"Dice can be fickle and cruel" Topic

I kind of get a kick out of bad dice throw stories – I am sort of weird that way.
In a game of WFB 8th w/ my 14 year old son yesterday – I had incredible luck, sort of.
He (Chaos) wanted to do a last stand scenario against my Kislev. It was a slaughter – all over in three turns. But here is the humorous part.

My son likes magic users, so I had three figs that "channeled" power dice. Twice in three turns I rolled three sixes out of three giving me three extra power dice – never got to use a one of them.

The first turn he failed all three attempts to cast a spell. The second time he went all in and got irresistible force. So my (probably) once in a lifetime channel rolls – did me no good whatsoever. The dice gods were in full Loki mode that day.

Kind of reminds me of high school, the girls would be nice, but as soon as I tried to act on that….. {grin}

A friend of mine had the luckiest roll I recall in a game.

40K second edition. Squad of chaos space marines with no heavy weapon, as a chimera (apc) rolls up and unloads a squad of imperial guards men.

The marines are probably going to be toast next turn. Then he remembers that he spent a few points giving krak grenades to the champion.
Why not? He throws one at the chimera.

Manages to hit (4+), hits the tracks (1 in 6 or 2 in 6 chance), scores maximum for armour penetration, the damage roll indicates that the tank flips over.. and the scatter roll causes it to land on the infantry squad it had just deployed, splattering most of them.

>>>>Dice can be fickle and cruel……
hence my insistence on a pre-nup before taking them into the house….

Ah, but dice can easily be disposed of! "You have failed me for the last time. . . "

I had a friend who tossed his dice out the car window on the way home from a game.

Spudeus;

Tried that once. Got out my least favorite die, parading him in front of the others. When I smacked him with the hammer, in a last act of defiance, he jumped up and nailed me in the thumb.

We all have those stories. Chuck enough dice in game….

Try my unit of Bretonnian knights fighting some chaos unit. He had incredible dice luck and hit me 14 times. I was saving on a 3+ if I remember correctly. Rolled seven 1s and five 2s.

Or a Napoleonic Game. Deployed armies. First turn – opponent shoots artillery battery at a random unit, and picks out my poorest moral class unit. Does some damage, I test and fail badly and the unit runs away. This triggers tests on adjacent units. I badly fail every one and in a cascade of routing my whole army, apart from two guard units, runs away. I never even got to my half of Turn 1.

Most ridiculous bad dice luck for me:

40k game. I had the usual massive number of Imperial Guardsmen blazing away. 4+ to hit. I rolled 17 consecutive misses.

SEVENTEEN

Sigh.

But my dice luck has always been poor. Bad enough that Avalon Hill legend Don Greenwood (renowned for his own bad luck at tournaments) once declared my luck might actually be worse than his.

Comforting in a weird way.

I've seen the cruelty.

A member of our group regularly 5 of 5 or 6 of 6 ones on D6s.

We've even given it a name: A Mitchell

His least favorite phrase: "Anything but a one."

DM

Warhammer 3rd Ed tournament, all my troops have 10+ leadership. First LD checks of the game, failed all 6 units in a row.

One game of 40K my bud Tuna and I had a massive bring everything ya got game. I had 27 heavy support choices. One turn I shot everything in the army but only killed 10 Imperial Guardmen. Truly wretched.

40k again. Running my Space Marines against Steve's orks. It took 10 lascannon (six of which hit) to kill a truk (armor 10).

I once introduced a whole family (Father, Mom, son, and teenage daughter to gaming and they loved it. They had not known a thing about war games 15 minutes before they began. They all became avid gamers.

Not a half hour into the game the two kids are wailing that "they have the worst die rolling in the world." They grow up so fast! Mom and Dad began their wailing about bad dice before they had even thrown one.

Our club record is 33 D6 rolls, 1 6. Was originally 32 dice, the 1 6 gave an extra roll which failed. We also have the Curse of the Chairman, where being appointed club chairman almost always results in said appointee's dice throwing abilities reduced to poor.

When told in a game to roll 2 average dice I pointed out that I didn't have any, but had plenty of below average dice.

Lol, that sounds like good checks and balances; if someone was appointed Chair and rolled well, the head would swell!

Not on par with these stories, but last year I was playing Federation Commander, carefully maneuvered the USS Hood to within short range of Klingon, and unloaded both torpedo tubes – snake eyes! (it was the scenario where the Hood always goes down, but I was even deprived of a satisfying alpha strike).

In one tournament game, my opponent had three or four units of archers and crossbowmen combining their shooting against one of my units. As mine was a 8-base unit, he needed to score 3 hits to force a cohesion test and base-loss test.

First turn of shooting – 17 dice, no hits
Second turn – 19 dice, 1 hit
Third turn – 15 dice, 1 hit

My unit with just 4 shooting dice had caused one of his units to drop in cohesion. At that point, the game ended as my cavalry attack caused a succession of routs and burst-throughs on his left wing taking his army to breaking point.

Once in a game I rolled 17 hits against the other player. he had a chance to roll for saves. he rolled 14 saves out of 17 die. I couldn't believe it.

These are all great stories!

I have had plenty of bad dice throws before – and laugh at them a lot. But never anything like my OP – two incredibly lucky die rolls – but couldn't use them!

Like drawing a straight flush – only to have your opponent fold before betting.

My two stories are from my most recent games. Air war, shooting at a "bag" from a Fokker Dr1; I must have rolled half a dozen "4"s in a row: lost my cool and threw my dice at the wall. Picked them up to "shoot" again and rolled another "4"; threw them at the floor, hard, they landed as "boxcars". Go figure. Then I rolled three "7"s in a row, and got the bag in flames, so my silly run of lousy and mediocre rolls didn't matter.

I rolled three "snake eyes" in a row and killed off three of my own guys, necessitating a morale check. This required a 9 or better (2D6), which I made: which made four "9"s or better in a row for the unit: the first three had been for "performance checks" to keep their cavalry charge going. I've never seen four "9" or better rolls in a row before either….

Back in the 1970's we were playing the old rules Napoleonique. It may have worked decently with a division per side. Of course we had 3+ divisions per side and the thing clunked along, an hour per turn.

We had a game in a friend's basement on the floor. I showed up with my 10 battalions of Prussians as reinforcements. I marched forward, closing up on the right flank of my allies. One hour per turn. After several hours I had moved into long artillery range. Soon I would actually get to play!

The French opposite me managed to get a hit on my lead battalion. It failed morale and broke. This required the regiment to check and they broke. This caused the next regiment to check. It broke. The last regiment checked and it broke. So the whole force, over 240 figures (regulars all) streamed to the rear because 1 figure had been hit. And they ran back at twice the speed they had advanced.

This required another turn to rally and then two more turns to get back into long artillery range. Did I say each turn took an hour to play?

There are reasons I play faster games these days. And I try to avoid cramming more units into the game than it was designed to handle.

Just three incidents (of many, many more I might add) from the FoG:R Doubles tournament at Usk, South Wales in January.

1) First game, against the organiser and his son. First shot of the game (by either side) with two batteries of two guns – four hits! Great, I thought. Opponent's death roll: 5; cohesion test safely passed. Last time the guns hit anything for the rest of that game (we lost 25-0)……or the next one (which we actually won 22-3!).

2) Third game, a cavalry melee – my armoured determined horse (average) versus his unarmoured horse (superior); both of us had a general fighting. Beat him 5-2, 5-3, and 5-2; his death rolls were 6, 6 and 6, and his cohesion tests 10, 12 and 10 – no re-rolls, by the way, all straight throws – and I failed to kill his general, twice by just one pip. Fourth round of melee: lost 2-1 – failed the death roll, double-dropped on cohesion (which made me rout, as I'd dropped earlier for another unit routing within 3"), and he killed my general (we lost 24-1).

3) Even in the one game we won (or rather my partner won), in a series of melees over three turns, I missed with 24/28 dice whilst hitting on 4-6 and re-rolling 1 and 2.