Do you buy Chapter/Faction Specific Dice?

[Lathe Biosas]

I keep seeing pre-orders for Faction Specific Dice for Sale from GW... but I've never seen anyone actually use them in a game.

 

Do you use them, like them, think they are wonderful, or just a waste of money?

Edited Monday at 02:24 PM by Lathe Biosas

[Bouargh]

As far as I am concerned, I think some are really cool looking (IF dices were very nice), some other ugly... But all characterful if you want to put your fav faction on the foregroung. And all very overpriced too.

 

So, I always pass.

 

Yet should they be price tagged as Bolt Action dices, I might be tempted. But it is true that I am asking for a 50% cost reduction vs. usual GW pricing....

[Tawnis]

A lot of them look really cool, but there are three factors that keep me from getting any. 

 

1. Legibility. Some of them are really hard to tell what is what. The Necron dice look amazing, but good luck telling at a glance what you actually rolled. And even if you eventually can, your opponent won't be able to and that will complicate your game immensely. 

 

2. They're quite expensive. When I can get a pack of 36 easy to roll and store dice for $14 ish bucks, it's a tough pill to swallow to pay more than double for half the dice, even if they do look cool. 

 

3. The number of dice. It should be 20. That's a great breakpoint for a lot of armies to do a single round of combat or shooting with. 16 is just not enough and forces people to buy 2 sets if they want to roll all their attacks at once. 

 

My best friend owns two sets of the White Scars dice and he really likes them, I've seen a fair few other people with them too, so they do certainly sell, but they've never quite crossed the line into something I wanted for myself. 

 

... that being said, I would probably cave and get some if they came out with some cool looking Kroot dice. 

Edited Monday at 02:56 PM by Tawnis

[MARK0SIAN]

I’ve got Iron Warriors, Blood Angels, White Scars and Custodes for my heresy armies. I like having the dice match the faction I’m playing just for reasons.

 

They're nice to handle and roll well but they’re no better than dice you can get for half the price. You do have to be careful about legibility in some cases. I bought the Imperial Knights dice that came out in (I think) 8th edition and played one turn with them and immediately switched to some others because the lack of contrast between the surface and pips meant they were just a pain to read quickly. I also played a game against a mate who’d bought the Death Guard dice in 8th edition and I couldn’t even work out how he was able to read them at all. I had to ask him to use some others in the end. They were probably the worst dice I’ve ever seen. 
 

So in a nutshell the well designed ones are a nice thing to have and I enjoy that they match my army but I don’t claim they do/offer anything special, especially for the money.

[NovemberIX]

There's only one faction worth repping and that's the B&C  

 

That said, I do mostly use my blue and yellow B&C dice in game, the admech dice is mostly for wounds and all the rest are for moral support 

[Lathe Biosas]

I didn't know there were B&C Dice... how long ago did they come out?

[NovemberIX]

Ya know, I've had them so long I don't fully remember, it was between 11 and 14 years ago? I think the last dice run was back in 2020, but I know I didn't order then.

[Ayatollah_of_Rock_n_Rolla]

For me they're too big and too expensive. Besides, I've never really felt the urge to own such faction gadgets. The only one I have is a "Swamp Rats" dogtag from long ago.

[Lathe Biosas]

Is it wrong of me to want to buy terrible dice that cause physical and mental anguish to my opponents?

 

Look how much fun you could have mixing these into your regular dice and watch as your opponent's brain breaks in front of you:

 

if the Sylvaneth Dice weren't so expensive, I'd already own them. These are official Warhammer dice with no numbers, just symbols... symbols that colors change from dice to dice, so your opponent (and to be honest you won't either) will never know what number you rolled.

Edited Monday at 09:21 PM by Lathe Biosas

[Indy Techwisp]

I buy all the Tzeentch and White Scars dice 'cause those are my 2 factions and I feel like I get better rolls when rolling with the "correct" dice (obv probability is a thing but I reckon I've failed or peril'd more TSons Ritual rolls when rolling WS dice than Tzeentch ones.

 

If I ever get around to actually putting together a proper AoS army I'd probably start buying their dice too.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

I got the BA dice from several years ago.

that was the first time, and probably last time I’ll do so.

[N1SB]

9 hours ago, Lathe Biosas said:

Do you use them, like them, think they are wonderful, or just a waste of money?

 

I do NOT buy them, but everyone else in my local Warhammer Store does, and I do NOT like them for 1 reason.

 

In addition to what you said (waste of money, hard to read), my problem is what Indy Techwisp said, they definitely SKEW towards certain numbers.  And it's not like they always roll 6s even though that's usually the side with the big image so it's the lightest side.  They'll statistically roll more like 4s and 5s or something (or 1s and 2s).

 

That's the 1 reason.  Dice are supposed to be random number generators, and they're not random.  They are bad tools.

 

It's not just the big symbol on the 6 face or something.  The swirls you see in them probably distort their weight distribution.

 

INB4 the generic GW white dice roll more 1s.  I've tested them.  They roll slightly more 1s AND 6s in equal amounts, like they're fair

 

Instead, I painted my tape measure red and put a Mechanicus Cog on it.  That does not affect its measuring abilities, remains a good tool.

 

EDIT - hang on, I'm being hypocritical again, I bought the rubbery Squig Dice.  Trust me when I say there's no skew really, they bounce so much and are so random that they actually DO work as good random number generators, but it's such a hassle chasing after your dice bouncing off the table, they're also bad tools.

Edited Monday at 11:59 PM by N1SB

[Lathe Biosas]

When you test your dice, how many times do you roll them?

 

 

[Indy Techwisp]

49 minutes ago, N1SB said:

In addition to what you said (waste of money, hard to read), my problem is what Indy Techwisp said, they definitely SKEW towards certain numbers.

 

I feel I should clarify.

 

The White Scars dice (both 40k and HH) roll perfectly fine for me when I'm playing White Scars.

 

Likewise my Tzeentch dice roll well unless I'm rolling them and not playing a Tzeentch army.

 

It's a superstition thing.

My brother has this occur with his T'au and SoB dice.

[Adeptekon]

Dice prices went through the roof. Baron of Dice had been selling on etsy or ebay for around $14 those have easily doubled. I'm seeing other packs for $56...

Edited yesterday at 12:54 AM by Adeptekon

[Kommisar_K]

Baron of Dice has some cool ones and my cousin got me a set for my Salamanders. They're good, seem fair, & come in good numbers. Seriously, playing blobs of pyreblasters teaches you what enough dice looks like real fast. Those pithy GW packs aren't worth the box they come in. Also the BoD ones come in different sizes so you get what you like (and can handle). 

 

That said I'll probably never buy faction dice for myself. They tend to be rather expensive & just... a hassle. And everywhere I look the prices have jumped. Literally over the last couple months. 

[Adeptekon]

you can print your own dice now.

[ThaneOfTas]

I've got a few sets of Blood Angels and Custodes ones, I've never notices many issues, but tbh i tend to use a generic box of smaller dice as with the number that I need to roll in some fight phases it just gets cumbersome with the size of the GW dice.

 

That being said, apparently the Dice, Datacards and token sheets are coming together in a pack this edition, so I might get some this time around agiain,or maybe not depending on price.

[Griefbringer]

As far as I can remember, I have only ever bought dice on their own once, and that was a pair of big red D6 casino dice bought as a souvenir when visiting Las Vegas once upon time (coincidentally, I do not have them anymore).

 

However, I do have a rather big box of dice that have accumulated over the years from various sources, mainly from various boxed sets from various manufacturers, or as part of bulk second hand game and miniature purchases.

 

The closest I have to GW faction dice are the dice that come in Adeptus Titanicus boxed set: there is a set of ten D6 which have Opus Titanicus emblem standing for number 6. These are decently readable, with white pips on a brownish marble background. However, one needs to take care not to confuse them with the other actual six-sided symbol dice included in the set, which have the same colours; there being six order dice, plus one each for scatter, reactor and hit location (and two D10). They look nice, but for practical purposes it might have been preferable to use different colours for the different types of dice, or to drop the Opus Titanicus emblem from the basic D6 to make it better stand out from the symbol dice.

 

I do understand the attraction of themed special dice, especially for games where you only roll a few dice at ones, but when it comes to rolling them by the bucketload then legibility becomes important - and the boring old white dice with black pips tends to work quite well for this.

 

The least practical dice I have is an orange D100 - which looks a bit like a gold ball with small black numbers running from 1 to 100. You need quite a lot of space to roll it properly, and the readability of the number on the top leaves a bit lacking.

[N1SB]

14 hours ago, Lathe Biosas said:

I didn't know there were B&C Dice... how long ago did they come out?

 

I rolled 16 dice x 50 times, in fact it was before the forum upgrade so we had to upload our images and link to them, so thankfully I got a copy here:

 

 

To contrast, I watched old Forgeworld (so not technically "Citadel" GW if you know what I mean) Blood Angel dice.  They literally rolled 1s half the time, which was the Blood Angel insignia.  My friends were playing, I was hanging out and watching and drinking, it got to a point where I could call out how many 1s he was going to roll.

 

Srsly, it's worth going through this exercise.  Play a podcast in the background and try rolling your fancy dice, just record numbers, it's quite fast.  The only "clever trick" I used was I had that column adding up all the 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, 6s to make sure it was how many dice I had, just to check I didn't "miss" any in tallying.

 

The other thing to watch out for is you MAY have a strange run where certain numbers come up, don't let that sway you.  Note early on, I rolled a ridiculous number of 1s.  I thought it confirmed the belief that GW's generic/free white dice rolled more 1s.  But when I tallied everything, I actually rolled more 6s.  I had had observer bias

[Emperor Ming]

Sometimes, the only dice that really work for me are standard 12mm chessex

 

The large square things always roll badly for me

[N1SB]

The winningest player in my local Warhammer Store uses Chessex dice.  He doesn't want anyone to take away from his victories by saying he uses janky dice.

[Grotsmasha]

I have both both 3rd party Dark Angel and HH 1st Legion dice, but my main gaming ones are my B&C dice

[Brother Eleysium]

I'll have to get some pictures when I get home this evening from the office, but unfortunately I have what is called "a dice problem." If I see a faction, genre, or anything in between specific set or sets of dice, they are getting purchased. I have so many dice that I find myself hiding the fact that I bought more from my wife... Some may call it unhealthy. 

 

As far as practicality, some of them roll better than others, but as a casual gamer I really don't care. Long gone are my days of tournaments and worrying about wins and losses. 

[Firedrake Cordova]

I find that the faction-specific dice often have legibility issues, and are a little on the pricey side, so I tend to avoid them. I have multiple 12mm Chessex Scarab/Borealis/Translucent dice bricks as well as some individual ones, so the brick is faction-coloured, and then there's some additional dice to use to mark special weapons, etc, so most unit attacks can be done in a single roll.

 

15 hours ago, N1SB said:

EDIT - hang on, I'm being hypocritical again, I bought the rubbery Squig Dice.  Trust me when I say there's no skew really, they bounce so much and are so random that they actually DO work as good random number generators, but it's such a hassle chasing after your dice bouncing off the table, they're also bad tools.

Sounds like true squigs ... BOIIINNNNNGG!