Rolling Dice + 40k advice

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Hey guys/gals.

I have a question and a little story I'd like to vent. The question is thus: Is there a trick to rolling dice? Basic D6 dice. Like a method, one hand vs. two hand, drop vs. throw, distance from the table, that increases the chances of certain numbers?
I ask this because I just played my older brother in a 40k match. He was Eldar and I was 30k Death Guard. In one turn with his Dire Avengers(using my dice that I normally use. The big block of dice GW sells with the scater dice and all) he hit my tactical squad(legion 20 size) with 20 shots. He was within 12" when he shot, so everyone got 2 shots. but no rerolls. 20 shots made 18 hits. No joke. And those 18 hits made 17 6s(meaning Ap 2 with his blade-storm ability) and 1 5.
I failed my single armor save and lost 18 men in 1 shooting phase.

So I'm asking, was I cheated? He used the exact same dice I used, but does he have a technique? Something I don't know? A way to roll 6s on dice? Or was he so astronomically lucky as to be impossible? According to a graphs I made using a dice probability site(anydice.com), he had a 0.0000001 chance of rolling 17 6s. And yet he did. So I'm very very lost here...

I don't want to attribute blame where blame doesn't exist, but this is so unlikely I simply can't let it go!

 

[Thaluikhain]

I wouldn't have thought that there was any technique to doing that that wasn't really obvious.

But 17 6s and one 5 out of 18 dice is...yeah. That doesn't tend to happen.

 

[carnex]

Those things happen, they are rare but they do happen. And even if the dice were loaded, that would show constantly.

Anyway I personally witnessed when in a Warhammer match chaos cavalry charged Savage Orks boar riders and managed to score no less than 16 wounds and guy rolled 11 6es and 5 5es and saved every single one of them. It's a stuff of folk tales in a beer fueled evenings in my local club.

captcha: it will pass
well obviosly it shall not captcha

P.S. to make things even funnier it was a tournament game and guy didn't have enough dices to roll all the saves at once which was requered so he grabbed dices from a local kid who had incredible luck in some games (and incredible lack of luck too, depending on a game he never really did average dice rolls) and rolled that. Poor kid had to run away from enraged Chaos Warriors player

But if you are so worried about cheating buy, or make one of those leather cups and throw dices from them and in regular form (flat palms cover both ends of a cup, few quick rotary jerks and drop of cup upside down on the table in one motion). That should fix your anxiety.

 

[Redryhno]

The best way to start rolling better is honestly to get superstitious and stop thinking there's a "correct" way to roll dice. They have a mind of their own and like some people over others. First off, give those dice to your brother(or have them get lost somewhere if you're not looking forward to 17 6's again) and go out and get your own set.

If you can buy them online, good, in person, even better, find a variety of styles, sizes, and colors you like, roll them a few times to get acquainted(if in person) and get rid of the ones that consistently roll lower than the rest, you'll probably want a couple dozen or so to buy and bring home. After that, play a few games with them, and do your best to keep track of every die you've got and what they roll(this is where the variety comes into play, makes it easier). Finally, take the ones that keep rolling badly, and submit them to the Die of Shame.

Basically just get a large custom base you can probably get through GW's website or the...I forget what they're called, but their non-canon stuff that costs twice what the normal models are, but are worth every bit for the amount of detail put into them. Anyways, you get that, and then take the one or two dice that have performed horribly over a period of time determined by you, find the best means of smashing/dismantling/destroying them, and glue them to the base. After that, take the base with you to every game and make sure you put it in full view of the rest of the dice you'll be using and repeat the process(this is why you get a couple dozen in a variety of colors). After a bit, you'll start having a pretty neat paperweight, as well as a conversation piece if you go for games outside of family and friends, in addition to an Idol of Terror for your dice to shape up and roll better. If nothing else, you'll have your own personal piece of terrain.

Edit: If none of that helps, realize that Eldar are the master race and that you should submit to their mastery of the Shooting phase. The Tau merely think they belong there, but they simply adopted it.

 

[TheBelgianGuy]

That roll was as likely as any other roll he could have done with that number of dice. It happens.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Welcome to dice-based games friend, that's just how it is. And I feel your pain; dice seem to hate me.

During a 40K: Only War RP session I once had to roll an 85 out of 100 or lower (40K RP systems work with d10 dice), I goddamn rolled a 100 and four consecutive times between 99 and 87. I mean, are you kidding me?!

 

[Smooth Operator]

Unless someone uses fixed dice then that is just plain RNGesus playing tricks on you, which is what makes dice games such a roller-coaster of emotions, anything can happen at any time.

 

[Kahani]

The whole point of dice is to generate random numbers. If there was a way to fix the results (other than using biased dice), we wouldn't use them and would have come up with something else instead.

he had a 0.0000001 chance of rolling 17 6s.

The problem with probability is that it's rarely useful to look at a single result. Sure, there's a very low chance of getting any specific result when you roll a bunch of dice, but if lots of people are rolling dice all the time, that adds up to a pretty good chance that someone, somewhere will get that result. It's like being dealt a straight flush in poker, or winning the lottery. Both very unlikely events, but they happen to people all the time because there are so many opportunities for it to happen. Assuming your numbers are correct (I haven't bothered checking), that's about a 1 in a million chance of this happening. The chance of someone winning the National Lottery in the UK is about 1 in 14 million, but there are frequently multiple jackpot winners.

I failed my single armor save and lost 18 men in 1 shooting phase.

Have you considered playing Orks? You quickly get used to losing 18 troops in one go. After all, that's exactly what gretchin are there for.

 

[lionsprey]

Clearly he had made a greater sacrifice to the gods of dice before you started playing and as such the dice blessed him with good fortune

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

Eldar dickery my friend, Eldar dickery. Your only option is regular sacrifices to Slaanesh. Before your game you need to put all your dice under the sheets in your bed and then have freaky drug fuelled sex on top of them. Bonus points if you can involve your opponent in some way. Inserting an Eldar model into any orifice also nets you additional favour.