Winning streaks, Lady Luck and the Dice Faeries...

 Artists impression of a Dice Faery (Annie Rodrigue)

Well I think its fair to say that my unbelievable winning streak continues to astound and confound my opponents and to be brutally honest... me!!! Its nearly been two years now that I've gone in multiple game systems without losing a single game. What's more amazing is the shear amount of those games that have been wins. In all that time only a very few have been draws and even those were really moral victories in 40k and Fantasy. I can count them on one hand as well, its three draws. So how have I achieved such an awesome feat? Skill? Army list spam? Cheating? Luck? Well I think its fair to say I've had a fair degree of luck.

Well it actually started with a loss, a bizarre and totally humiliating loss to be precise with my bloody Dwarfs in Warhammer 7th Edition. What happened I hear you ask? Well I took a dwarf gunline, I mean why wouldn't you? Against a High Elf army, he had Tiranoc Chariots, Silver Helms and various units that were going to try and get over the other side of the board to blat me, my mission was to blat him with my guns and cannons and other toys before he got there. It actually went really well and he ended up with a unit of 12 Sword Masters or thereabouts and a unit of 2 Dragon Princes actually getting to me, meanwhile I'd lost nothing.

Yep the plan was going well. Very well. So how on earth did it all go so hideously wrong I hear you all cry. Well to tell you the truth to this day I don't really know. My opponent was going to extend his hand before the fateful last round, BUT the ribbing of his friends made him play on. We did the Sword Masters versus my Ironbreakers first, he scored a respectable 4 kills and I returned the favour with 0 kills, not to worry though I had more ranks and outnumbered, I still lost by 1 but the general and army standard were nearby. I rolled double 6 for my leadership. We laughed and I picked the dice up for my re-roll... 11. Brilliant my Dwarfs were running oh well, I rolled the dice... I rolled 3, with the -1 that was a mighty 2 inches. You could not make it up. His Sword Masters ran them down.

I don't want to go into too much more detail be suffice to say my entire battle line crumbled at the sight of the Ironbreakers being butchered. At the time I remember us both laughing at it because it was just dire luck and I bet I'll never have a game like it again in all my life. It happens. So why am I telling you all this, well its partially to convince my opponents that I do have bad luck... just very rarely. You see in this nearly two year long streak I have played well, and I am a more than competent gamer, BUT the biggest thing contributing to my winning streak has been lady luck, or as she's now known around these parts... the Dice Faeries!!! My friends joke that the average on 2D6 is 12 when I'm rolling the dice, sad thing is when I'm playing Warmachine they're right, I have outrageous luck with my damage rolls, many a time against Jacks my Mage Hunter Strike Force has rolled multiple triple 6's.

This picture to the left needs some explaining, here are two opposing dice rolls from a game of Infinity. The orange dice represent the rolls of my opponent who needed 11's or under on his 5 D20 rolls to hit my Guilang Sniper with his Szalamander. He rolled a very respectable four hits with a 1, 3, 9 and 10 and only the one miss of a 17. I needed a 14 or under on the one D20 , and to score above his 10 to win the face to face roll. The red dice as you can clearly see is showing a 14. Now for those of you who play Infinity you'll know that's a Critical Hit and the Szalamander has to lose a structure point, no armour saves allowed. This would have been jammy, except I followed it up with another Critical in the same fire fight on his next order and my next ARO. I eventually downed the TAG with my sniper due to pure fluke.

I've always been lucky with dice rolls. So much so in fact that I've been accused on more than one occasion of using loaded dice, I don't and I never have. Although to be fair if I was on the other side of the table I'd be thinking the same. Its why I now try to always use the same dice as my opponents either we use mine or their dice... but still those unbelievably jammy dice rolls keep cropping up. You see the reason I'm writing this article is because I recently played a game of Dystopian Wars against 'the Cursed'. I won and there wasn't really anything unusual about that, but there were a number of dice rolls in that game that just beggared belief. even by my standards they were awesome.

He even took a photograph of some of them as proof for people, the one that got him though and me was a dice roll that even for me was jammy. You see in Dystopian Wars like all Spartan Games systems a 6 to hit counts as double, and then you get the 'exploding dice' mechanic where you get to roll those 6's again for more shots / hits etc. so what happened? Well I rolled 11 dice, I got seven 6's and three 5's and one 4. All hits. I then picked up those seven 6's and rolled five more 6's a 4 and a 5. I then picked up those 6's again and rolled three more 6's a 2 and a 3, my first misses. Rolling the three 6's again I got a 2, 4 and 5. All in all I'd done 39 hits, trust me that's an awful lot, yeah he took some of them out with ack-ack and his shields but it was a lot, too much for his Battleship to cope with.

The begging of an amazing sequence of rolls... or just my average roll

The above picture is actual evidence taken by the cursed on his phone. It got worse though he asked me 'why the hell don't you roll any 1's?' he was suffering from a frustration born of losing to me at games for 2 years... but he had a point. I mean statistically I was due a couple of 1's, so I flipped over my Dystopian Wars game sheet to look on the critical damage table. I felt a little bad that I'd done a critical on his Battleship and that things were going so well for me, I rolled my two dice to see what damage I'd done. They bounced around and teased spinning showing a 5 or 2 and then they settled there for all to see. Double 1, snake eyes, normally a gamers nightmare, but here in this game I'd just sunk his Battleship. I saw his dejected face again as my incredible luck continued, he extended his hand as he always does like a gentlemen and said 'good game'.

I don't really know how the hell to explain it because you see that sort of dice roll for me is all too common. I have become that gamer you hate, the guy who wins because of flukey dice, and to tell you the truth its annoying me as well because I'm not a bad gamer. I know my rules, I know my combo's and strategically I'm actually quite astute. I mean I should be I've been playing for years now... but even I have to admit that many of my games over the last two years have been decided by the Dice Faeries, in fact far too many. I even thought switching to a card based game like Malifaux would help, but it hasn't because those blasted Dice Faeries are adept with cards as well... in my last three games the Black Joker has ended up in my hand, never to be played.

Three armour saves of 15+ you say? EASY!!!

So what the hell can I do, people tell me I should be happy with the luck I get, but honestly I'd actually just like things to go back to normal or average rolls. I'm fed up of being 'that' guy, the one no one really wants to play, I want to be able to claim I 'deserved' a victory again, that I worked for it. Most importantly of all though, I really do want somebody to beat me at a game, grind my army into dust and teach me a lesson. Because here's the thing, in two years of wargaming, apart from picking up new games and learning those rules I've learned nothing. Not a thing, I haven't needed too. Perhaps this is why I've started looking at co-operative board games again. Eventually this 'streak' will come to an end and for whoever it is who beats me I'm sure it'll be a big deal, thing is I'll be grateful... just as long as I don't go on a two year losing streak. Peace out!

PS This article is dedicated to all my friends and opponents who have suffered at my hands and witnessed astonishing dice rolls and taken it all with good grace. I'm sorry and I really do hope one of you kicks my ass soon.