How to Overcome Bad Luck

Hello everyone. I know this is kind of a strange topic to bring up in a tactics forum, but I've been playing Dark Eldar for 3 years now and my greatest struggle is with terrible dice rolling.

I recently played a 2,000 point game with my friend who played Grey Knights. Although it was a close game, my opponent won by 1 victory point. During the after action debate, he said my plan and tactics were good, and my army list was well built. The thing that cost me the game was rolling a lot of 1s and 2s with most of my dark lances at the beginning turns of the game.

Now I know that luck plays quite a big part in this game, but I am wondering how other players bounce back from bad luck early on. Or how they try to reduce how big a part dice rolling plays in their game plan.

I know this is quite a strange topic to bring up, but if anyone has any advice at all, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

PS. If you are interested in the list I used, I posted it up on the Army List Forum.

Loaded dice help. That way you roll lots of 6s. Keep another pair for LD tests, those should be loaded on 1s. ))))

Jokes aside, if dices mattered, then you were winning only by a slim margin for it to matter.

Not all things are revolving around luck, there is luck in trying to shoot something and not getting sucess. Not so much in pinning enemy in place with assault, bar that hellish assault move. No luck also in movement and deployment parts of the game, the most important parts.

Well, how all the generals dealt with luck - have contingencies and be brave. Fortuna favors the bold.

Something I have noticed helping me when it comes to rolls is to never expect anything to go as planned and plan around that. An exampled would be taking out a Vehicle with 2 Ravagers. 2 Ravagers gives me 6 shots should be 4 hits, and they glance on at least 4+, I should expect at least 2 4+, so that is at least 2 hull points. Now often this should be enough to take out a damaged vehicle. The problem is that it is not guaranteed. What I do is that i try to make sure that i have the following set up:
1 Ravager set up to shoot the vehicle I want to kill
1 Ravager set up to shoot the vehicle i want to kill and something else
Some form of back up, for example Scourges, that can come in and help if above two fails.

Now i have the following:
1) Ravager 1 shoots, and either pens and destroys the vehicle, everyone is happy and i can shoot on something else.
2) Ravager 1 glances once, and the second ravager kills the vehicle. Scourges can do whatever they want.
3) Ravager 1 and 2 fails to kill the vehicle, the Scourges sweeps in for the kill.

Basically, what it boils down to, is that I always have a secondary and tertiary plan, with the secondary and tertiary being able to do something more than i planned to begin with but i expect the tertiary plan to be necessary to succeed.

I have not tried this with DE, but the general idea should be the same, have a primary plan, a secondary that can follow up if the primary fails to kill the target, and a tertiary to fall back on if everything else fails. This gives a good kill chance, and if you position your models correct, the secondary and tertiary can go on to the next target if everything goes as planned. It might not solve the bad roll problem, but it helps.

In my experience, square edged dice roll better. Rounded dice are only made to save material. If you want go ahead and take a hammer and bash apart some of the dice you are using they might have air bubbles in them. I stay away from GW dice.

Nightshields, splinter racks, venom blades, feel no pain, splinter cannons, haywire grenades, shadowfield and a farseer?

Invulnerable saves on vehicles, wounding/glancing on twos, rerolling saves and hits, high volume of shots/attacks, the same stuff everyone else uses to negates bad luck with we just have less of it.

Hm, farseer and council could help you reroll some of your dice.Good point there. Or take Eldrath.
He really kicks... well, you know, what I mean. He can really give the extra edge on the field.

I hate rolling single Dark Lance shots coz 1s nearly always happen..... so instead, I take Dissies ;p

But seriously if you want to change your luck, either buy new dice (non GW), or change your list so that your rolling more at one time ie: units like 4 Blasterborn, or Haywire Wyches for your AT, etc

But don't forget, it is a dice game and it's bound to happen....

Zenotaph wrote:

Hm, farseer and council could help you reroll some of your dice.Good point there. Or take Eldrath.
He really kicks... well, you know, what I mean. He can really give the extra edge on the field.

Unfortunately Warlock councils can only be taken when Eldar are your primary detachment. Not when they are your secondary detachment.

The whole point of winning techniques in 40k is to minimise the element of luck wherever you can. There's no perfect solution. You can stack the odds in your favour as best you can, but there's no way to completely overcome the dice.

That's why some of the deathstars and unit combos are so lethal - without the Command and Control Node on a commander, the farsight bomb wouldn't be nearly as vicious as you're at the mercy of missing. It's why daemon lists so often include Fateweaver, to minimise the crap rolls on the warp storm table, and that 1 re-roll per turn that's often vital.

With Dark Eldar, it's better to focus on damage output rather than damage limitation. Don't try and prevent your stuff from being destroyed, instead try and make sure it deals damage before it goes down. Also, as a more general rule, always play to your outs - it doesn't matter how slim a chance it has of improving your situation, as long as you don't make it any worse. For an actual example of bouncing back from early bad luck, try giving this game of mine a look:
http://www.thedarkcity.net/t8171-dark-eldar-vs-eldar-1500-points

Silverglade wrote:

Unfortunately Warlock councils can only be taken when Eldar are your primary detachment.  Not when they are your secondary detachment.  

Hm, I didn't know that. Would be to great...

It sounds daft but play with a fully painted army, my rolls are always better when I field an army fully painted.

Quote :

It sounds daft but play with a fully painted army, my rolls are always better when I field an army fully painted.

That is true!

if you want to learn how to 'manage' luck, play blood bowl for a while. the 'turnover' rule will teach you everything you need to know about managing dice rolls and mitigating luck.


(seriously)

Have you read Thor665's Tactica, and in particular on how to use threat bubbles?
http://thedarkcity.wikia.com/wiki/Dark_Eldar_Tactica
(about halfway down)
If you take Dethric's advice above, and combine it with the threat bubble approach, you will maximise the probability of success, and reduce the impact of bad luck.

Nothing is guaranteed, and DE are an army that rely on a good strike, and little retaliation. You may have just been really unlucky, or it may be that you are still relying on odds that are not big enough in your favour.
Either way, keep playing, keep records of what worked and failed, and you will improve.

To quote one of the big names on another forum, "Luck is just statistics taken personally."

shiodome wrote:

if you want to learn how to 'manage' luck, play blood bowl for a while.  the 'turnover' rule will teach you everything you need to know about managing dice rolls and mitigating luck.


(seriously)

Without a doubt! Bloodbowl is a cruel and unforgiving teacher, but you'll learn to manage risks like a bookie hedging a bet made by tzeentch.

It can feel sometimes that the dice are against you. I know I feel that way a lot, in fact, the people I play with tell me repeatedly that I have the worst "luck" they have ever seen. But its out of your control, I have learnt that the best way to avoid the inevitable fails is to increase the number of dice you use. I.e.Get more shots out then you need to.

Another method is to roll each dice individually. Sounds silly I know but it seems to work or at the very least is less dissatisfying for you to look at all those 1 and 2s on the table! Although you will not be the most popular person for doing so (takes a long time unsurprisingly).

Grub wrote:

It can feel sometimes that the dice are against you. I know I feel that way a lot, in fact, the people I play with tell me repeatedly that I have the worst "luck" they have ever seen. But its out of your control, I have learnt that the best way to avoid the inevitable fails is to increase the number of dice you use. I.e.Get more shots out then you need to.

Another method is to roll each dice individually. Sounds silly I know but it seems to work or at the very least is less dissatisfying for you to look at all those 1 and 2s on the table! Although you will not be the most popular person for doing so (takes a long time unsurprisingly).  

I agree completely. I am famous amongst my group for being absolutely unable to destroy anything with melta weapons. If I don't miss I'll fail to damage/wound and if I do manage to do that they'll make their save. Seriously, I'm lucky if I kill 1 model every 3 or 4 games with melta!

My opponents also seem to hold to the 'roll one dice at a time' theory when making saves and it seems to work as they make a freakish amount of saves doing it that way. Occasionally it even works for me!

Grub wrote:

Another method is to roll each dice individually. Sounds silly I know but it seems to work or at the very least is less dissatisfying for you to look at all those 1 and 2s on the table! Although you will not be the most popular person for doing so (takes a long time unsurprisingly).  

I wish it would work but my Archon's shadowfield is a proof that it does not... for me at least. I can't remember the last time it saved more than 1 wound without my archon being fortuned.

The only reliable way is to just throw a lot of dices. This way results will be closer to the average, therefore, more predictable.

If you don't mind a little cheating, train to throw dices one-by-one in such way that they do not land on 1. Hard (i can't do it), but i've seen that technique. Guy passed 98 2+ saves through the game without failing one, and passing 3+ was statistically closer to the 2+. Dices weren't loaded since i requested swap and he was doing pretty much the same with mine.

no, the way is to learn how to play wargames and make dice rolls in the right order.  so that if your first attempt at accomplishing some vital task fails, you have contingencies and back-ups to make further attempts (even if to the detriment of secondary tasks).  rather than, as i see all too often, saving the crucial roll as some sort of 'finale' for the turn only for it fail and having no remedy as everything else has already been used.

bad luck exists, but it's effect is magnified by poor planning.

like i said, play bloodbowl.

Have contingency plans. That's the most important thing in overcoming bad luck, since avoiding it is way way hard.
That said, I have a superstition I can't shake, that I'll share. Famously makes my flickerfields nigh impenetrable.

Don't roll dice that are already showing low numbers!

Pick up the guys that rolled ones and twos last time, and with the application of a certain amount of child-logic, you can see how they're much less likely to do it again!

(I know, I know, but I stick by it.)

Have no redundancies: make sure every unit can threaten pretty much anything: put blasters in venoms, put anti-troop stuff in Raiders.

The more dice you roll, the closer to a normal distribution they will get. Massed shooting is usually going to give you a better chance of being nearer the 'average' overall than one tooled up combat unit (in any given turn).

If in doubt... massed splinter fire and haywire wyches.

I prefer haywire for my anti-tank; it takes more skill to get it there (down to you), but once you're in the absolute chance of doing nothing is minimum!

Be flexible. Good tactics should be able to overcome bad luck.

Be superstitious. I prefer to put dice I've just rolled on one side of the dice pile, and take dice to roll from the other (so they get a 'cool down' period). If I need to roll a single save or some such, I will try to pick up a die that just rolled a one. My heart says the odds of it rolling TWO ones in a row are much lower, even while my brain is giving my heart a cookie and a patronizing pat on the head.

You could also try blood sacrifices! Nothing overcomes bad luck and horrible rolls as a bit of blood to slake the bloodthirst of your models and make them perform better! So next time you cut yourself while converting something, smear a droplet or two under the bases of your models for that sneaky early Pain Token. Works like a charm!

Honestly though, this is something that plagues me every time I borrow models to make one of those crazy netlists you see - triple ravager, three wave serpent extravaganzas and so on. They simply don't work. The dice refuse. However, when I play my oddball lists, the dice simply seem to roll better. Now, one could simply say that this is because I am playing more relaxed and therefore don't pay much attention to the bad dice rolls. That might be the case, because I simply don't find many of the very potent lists on paper to be any fun to play with.

So my advice is this - play the game with a themed list you like (and which is still reasonably strong - it doesn't have to be newest deathstar smasher - just enough to give you a good chance to win) and just have a nice, fun game with your opponent. You're both there to have a good time, so make sure that happens. Soon you will find that the dice actually start rolling rather decently, bad rolls happening less. And even when they happen, don't worry about it too much. Decrying your luck after every roll just reinforces this 'cursed' feeling, and doesn't really change anything. After all, as the Architect of Fate has decided, so shall it be!

Jimsolo knows how it is. You just have to believe!