that. :?


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## the cabbage (Dec 29, 2006)

I have three sets of 36 dice. Red, Blue and Green.

I never use the red and only use them to loan to opponents as they are consistently bad for me.

I use the blue for armies of the imperium and green for enemies of the imperium.

I understand what has been said in other threads about inconsistancies on certain dice causing them to roll high or low more than the law of averages says. However most gamers I have met use large amounts of dice and therefore this effect will average out. All my dice habits arise from my own twisted brain not experience.

Have you ever come across loaded dice in a gaming setting? I did hear about it in a UK tournament but it could be urban myth.


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## jigplums (Dec 15, 2006)

never come across actually loaded dice in a tourney setting before.

The thing with dice sets rolling consistantly badley is also highly exhaggerated.
the difference is minimal, so minimal that you would not notice within the course of a single game, in fact you would need thousands of rolls to form a significant pattern.

Now bloodbowl is a much different matter. When things go wrong they cause a turn over so rolling "badly" has a much bigger impact on the game. I have had really bad dice happen in BB many times, however you are rolling alot less dice than in a game of 40k so extremes are too be expected. It is not unlikely to roll 3 1's in a row for example but it is unlikely to roll 200 1's out of 600 dice. 

In 40k though you roll dozens of dice each turn so overall your luck will balance out. If a single dice roll costs you the game, you obviously left yourself in a too vulnerable position where that could happen. for example 1 meltagun shot fails to pen a landraider. A good player would have the back up of lascannons, missile launchers, more meltas, powerfists, meltabombs etc on stand by to deal with the landraider should the meltagun fail.


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## Greyskullscrusade (Jan 24, 2007)

I hate when people bring up things such as "the dice hate me" or "my dice suck", Im not a guy who belives in luck, or in dice having vengful personalities. What about you guys?


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## Elchimpster (Jan 31, 2007)

I have to diasgree jigplums. It's not necissarily a miniscule thing and it can most certainly have a noticeable impact.

Sure. you roll a lot of dice, but when you have a dice set that rolls consistantly higher or lower than the mean, it can be mitigated by excluding the dice that "don't work for you".

How many people have seen these scenarios:
Roll a handfull of dice, pick out the ones that rolled high to make your actual rolls.
or Roll to hit, then choose the dice that hit to make your wound saves.
or people using certain dice for hits and saves, and different ones for leadership/ psyker tests.

The thing is, the individual effect is small. Sure, that can be mitigated too...make sure you use unbelieveably overwhelming force to roll so many dice even if the trend is low, you have enough to do the job. If you are some kind of superstar player who is a tactical genius, or your Army Builder skills are truly elite, you can do this. For the average player though...the dice make a difference.

jigplums, I know you are one of the uber-elite players, and I'm sure you have the skills to overcome such things, but the vast majority of players, simply aren't. Most of us are really banking on that 1/6th chance per die face and the law of averages saying most dice will roll at 50% success...and when those dice are off, it's noticeable.


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## Anphicar (Dec 31, 2006)

Can, yes, can. It can mess you up.

But rolling all 1's in a game is very unlikely, and though we have had our bad days, saying we did not get any good rolls is crapola.


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## spikydavid (Mar 11, 2007)

One of my friends once lost a combat patrol by consistently rolling 4+ on all his dice. He kept failing target priority tests, and being forced to shoot an inconsequential speeder, allowing his opponent to whittle squads down, followed by him running off the table everytime he took a leadership test


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## Sei 'fir (Mar 23, 2007)

My theory is that the dice are like fate sure you can do whatever you like but it always comes down to the dice


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## MarzM (Jan 26, 2007)

Well i played one of my mates daemon hunters army, and i lost because on the last turn my Chaplain charged into a grey knight squad! I only had to kill 2 guy's to win the game. He hit 5 times and failed to roll a single 4+ to wound. He got a minor victory because of table quarters.


MarzM :mrgreen:


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## Elchimpster (Jan 31, 2007)

Anphicar said:


> Can, yes, can. It can mess you up.
> 
> But rolling all 1's in a game is very unlikely, and though we have had our bad days, saying we did not get any good rolls is crapola.


The point is, it doesn't have to be ALL ones. Nobody gets ALL ones. nobody gets NO good rolls. But then, it really doesn't have to be ALL failures to skew the results of the game now does it? Just a disproportionate number of failures can totally skew a result, turning a win to a draw, a draw to a loss.

Doesn't need to change a victory to a loss...just one step.


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## cccp (Dec 15, 2006)

some people i know have terrible dice rolls. but a losing a game also comes down to the quaity of your opp, the quality of your list and your tactics. 

when i do play, i play with gt vets; jig, jez etc and even with luck on your side it is very hard to do well against them.


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## Elchimpster (Jan 31, 2007)

Thing that kills me is that the high end players are able to do well regardless, and are so experienced, they can overcome crappy rolls easily, and really seem to believe that the effect of irregular dice is negligible. I imagine at their level of play it is.

For myself, and the lower end of the totem pole, the die rolls are far more impacting on a game.


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## DaemonsR'us (Jan 25, 2007)

Urm ive noticed over the playing time my dice usually even out to statistical odds, and in large rolls are usually very close, but on occasion you do get the odd ball highs and lows, for me i dont really look at it as good bad luck, what ever you roll is what ever you roll, but i have noticed dice with rounded edges do get more "fair" rolls as they are less likely to hit a flat edge/side and just kinda stop flat however you dropped it


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## blessed knight (Feb 27, 2007)

I've found that combat elements of my force tend to be better at shooting and visa versa.

Maybe i should just charge with my devastators and give support fire from my assault marines :lol:


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## Jezlad (Oct 14, 2006)

> never come across actually loaded dice in a tourney setting before.


 :lol: :lol: 

The guy you played on Sunday did bitch a bit to much. I was surprised it took you so long to take him out.

How could he moan when your meaty HQ backfired so dramatically?


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## anathema (Jan 24, 2007)

> Thing that kills me is that the high end players are able to do well regardless, and are so experienced, they can overcome crappy rolls easily, and really seem to believe that the effect of irregular dice is negligible. I imagine at their level of play it is.


Actually on the top tables of tournament gaming it can make a hell of a big difference. Everyone you play is good enough to ruthlessly exploit any weaknesses and really punish you if your carefully laid killer plans fail due to a few key dice rolls going wrong. Playing Longbeard at the GT final recently, his predators just couldn't even glance my Fire Prisms to at least stop them firing which never missed all game. This had a huge effect as I then pounded his Death Company and predators with them.
Against a less skilled player it can be pulled back though, as I'm sure we've all experienced.

I usually plan my attacks with redundancy in mind and have most units able to target two or three different enemies depending on what kills what. Can't help me if my dice go to hell though and can well and truly leave me up shit creek. 

To a large extent it depends on how well your army can handle it. 
Some builds are very resilient and can suffer a few squad or unit losses and carry on. My Eldar rely on interdependency and the loss of a few key units (2 grav tanks down can really screw my plans) can be catastrophic. This can be because my opponents rolls well or if my morale or shooting is poor. 
Its the risk I take balancing potentially devestating offensive power against defensive frailty in some situations (not getting first turn in Gamma, Harlequins being hit by scattering ordnance, for example).


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## spikydavid (Mar 11, 2007)

Elchimpster said:


> Thing that kills me is that the high end players are able to do well regardless, and are so experienced, they can overcome crappy rolls easily, and really seem to believe that the effect of irregular dice is negligible. I imagine at their level of play it is.
> 
> For myself, and the lower end of the totem pole, the die rolls are far more impacting on a game.


As anathema says above - "kinda". One thing you can do is build your army list to be less dependent on dice rolls. 

You could, for example, build an army that rolls buckets of dice. The more dice you roll, the more likely you are to get average results. It means you're less likely to get that devastating charge, but you're also less likely to be stood there, turn after turn, doing nothing.

There is also a redundancy factor - if one defiler is good, two must be more than twice as good. If one misses, the other one still has a chance.

I will say that personally, I've never really seen a single dice roll alter a game result more than maybe 50-100 points. Even shifting a minor victory to a draw generally requires two or three key dice rolls all going wrong (and I'm not talking about "but I never rolled a double six to destroy his fire prism" - reasonable chance rolls, please)


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## LongBeard (Dec 22, 2006)

> Playing Longbeard at the GT final recently, his predators just couldn't even glance my Fire Prisms to at least stop them firing which never missed all game. This had a huge effect as I then pounded his Death Company and predators with them.


  
It's true though, when you have players of equal ability both with balanced lists and fair terrain the dice WILL play a big part.
As another example I played at the Carnage tournament at the weekend and last game I drew up against fellow FLAME on'er Gus and his GT styled IW's list, due to their being virtually no terrain It became a straight firefight which I should have lost but due to some horriffc dice rolling I won fairly comfortably, given balanced dice I would have lost to be sure.
Generally to avoid the dice problem many players double up on units or go for multi-shot weaponry I suppose It comes down to covering all of your bases for when those killer dice come Into play! :twisted:


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## uberschveinen (Dec 29, 2006)

Good luck and bad luck are omnipresent in conflicts of all types. Bad things happen, just as good things happen. That's why one of the most important abilities for a commander to have is the capacity to reduce the role luck plays to an absolute minimum. 

Plan for all eventualities. Not just the ones where you win easily, not just ones where you roll consistently above average, not just most or even all but a few occurances. Any general worth his pay will take every single possible event, chart them out, and do something about every single one he can. If you do not do so, you cannot blame the dice, ever. That devastator squad wiped out by a Basilisk first turn, leaving you without any anti-armour? That's not bad luck. That's poor planning, assuming that one unit will live to do its job. Your Assault Squad doesn't land until turn six, leaving you without combat support? If you planned for this, your other units can take up the slack. If not, you planned for this. As much as I hate it, the old adage is true: if you fail to plan, plan to fail.

Certainly, there are some situations where you couldn't possibly have been expected to do something about it. A single Lascannon scoring a 6,6 on its armour dice, blowing up your LRC and contents is an event that, while you have foreseen it, you can do nothing about, and simply must hope never happens. However, these genuinely unavoidable events are rare, especially compared to how many times people assume that their failure is the fault of one of these.

Blaming luck feels nice, since it means avoiding being forced to acknowledge one's own shortcomings, but so long as you blame bad luck for all of your losses, they will _never stop happening_.

The only solution is simple. When something goes wrong, assume it is your fault. Because it is your fault, there must have been something you could have done about it. Find out what you could have done about it, and, if plausible, implement it in future. Each time you lose, instead of a simple loss, it becomes a new piece of information that you can use to prevent such a thing from ever repeating. Much like the Borg, every time you lose, you will never be able to lose in that way again. The more times you are defeated, the more invincible you become.

Of course, reality doesn't _quite_ work that way, although to the extremely analytical gamer it does come close. There will be things you can simply do nothing about, the genuine article of bad luck. Since you cannot make a perfect army, you will always have to leave yourself vulnerable to certain events, but as you find more and more ways to prevent these catastrophic events, you will become systematically better at arranging your shortcomings in the most efficient way possible.

It's not an easy process to start, since it inherently involves admitting your own failures. However, it is one that will make you a far better gamer, of all systems, than you started out as.


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## Elchimpster (Jan 31, 2007)

spikydavid said:


> <snip>As anathema says above - "kinda". One thing you can do is build your army list to be less dependent on dice rolls.
> 
> You could, for example, build an army that rolls buckets of dice. <snip>


I mean, It's always possible to min/max a list to minimize the impact of dice...but when playing someone else...who has done the same you are in the same mess again.

I think Longbeard nailed it.

Lets say you have two lists, or hell...say one list, and two armies using it. Both sides make the same tactical choices, dice will end up being the deciding factor...and if they are skewed...even a little, it can shift the outcome an entire category: from win to draw, and draw to loss (and vice versa).

One thing I didn't mention which I should in all fairness...
It's not like every batch of chessex dice is skewed far one way or another.
Out of say one brick of 36 dice, lets average it out and say a third roll high, a third roll low and a third roll average. Sounds all averaged out.

Not everyone has a system for mitigating this. I don't (though I'm sorely tempted to). Some players just roll dice. Others have methods of keeping track of which dice "fail them" and set them aside.

Is this malicious? I don't think so. I figure most folks don't even think of it or notice when they do it. I mean, it's easiest to roll a handful of dice (whether picked out special dice or just a handful) to hit, set aside the failed hits and pick up the HITS, roll those dice to wound. That's pretty natural to me. Most people do that. It is also using high rolling dice to roll another (more likely than not) high roll.

I think my main point here, which I'll summarize in wrap up...is that the dice ARE a factor. They are one of many, but they must be considered a factor in any game that uses them...from D&D to 40k. I don't want to over emphasize them, they are just one factor, just like tactics, and army builder skills. All things being equal in the other areas, dice will decide the game, and they can be controlled to a limited degree (enough of a degree to shift the tide of a game hundreds of victory points either direction). A lot of folks dismiss dice as being a non-issue, perfectly "random", and my position on this is that they are not unless both sides use the same brick of dice, or players use casino dice.


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## dakari-mane (Mar 9, 2007)

Elchimpster said:


> All things being equal in the other areas, dice will decide the game, and they can be controlled to a limited degree (enough of a degree to shift the tide of a game hundreds of victory points either direction). A lot of folks dismiss dice as being a non-issue, perfectly "random", and my position on this is that they are not unless both sides use the same brick of dice, or players use casino dice.


1) All things are never equal. There are always differences to exploit.

2) Die are a factor and for all intents and purposes die are random (unless you have loaded die). The trick is to control when & where you roll the die i.e. you try to only roll the die when it is advantageous to you &/or disadvantageous to your opponent. Also as Spikydavid rightly pointed out you load the odds in your favour by upping the number of die you roll to suceed in a certain task. Make your own luck.

In da wordz uv da greatest warboss eva: 
"If summit iz ard to kill shoot it wiv a tun o rokkitz!" - Badgutz


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## Elchimpster (Jan 31, 2007)

The most common dice out there are imperfect and prone to rolling a given face more often than others.
Take a look at some of these articles on casino/ perfect dice and imperfect/ common dice:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/dice-play/DiceStandard.htm
http://www.dice4everyone.com/dice-types.shtml
http://www.geocities.com/dicephysics/0107.htm


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## Severian (Jan 22, 2007)

No doubt that dice rolls play a big part in this hobby. It is a matter of chance though, that is why we use dice. One day things will go spectacularly your way and another you will have an absolute disaster (much like real life, and war, don't you know) :wink: 

It might be that some anomaly might crop up with dice but unless the die is loaded I believe it to be insignificant. While I agree that your point of view tends to differ radically after rolling 2 pairs of snake eyes for wounds with your PF :evil: I still believe it evens out in the end. It is also part of what makes it really cool to play the game and provides us with cinematic moments like a lone marine against all odds managing to kill 2 nobbs (insert your own unbelievable/ miraculous event) :shock: . 

In short these temporary lapses ( reality tends to drag it kicking and screaming back into alignment again - with the exception of my lasscannons, they just suck) in the law of averages represent the vagaries of real warfare.In short I wont be losing sleep over that pesky die that keeps on rolling1s for my plasma gun. 

Well thats the opinion of one man.


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## Elchimpster (Jan 31, 2007)

> The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.


Heheheh...I just watched Patton last night (background noise while painting FoW minis.)


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