Dice, rolling, and what I know.

Hello everyone.

At the last Eastside Fantasy tourney I was a part of (a smallish affair, most of my buddies from Kentucky showed up, only 1 or 2 other players) many of you unfortunately got to witness my small lousy-dice-roll inducing meltdown whereupon I pretty much threw away over 60 Chessex Warhammer dice. Granted, my buddy took them, but I refused steadfastly to ever roll another Chessex d6 ever again, at least for Warhammer. This is why:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/That%27s_How_I_Roll_-_A_Scientific_Analysis_of_Dice

TL;DR the idea here is that while statistically dice SHOULD roll a 16.6% chance of a 1 on any given toss, Chessex dice AVERAGED 29% 1's. Now, for leadership and whatnot, this is a good thing, but overall in wargaming that high of a variance, almost a 2:1 ratio is totally unacceptable.

The article is a phenomenal read and I highly suggest reading it.

So, to sum up: I am sorry I kind of lost my cool. It in no way reflected anything else, and Ken (a High Elf player) who won was very gracious and awesome, as were all my friends who pretty much stomped the ever living crap out of me that day.

Dice luck, ill and well, falls heavy upon everyone who tosses them for our hobby....but sometimes, and in this case in a study with over 144k tosses, the Chessex dice failed significantly more frequently than I am willing to rely on.

I will be buying new dice soon, I hope.

When I do, expect to see me back for some more Warhammer!

-Gabriel

I wasn't there, so I can't comment on the breakdown, but I find that used casino dice work a lot better than chessex. They are a bit more expensive, but may save you some grief when you game. I have probably 25 of them, and even though my rolling is horrible now, it's more from rolling high when I want to roll low, and low when I want to roll high.... Very few 1's anymore!

Anyhow, here are some auctions on eBay (from a quick search):

http://www.ebay.com/itm/High-Quality-Viva-Las-Vegas-Casino-Dice-/200780424509?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2ebf72253d


http://www.ebay.com/itm/LAS-VEGAS-CASINO-Dice-Numbered-20ea-AWESOME-/261085660227?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cc9eb0443

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rare-Brown-or-Dark-Copper-Color-High-Quality-Casino-Dice-/200800854662?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2ec0a9e286


ETA: LOL, and the article you posted said the casino dice are the way to go... Should have read that first... Anyhow, I agree, I like the casino dice much better!

Yade wrote:

Quote :

You have to hold the dice in the tips of your fingers and when you toss them they have to hit the table and a wall in order to be considered a valid toss!

Unforntunetly I disagree with the assumtion that casino dice are accepteable for table top gaming, they are not! The above quote from the article clearly indicates that as they must be held and thrown in a particular manner, very difficult to do for table top gaming. There are no walls to bounce them off of and no specific distance to throw them and of course the surface on which they are thrown is completely different. Cassino dice while they may be held to strict tolerances also allows for easier dice manipulation hence the strict policies for dice rolling at cassinos.

I do not disagree with Chessex dice on the whole but some of that comes with their finishing process. Chessex dice are tumbled to remove imperfections and the excess from the injection site which causes an imbalance of the dice. Better alternative is to buy regular square edged dice. G2 collectables and games have a whole range of square edged dice and I believe they are out of Columbus, Oh. I have orderd dice from them and have always recieved them within a couple of days of ordering.

Warmonger wrote:

Unforntunetly I disagree with the assumtion that casino dice are accepteable for table top gaming, they are not! The above quote from the article clearly indicates that as they must be held and thrown in a particular manner, very difficult to do for table top gaming.

Those rules are to stop mechanics. While there might be one or two in the gaming community, I'm sure people will pick up on their antics sooner rather than later. In short I don't think it's a problem.

This has come up before and it was a problem even thou the person wasn't trying to manipulate the dice the perception of such is still there and is important. If my opponent brings cassino dice it is my right to request for him to use other dice and I would.

I may not be very popular after this but for CAGBASH this year Part of the entry fee will be a new unopened brick of dice from games workshop!

I have heard enough grmblings over the past year about dice and how people view the rolling of dice or the ever so popular "is the pic on the 6 or the 1 or both..." To alleviate "Cooked", "Baked", Weighted dice, CAG has decided to just go with GW dice bricks. Pre ordering will allow you to order more than 1 brick and the color you want.

I personally love my dice collection and fret at the possibility of having to use new dice but its the most fair way I can come up with and not have so many people complain about dice shennaingans in game that were never brought to my attention until after the fact.

As far as the unlucky dice go, I make an example by destroying a dice with a hammer in front of the others whilst praying to mork and gork and that seems to do great for me. As anyone can attest to my dice rolling is almost legendary...

Well i love my whacky ork dice (complete with deffskulls and hash marks) and I have never noticed them being anything but random. They are bigger than chessex.

I am not sure a brick would provide me with enough dice for some of my Ork shenanigans - sometimes I have to roll 60 dice (to kill 3 Marines! ha!) but if it makes people feel better I'll use anything. I do have to use chessex cubes when I am dropping that much dakka. Seem random to me, too. I will eventually replace them all with the 'ork' style bigger dice - just because I like them. Big dice are easier to handle, count & find on the floor!

I think Casino dice just need a little more room to get a good random roll. They seem to fall and 'splat' on one number.



OK. It would be pretty sad to assume everytime your opponent gets lucky that he is weighting his throw. Sometimes people just get lucky, and sometimes it just lasts all day.

The more you play dice games, the more wired rolls you'll see. I've rolled 27 casino dice and failed to get more than 3 4+s. I've rolled 15 hoping for 5+s and made 12 of them. I've failed roll an 8 on three dice 9 times in a row. And I've rolled no less than an 11 on two dice for an entire game. You can't get too mad, cause its going to happen. You can't beat your dice no matter what kind they are.

I believe the power of sleeping with you dice and the worshipping sacrifice to the dice gods bring you good fortune....

The Dice Gods are a unforgiving lot, without proper worship they will make you suffer!

Look, I'm not trying to cheat the system, far from it. I am trying to prevent the Chessex system from cheating me.

Statistically speaking, 16.6% 1's are to be expected, or even a bit more as the article suggests....but the 29% that the scientist rolled using Chessex dice was simply an AVERAGE. Some of the times it was even higher. This is almost double what it statistically should be. Sometimes, it might even be 3 times higher than it ought to be. That is simply unacceptable to me.

I am in the process of securing casino dice, and it will pretty much be all that I use when I wargame.

Ask me to use something else, I guess the final arbiter will be the judge of the event, but I can tell you I'd be plenty pissed if I had to forfeit because someone thinks I am cheating.

ThatFrogGuy wrote:

Look, I'm not trying to cheat the system, far from it. I am trying to prevent the Chessex system from cheating me.

Statistically speaking, 16.6% 1's are to be expected, or even a bit more as the article suggests....but the 29% that the scientist rolled using Chessex dice was simply an AVERAGE. Some of the times it was even higher. This is almost double what it statistically should be. Sometimes, it might even be 3 times higher than it ought to be. That is simply unacceptable to me.

I am in the process of securing casino dice, and it will pretty much be all that I use when I wargame.

Ask me to use something else, I guess the final arbiter will be the judge of the event, but I can tell you I'd be plenty pissed if I had to forfeit because someone thinks I am cheating.

Not saying you were. I just think some good loving to your dice will make t all better. Be one with them. Or in your case....be six with them.......


Dice are dice in my opinion. It's the luck of the role.

Makari wrote:

I may not be very popular after this but for CAGBASH this year Part of the entry fee will be a new unopened brick of dice from games workshop!

I have heard enough grmblings over the past year about dice and how people view the rolling of dice or the ever so popular "is the pic on the 6 or the 1 or both..." To alleviate "Cooked", "Baked", Weighted dice, CAG has decided to just go with GW dice bricks. Pre ordering will allow you to order more than 1 brick and the color you want.

I personally love my dice collection and fret at the possibility of having to use new dice but its the most fair way I can come up with and not have so many people complain about dice shennaingans in game that were never brought to my attention until after the fact.

As far as the unlucky dice go, I make an example by destroying a dice with a hammer in front of the others whilst praying to mork and gork and that seems to do great for me. As anyone can attest to my dice rolling is almost legendary...

CALLING DIBS ON HOT PINK ONES!!!

Wait.....knowing you....you would do tha too....NM

lol

during my first CAGbash - 2nd round. a 4 man Terminator squad were shot at by a tactical SM squad. 4 Wounds, 4 armor saving rolls, 4 1's. No more squad and right flank attack.
Could I have bad dice? Who knows, I don't remember where they come from (most likely GW box sets) and don't give it a 2nd thought. They sucked that game but were awesome the next. Such is life. I could have thrown a strop after getting my Termies wiped out but all I could do was laugh.

Back in the UK, my friends and I played a lot of Blood Bowl. I was called a great variety of obscene names due to my ungodly luck with my dice rolling. Those same batch of generic dice would usually fail me at a critical point during WFB or 40K games though.

This isn't new. Over the 30 years I've been in and out of the hobby, many studies have show time and again that rounded edges and corners on dice make for a lack of true randomality. I spent a few minutes at GenCon talking to Lou Zocchi, the owner of Gamescience. Lou was one of the first makers of qulity polyhedra dice back in the late 70s early 80s, and has always used straight edges and sharp corners. His first generation 4-siders were positively hazardous, until he cut off the points, (caltrops on the kitchn floor). Now, we have a huge selection of dice to choose from, most of which have rounded edges and corners. I can only speak for myself, I just never thought much about anything beyond color, convenience and price, ie I have several cubes of Chessex dice. I am pretty sure most of us use similar products for the same reason, though I could be wrong. I still have a bunch of really cool old Gamescience dice that look like new, except for the chrome experiment. Anyway, it seems pretty clear that if we want truly random determinations, dice rolls, we sould ditch these pretty but innacurate dice.
That said, I'm ordering straight edge/straight corners dice for any serious games that I'm playing these days, probably from Gamescience. Believe me, I will be replacing quite few and am not keen on spending the money to replace them. BUT, if they don't roll a truly random result, well, what's the point of rolling dice.
Last time I checked, GW dice have rounded corners and edges. Just sayin'.

I have plenty of totally amazing moments with my dice from Chessex. Something like 18 out of 32 rolled 6's once, on a poison attack from skinks against a heavy armored Cav formation from Brettonia, and the resulting 1's my opponent rolled forced a leadership check, which failed, and then I caught him next round and ran him down with skinks....just one of many such "holy crap I can't believe that moment".

And I get that. I really do. I understand that luck has a big factor to play in these type of games.

The fact remains, that when rolled 144,000 times, Chessex dice consistently rolled far more 1's than they should, by an almost 2:1 ratio, and in some cases even as high as a 3:1 ratio.

Think about it for a second....if your tires on your car blew out 3 times more often than they should, you'd have a serious problem with that, wouldn't you??

For me, its time to get rid of my Chessex pieces of crap. I own a boatload, and its going to be a small fortune to replace them all for the most part, but it has to be done.

For my sanity, and yours across from me the next time I play.

ThatFrogGuy wrote:

I have plenty of totally amazing moments with my dice from Chessex. Something like 18 out of 32 rolled 6's once, on a poison attack from skinks against a heavy armored Cav formation from Brettonia, and the resulting 1's my opponent rolled forced a leadership check, which failed, and then I caught him next round and ran him down with skinks....just one of many such "holy crap I can't believe that moment".

And I get that. I really do. I understand that luck has a big factor to play in these type of games.

The fact remains, that when rolled 144,000 times, Chessex dice consistently rolled far more 1's than they should, by an almost 2:1 ratio, and in some cases even as high as a 3:1 ratio.

Think about it for a second....if your tires on your car blew out 3 times more often than they should, you'd have a serious problem with that, wouldn't you??

For me, its time to get rid of my Chessex pieces of crap. I own a boatload, and its going to be a small fortune to replace them all for the most part, but it has to be done.

For my sanity, and yours across from me the next time I play.

Save them and invest in a sling shot like I did.....ahh....that was a good time.....

Save them and invest in a sling shot like I did.....ahh....that was a good time.....[/quote]

CJ you are a genius. I think I have a wrist-rocket in the garage. Would that many shattered dice impact the local environment?

fsloan wrote:

Save them and invest in a sling shot like I did.....ahh....that was a good time.....

CJ you are a genius. I think I have a wrist-rocket in the garage. Would that many shattered dice impact the local environment?[/quote]

no clue.....my brother went hunting one day and actually found quite a few of them again,,,lol