Here we have another installment of "Another voice in the Warp!" Chaos Mike has a few words he wants to share about his take on luck and 40k. I wrote a similar article a while back, (great minds and all that, right?) but Mike's got a slightly different take on it, so sit back and enjoy.
Luck
A while back Charles, Adrienne and I were playing a game with me on one side and Charles and Adrienne on the other side. During the game Charles fired at my possessed Chaos Marines several times with lascannons, heavy bolters, and storm bolters for about two turns. After about 9+ lascannon shots, 18 heavy bolter shots, and lots of storm bolter shots only two Possessed fell.
Two.
Ouch.
I could tell Charles was frustrated by this (Charles does a good job of holding back his emotions, but after two years playing with the man I can read him fairly well) but he pushed on. At another point one of my 14-model Plague Bearer squads assaulted one of his 5-man Terminator squads. After about 4 assault rounds his squad was killed and I only had minimal losses due to good invulnerable saves and poor hit rolls.
Again ouch.
Now Charles is a good player. He lets these things roll off him and keeps playing, which is the best thing to do in the face of bad luck. But this does lead to my point. Charles talks about percentiles and number of dead marines per unit, but when you are in the game with your opponent facing off on the other side it comes down to your skill and the roll of the dice, and the dice can be fickle.
So what do you do if your luck goes bad?
Well first, don't lose your cool. Bad dice rolls happen and you have to shake it off and keep going. You never know when your luck will change. The best thing you can do during the game is change your tactics. Concentrate on getting a large number of attacks on a single unit. Take the long shots when you have to (you never know, you may make it). And remember, smile!
For example, Adrienne, the other player with Charles in this game, attacked my possessed marines with Khorne Berserkers. My poor Possessed couldn't get enough attacks against the Berserkers to do much damage (2 attacks per model verses 3) and were outnumbered. They went down in two rounds of combat. That helped their side turn the battle for a bit.
If your luck is bad all the time there are things you can do before the game to help you out. Make sure you have lots of models in your army to make up for failed armor saves. Lots of troops will fix this every time. Also, make sure you have lots of firepower and/or assault attacks to make up for all the misses and failed wound rolls. At the start of the game set up conservatively. Is every unit covered by another unit? Can you concentrate your firepower on a single unit? Can you assault in a single mass and get 2 units on one? If you can answer yes to these questions then you can help defeat your own bad luck with large numbers.
Charles did these things in our next engagement. He forced me to come at him piecemeal and grouped most of his terminators so that when I hit him he had the ratio of models in his favor. (Of course with terminators a favorable ratio of models is 1 to 2. 1 terminator, 2 enemy models.) He sacrificed a unit to distract me and made me split my forces. In that game, I was just about killed to the man.
Remember, the more dice you roll, the more likely things will come out odds.
Roll on.
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