Sunday, July 19, 2009

Fast Re-Rolling Tip


Nothing to magical here but just sharing a little tip on speeding up your play. There are a lot of rerolls around in 40K. One thing I like to do roll the reroll die at the same time as the normal roll die. This can essential cut the dice rolls down a ton. For example I often have a Predator with TL Lascannon and 2 heavy bolters in my mech list. So when I roll to hit I will roll 6 white dice and 2 red dice. White dice are the heavy bolter and the red are the TL lascannon. When I am picking up the dice to move on to wounding or armor penetration I just have to check both red. If they both miss pick both up if not pick one up since 1 hit and 1 miss or 2 hits both yield infact 1 hit. Same thing works for difficult terrain tests with dozer blades. Roll 2 dice as long as 1 is not 1 you are fine.


Now you might say that but the second die is final. That is way you can only use this trick on things where the result is either pass or fail with no penalty to get the die roll(Bosspole). If I passed the first roll I would not have rolled the second so the other die is ignored. If I failed the first then the other die is the pass. All the odds work out the same since the each dice roll is indepedent. If both dice succeed, I use my logic since I know I am limited to 1 success.


Now for scatter dice you do not want to do this trick since they are not purely pass/fail the numbers and directions matter.


This trick is great for those Vulkan buffed Thunderhammer Termis. Since the weapons are mastercrafted not Twin Linked you only get to reroll 1 miss each. So that means you have to roll each termi seperately. Roll three dice and reroll 1 miss on the charge. Instead just roll four dice and know that the max hits is 3.

6 comments:

  1. Man, that'd just confuse me! I like my rerolls to be rerolls, there's enough to remember without complicating things further by adding another type of reroll.

    If it works for you though, fair dos.

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  2. When playing someone, I ould always prefer they re-roll there misses. It mkaes it easy to forget things, and 1 mistake on this, could cost 10mins of talking on how to resolve the issue. Rerolls only take about 5 extra seconds so so. It may take more time to explain this system to an opponent then all the re-rolls you could of possibly done in 1 game.

    If it works for you, and your gaming group then keep on truckin! :)

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  3. I used to do this until a mate of mine who's a mathematician pointed out that it changes the odds in favour of you hitting, and forbade me to do it.

    He explained the maths of it at the time, but I'm afraid I can't extend the same courtesy...

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  4. Yeah, someone once tried to convince me of that... but their maths was a bit wobbly...

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  5. The math is fine as long as it is a single die reroll. Probability of failure for a die roll with reroll is probabilty of failing the first roll times probability of failing the second which is exactly equal to the probability of failing the test on both dice. Another advantage of this method is that it cuts down on the easier to manipulate single dice rolls.

    If it is a whole unit of twin linked weapons or a multishot twin linked weapon then you cannot just double the dice you roll since in that case the pairings mater. For something like a twin link heavy bolter you would do it by rolling 6 dice with 3 different colors at 2 each. The dice are compared in color groups. This is far more complicated than just rolling 3 dice and rerolling the misses so no one would try this for that situation.

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  6. Thanks, Eriochrome: that's just what my mate picked me up on - a twin-linked heavy bolter.

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