Good morning friends!

So I had a pretty decent weekend, managed to snag 1x of each new expansion (with another of each on the way) and got a couple of good matches in Friday (even ran a demo for two separate people, both of which seemed very interested in joining our weekly group).

The highlight of this weekend wasn't necessarily on me though, but rather my friend, who, despite having played the game as long as myself, can never seem to catch a break with his dice. He played two matches and every roll was just plain terrible. Ships throwing 6-8 dice (with reolls) would only come up with 1-3 damage...

I've played him dozens of times, and it's pretty safe to say, it's not unusual for his dice to suck.


I was curious if anyone has done the saltwater test for the standard FFG dice? Do they have a a sizable "bad" die production margin?

I think there was a thread about this over in the X-wing forum. Someone did a minor-ish run and I think came up with the dice being more or less "true." Not sure if that holds for Armada or not though. Don't see why it wouldn't though.

The thing I think with eight-siders is that you can sort of "slide" them onto the table a bit without them rolling over. Maybe he should look at getting a dice tower or re-think how he rolls.

Lend him another set and see if his luck changes?

I know my dice are average. I get high rolls and low rolls and normal rolls.

I think the regional sparkle dice have some perfect roll dice. You have no idea how many times I've seen an Ackbar TRC90 roll 4 double hits or 3 doubles with an Acc.

Easy solution: win clear(er) dice. You can see the voids (if any) and avoid the bad ones.

We had a thread about this back around the 2016 wave 2 regionals. For some players including myself, some of the clear dice had visibly off center balance (sometimes severe towards a particular corner or facing).

This doesn't mean every die is unbalanced, but you might have a few. Consistent balancing is notoriously difficult on cheap dice that aren't a cube shape and affects d8s (Armada and xwing), d4s, d20s, etc.

6 minutes ago, TaeSWXW said:

Easy solution: win clear(er) dice. You can see the voids (if any) and avoid the bad ones.

For me I think the easier solution may be the saltwater lol

2 minutes ago, thecactusman17 said:

We had a thread about this back around the 2016 wave 2 regionals. For some players including myself, some of the clear dice had visibly off center balance (sometimes severe towards a particular corner or facing).

This doesn't mean every die is unbalanced, but you might have a few. Consistent balancing is notoriously difficult on cheap dice that aren't a cube shape and affects d8s (Armada and xwing), d4s, d20s, etc.

I would think the clear dice would be better than the standard.


I may just have to run the test.... it's possible he got a bad batch

After the last discussion I decided to test my dice. Locally we all had the impression that the clear regionals dice were just awful.

The salt water test confirmed that for me and I stopped using them. They were definitely skewed. The regular dice all seemed fine for me and the sparkly regional dice also seemed reasonably random as well.

12 minutes ago, shmitty said:

After the last discussion I decided to test my dice. Locally we all had the impression that the clear regionals dice were just awful.

The salt water test confirmed that for me and I stopped using them. They were definitely skewed. The regular dice all seemed fine for me and the sparkly regional dice also seemed reasonably random as well.

Is it difficult to test D8s?

4 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

Is it difficult to test D8s?

Not anymoreso than any die.

You're only testing for single face bias, effectively... So you just want to see if the one face keeps coming up or not when the die settles...

The only difference you need is the salt concentration in the water to account for the heavier die - which, generally, you do anyway (add salt until it floats...)

1 minute ago, Drasnighta said:

Not anymoreso than any die.

You're only testing for single face bias, effectively... So you just want to see if the one face keeps coming up or not when the die settles...

The only difference you need is the salt concentration in the water to account for the heavier die - which, generally, you do anyway (add salt until it floats...)

Gotcha. Thanks Dras

1 hour ago, Darth Sanguis said:

Good morning friends!

The meta time here is evening. Stop changing the meta.

1 hour ago, Drasnighta said:

You're only testing for single face bias, effectively... So you just want to see if the one face keeps coming up or not when the die settles...

The only difference you need is the salt concentration in the water to account for the heavier die - which, generally, you do anyway (add salt until it floats...)

So, I think I understand HOW you would do the saltwater test. My question is WHY you would do the saltwater test, instead of just rolling the die several times, and checking the distribution.

Just now, JgzMan said:

So, I think I understand HOW you would do the saltwater test. My question is WHY you would do the saltwater test, instead of just rolling the die several times, and checking the distribution.

You have to define "Several".

For most systems, to check that sort of thing robustly, "Several" is "hundreds" or "thousands" of times...

Plus the recordkeeping of that.

It works for some people, for sure...

But,

The Saltwater test, by comparison, is quicker and easier - because bias testing is a matter of "remove, mark, return" - and the bias, if any, becomes apparent.

Well, fair enough. I maintain, though, that if you're not willing to roll a die ten thousand times and run statistical analysis on the results, then you don't care enough.

Or, I suppose, I might just be neurotic.

If it takes thousands of rolls to detect a bias, is the bias significant enough to be concerned about?

I mean, on the one hand, people are saying this effect is really noticeable in their die rolling. But on the other hand, they're saying its a subtle effect that you need to measure carefully to be sure it's real. Is the saltwater test a test for a cause that has little measurable effect? It seems like the saltwater test would be permeated by the sweet smell of confirmation bias.

8 minutes ago, RobertK said:

If it takes thousands of rolls to detect a bias, is the bias significant enough to be concerned about?

I mean, on the one hand, people are saying this effect is really noticeable in their die rolling. But on the other hand, they're saying its a subtle effect that you need to measure carefully to be sure it's real. Is the saltwater test a test for a cause that has little measurable effect? It seems like the saltwater test would be permeated by the sweet smell of confirmation bias.

The thing is, if you roll 10 dice, and got double hits on 8 of them, mostly luck? or bias? Now if you roll 1000 and 800 were double hits, it's much more likely biased. The higher the amount, the more trustworthy it is

15 minutes ago, Visovics said:

The thing is, if you roll 10 dice, and got double hits on 8 of them, mostly luck? or bias? Now if you roll 1000 and 800 were double hits, it's much more likely biased. The higher the amount, the more trustworthy it is

That's rather my point. If the bias is really noticeable, you should be able to detect it with only a few (dozen?) samples. If that's true, then it shouldn't take thousands of rolls to detect and you don't even really need to be very careful with your record keeping; it'll be hard to miss!

I'm saying the saltwater test is problematic. It is, supposedly, a short cut to detecting biased dice: just see if the die is unevenly weighted by testing its buoyancy. By performing the saltwater test, you're looking for a cause of bias when you haven't first done a systematic test for an actual bias! So, whether the die is biased at the rate of 1 roll in 100 or 1 roll in 10000 (which the saltwater test does NOT determine, I might add) you've detected the cause of that bias, even if it is biased at rate which you couldn't reliably distinguish after 10000 rolls.

I'm concerned the saltwater test is a test that finds a cause without an effect.

If I roll 8 damage on 4 red dice, I hope you wouldn't base your analysis of whether I'm cheating or not on the results of a saltwater test.

6 minutes ago, RobertK said:

That's rather my point. If the bias is really noticeable, you should be able to detect it with only a few (dozen?) samples. If that's true, then it shouldn't take thousands of rolls to detect and you don't even really need to be very careful with your record keeping; it'll be hard to miss!

I'm saying the saltwater test is problematic. It is, supposedly, a short cut to detecting biased dice: just see if the die is unevenly weighted by testing its buoyancy. By performing the saltwater test, you're looking for a cause of bias when you haven't first done a systematic test for an actual bias! So, whether the die is biased at the rate of 1 roll in 100 or 1 roll in 10000 (which the saltwater test does NOT determine, I might add) you've detected the cause of that bias, even if it is biased at rate which you couldn't reliably distinguish after 10000 rolls.

I'm concerned the saltwater test is a test that finds a cause without an effect.

If I roll 8 damage on 4 red dice, I hope you wouldn't base your analysis of whether I'm cheating or not on the results of a saltwater test.

Personally:

If I were inclined (I'm not, I'm just a bad die roller) - I'd rather spend 10 minutes and some saltwater testing to see if it is worth the couple of hours of extended testing and recording... Rather than just knuckle down and start a few hours of testing on a whim .

In games, we tend to 'batch roll' our dice - we're not keeping an eye on an individual die, so its hard to determine wether one die is skewed or not.

The Saltwater test is a quick way to break them down to see weather they are worth testing further, or wether their spread of weight is "close enough".

Again, personally, the only time I've actually used the saltwater test method was to verify Doctor'd and Cheating dice as part of Melbourne's Warhammer40k dice-gate affair a few years back.

We were testing 'cheap' dollar store dice, versus high-viscosity gel filled dice - and the saltwater test certainly picked those out.

4 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

Again, personally, the only time I've actually used the saltwater test method was to verify Doctor'd and Cheating dice as part of Melbourne's Warhammer40k dice-gate affair a few years back.

We were testing 'cheap' dollar store dice, versus high-viscosity gel filled dice - and the saltwater test certainly picked those out.

I guess when you drop a few thousand on a game, you better make sure you win every **** tournament. I've heard prizes for big tournaments can be quite expensive and make some money back on your investment.

Just now, Undeadguy said:

I guess when you drop a few thousand on a game, you better make sure you win every **** tournament. I've heard prizes for big tournaments can be quite expensive and make some money back on your investment.

In this instance, in the year he was 'caught' alone, he'd taken home over $5000 in Product from multiple tournaments.

It was profit making for him.

23 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

In this instance, in the year he was 'caught' alone, he'd taken home over $5000 in Product from multiple tournaments.

It was profit making for him.

What did they do to the guy? Slap on the wrist? Ban from future tournaments? A trip down to the pier to sleep with the fishes?

From what I recall, he was effectively banned from all tournaments that involved any of the local gaming stores in Melbourne, as well as all tournaments organised as part of the "40k Grand Prix" that had been setup by TOs such as myself... Not to mention, as part of getting that information out to stores, the public shaming he received.

This was almost 10 years ago now... I left the country shortly after that, so I have no clue how it held up or anything.

I did it on my X Wing Green dice and found 1 that kept coming up blank then I rolled it X number of times as well as all my other green dice and there was no actual difference in results when averaged out

8 Sided dice care less for in balance then 6 sided dice you just have to get them rolling

Try the Hoagie roll method to get them rolling more if your friend has trouble getting them to roll

My buddy and I did the salt test and found a few dice, mostly red, that appeared to be unbalanced. I was told by some people in the XWing forum that the salt test is worthless and others thought it was worth it only if we had seriously crappy dice. For what it's worth, we did a dozen or so "rolls" in the bucket and some of the dice do move very strangely and we don't use those dice any more.