4 ms·
Interesting. I went to the most recent Prerelease event for Magic: the Gathering and my first opponent told me to not use the D20 that came with the kit and to
by Yhippa 8y ago
Interesting. I went to the most recent Prerelease event for Magic: the Gathering and my first opponent told me to not use the D20 that came with the kit and to use his individual D6s. He said they had known biases. Maybe he was on to something.
- rapfaria 8y agoYour opponent told you to use the die he brought? He was probably on to something.
- quink 8y agoIf the opponent picked from the same pool that sounds OK. At least way better than spindown dice, which are known to be weighted.
- reificator 8y agoI get where you're coming from, but I honestly assume no malice. It's fairly common knowledge in tabletop circles that spindown dice will have an unbalanced distribution. They're definitely made to be used only as a counter. Now, whether it matters if you use a weighted die to determine who goes first is a different story. If you're both using the same die, who cares?
- busterarm 8y agoThe D20s that come with Magic products are spindown dice, not normal D20s. The faces are ordered for ease of lifetracking and are _not_ optimized for random rolls. Because the dice aren't evenly weighted, they have a strong bias. IIRC, Spindown D20s crit somewhere around 30% of the time.
- ufo 8y agoMore specifically, in the spindown each number is adjacent to its predecessor and successor. In a regular d20 the numbers are more spread out, and opposite faces add up to 21.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- beatgammit 8y agoThe only time I used a D20 in magic was for keeping track of life totals. If you're rolling to see who starts, it doesn't really matter if it's biased if you use the same die. I guess some cards use a dice roll, but that's pretty rare.
- aceld111 8y agoAs a mtg player, I really don't get why can't we use spin-down dice as high roll at the beginning of the game.
- brianwawok 8y agoAs a fellow MTG player, mostly people hearing a story once how someone tested a spindown dice, and it wasn't fair. But the average MTG player at a con did not take stats in college, and not worth a fight. So ya just pull out another dice and smile and roll it.
- quink 8y agoFirst thing I can think of is that it may matter if the distribution isn’t linear, although not really sure how it would. The second more straightforward one is that the spindown dice vary from set to set and even within the set sometimes. As such the weighting is likely going to vary a lot.
- danielvinson 8y agoI'm a former competitive MtG player. My playgroup found that with a bit of practice and a specific technique, we could roll 17+ on any spindown dice almost every time (try rolling the die with it starting in your hand with the 20 facing upwards with a sideways motion). While technically you can use any method you choose to randomly determine the start of a game, these dice have been proven to not be "random" thus cannot be used in a tournament. It doesn't matter at all in casual play, but in a tournament, you're just giving your opponent a chance to play first for free.