Can yoku take luck out of 40k

[EmperorEternalXIX]

I think taking the luck out of the game is basically what we do whenever we strategize. Moving multiple units into position to fire in case one has a bad shooting phase, etc.

I once went to a tournament where the losing team got a consolidation prize of two new sets of dice. LOL

As far as dice superstition, I am extraordinarily superstitious about mine.

I have a tin of dice we call "The Cursed Bin." It contains my very first set of dice, a basic set of GW red and black, with some of those cool aquila/bullet hole ones mixed in. All of them have round edges and roll very poorly, and so we came to know them as cursed. I sealed them in this evil tin and never called them out again.

One day, a friend and I were playing and we were having a real slugfest of a game, but my dice like was being totally absurd. I hadn't rolled a single 1 until the onset of turn 3! Then another mutual friend approached me, a Chaos player, teasing that the Chaos gods would destroy my dice luck...and he opened the cursed tin. It was only a joke, but amazingly, at that point my luck started to collapse and I eventually lost the game, getting tabled. Since then this tray is forbidden to be opened, and my luck with any GW dice has been below average to say the least...

Using square-edged dice is a much more mathematically fair prospect. The rounded ones are prone to rolling that extra bit when on a more weighted side, so you will see a lot of ones. When I use my non-GW rounded edge dice (some nice chessex ones, they look cool and all but god damn they are so rounded they are almost circles FFS), I often don't ever throw a handful of dice without there being some 1's. In a Space Marine army this is beyond bad; we rely heavily on that armor save to deal with the shortcomings of our low model count, and so failing those saves almost every time you roll them is a fast way to being crippled.

These dice are so crappy I usually use them when I NEED to fail something (like lose a couple of sternguard so I can enact combat tactics).

Still...It is very difficult to find a set of square-edged dice these days, at least in my area.

[Jive Tyrant]

As an experiment, you could not roll the dice, but just take the corrrect proportion as hits. For example, if you roll 6 dice and need to get 5+, then two of those dice have hit. If it's just one dice, 2+ and 3+ always hit, 4+ 5+ 6+ always miss. You get the idea. Then you are playing the odds without the dice rolls.

But I bet the OP will still get creamed, because luck doesn't matter in this game as much as tactics. And he's probably a glass-half-empty kinda guy too. Or maybe he's just cursed. It happens.

[Drunkencorgimaster]

On the plus side, you could probably go to Vegas and get a job as a "cooler."

[Scoota]

In terms of shooting, you could use template weapons - Marines with flamers, plasma cannons, Vindicators, Whirlwinds, etc. Or take a Salamanders army with Vulkan Hestan.
Necrons... um, lots of monoliths?

In close combat, take a couple of Chaplains for your Marines, or as many master-crafted weapons as possible... you've got the option of more dice or more price on your war-gear.
Necrons... again, um.

Personally, my Nid army gives me lots of dice to roll - a unit of 32 hormagaunts (if you can get them across the table unmolested) will roll 96 dice. That allows you to bring along your bucket'o'dice and roll them all. Plus there's plenty of twin-linked and template guns for the 'Nids, and you can use Feeder Tendrils in combat for those low weapon skill gribblies.

[Drax]

I had bad dice rolling for a little while to, I ended up buying new dice, and seem to do alright. Also I run aarmy where everything is twin linked so that has it's advantages there there have been plenty of times I have rolled double misses etc.

[Rapture]

don't ever touch an opponents dice!

you are required to bring your own dice, measuring stick, rules and templates. if you need dice at a game with me ask i'll give you a handfull of GW dice, but don't touch the ones i use.

Not to sound mean but are you five years old? That is very, very silly.

[Levitas]

Ex casino dice for 7 bucks each. Roll like a winner!

[GM Rex Nihilo]

Question: Can you take luck out of 40k?

Answer: No ... nor should you! Random things happen how else are you represent this? If you use you imagination you can come up with reasons/stories why the IG veterans killed the Daemon Prince with their pointy sticks for example.

[PhoenixFlame]

Ok, so I need some input from the general populous here...I have notoriously bad luck with the dice...my Space Marines fail 2/3 of their armor saves, my Necrons get back up with a "we'll be back" roll about 1/5 of the time...after failing 2/3 of the armor saves...I am an average/above average tactician...been playing the game plenty long to understand what works, but with the dice stacked against me no one would ever know it.

Can the influence of the dice on the game be minimized? Is it possible to build an army that takes the luck out of the game? Is there a list that can reward good play while minimizing the punishment for having abysmal luck with the dice?

Please don't try to turn this into an argument about whether or not luck exists, as I have had that discussion with 100s of players...until they play me...then they apologize for my dice, shake my hand and join the rather large group of people who say "You won't believe it!" to the next guy who wants to debate the existence of luck.

In any case, I am very curious about suggested builds or army tactics...

Well I won't claim my knowledge of 40k is exhaustive, however what it sounds like you need is a Nurgle Deamon army. You can get a pretty high model count going, you've got Invul saves and you have FnP. Beyond that take The Tallyman IC herald of Nurgle and you rack up all sorts of benefits such as better FnP and more Poison when you're increasing your tally (oh and you can start ignoring the other payers armor).
With troops at 13 pts for a 3W base and some of the best toughness values in the game you've got a lot in the way of dice roll mitigation.
Here's the big BUT however. You have to Deep Strike everything in. Now Icons will fix that problem for you.. but they have to be on the board from the start of your turn to do any good, which means you're still looking at 1/2 your force deep striking in "naked" and completely vulnerable to harsh treatment from bad scatter rolls. But here at least you can play it safe and put them places they're less likely to hit anything resulting in a mishap if they do scatter. That costs you something in the way of tactical deployment/flexibility but it does give you a way around some of the effect of scatter rolls.

It's not a perfect solution, the dice will effect the game period. But as far as a build/list to allow your tactics to mitigate the dice effect? Well this is the best I've heard of (tho there are some funky things you can do with Nids upgrades to get sick re-rolls of of stealers and it groups that can be highly effective as well.. plus you'll be tossing a lot of dice so that's good... but I think Nurgle is still better when you consider how fragile the stealers are)

2c

Phoenix

Additional:

Question: Can you take luck out of 40k?

Answer: No ... nor should you! Random things happen how else are you represent this? If you use you imagination you can come up with reasons/stories why the IG veterans killed the Daemon Prince with their pointy sticks for example.

I have a buddy I play with who lost his Daemon Price to a fire warrior. Yes that's right a fire warrior... in close combat... craziness.

[Grimwar]

Please don't try to turn this into an argument about whether or not luck exists, as I have had that discussion with 100s of players...

I somehow doubt that.

Go by a few simple rules. Dont let your hand touch the table when rolling. This isn't a "luck" thing here its common sense the dice will flip 3 sides if you use small dice, and two sides if you roll big dice.

Example. I rolled a 6. I pick up the dice, the 6 is in my palm because it was facing upright, and my palm was facing downward.

I roll with my hand touching the table, obviously the side that the dice will roll off of. Because of the nature of the game, we dont chuck dice, we gently roll them because we don't want to strike our models or knock them out of place.

With that said, we naturally, and commonly among ALL players roll them sliding out of our hands.

If our hand is that close to the table, you will notice a consistent three side topple. Means the 6 has a high chance of becoming anything but a 1, because its not a four side topple. How that works is because you need two topples of any side to get the result of a 1. Meaning the 2,5,4 sides have a higher chance of being the result.

Now here's how dice work for the three side bad, three side good or ying/yang. You will notice 1, 3 and 2 are visible if you stare at the dice holding it on a certain corner. The other side has the other three results of the higher sides.

The 2 is opposite of the 5. The 1 is opposite of the 6. The 3 is opposite of the 4. Why? To get the average of a 7 among 2 dice for calculations. Both dice roll opposite side numbers, its an equal chance of getting a 7. 1+6 / 2+5 / 3+4 ...


With all of this. IF YOU ROLL above the table at least 2 inches, it will be a higher chance the weight of the dice will strike the corner and force it to roll randomly.


Dolts at GW didn't do their homework on the dice they chose for their dice set and why they have rounded corners. This causes more problems for small dice. Know the Vegas Dice? With Corners? They have those for a reason. Buy cornered dice if the problem persists. Make sure those dice are transparent (see through) so you won't be called a weighted dice user. Make sure they are very clearly transparent.


In a large scale test with GW-only dice it was calculated that they roll the lower half of the dice more then 54% of the time over 5 million dice rolls with twenty college students testing it over the course of a month. All recorded and calculated. I fail to find the result myself. Though I find I get more consistent dice rolls when I have my hand above the table at least two inches.

I also found out how to roll consistent high side dice rolls with how I pick up the dice and rolling them near the table. Don't ask, I won't share how. I just like to share that it's possible to cheat that way and that I know for sure it can be done from experience.