Empire Helblaster Nuclear Misfire

[mykerush]

Hey guys,


Just had to post.
Last night I was playing 1500pts against Skaven.
Had a free shot at a unit of 5 Rat Ogres with my HBVG helped by Master Engineer.
Rolled 4 straight misfires and destroyed the RO with the ensuing 30 s5 shots and caused panic around the unit.
Anybody know the statistical odds of 4 straight misfire rolls?

[Ultimate Life Form]

1/6 x 1/6 x 1/6 x 1/6 = 1/1296 or 0,000771604938 or 0,0771604938%

(If I'm not mistaken)

[theunwantedbeing]

You only roll 3 dice for the helblaster, not 4.
3 misfires makes it fire all 30 shots, but it then dies.

So a 1/216 chance to get that result.

The re-roll from the master engineer is then a 1/6 chance to get the same result.

So not really a 1/1296 chance to happen.
But a 1/216 chance and then a 1/6 chance.

[Ultimate Life Form]

You only roll 3 dice for the helblaster, not 4.
3 misfires makes it fire all 30 shots, but it then dies.

So a 1/216 chance to get that result.

Oh yeah, something sounded wrong about that. So it's roughly 0,5%.

[mykerush]

I did use the engineer to reroll the first misfire then followed up with another 3. So 4 consecutive misfire results.

[The bearded one]

You only roll 3 dice for the helblaster, not 4.
3 misfires makes it fire all 30 shots, but it then dies.

So a 1/216 chance to get that result.

The re-roll from the master engineer is then a 1/6 chance to get the same result.

So not really a 1/1296 chance to happen.
But a 1/216 chance and then a 1/6 chance.

1/216 chance and then another 1/6 chance is actually exactly what ULF wrote down

regardless of the origin of the 4th dice, it is still a dice with the odds of rolling a misfire, and in the end the OP still rolled 4 dice, even if one of them was a reroll, which all turned up a misfire, ergo 1/6x1/6x1/6x1/6=1/1296

[amakiir]

Back in around 2001ish, I used the Hail of Doom Arrow for the first time. All of my wood elf buddies kept telling me how amazing it was. So I said fine, I'll try it out. Got into a great position, can't remember exactly what, but it was the PERFECT time to use the Hail of Doom Arrow. So I roll 3d6 for the number of shots. I rolled 6, 6, 6. AWESOME! Perfect, right? Wow, couldn't be better. Okay, lets roll to hit. I hit on a 1+ with my BS7. 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1.

I rolled 18 ones.

18.

EIGHTEEN.

I never once used the Hail of Doom Arrow again. What a worthless item.

[The bearded one]

Back in around 2001ish, I used the Hail of Doom Arrow for the first time. All of my wood elf buddies kept telling me how amazing it was. So I said fine, I'll try it out. Got into a great position, can't remember exactly what, but it was the PERFECT time to use the Hail of Doom Arrow. So I roll 3d6 for the number of shots. I rolled 6, 6, 6. AWESOME! Perfect, right? Wow, couldn't be better. Okay, lets roll to hit. I hit on a 1+ with my BS7. 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1.

I rolled 18 ones.

18.

EIGHTEEN.

I never once used the Hail of Doom Arrow again. What a worthless item.

that's..

wow..

[dimetri1]

WOW, that beats my worst roll by far.

[amakiir]

A friend of mine lets me reroll dice a lot because he says he feels like it is cheating when I fail 5 out of 6 2+ armor saves two turns in a row. Yeah, I'm that guy. He doesn't even let me use real dice anymore, because he thinks every dice I have is secretely weighted, so I use online random number generators. Doesn't help.

[Jezbot]

Regarding the Engineer, I think if you roll 3 misfires it's probably best to decline to reroll any of your dice. Sure the helblaster will explode, but it'll leave a hell of a mess in the target unit. Reroll one of the dice, though, and you still have to roll on the misfire table, and that means a 1/3 chance of blowing up anyway (and not taking out the enemy unit), a 1/3 chance of losing this turn and next (and so likely never getting to fire again), and a 1/3 chance of missing a turn.

Better to guarantee 30 shots this turn, I reckon.

[amakiir]

Regarding the Engineer, I think if you roll 3 misfires it's probably best to decline to reroll any of your dice. Sure the helblaster will explode, but it'll leave a hell of a mess in the target unit. Reroll one of the dice, though, and you still have to roll on the misfire table, and that means a 1/3 chance of blowing up anyway (and not taking out the enemy unit), a 1/3 chance of losing this turn and next (and so likely never getting to fire again), and a 1/3 chance of missing a turn.

Better to guarantee 30 shots this turn, I reckon.

That depends on the situation. If you're shooting something that you can destroy in another way, it may be worth taking the risk to keep the thing.

[Count Zero]

Also it seemed from the description the OP was rolling the art. dice one by one, when i believe you are meant to roll all 3 simultaneously (ie even if you only have 1 dice you roll it 3 times treating them as simultaneous then choose if you want to re-roll with the engineer)

[Lord Inquisitor]

Back in around 2001ish, I used the Hail of Doom Arrow for the first time. All of my wood elf buddies kept telling me how amazing it was. So I said fine, I'll try it out. Got into a great position, can't remember exactly what, but it was the PERFECT time to use the Hail of Doom Arrow. So I roll 3d6 for the number of shots. I rolled 6, 6, 6. AWESOME! Perfect, right? Wow, couldn't be better. Okay, lets roll to hit. I hit on a 1+ with my BS7. 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1.

I rolled 18 ones.

18.

EIGHTEEN.

I never once used the Hail of Doom Arrow again. What a worthless item.

Chance of this happening (including the 1/216 of rolling 18 shots)

1 in 21,936,950,640,377,856

Put another way, if you rolled 18 dice (plus the three "shot number" dice), once a second, 24 hours a day, since mankind first evolved 200,000 years ago, odds are only 0.3% that you'd see such an event even once.

Put another way again, the chance of you winning half a billion dollars on one particular lottery are 1 in 175 million. This event is 125 million TIMES more unlikely than winning the lottery.

So yeah, didn't happen, or at least you're exaggerating. If it did happen, well, I'd congratulate yourself on an event that's literally unbelievable and go play the lottery.

[Jezbot]

That depends on the situation. If you're shooting something that you can destroy in another way, it may be worth taking the risk to keep the thing.

True, everything is situational. Though I'd just say that a situation in which taking the 30 shots was the better option has been the case every time this has happened to me (which admittedly is all of twice under the new rules).

Chance of this happening (including the 1/216 of rolling 18 shots)

1 in 21,936,950,640,377,856

Put another way, if you rolled 18 dice (plus the three "shot number" dice), once a second, 24 hours a day, since mankind first evolved 200,000 years ago, odds are only 0.3% that you'd see such an event even once.

Put another way again, the chance of you winning half a billion dollars on one particular lottery are 1 in 175 million. This event is 125 million TIMES more unlikely than winning the lottery.

So yeah, didn't happen, or at least you're exaggerating. If it did happen, well, I'd congratulate yourself on an event that's literally unbelievable and go play the lottery.

To look at it another way, let's say the average player spends about £200 on Warhammer stuff a year. With a revenue base of £120 million, that means there is an active playing base for Warhammer of roughly 600,000 people. Let's be generous and say the average player gets in a game a week, so with two guys playing in each game there is 15,600,000 games of Warhammer of some type or another every year. In the average game there's a lot of dice rolls, but only so many dice rolls with 18 dice or thereabouts (large units shooting, rolling for the effect of spells on whole units, large blast template hits, stuff like that)... let's be generous again and say there's maybe 10 such rolls in the average game. That means you've got 156,000,000 rolls each year in games of Warhammer of some large number of dice.

156,000,000 is a lot of dice rolls in a year, but it still goes into 21,936,950,640,377,856 a total of 140,621,475 times. That means we could reasonably expect the whole of the Warhammer community, if everyone played a game a week, to play for 140,621,475 years before someone would roll 18 dice and roll all 1s.

So yeah, it's probably exaggerated.

[amakiir]

So yeah, didn't happen, or at least you're exaggerating.

Wrong. Sorry to disappoint, but it did happen. I am pretty sure it was against dwarves, maybe vampire counts. Went back to using the hunting spear after the disappointment. Scouting ballistas ftw.

So yeah, it's probably exaggerated.

Eh, wrong. Again, I'm sorry to disappoint you and your rudimentary use of 'probability', but it did happen.

[The bearded one]

Don't you guys know that when calculating "how many years it would take" before something like 18 1's would happen on average.. it does not necessarily mean that such a roll occurs as the very last roll It could be the first roll, and it (on average) not happening anymore for the next 140.000.000 years

[Spider]

Wrong. Sorry to disappoint, but it did happen. I am pretty sure it was against dwarves, maybe vampire counts. Went back to using the hunting spear after the disappointment. Scouting ballistas ftw.



Eh, wrong. Again, I'm sorry to disappoint you and your rudimentary use of 'probability', but it did happen.

What I don't really understand (assuming this happened) is that you blame what was the best and most useful item the woodies had for your impossibly bad luck. That would be like writing off a Ferrari because you cannot drive but blaming the car.

[Lord Inquisitor]

It's more like saying you think Ferraris are rubbish because yours got hit by a meteor.

[dementian]

It's more like saying you think Ferraris are rubbish because yours got hit by a meteor.

Oh my lord. This has been the first time I have actually laughed out loud to a forum post. I'm subscribed.