Dice deck

[jugra207]

Hey everyone,

It seems like noone likes to play with the dice deck. Why is it so unpopular?

[Jontia]

Well, I've always been happy with the dice anyway, but looking at the way the Dice deck is set up it's spectacularly bizzare.

- A stack with 36 cards is build. On these cards the results of 2 dices are written based on the expected statistical probabilities: 2=1; 3=2x; 4=3x; 5=4x; 6=5x; 7=6x; 8=5x; 9=4x; 10=3x; 11=2x; 12=1
- 18 cards are removed randomly.
- Now a second stack is build in the same way, so that you have two stacks with 18 cards in the end.
- Both stacks are shuffled together to form a new stack of 36 cards.

They've created a system, where before the game begins in the background you can be garunteed no number above a 7 will be drawn all game. Or no number below. It seems almost intended to provide whacky lopsided games on a regular basis.

The dice deck that is described in some of the older editions was just a simple set of 36 cards. And you'd stop and re-shuffle when you get down to the last five. This meant you could card count and have a good idea of what might come out around turns 25-30, and I think the developers here at BGA wanted to avoid that.

Which is odd, because all the complaints about the normal dice are basically that the distribution of the numbers varies from the perfect propability curve, i.e. I want to be able to predict what numbers should come out on rolls 25-30.

In conclusion, I think few people play with the dice deck because only a few noisy people thought there was a problem with the dice in the first place, and the dice deck as implemented doesn't solve the problem that those people felt existed, which is the lack of perfect probability curves of results within each game.

[euklid314]

Hey everyone,

It seems like noone likes to play with the dice deck. Why is it so unpopular?

As Jontia wrote, the players complaining about dice are vocal but they are very small minority.

Most players play CATAN because it has a random component and not despite of this fact! The goal is to play moves that are flexible with respect to many of the possible rolls that will appear in the future. The random aspect adds to the fun of the game - we players are not in full control of the outcome!

Players that do not like this aspect usually play other games. This ranges from, say, Agricola, where the random factor is low to, say, Chess, where the random factor is zero.

[jugra207]

Well, I've always been happy with the dice anyway, but looking at the way the Dice deck is set up it's spectactuly bizzare.

- A stack with 36 cards is build. On these cards the results of 2 dices are written based on the expected statistical probabilities: 2=1; 3=2x; 4=3x; 5=4x; 6=5x; 7=6x; 8=5x; 9=4x; 10=3x; 11=2x; 12=1
- 18 cards are removed randomly.
- Now a second stack is build in the same way, so that you have two stacks with 18 cards in the end.
- Both stacks are shuffled together to form a new stack of 36 cards.

They've created a system, where before the game begins in the background you can be garunteed no number above a 7 will be drawn all game. Or no number below. It seems almost intended to provide whacky lopsided games on a regular basis.

The dice deck that is described in some of the older editions was just a simple set of 36 cards. And you'd stop and re-shuffle when you get down to the last five. This meant you could card count and have a good idea of what might come out around turns 25-30, and I think the developers here at BGA wanted to avoid that.

Which is odd, because all the complaints about the normal dice are basically that the distribution of the numbers varies from the perfect propability curve, i.e. I want to be able to predict what numbers should come out on rolls 25-30.

In conclusion, I think few people play with the dice deck because only a few noisy people thought there was a problem with the dice in the first place, and the dice deck as implemented doesn't solve the problem that those people felt existed, which is the lack of perfect probability curves of results within each game.

Oh well. Knowing how the deck is build and considering how long the turn timers are I stick to other games on BGA I suppose thanks for letting me know!