You are in luck, Eagle games already makes this kind of dice
Great!
@Carolina:
I went with blank d6 - 5 colors, and applied 1 dot, 2 dots, …. 5 dots on each color set. Now, is there a discussion on which color get how many dots? Leaning towards, yellow 1, black 2, red 3, blue 4, green 5. Also, are the 2 dots opposite or adjoining sides? (So many decisions!!!)
Sure, Carolina. That’s why I prefer my original 1-4 polyhedral dice option: no decisions! :-D
I find both ideas really cool. Narvik’s means an even easier approach to mine, and YG’s is as easy and takes it back to good old d6’s. Time to dust off my dear blank d6’s and buy some blank polys!
I recently bought A&A 1941 and I started to look into all these pretty house rules people conceive and use. I found some great and some not that great (at least for me), but I was really impressed that I could find no mention about the use of polyhedral dice in the combat system. Don’t get me wrong, I love good old six sided dice, but the thought of rolling and checking results separately for units with different attack/defense values on each combat round made me feel a bit lazy. Then I read about the “reduced luck” variant but, well, I want a quicker rolling, but not to the point of spoiling the fun in taking your lonely defending infantry unit to a glorious win!
I began to think about new possibilities. One idea was the use of different coloured dice, of course, but as a Maths teacher and poly dice enthusiast I had to calculate probabilities, and found that some of these dice could fit quite well in the game. My idea: all units hit when rolling 1 to 4, but they roll different dice depending on their attack/defense value:
| Att/Def value | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| Hit probability | 17% | 33% | 50% | 67% |
| Polyhedral dice | 1d20 | 1d12 | 1d8 | 1d6 |
| Prob of 1-4 roll | 20%* | 33% | 50% | 67% |
*Units with attack/defense value of 1 are a bit favoured in their hit probability ―perhaps an interesting slight twist in the game?
This way you just pick up a handful of poly dice, roll and check all your 1-4 hitting results in one single throw. We all love our dear d6, that’s sure, but the idea seems quite interesting to me and I wanted to share it in case anyone finds it nice too. By the way, I have not tested it, so your thoughts and impressions are welcome. Cheers!
In real life, a sub would get one chance to get a surprise attack on an enemy, would take it and get the heck out of there. If they hung around any ship - cruisers, battleships and even carriers had the capability to take out a sub. So this just doesn’t make any logical sense…
It actually does make sense. The game is abstact, not literal. In other words, don’t think of the battle in a sea zone as a single engagement. Those turns are months long. Let’s say a single battle involving 2 subs and a battleship goes 3 rounds. It would be unrealistic for the battleship to be surprised if all 3 rounds occured in one hour of real life, agreed. But perhaps each round of rolling (within that one player turn) is days, weeks, or even a month apart, with the subs firing and disengaging each time and returning for another pass when they are confident of their advantage. A sub getting a surprise attack in each round always seemed reasonable to me because of the scale of the game.
After reading all the posts, THIS is the idea that makes real sense for me. Thanks!