Public Sillyness

[Jennifer]

Yes, bad dice can be part of the game.  They can also ruin a game.  If you’re always lucky with the dice or always unlucky with the dice in a game it ruins the fun.

good dice rolls beat good tactics

unfortunately is true.  However, Low Luck still uses the dice, it just reduces the luck factor by allowing you to strategically place units, buy the right units and prepare for counter attacks.  LL makes it more like chess.  ADS makes it more like Yahtzee.

Point:

2 German Fighters, 1 German Submarine vs one British Battleship (2h):

Battleship damaged, all attackers destroyed.  YAHTZEE!!!

9 Infantry attacking 2 infantry:

1 defender killed, all attackers killed.  YAHTZEE

Eventually you have to sit there and say what are the odds?

Personally, I like the idea of keeping all the odds open.  So I’d say, with the online calculators out there, figure out the odds of success and failure then roll 1d100.  Speaking of which, I always wanted to see if the dicey could handle other dice, so I’m going to test it below.

Percentile Dice
Rolling 1 100-sided dice:
20

D20
Rolling 1 20-sided dice:
10

D10
Rolling 1 10-sided dice:
10

D8
Rolling 1 8-sided dice:
8

D4
Rolling 1 4-sided dice:
1

D2
Rolling 1 2-sided dice:
1

[Jennifer]

oh Snap!  :evil:

Anyone wanna play a game with D100’s?  heheh

4 Infantry at 20% vs 8 Infantry at 40%

Attack:
Rolling 4 100-sided dice:
26, 45, 88, 28

Defend:
Rolling 8 100-sided dice:
75, 4, 21, 53, 86, 87, 4, 86

[88 Millimeter]

Sweet! Nice job, Jen. My friend and I have been working on a d20 variant of A&A, so this is nice to know. %dice is obviously the best choice, but it gets a bit clunky in FTF games to roll so many dice…

And yes, luck is a part of the game, but I’ve had a beautiful 20 turn game go south in a hurry on one turn of bad luck. It was a game that had been picked up and written down multiple times- the kind you spend ALOT of time thinking about. Bad dice killed it. It sucked the fun out of the best game I’ve ever been a part of for both winner and loser.

When you win on crazy dice do you ever truly feel like you outplayed your opponent?

When you lose on bad dice do you truly feel like you were out-strategized?

No, and no. So as Jen alluded to, sometimes it feels like you might as well play yahtzee.

[way2slo]

@88:

So as Jen alluded to, sometimes it feels like you might as well play yahtzee.

Remove the luck factor of the dice, and you might as well quit playing A&A and go play chess.  :wink:

[Guest]

Singing to the choir, Way!  :mrgreen:

[Jennifer]

But in LL you don’t remove the luck factor.  You just minimize it.  There’s still luck involved.

Also, I wanna start working on a d100 variant.  I think we’d have to round off to the nearest 5% to make it easier to remmeber what units have what percentage chance to hit.

But I do think that AA guns should have a higher percentage to hit then attacking infantry.  Especially over capitals!

[Guest]

Further discussion on a d100 variant (or any other variant) needs to be under House Rules.

[Squash]

Doesn’t anyone else see the irony of talking about using low luck dice’s, because good or bad luck could ruin a game… And the unrealisms in the game, in the same conversation? Take Midway for example, that was an incredibly close, unbalanced, and purely lucky thing.

[Guest]

And do not forget that the code name for the position selected for the US fleet at Midway was…
Point Luck

[way2slo]

@Jennifer:

But in LL you don’t remove the luck factor.  You just minimize it.  There’s still luck involved.

Also, I wanna start working on a d100 variant.  I think we’d have to round off to the nearest 5% to make it easier to remmeber what units have what percentage chance to hit.

But I do think that AA guns should have a higher percentage to hit then attacking infantry.  Especially over capitals!

A few thoughts:

• Low Luck (LL) is still too close to straight math, IMHO, which dosen’t give you the thrill of the great battles.  With LL, would the 101st Airborne have held Bastogne in the Battle of the Ardennes?  No.  Would the RAF have fought off the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain?  No.  Would the Russians have held off Germany at the Siege of Leningrad?  No.  Come to think of it, the Allies got pretty lucky in Europe.  :-D

• d100 rounded off to the nearest 5% becomes d20

• While I agree that there should be better defenses against strategic bombing other than a puny AA piece, AA guns in and of themselves were really not that effective, historically.  I believe the game rules reflect night-time air raids, which means they were shooting at the dark and hoping the bombers would run into their shells.  In that case, I would say that the attack rating of 1 is very generous.

  What is an effective Defense against WWII bobmbing raids are Fighters.  If I were going to modify the rules, I would allow Fighters to shoot once, like an AA gun, at each Bomber in a SBR entering the territory.  This would reflect Day-Time air raids.  One Fighter per territory.  The Fighter would hit on 3 or 4. (I would have to play-test it.) However, a 50% or 66% chance of losing your Bomber would be a huge deterrent.  Would you even bother doing SBR’s?  Even with Heavy Bombers?

[Jennifer]

Yes, d100 rounded to the nearest 5% is a d20.  So?  It’s just way cooler to throw 20d100 then it is to throw 20d20……IMHO

[way2slo]

You like throwing d100?  Well, I guess that is ok.  I personally think they are too hard to read (are you sure its not “that” number on top??) and they tend to crack over time.  d20 have some coolness to them, even if it is only because they are not d6.

If you want to throw d100, I suggest that you don’t round.  Make the values odd percentages that don’t divide evenly into each other for the units.  For the people that like to calculate everything, that will drive them crazy.  :lol:  ( Make them all different prime numbers if you can.  Infantry 13/23, Tank 37/31, Artillery 17/29 and give Inf +10 :evil: )

[Guest]

d100 have to be the most annoying dice ever made.  They tend to roll forever, fall off tables, scatter miniatures on the combat grid, become cat toys, and in general are a pain in the butt.

We had a house rule that d100 were prohibited due to these problems.

For %, you used tried and true… 2d10, calling one color die as 10’s, the other as 1’s.

[ajgundam5]

d100 ? is that a hundred sided dice?

[Guest]

Yep.

They are usually 2" to 3" in diameter, and roll forever…

[way2slo]

Have any of you played with the d10 that looked like logs?  I have seen them in stores, but I don’t know how they play.  I thought it would be annoying if one finished rolling as it was leaning on another.  Can that happen?

[Jennifer]

@ncscswitch:

d100 have to be the most annoying dice ever made.  They tend to roll forever, fall off tables, scatter miniatures on the combat grid, become cat toys, and in general are a pain in the butt.

We had a house rule that d100 were prohibited due to these problems.

For %, you used tried and true… 2d10, calling one color die as 10’s, the other as 1’s.

Yup, that’s why they’re so much FUN!

(Though, d20 is perfectly fine.)

[balungaloaf]

reading your first post jen,  thats why i dont play by your house rules here, they are idiotic.  We play by a booklet of rules made by the same guy who made this game, where he has to fix his mistakes and inconsistencies.  Its a great way to play much much better than the way i played before, makes the games so much better.  Free units in the capitals, only capitals can build certain units.  No more rediculous rules.  You guys should all check it out and then start a new version of the game here with those rules.  New units, new IC’s new ways to hit opponents, you get to choose the casualty on att. and def. on a roll of 1.  Its awesome but a lot a lot is different.  Its a pretty big booklet for how big booklets should be.

[balungaloaf]

just read the post below yours jen, in the new way, allies cant ever go on russian soil unless russia is done and out for the game.  A lot of new rules like that to, ways to take over a few neutral countries, new impassible terrian in the himilaya’s, sorry i just like the new way a lot lot better.

[Jennifer]

And you’re posting a link to the PDF when?