Medium Luck: Fudge Dice

“Low Luck” is a very common variant where instead of rolling dice, you add up all of the ‘pips’ in your attack roll, divide by 6, and then use one die to figure out whether your ‘remainder’ scores an additional hit. For example, if you’re attacking with 8 destroyers, and the destroyers each have 2 pips of offense, then you have a total of 8 * 2 = 16 pips. 16 / 6 = 2 remainder 4, so you automatically score 2 hits, and then you roll one die and score a third hit on a roll of 4 or less.

Low Luck has its fans, and it also has its haters. The debate has already spilled on for several pages, so here is a very short, incomplete summary:

1. With Low Luck, it’s very unlikely that you’ll invest five hours in building up a brilliant strategy only to have it smushed by a series of bad rolls
2. With Low Luck, the game goes faster because you don’t waste time rolling dozens and dozens of dice
3. With Low Luck, it’s very unlikely that you’ll face any interesting surprises, and the whole game will play out robotically within the confines of a tight script
4. With Low Luck, the game goes slower because you waste a lot of time precisely calculating how many pips you need for each battle.

I really don’t care about this debate. I care about showcasing my amazing new system that gives you the benefits of Low Luck (a fair chance to execute your strategy, and faster dice rolling) without the costs of Low Luck (boring predictability and analysis paralysis).

How to Use Fudge Dice to get Medium Luck

Fudge Dice are six-sided dice that have two blank sides, two sides with a minus sign, and two sides with a plus sign. The blanks represent zeroes, the pluses represent +1’s, and the minuses represent -1’s. The application is very straightforward: play with Low Luck Rules, ignore any remainder left over after you divide by 6, and instead of rolling a d6 to see if you hit a target, roll one guaranteed Fudge Die plus one more Fudge Die for every group of three units (“brigades”) you have in the battle (ignore any remainder), and modify your total number of hits by the total shown on the Fudge Dice. If you score a negative number of total hits, just round it up to zero hits.

Examples

For example, suppose you attack with 5 infantry and 2 tanks. You have (5 * 1) + (2 * 3) = 11 pips; 11 / 6 = 1 expected hit (ignoring the remainder). You have (5 + 2) / 3 = 2 full brigades, so you roll 2 (for your brigades) + 1 (because it’s guaranteed) = 3 Fudge Dice. The Fudge Dice show [+, +, -], which means you get +1 hit. 1 expected hit plus 1 extra hit is 2 total hits. Done.

Another example: suppose you attack with 2 infantry and 1 bomber. You have (2 * 1) + (1 * 4) = 6 pips; 6 / 6 = 1 expected hit. You have (3 / 3) = 1 full brigade, so you roll 1 (for your brigade) + 1 (because always) = 2 Fudge Dice. The Fudge Dice show [-, 0], which means you get -1 hit. 1 expected hit minus 1 blunder is 0 total hits. Done.

Why Fudge Dice are Amazing

This system provides more randomness than Low Luck, less randomness than Standard, faster dice rolling than Standard, and less reason to count every single pip than ordinary Low Luck – with Low Luck, you try to figure out the risk of attacking with a remainder of 4 vs. attacking with a remainder of 5, but here you either have 6 pips of offense, or you don’t – it’s easier to tell at a glance how you’ll want to arrange your battles, and you can just flush all the remainders when you’re doing your mental math.

Fudge Dice are very affordable and available in packs of 10 at your local gamestore or via Amazon. If you’re poor, you can just use regular d6’s and interpret rolls of 1 and 2 as a minus, rolls of 3 and 4 as a zero, and rolls of 5 and 6 as a plus. It works out the same.

Bonus: Bombing Raids and Anti-Air Strikes

When making a bombing run, roll two Fudge dice for each bomber you brought to the party, up to a maximum of 10 Fudge dice. Each roll of “+” scores 5 industrial damage. Each roll of “-” means that your bombers were targeted by anti-aircraft fire. After you roll, the defender picks up any of your Fudge dice that were showing a “-” and re-rolls them. Each die that is still showing a “-” after the re-roll kills one attacking bomber. If the defender has any anti-aircraft guns on site, she can use each AA gun to re-roll one of her misses. Regardless of how many AAA guns you have, any given Fudge die can only be rolled up to three times in an air raid (once for the attacker, and twice for the defender).

Example: Hitler is a madman, so Germany bombs Moscow with 5 bombers. Stalin is paranoid, so Moscow is defended by 3 AA guns. Germany rolls 5 Fudge dice, one for each bomber. They show [+, +, 0, -, -]. Germany inflicts 10 industrial damage on Moscow: 5 damage for each + sign showing. Russia will have to pay 10 IPCs next turn if she wants to fully repair the damage. Then, Russia picks up the two ‘minus’ dice and re-rolls them. They show [+, 0]. Russia uses one of her AAA guns to re-roll the +, and one of her AAA guns to re-roll the 0. Now the Fudge dice show [-, +]. Russia kills one of the German bombers because Russia rolled one minus sign on her AA Fudge dice. Russia still has a third AAA gun, but it is worthless for now because Russia has already re-re-rolled both of Germany’s minus dice, so that’s the end of the air raid.