Dice or Low Luck??

I chose dice, personally I just love to roll dice.  Battle calculators, LL and all the calculations that go into the game are great tools and useful to help you get better.  But for me the game was and is designed to be a board game, not a computer game.  Invite some buddies over have some adult beverages, talk some trash, have a great time playing the game.  If “getting screwed by dice” really upsets you I can understand the LL route, it just makes it boring and scripted for me.  We instituted a house rule where each power gets a set number of battles they can use LL on to appease the LL person in our group.  Seems to work nicely.  Dice can be upsetting but that is the beauty of them IMHO.  I would know I also play Star Wars Miniatures and those dice will drive you mad!!!

Fascinating! How many LL battles per nation do you usually allow? What kinds of battles do people tend to use them for?

@Argothair:

Fascinating! How many LL battles per nation do you usually allow? What kinds of battles do people tend to use them for?

Well we haven’t been able to get together for a couple of months but I believe we left off with 5 battles per Axis nation. And for the allies we were giving 3 each to US, Russia, Anzac, UK London, UK Calcutta for a total of 15 battles for each side.  Probably could use some tweaking too.  (I always forgot to use them)  They were used for a lot of different battles.  Some people used them right off the bat to guarantee outcomes on turn 1, others saved them for later when you really needed to have a battle go your way and couldn’t afford to get diced.  Sometimes they were used for capital takes to minimize losses.  Usually for the really large unit battles the dice seemed to average out but having the LL in your pocket to use was a great comfort to some.  I liked to heat 'em up and let 'em fly!  And live with the results, our games were never really decided by someone getting diced it usually was a result of bad strategy or superior strategy depending on who you talked too. :wink:

We also played timed turns.  You really want to mess with peoples thought processes try 3 minute turns!  That was a blast for me, overload for some.

@majikforce:

I chose dice, personally I just love to roll dice.  Battle calculators, LL and all the calculations that go into the game are great tools and useful to help you get better.  But for me the game was and is designed to be a board game, not a computer game.  Invite some buddies over have some adult beverages, talk some trash, have a great time playing the game.  If “getting screwed by dice” really upsets you I can understand the LL route, it just makes it boring and scripted for me.  We instituted a house rule where each power gets a set number of battles they can use LL on to appease the LL person in our group.  Seems to work nicely.  Dice can be upsetting but that is the beauty of them IMHO.  I would know I also play Star Wars Miniatures and those dice will drive you mad!!!

…what majikforce said, except I dont want to appease the LL lovers in Our group

I choose dice all the way. I really don’t like Low Luck. We tried it out a couple of games. A couple of our players seemed to like it some but for me it was miserable. I will admit in some cases it does speed up the combat but I still don’t like it. I like excitement of rolling the dice.

I dont know, I will play both but by far prefer dice. I think the biggest issues with LL is the smaller battles, especially those involving subs. If I am correct a battle involving a sub and a destroyer gets to fire twice and if you have 2 destroyers defending they only get to fire once. To me this is bs. Yeah I know the sub has the surprise attack. In any case if your overall attack (or defence) strength is 6/6 or less you should not be able to get more than one hit!

First off, well said, Argothair. If I were going to be a proponent of LL, that would sum it up. I also agree with the sentiment that rolling for large battles is time consuming, though I turn into a dice-rolling robot when it’s my turn, and everyone involved goes into a calculation trance to get that shit done as quickly as is humanly possible. If I were at a table where this was not the case, I can imagine I’d go crazy.

On the other hand, at my table, we play with a range of people. I recently moved a great distance away from the old group, so most of my physical people are only on their 0th through 6th game ever. Still far too early to propose low-luck in my opinion–even if I were to consider suggesting it.

As far as online with people I used to play with back home, we always have done, and will likely continue to do, dice games for anything competitive.

For theory-craft and screwing around with what-ifs, however, we always did/do LL. And actually, usually branch at decisive battles (because it’s easy to do in an electronic format). One branch where the results were subpar but not disastrous, one where the results were exactly average, and one where the results were slightly better than average. This turns into a fractal of “wasted” time, yeah, but it lets you see how the game could evolve from turning points depending on how well you bounced through a particular fight. If you have the time, it can help you plan not only if a strategy is worthwhile, but what can be done immediately afterwards depending on the results.

If you’re in the thick of a real game, the dice are an equalizer of sorts. Yes, you can drop to a mathematically negligent chance of winning in only an hour or two of play (if you’re doing something overtly risky or have exceptionally bad luck), but that’s part of the challenge: adapting to what happens to you. In LL, you can plan everything to the letter nearly. In dice games, as calvinhobbesliker said, you must actually play differently at certain times, because you need to overkill battles that you need to win. It also leads to situations where that one frenchman that runs headlong into three italians (to take the 1/6 chance to soften them up before a US landing, for instance) can actually win. This is a fantastic thing to see, and much drinking is done when it occurs.

We also are usually very respective (yet reluctant, mind you) to throw in the towel. If it’s 3v2 or what have you, and everyone on one side and at least half of the people on the other agree there is nearly no chance for one side to continue, we shake hands, and if it’s early enough, set it all up again.

I think dice are just more fun.

I figure that a fair share of the real battles of WWII would not be possible to reenact with LL. Take the Battle of France 1940, The Allies had more men, more tanks, more planes, more of everything. They even had terrain that favored the defender. Yet, Germany won a crushing victory with almost no loss of own units. You need to use dice to get a result like that. One side all snake eyes, the other side zip. If you do a simulation of that battle with LL, the result would not be anything even remotely close to the historical correct German victory.

Real men play dice.

@Narvik:

I figure that a fair share of the real battles of WWII would not be possible to reenact with LL. Take the Battle of France 1940, The Allies had more men, more tanks, more planes, more of everything. They even had terrain that favored the defender. Yet, Germany won a crushing victory with almost no loss of own units. You need to use dice to get a result like that. One side all snake eyes, the other side zip. If you do a simulation of that battle with LL, the result would not be anything even remotely close to the historical correct German victory.

Real men play dice.

To be fair, this game is not too realistic…the Axis make way too much money compared to the Allies than what was the case in real life.

I choose LL because it better shows the apparent skills of the player(s) and how effective a strategy can be.  Losing when u have overwhelming odds in your favor and winning when you have crap odds ruin the game for me.

@ShadowHAwk:

Well its a game, irl it does not mather how many men you have but where you have them. France had them out of position. When your troops are surounded without proper leadership they will lose because of supply issues.

Look at that, I used to believe that rich France lost because of lack of morale and fighting spirit, not because of supply issues. I think the poor Russians were out of supply all the time, two men had to share a rifle, only the lucky ones got boots, ammo was rare and food was really hard to find. That did not stop them from fighting. Every day Russian troops were surrounded without proper leadership, and with lots of supply issues. That did not stop them from taking last stand battles. Russian troops won at Stalingrad without proper leadership and with supply issues.

Real men use dice

@ghr2:

I choose LL because it better shows the apparent skills of the player(s) and how effective a strategy can be.  Losing when u have overwhelming odds in your favor and winning when you have crap odds ruin the game for me.

I beg to differ. A skilled player must know his dice. If you play LL the computer did the job, if you roll dice you must know when to gamble, when to stop and when to walk away. Dice takes more skill and knowledge than playing the dull LL. IMHO.

@Narvik:

@ghr2:

I choose LL because it better shows the apparent skills of the player(s) and how effective a strategy can be.�  Losing when u have overwhelming odds in your favor and winning when you have crap odds ruin the game for me.

I beg to differ. A skilled player must know his dice. If you play LL the computer did the job, if you roll dice you must know when to gamble, when to stop and when to walk away. Dice takes more skill and knowledge than playing the dull LL. IMHO.

The computer rolls the dice too…  it is called: Random Number Generator.  Dice and LL can happen face-to-face or on some software version of the game.  There is no such thing as knowing when to gamble when the dice can swing in any number of ways.  There is no way to predict whether the dice will favor a player or whether they are about even.  The idea of ‘knowing your dice’ is just common superstition that places like casinos profit off of.  The only ‘skill’ for dice is being able to run a mental cost/benefit analysis and weighing that against the probability to win.  This skill also holds true in LL since both involve proper allocation of resources.  LL works if you want to minimize risk and focus more on in-game strategy and to truly determine who is the superior player without one side potentially getting overly bad or overly good dice rolls which may affect a fair skill comparison.  Dice works when you want simplicity in combat(not adding dice and dividing by 6) and if you like the potential dynamic game that it can bring.  Yes dice can breed skill in being able to adapt to bad dice rolls, but winning when getting lucky rolls does not make you look good and losing when having bad rolls does not necessarily make you look bad.  It also allows for occasions where a bad attack is made worse by even worse dice.  Then the attacking player tries to claim that he/she got diced while the defending player tries to claim that the attack was already doomed in the first place.  Dice just has too many variables for a fair assessment.

Anyway, if you want to do dice, you will probably have a game that is very dynamic and has a lot of excitement.  But be ready to have a player be pissed or to be in a sour mood because their strategy was destroyed by dice.  If you want LL then be ready for a game that has some dynamic action but mostly straight, predictable, and usually very fair to both sides in proper skill measurement.

Well said, ghr2!

Not played LL so not really qualified, but voted dice anyway. Like the uncertainty and freshness dice give. Every game is different.

I also like to roll the dice too. But looking at LL now. See if I got this right.

D6                      D12
    Attacker            Attacker

4 inf    @1          4 inf    @2
  2 arm  @3          2 arm  @6
  1 fit    @3          1 fig  @6

13=                  26=
  2 hits and @1    2 hits and @2
    1 dice roll          1 dice roll

D6                      D12
    Defender            Defender

3 inf    @2          3 inf    @4
  1 art  @2          1 art  @4

8=                    16=
  1 hit and @2    1 hit and @4
    1 dice roll        1 dice roll

My question is would your odds increase just a bit using D12 for the dice roll. I don’t have any access to a D12 calc.

@SS:

I also like to roll the dice too. But looking at LL now. See if I got this right.

D6                      D12
    Attacker            Attacker

4 inf    @1          4 inf    @2
  2 arm  @3          2 arm  @6
  1 fit    @3          1 fig  @6

13=                  26=
  2 hits and @1    2 hits and @2
    1 dice roll          1 dice roll

D6                      D12
    Defender            Defender

3 inf    @2          3 inf    @4
  1 art  @2          1 art  @4

8=                    16=
  1 hit and @2    1 hit and @4
    1 dice roll        1 dice roll

My question is would your odds increase just a bit using D12 for the dice roll. I don’t have any access to a D12 calc.

It should be exactly the same with a D12, since you’re just doubling everything.

I’ve never used the Low Luck system, so I don’t have any opinions on its merits relative to standard dice…but one element of this discussion caught my eye: the general issue of “result predictability” versus the potential for having a good strategy ruined by bad dice.  Although I never really developed the idea beyond just a rough concept, I’ve sometimes wondered whether a variable-risk dicing method might be interesting to use in an A&A context.

I got this idea from a subject area that has nothing to so with wargaming: possible ranges of investment returns (both positive and negative) based on the riskiness of investment types.  Financial institutions sometimes offer investors various types of pre-packaged investment portfolios which contain mixtures of stocks and bonds, in different proportions, and in varying ratios of domestic versus foreign holdings.  Here are three simple (and completely fictitious) examples of what I’m talking about.  At one end of the scale, you might have a very conservative portfolio that consists entirely of domestic guaranteed government bonds; its upside is that it’s very safe (you’re virtually certain never to lose any money), but its downside is that the rate of return is very low.  At the opposite end of the scale, you might have an aggressive portfolio consisting entirely of foreign stocks in high speculative and volatile sectors of the economy; its upside is that it has potential for generating spectacularly high returns, but its downside is that you could end up losing all your money.  In the middle of the scale, you might have a balanced portfolio which distributes your money among many different asset classes, and therefore which offers a mixture of safety and risk and a mixture of low and high returns.

How might this apply to A&A dicing?  As I said, I never really worked out any details, but the idea would be that a player who’s about to enter a round of combat would choose one of three dicing options: low-risk, medium-risk and high-risk.  These options would, I imagine, work either by using either different dice types (4-sided, 6-sided, 8-sided, etc.) or by using standard dice combined with some sort of interpretation table.  The low-risk option (represented, let’s say, by 4-sided dice), would offer a narrow and hence fairly predictable range of outcomes, which would translate into only modest gains or modest losses.  The high-risk option (represented by, let’s say, 8-sided or 12-sided dice) would offer a much wider and less predictable range of outcomes, with potential for either spectacular gains or spectacular losses.  The medium-risk option would fall somewhere between those two extremes.

The point of the system would be that each player would have to decide on a case-by-cases basis whether he wants to use a low-risk, medium-risk or high-risk dicing strategy in a particular round of combat, rather than being locked for the whole game in either a Low Luck mode or a standard dice mode.  In principle, this would have two advantages.  First, it would mean that each player would have to make a new type of “command decision” during the course the game, which adds to the thrill of being an armchair general or admiral (which is part of the whole attraction of wargaming). Second, a player who decides to use a high-risk dicing strategy and who ends up losing big won’t be able to put all the blame on the bad dice: he’ll have to take responsibility for having chosen the high-risk dicing strategy in the first place (which, again, is something that a real commander has to live with in a real war).  Conversely, the player who decides to use a high-risk dicing strategy and who ends up winning big will be able to congratulate himself for pulling off a gamble which succeeded spectacularly.  Yamamoto (who was an avid poker and shogi player) was definitely a commander of the “high-risk dicing strategy” type, and he’d probably have agreed with what James Graham, the 5th Earl of Montrose, said during the English Civil War :

“He either fears his fate too much,
Or his desserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch,
To win or lose it all.”