If we can identify such a board (or boards), maybe those can be pointed out to anybody who is absolutely convinced that things are rigged or people are magically cheating.

If you're trying to prove to someone that the dice are not loaded, good luck. The dice gods are fickle. Every once in a while they do their damndest to trick people into thinking that someone is cheating, and the best part is they can do it on a whim and at any time on any board.

Nah, no point (as you mentioned) in trying to prove that dice are random.

I just figure maybe it will help those people if they can focus on boards where dice are less of a factor, instead of constantly whinging about the unfairness of it all on the boards where luck sometimes plays a very heavy role. :-)

Go-Geared isn't reliant on dice at all if you choose the 1-sided dice scenario. Same with Five.

Ten-Propagate and Seven & Seven Redux likewise doesn't depend on dice but on those initial position will have bigger influence.

Even with the 8-sided dice scenarios, better players will easily win most of their games against players with lesser skills on Go-Geared.

If you're looking for games where the dice are significant, yet it's all but impossible to win without developing a skill-set for playing the board, look no further than Battle of Waterloo. There's practically no way a weak or novice player could beat a top player like berickf, despite what he says in his review..

..cannot be mastered to a level where the dice will not still have their heyday and throw a game here or there, which is quite unfortunate..

This may be true with equally matched players, but as far as I'm concerned, this reviewer is criticizing the board because he can't win EVERY game given his superior skills. The only games I've ever won against him were those where I was teaching him the basics.

Both of these boards are my designs. If you are interested in learning how to play them or getting some additional strategic advice (for whatever that may be worth), feel free to invite me to a game.

M57 wrote:

If you're looking for games where the dice are significant,

Would that include 40 kills/74 deaths (-15.39) 7 1/2 rounds in?

Asking for a friend.

(Apologies to the OP)

LItotes and I were having a conversation about this in a game, and he suggested that Iwo Jima allows for high skill to trump bad luck most of the time. (Which I completely believe, because I pretty much always lose when I play against any of top players).

I believe the "original" scenarios on Octagons have no dice luck and no starting position luck.

https://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Octagons

Hex is basically the same:

https://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Hex

I think those might be the only two boards with that distinction.

Ozyman wrote:LItotes and I were having a conversation about this in a game, and he suggested that Iwo Jima allows for high skill to trump bad luck most of the time. (Which I completely believe, because I pretty much always lose when I play against any of top players).

I believe the "original" scenarios on Octagons have no dice luck and no starting position luck.

https://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Octagons" target="_blank"> https://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Octagons

Hex is basically the same:

https://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Hex" target="_blank"> https://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Hex

I think those might be the only two boards with that distinction.

Indeed it does, I have so far consistently won more than 90% of games on Iwo Jima and in my experience 90% 1v1 simply isn't possible on most boards, even if you get berickf vs almost beginner.

Octagons and Hex join Go-Geared and Five. It's still a slight advantage for seat position but it's really low.

I have a feeling it's one more I have forgotten. Memory not what it was.

M57 wrote:Even with the 8-sided dice scenarios, better players will easily win most of their games against players with lesser skills on Go-Geared.

If you're looking for games where the dice are significant, yet it's all but impossible to win without developing a skill-set for playing the board, look no further than Battle of Waterloo. There's practically no way a weak or novice player could beat a top player like berickf, despite what he says in his review..

..cannot be mastered to a level where the dice will not still have their heyday and throw a game here or there, which is quite unfortunate..

This may be true with equally matched players, but as far as I'm concerned, this reviewer is criticizing the board because he can't win EVERY game given his superior skills. The only games I've ever won against him were those where I was teaching him the basics.

Both of these boards are my designs. If you are interested in learning how to play them or getting some additional strategic advice (for whatever that may be worth), feel free to invite me to a game.

Very true. In tournament games on Go-Geared I have only lost once and that was to Andernut, who is simply a better player than me on that board. 

I have 5 wins, 1 loss and 1 draw to berickf but never played him on his best boards. Which is a pity.  Towards the end he was mainly a stats hoarder. He didn't want to play the most difficult opponents, he wanted to increase his win percentages and you won't get that if you engage in a lot of games vs Andernut.

Ozyman wrote:LItotes and I were having a conversation about this in a game, and he suggested that Iwo Jima allows for high skill to trump bad luck most of the time. (Which I completely believe, because I pretty much always lose when I play against any of top players).

Agree. I've only played IJ a few time and didn't stand a chance against experienced players. For the same reason I think The Battle of Bladensburg might fall into this category as well.

Litotes wrote:

Very true. In tournament games on Go-Geared I have only lost once and that was to Andernut, who is simply a better player than me on that board. 

I have 5 wins, 1 loss and 1 draw to berickf but never played him on his best boards. Which is a pity.  Towards the end he was mainly a stats hoarder. He didn't want to play the most difficult opponents, he wanted to increase his win percentages and you won't get that if you engage in a lot of games vs Andernut.

Those players were beasts, and for the reason L mentioned above they both gravitated towards the types of games that the OP is asking about, especially Andernut. But the fact is they could dominate on any board. If the OP wants to make a point to any dice conspiracy theorists, all he has to do is point them at the cannon of games by those two players. Sure the dice can be fickle and anything can and does happen (that's why we play this game, right?) ..but in the end, great generals prevail way more often than common players.

M57 wrote:Litotes wrote:

Very true. In tournament games on Go-Geared I have only lost once and that was to Andernut, who is simply a better player than me on that board. 

I have 5 wins, 1 loss and 1 draw to berickf but never played him on his best boards. Which is a pity.  Towards the end he was mainly a stats hoarder. He didn't want to play the most difficult opponents, he wanted to increase his win percentages and you won't get that if you engage in a lot of games vs Andernut.

Those players were beasts, and for the reason L mentioned above they both gravitated towards the types of games that the OP is asking about, especially Andernut. But the fact is they could dominate on any board. If the OP wants to make a point to any dice conspiracy theorists, all he has to do is point them at the cannon of games by those two players. Sure the dice can be fickle and anything can and does happen (that's why we play this game, right?) ..but in the end, great generals prevail way more often than common players.

They can't dominate on any board. Before becoming a stats hoarder berickf played a lot of Wargear Warfare, and only managed to win 80 from 150 games playing mostly 1v1 (a few bigger games gave him a 61% H-score). WGWF is so luck-reliant it's almost impossible to win much more than 60% of 1v1 games long term.

Litotes wrote:

They can't dominate on any board. Before becoming a stats hoarder berickf played a lot of Wargear Warfare, and only managed to win 80 from 150 games playing mostly 1v1 (a few bigger games gave him a 61% H-score). WGWF is so luck-reliant it's almost impossible to win much more than 60% of 1v1 games long term.

Good point, and I stand corrected. There are many boards that give positional advantages based on the draw. Also, far too many boards give an advantage to players who get to move first, which is too bad because in many cases there's an easy design fix, which is to force the size of first round bonuses based on seat position. I do it and it works. Check out the charts for most any of my boards across games with any number of players. Here's an example..

https://www.wargear.net/boards/view/New+Earth/Charts

For some boards I even create separate scenarios for specific ranges of players solely for this reason. Hmm.. Looking at the New Earth charts, it looks like I'll need to go back and do that specifically for 2-player games!

Boards that don't have Dice Luck as a factor:

• (sort of) Rescue
• Five
• Seven / Seven Reduox
• Ten
• Hex
• Octogons
• Pong
• (maybe) RoShamBo
• (sort of) Spy v Spy
• 
  

weathertop wrote:Boards that don't have Dice Luck as a factor:

• (sort of) Rescue
• Five
• Seven / Seven Reduox
• Ten
• Hex
• Octogons
• Pong
• (maybe) RoShamBo
• (sort of) Spy v Spy
• 
  

Rescue, yes. Good addition. It has territory distribution luck but not dice luck.

Pong I actually never tried.

Spy vs Spy, no. Most attacks are 5v8 dice, that's unusual dice but it isn't no dice. Skill will regularly be trumped by luck. But of course it's a board where a really good player can win more than 2/3 of games.