Low luck or not?

chance is a significant part of the reason I play games.

Depends. For tournament play, I prefer low luck. For fun, dice is the way to go.

In my very humble opinion, we are stuck with dice but they suck.  It’s the one thing about the game that sucks.  Low luck sucks even worse though.  So I play with dice and try my best, but plan on losing so I don’t get disappointed.

The thing to keep in mind is it takes practice to get skilled at either style.  Opening moves and sometimes overall strategy should be somewhat different.

Low luck is less complicated because there are less variables.  Sometimes people complain that low luck requires too much counting and computing…. in fact, dice games require much more of both.  The appeal of low luck is the dice outcomes are (roughly) fair, so when you lose there’s no sense in complaining, and every loss tends to be a good learning experience.  It’s more like chess and less like poker, so everyone is calmer.

The bid for allies in a ll global game should be about 8-10 ipc more than for a dice game.

Dice is the more complex and exciting way to play.   It’s more like poker and less like chess, so everyone is revved up.

I use dice, because it’s in the rules and people are used to it. Maybe I’ll propose low luck when I get to play another game. I’m not a big fan of the rather large luck factor that mars this game.

@Zhukov44:

The thing to keep in mind is it takes practice to get skilled at either style.  Opening moves and sometimes overall strategy should be somewhat different.

Low luck is less complicated because there are less variables.  Sometimes people complain that low luck requires too much counting and computing…. in fact, dice games require much more of both.  The appeal of low luck is the dice outcomes are (roughly) fair, so when you lose there’s no sense in complaining, and every loss tends to be a good learning experience.  It’s more like chess and less like poker, so everyone is calmer.

The bid for allies in a ll global game should be about 8-10 ipc more than for a dice game.

Dice is the more complex and exciting way to play.   It’s more like poker and less like chess, so everyone is revved up.

excellent post zhukov. i have not read a comparison of ll to dice as good as yours.

We do dice 95% of the time but sometimes it gets to a big battle and no one wants to get hosed, so one proposed LL and if the other agrees, we do it for that battle.

@vonLettowVorbeck1914:

We do dice 95% of the time but sometimes it gets to a big battle and no one wants to get hosed, so one proposed LL and if the other agrees, we do it for that battle.

If I was the defender in such a situation, I’d probably issue an automatic no to that idea, since you’d likely just be handing the attacker an automatic win after several turns spent maneuvering and building up.  In some cases the element of chance is the only thing that is going to give the defender enough of an edge to discourage attack.

@Eqqman:

@vonLettowVorbeck1914:

We do dice 95% of the time but sometimes it gets to a big battle and no one wants to get hosed, so one proposed LL and if the other agrees, we do it for that battle.

If I was the defender in such a situation, I’d probably issue an automatic no to that idea, since you’d likely just be handing the attacker an automatic win after several turns spent maneuvering and building up.  In some cases the element of chance is the only thing that is going to give the defender enough of an edge to discourage attack.

Yeah, the defender never says yes if it were the battle of moscow or something, we usually see this is naval battles where the defender wants to make sure they get a few planes and the attacker wants to make sure they don’t lose it all.

usually play low luck, the disadvantage of it is however is that you can make attacks with a smaller margin, low luck is attacker friendly, and has a real luckadvantage of its own.

just imagine using 2 inf + 1 bomber against 1 inf, in low luck you will win every time and take 1 ipc as a loss on average.

with dice you will take 1.5 IPC and only take the terr about 95% of the battles

I think we would play lowluck more if it didn’t seem that retreats were so abusable. (of course though, what is abuse is opinion in this case).

LL

Main reason: Hate spending several of hours on “great strategical work” just to see the game ending in a split of a second without you making a mistake. On the other hand I dont find it very satisfying winning a game because my opponent lost a battle to dices.

A note on low luck: low luck doesnt mean that you dont loses games because of bad dices - or wins games because of good dices. But normally it takes several rounds of bad dices to lose a good played game or several rounds of good dices to win a bad played game. More my way of playing.

Yeah, I remember a few games of LL in revised where one side got repeatedly hosed on the trade battles on the Eastern front. Things like 3 inf 1 ftr losing 2 or 3 to 2 inf while the opponent’s 1 inf 1 ftr beats 1 inf constantly.

The  effect of the infantry losses discrepancy can really break even a LL game. It’s not as simple as sending enough to guarantee victory every time as a way to avoid losing in LL. You do that, you run out of dudes.

Dice.

I like the idea that you can make gambles that pay off.  The analgy that Zhukov44 makes about poker vs chess is perfect!

next game I am thinking of giving everyone 3-5 combats where you can call low-luck and that fight is resolved by low luck as opposed to dice.  Gives people a little bit more confidence in that one big gamble they need to pull off but keeps everything from being reduced to linear combat.

Pure low-luck games don’t sound that interesting because you are normalizing everything which doesn’t strike me as being anything like a war.  I love those wins/losses that occurr completely against the grain and these occur in the field too, Rats of Tobruk anyone?

The crazygonuts stuff still happens plenty in LL, just in the smaller or more even battles.

Medium luck is the best thing that anyone ever came up with to address this.

anytime you are about to roll dice you can choose - Average + remainder die, or all dice.

It makes a hell of a better game, and most of the time, you find that you risk in on the dice anyways!

@elzario:

Dice.

I like the idea that you can make gambles that pay off.  The analgy that Zhukov44 makes about poker vs chess is perfect!

next game I am thinking of giving everyone 3-5 combats where you can call low-luck and that fight is resolved by low luck as opposed to dice.  Gives people a little bit more confidence in that one big gamble they need to pull off but keeps everything from being reduced to linear combat.

Pure low-luck games don’t sound that interesting because you are normalizing everything which doesn’t strike me as being anything like a war.  I love those wins/losses that occurr completely against the grain and these occur in the field too, Rats of Tobruk anyone?

I love this idea. Maybe giving each of the axis 5 LL battles during the game, and each of the allies 3. This would mean that almost every battle is still dice, but there would still be LL in big battles like france.