Warcry Math Corner: Why Quads Still Feel Rare
A tiny army-building detour into dice math
Sometimes our hobby chats take a sharp turn from painting plans and roster ideas straight into probability. This time, while talking about Warcry, we ended up looking at how often the different ability values actually show up in a game.
Stas threw out some baseline numbers:
- Doubles: 4.82 per game
- Triples: 1.28 per game
- Quads: 0.21 per game
And then came the important caveat from Michał: that was without Wild Dice.
Two Wild Dice rules that change how we think about lists
After some reading, Stas came back with two really interesting reminders about Wild Dice:
- You can save them for future turns instead of using them immediately.
- You can’t turn a single into a triple, and you can’t turn a double into a quad.
That second point is the one that really stuck with us.
A lot of the time, when we think about Wild Dice, it is easy to mentally file them under “they smooth everything out.” And yes, they do help. But they do not magically make every high-value ability reliable.
So what does that mean in practice?
Even with Wild Dice in the mix, quads remain genuinely rare.
That matters for army-building, because it changes how we evaluate fighters and abilities:
- If a warband has an amazing quad ability, we probably should not build the whole plan around seeing it every game.
- Triples are already much more realistic than quads, but still nowhere near as common as doubles.
- Doubles remain the bread and butter of most games, and that is usually where we should expect our most reliable value.
In other words: if we are choosing between a fighter with a flashy quad and one with a strong, dependable double, the boring answer may often be the correct one.
Why this matters for list design
This is one of those small rules interactions that can quietly change how we build a warband.
If Wild Dice could freely jump a double into a quad, then planning around top-end abilities would be much easier. But since they cannot, the ceiling stays high and inconsistent.
So when we are putting together a list, it is probably worth asking:
- Does this warband function well on doubles?
- Do the triples feel like a bonus rather than a requirement?
- Is the quad a nice dream, not the foundation of the game plan?
That does not mean quad abilities are bad. Far from it. It just means they are best treated as a spike, not a promise.
The fun part of hobby conversations
Honestly, we love these little side quests into rules and probabilities. They do not look like classic army-building at first, but they absolutely feed back into it. The better we understand what actually happens on the table, the better we can judge which abilities are worth paying for.
And in this case, the takeaway is simple:
Even with Wild Dice, quads are still rare enough that we should be careful about building around them.
If nothing else, it is a nice reminder that in Warcry, reliable doubles probably win us more games than dreamland quads ever will.
If you have done similar Warcry probability digging, we would love to compare notes.