Something that has recently been playing on my mind is the amount that luck plays a part in Warhammer Fantasy games.  Many players bemoan their lack of dice rolling ability in crucial parts of battles and a lot of players (mainly those who don’t win that much!) clamour very loudly about the random aspect of our hobby.

It got me thinking, really how much do the dice play a part in the game of Warhammer Fantasy battles?

As we all know, a lot of dice are thrown over the course of a game and the general consensus is that they will even out to the standard bell curve over time. However  there are singly isolated dice rolls that are crucial and have a far greater bearing on the outcome of a battle than the numerous rolls you would routinely do each turn. A terror test and break tests are classic examples where the outcome is normally crucial, and you would not do enough of these tests to provide a big enough sample for the bell curve theory.

Despite all this talk about dice randomness perhaps the most important element of the game does not incorporate rolling dice, and that is the movement phase. And many an astute general will tell you that this is the phase where the game is won or lost. The truth is that every general that plays Warhammer, the good and the not so good, all roll the same dice the same amount of times, but somehow the same "good" generals continue to rise to the top at tournaments. The key differentiators when comparing the relative skills between generals is the deployment, movement and battle planning, and not surprisingly their ability to roll good dice does not figure as a key skill.

Good generals will spend a lot of the game trying to directly or indirectly reduce the affect dice rolling has on the battle at hand. That is the key. Yes there are going to be times when an out of the ordinary sequence of dice will throw a spanner into the works of the best laid plans, but if I could put my finger on the most important feature of a good general's attributes, it would be the ability to reduce the risk that bad dice will adversely affect your plans. Things like moving your general within any unit he leads so that his leadership radius is the most beneficial. Ensuring that units are moved so that if one does break the resulting panic tests are minimised. Simple things that when over time become a part of your standard game your win percentage will improve.

Finally, considering everything I have said so far, yes there are games where sometimes I pin point a loss to a single bad dice roll. I console myself in the belief that over the course of a tournament and/or several tournaments these things to tend to even out. If you are in the frame of mind where you harp on every negative dice , you will find yourself looking for them, and they will accumulate in your mind until you project a very distorted view of your battles onto your psyche. Believe me you will enjoy your games more, and so will your opponent, if you accept the fact there are random elements of the game and go with the flow when these things happen. Better still revel in the grand stories that are possible when the dice gods just let rip! Ever heard the story when a Chaos Lord on a Chaos Dragon charged my unit of Gnobars? :)