Dice, Ethics, and…Dicey Ethics?

After all is said and done, I’m going to be looking for some audience participation from anybody that happens to stumble their way across here.

I was fortunate enough to get the chance to play two games of Warhammer over the past weekend.

The first game was an epic struggle with one of my buddies and his Lizardmen. He was gracious enough to announce that he would not cast Dwellers Below unless things went horribly wrong. I returned that I could use all his spells with the Third Eye of Tzeentch, so we had a very nice little prisoner’s dilemma brewing. It was a back and forth match that saw us separated by about 50 victory points at the end, meaning it was one of the most fun ties I’ve been a part of.

Following that, I played one of the vets and the new Tomb Kings book. It was close to start. A random “river of light” roll saw my Trolls get weapon skill and initiative 10, along with a +1 strength bonus from the Warshrine. Needless to say, they and a unit of knights plowed their way through a unit of archers apiece, before running into infantry blocks and the charge of a chariot unit with the flaming banner that they just weren’t quite hard enough to handle. After that, things took a turn as my infantry met his proceeded to absolutely grind their way through them. I found the most challenging part of the game to be deciding which of his spells to let through, as he had entirely too many dice to stop them all. Unfortunately for him, I think GW has seen the problem they created with the eight main lores and are fixing it by toning down the army book lores. Of course, that makes for a very unbalanced system…

Two paragraphs in the bag. Neither of them really relates to what I want to say in this space, but they do lead to it. We all know this is a dice game. We all whinge and moan about those terrible ones that we just roll all the time. It comes with the territory. I don’t know any wargamer that isn’t superstitious to some degree. But what about the other end? What happens when you’re just rolling out your mind and keep climbing higher and higher on the bell curve until you start thinking about non-stop flights to Vegas? I don’t care how much skill your opponent has, when you save on your armor 30+ times in a row, the odds begin to skew in your favor. And I’m not speaking hyperbolically, because we started counting.

Obviously this can happen. We all catch hot streaks. But it’s been like that three and a half games out of four, and I’m starting to think it’s my custom club dice. I’m scared to take leadership checks, even on an 8 or a 9, outside of the Casket of Souls and a voluntary flee reaction (which I then needed two turns to rally from), I’ve only needed to check twice. And when my buddies have to take inordinate amounts of models off the table over and over again, I start to feel bad and neither of us enjoys the game as much.

So what then? My dice aren’t modded. I’m not picking and choosing which dice I’m throwing based on needing to roll high or low (which has been done by others in the past). I don’t pick up the small dice for characteristic checks. But I am rolling sixes so hard it looks like a hub for cargo trains most of the time. At what point do I start to think about picking up different dice to play with? It’s not an issue of the legality of the game, but rather, an ethics one. At what point do things begin to get murky in terms of the spirit of fair play?

Real Actual Games

I actually got to play a game of 40K today. Two in fact. Who knew that side of the hobby existed?

After a pair of cancellations, I played another one of the local guys who just happened to hanging out at the club.

It was the first time I have gotten to use my Blood Wing. Originally, I built the army list to be played at 2000 points, albeit not so competitively. I had also planned not to field it until it was fully painted, but with two drop pods and a big tank to go, I thought I'd just give it a run as is.

Note that the Pepsi can is not being proxied as anything.

So this is the entire army at 1500 points. Originally, I had planned on running a Dreadnought in the third pod, but he got left at home, so I ran a Lone Wolf instead and had the pod drop empty.

The first game was capture and control. I dropped a unit with combimeltas, and an assault unit with Logan in aggressively. I promptly exploded one of his rhinos, and immobilized another. With a pair of nasty units in his back line, he decided to take the fight to the other side of the board. He dropped a Furioso back near my objective, with his Death Company still in reserve. My rune priest blew up his last Rhino which essentially forced him to charge my Lone Wolf in a one on twenty combat. At this point, I feel the need to mention that my dice were on fire. I could not fail a save anywhere on the board. I took a single wound on the Lone Wolf and lost two guys on the next turn's charge, and that was it. There really wasn't much he could have done, because I was just so en fuego.

With no scoring units left on his side, we called it so we could run it back.

We rolled up a seize ground with five objectives. He went first and walked everything on. I dropped in aggressive again, forcing his Death Company towards my Assault Terminators with Logan. He charged my combimelta squad with an Assault Squad, but between Logan's Living Legend and counter attack, my four guys had sixteen attacks, and duly wiped the squad. Meanwhile Logan and company finished off the Death Company, though they lost 3 of their own guys. Logan immediately split off and annihilated his Devastator squad, while the remaining Terminator attacked another assault squad. Though I was losing guys at a more regular clip, my dice for damage really started to heat up again, and after my Rune Priest lit up his Furioso, which was his only real chance to contest/kill off the guys on my objectives, so we called it again and chatted about strengths and weaknesses in the list.

On to Number Two

I finished the interior of the first drop pod way faster than I though possible, mostly because I went straight black for most of the details. It's not supposed to be a particularly eye catching part of the army, so I'm ok with it. I'm looking forward to the next one, because it's for a dreadnought, and the lack of interior makes it seem less daunting.

Finally, Kinda

I have finally finished the exterior of pod number one. Well, it's done anyway. I went back and added a couple coats of red and gold to solidify the colors. They look a lot more matte, and I know the model is a lot better for it. Of course, just now I saw a piece of gold with splotch of out of place red on it, so of course, the work is never done. But even if the exterior were perfect, I still need to do the inside. Typically, I don't rate painting the inner parts of vehicles. I don't ever drop the ramps in game, so why go to the extra effort? Drop pods, on the other hand, look odd on the table top without the petals down, but all the nice display details are on the outside, so I'm committed to finishing this in its entirety. Thankfully, I have an exceedingly simple scheme. It doesn't need to pop. It can be fairly reductionist and still look good.
It's been a while, but I can see the end in sight, so that is exciting.

Hobby Goals
-Finish the interior of Pod 1.
-Less time between posts next time.
-Glue Chaos Warriors on bases.

Hobby Progress
-Exterior is complete.
-Some WoC bases are complete.
-Finished the Greed Corp campaign.