hitmonchan93 said:
But i think they didn't allow you to use dice because you could load them so they land evens all the time.
Landing on evens all the time sounds like a bit of a stretch (generally I thought you could load dice so they landed on a specific
number more often than not). Even if you can, coins can be rigged in a similar manner. After all, many coins included with past Pokemon TCG products are now illegal to use as the randomizer because some or all were misweighted, leading to a disproportianate amount of one result or the other.
More over, coins are easier to control (in terms of getting a desired result) than dice. With both kinds of randomizers, a person may learn how to flip/roll to get a desired result more often than they should. At least, with randomizers of less than 8 sides. I haven't seen anyone roll what they wanted with enough frequency to convince me they could adequately control a d8 (eight sided dice) or higher. As such, a d20 make for a fine randomizer: it's good enough for the number one RPG system (d20, used with Dungeons and Dragons Third Edition) and keep in mind, I don't really care much for D&D3e or its revisions, so if anything I'd be prejudiced against using d20s.
I use d12 for damamge counters. The main reason is I don't run any Pokemon ex in most of my decks, so a d12 means that I can count the damage for any of my Pokemon. I find that anything past a d12 is too unstable for damage counting purposes, and for that matter, even most d8 and d10 dice are still to easily bumped or shaken onto the wrong number. I still breing plenty of d6 though, as they are quite stable and I am debating on d4, as the only things more stable than those are coins and counters (who become too cumbersome for high HP Pokemon).
ukpokemonpro said:
Just stick with coins it's in the rule book and you can't get called for sticking to the rules.
Plus it's much more fun and spirit of the game
Ugh. No. As I mentioned earlier, coins are easier to control the result of
if you know how. Now, there are ways around this, but they increase the second problem with coins: control.
Confused? Well, I chose to branch into a new paragraph and make a lame joke to draw attention that control can also mean keeping the coin from going all over: that is flipping a coin and having it land within the desired area. Even if that area is pretty generous, it's can be hard, especially for little kids, to get it right. Just flipping a coin at all is difficult for some people, and especially for many little kids. They often has LESS fun, because while they may enjoy the "act" of flipping a coin, they get mad when their opponent won't count an obviously bad flip. What do I mean by that? I mean when the coin just slides off the side of the hand, and doesn't have enough time to significantly rotate. Basically, its a guaranteed "heads" or "tails", depending on where it started.
Going back to my earlier statment (I am sorry for the jumping around), to prevent someone from cheating with an unrigged coin, you need to require a minimum of at least a foot of height on the flip, giving the coin adequate time to rotate more than once. Again, doing this reduced control... for both ways I've used the term. I don't think that is very conducive to a timely tournament for everyone to have to measure flips and chase after stray coins. And we are talking worlds here. We don't get to ingore the Spirit of the Game, but it does become more serious due to the stakes. You can still have fun if you lose, but not if you allow yourself to lose due to an opponent's questionable randomization technique.
I recommend in addition to agreeing on what kind of randomizer/damage counter to use (provided its legal to begin with) that a player uses the exact same randomizers as their opponent. I don't remember off the top of my head and lack the time to look it up, but I am pretty sure that's in the rules that your opponent
must let you use their randomizer. This makes cheating much less beneficial: when you go to roll off, if their dice is rigged to come up 12, after you tie 10 times, it's going to arouse suspicions. Even if its a "generally" loaded dice so that it comes up usuaully high, you've decreased the odds of their cheating helping them while making it more likely their cheating helped you. Likewise, use the same randomizer for coinflips that they would, and pay special attention to which they use if some situations arise where they
want to flip tails. Finally, ask that randomizers never leave the "table". While it is sad, as stated there is a lot on the line and some may cave into temptation and, for example have two identical dice... except one is loaded and hidden in their sleeve. Obviously you pick them up to roll them, but if that's the only opportunity to change them out (instead of holding onto them or having them constantly slip into a dice bag or other container), it's much harder to do it without getting caught.
Doing these things are more or less in line with insisting on cutting decks: by making them your standard routine you discourage cheating and are more likely to catch it if it occurs, but you don't have the problem of insinuating that a specific player is cheating.
