How to mitigate consistant poor rolling

[johhnytrash]

I'm pretty well known in my league as an unlucky roller. I know that the randomness can be overcome, simply because I know players that are consistent winners and the dice can't be kind consistently.

What do you guys do to try to limit the damage of bad dice?

[johhnytrash]

I've art of blocking, I've tried to do my non-rolling maneuvers first, but I'm still struggling with first roll turnovers. Anyway I'm reading advice given to other in the past on this forum, It will help, I'm sure.

[Joemanji]

Pick a team that is forgiving dice wise but perhaps harder to coach (e.g. Dwarfs or Norse). But if you are really turning over first roll every turn, likely you are picking options that are too risky. One dice blocks or 3+ dodges for example.

A good idea is to plan ahead in the previous turn. Mitigate against the turnover by being more cautious. Or leave players where they can move to lend assists etc.

[Jonny Deth]

Play a real safety game! Do not do anything risky at all...This is how I play my dwarves and end the halves with most my re-rolls intact.

[grampyseer]

I'll echo what has already been said. Make easier die rolls.

If you set yourself up to need a 2+, rather than a 3+, you will have a much easier go of it.

Maybe someone has some official stats on this.........but in every game of FUMBBL I've played, the luck is seldomly split by worse than 10-15%. (I don't think that pure luck blowouts are as common as we make them out to be)

Good coaches don't roll well, they cover their bases so that they can afford to roll poorly from time to time.

[fen]

Avoid agility rolls if at all possible, if they are unavoidable leave them till as late as possible in a turn or do them immediately while you still have a reroll. Ball handling is the main place where you have compulsary agility rolls, most other agility rolls in the game can be avoided if you're willing to either be patient or use a 2D Block instead.

Maximising the number of 2D Blocks you take in a turn is the fastest way to appear lucky. A 2D Block (or 3D) is less likely to fail than any agility roll because when you use a reroll you get an extra two dice instead of just the one. Learning how to set up chains of 2D Blocks are key.

Also try to use move actions (which are risk free if you don't need to dodge) to set up easier blocks and also cover for potential bad rolls. A player standing on his feet but doing nothing that turn is sometimes better than rolling the dice and having him fall over. I often just sit a lineman in someones tackle zone (for example) if it's better to tie up the opposing player and just take the hit. I give my opponent the chance to skull out his block then.

Most of all, you need to remember that luck is a fictional concept that people hold in their heads. In truth there is no luck; confidence, creating opportunities, taking advantage of those opportunities and accepting that occasionally you'll fail are the fastest ways to being lucky in anything.

[kithor2002]

I aggree with fen's posting.
And use a dicecup. A lot of people I know made the experience that the dice rolls were more balanced.....

[datalorex]

Try to use characters that don't use die rolls that will end your turn for you. Assassins don't end your turn with their stab rolls, for example. Failing Jump Up, Really Stupid, Wild Animal, and others will not end your turn. Do those types of die rolls first.

[Kheldar]

Yeah but players with Really stupid, wild animal and so on have most of the time loner. I would not say do these first. Maybe dont even move them if not needed.

Rest is said.

Stand up people you dont want to move later on.
Make move actions without dodge and gfi first. The two or three dice blocks. And most important:

Do the important stuff first. Dont do blocks on the line, when there is a free block on the ball carrier. Such things have priority.

[Joemanji]

And if something has a chance of failure, and you don't need to do it, then don't! Make your opponent react. Even things like dodging a player out of a TZ at the end of the turn when things have gone well for you. I've killed plenty of players that way. Good coaching is all about making your opponent roll more hard dice than you.

[mattgslater]

In addition to seconding everything Fen said (see below for my particular take on luck), I have three more pieces of advice.

A) Defensive setup is critical. Good setup makes your opponent rely on luck.

B) Hire the best players. The ones who don't need to GFI as much, or who start with Block, or who don't eat team re-rolls. Then as long as they don't get killed you'll have a better time making your own luck.TRRs are really nice, but they're not luck-machines and whether your luck is good, bad or indifferent, they hit a point of diminishing returns at somewhere between 3 (for Elves or Humans) and 5 (for Chaos or Halflings).

C) Before you take any action, ask yourself:
1) What are my objectives for the turn?
2) What happens if this action fails?
3) Is there something lower-risk I could be doing?

Note that lower-risk doesn't always equate to easy. I won a game a couple years ago because my opponent stopped to make a 2d-his-choice block before a GFI to TD, rolled double skulls, re-rolled, knocked my guy down and didn't hurt him, then rolled a 1 on the GFI. Bad luck? Maybe, but he probably would have forced OT if he hadn't tried the block (and earned more SPP than the low-percentage block could even as a maximum). Also, if you have a move action that isn't based on the blitz but puts your guy in a bad position if your blitz doesn't go down, you should take it only after the blitz: no point in taking a move you don't want given the new situation.

Yes, luck exists as I understand it (that is, there is certainly chance, and obviously the possible outcomes can be desirable or not), but it's only valuable to see as a case-by-case thing: you can't have bad luck in general, or at least not so much worse than normal that it'll kill you more than once in a season. Sorry. And if you do have normally bad luck for a season, don't take it personally and NEVER EVER EVER let yourself attribute it to your dice or your luck. That's just an excuse for a coaching failure. Instead, look for the coaching failures that are getting you there and try to solve those.

[Cramy]

Seconding what other said.

One simple rule that I follow: Roll the dice as little as possible. The less often you roll the dice, the lower your chances of failure. For your opponent to roll as many dice as possible. The more dice he rolls, the higher the chances of failure for him.

This post is already full of ideas on how to achieve the above.

[DoubleSkulls]

What do you guys do to try to limit the damage of bad dice?

Okay sometimes you get screwed by bad dice... but if it is consistent it is your coaching that is a problem.

Accept that it isn't the dice its me. Bad luck is a symptom of bad play. So I try and work out what I did wrong that left me is a position where that roll cost me a game and fix it.

Once you understand that then you can start getting to be a better coach. Most coaches reach a level and then stop - because they start blaming the dice for them not winning games. So they stop learning and don't get better.

[mattgslater]

Unless talking about a single play/turn/drive which ended up very improbably, it's bad form to tell your opponent you were unlucky (he can tell you that, and you can tell him you were lucky), as he'd probably rather think that his play resulted in the outcome.

So luck can be an excuse for failing THIS action or for taking THAT casualty if you like, but if the game hinged on that action/player, maybe you should look at what you could have done to protect your key guy better or make the game less dependent on a single die roll. A 9-1 team that lost only on a "lucky" play is still a 9-1 team: you give your opponents enough opportunities, and somebody will be in position when the dice come down.

Win or lose, the dice will play with you and frustrate you to no end. Over the course of a part of the game, they might even seem biased against you. Just accept that this is an illusion, and if you're consistently losing games the problem is probably that you don't get something that the people you're playing with do get. Try to figure out what it is.

[DoubleSkulls]

And its much easier to agree with your opponent that the reason you won was his terrible dice, rather than his poor coaching