Artillery dice are six-sided dice marked 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and Misfire instead of 1 to 6. Five faces give a number, usually a distance or a quantity, and the sixth means the shot has gone wrong. In Warhammer: The Old World they are what war machines roll, and one face in six is the bad one.
It comes up the first time someone hands you a war machine. You line up the shot, roll, and instead of a number the dice shows a word. The die is not faulty and you have not misread it. Misfire is a printed result, and it is supposed to happen.
Want to see how often it lands? Roll one below.
Roll to see a result.
Misfires so far: 0 of 0 rolls.
This uses the standard 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and Misfire layout. What each number does depends on the war machine's own rules.
What Is an Artillery Dice?
It is an ordinary six-sided dice with an unusual set of faces. Games Workshop's own Warhammer: The Old World dice set lists its contents as eighteen D6, one Artillery dice labelled 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and Misfire, and one scatter dice, all of them 16mm. That layout is the standard the rest of the hobby follows.
| Face | What it does |
|---|---|
| 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 | A number the war machine's rules ask for, most often a distance in inches or a count of hits. |
| Misfire | The shot fails, and you resolve what went wrong on the misfire table for that machine. |
Why the Numbers Jump in Twos
The five numbers are evenly spaced from 2 to 10, which is a range no ordinary D6 can produce on its own. One throw covers a spread of eight inches in five steps, and the average of the five number faces is exactly 6.
You can see the effect on paper. Write 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 in a row, then write 1 to 6 underneath. The second row is tight and predictable. The first is wide enough that a war machine can fall well short or reach much further than you planned, which is the whole point of a weapon that lobs something over a battlefield.
An Artillery Dice Is a Doubled D6
Line the two up and something falls out. Double each face of a normal D6 and you get 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12. An artillery dice gives you the same first five numbers and swaps the 12 for Misfire.
| D6 face | Doubled | Artillery dice face |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 2 |
| 2 | 4 | 4 |
| 3 | 6 | 6 |
| 4 | 8 | 8 |
| 5 | 10 | 10 |
| 6 | 12 | Misfire |
Whether that was designed or a happy coincidence, it is the most useful thing to know about the dice. It tells you the odds without any arithmetic, since every face is as likely as any face of a D6, and it gives you an exact substitute if you do not own one. More on that further down.
What Happens on a Misfire?
The number faces explain themselves. The Misfire face is the reason the dice exists at all.
On a Misfire the shot does not happen as intended, and you resolve it on the misfire table belonging to that war machine. Different machines have different tables, which is why a stone thrower and a cannon do not fail in the same way.
Those tables are printed in the rulebook rather than in the free downloads, so we are not going to reproduce them here. It is worth finding your machine's entry before the game rather than during it, since the chart you need belongs to that machine and is not one shared list. For choosing dice the important part is simpler: one face in six ends the shot, and you will be looking at that face regularly.
How an Artillery Dice and a Scatter Dice Work Together
They come in the same official set, and that pairing reflects how template weapons behave. Something has to decide how far, and something else has to decide which way.
The scatter dice carries direction arrows and hit faces, so it answers the second question. The artillery dice answers the first, and it is the one that can also cancel the shot outright. If you have picked up one of these dice you will usually want the other, which is why we wrote a separate guide, What Are Scatter Dice, and keep a full range of Scatter and Deviation Dice.
Which Games Use an Artillery Dice?
Warhammer: The Old World is where you will meet one today. Its rulebook FAQ, updated in July 2026, refers to the Artillery dice by name when it explains that a high result cannot be used to push a cannonball through an obstacle it should not pass. The rules are still being maintained, and the 2026 core set ships an updated rulebook with revised rules, so it is worth checking the official downloads page for the current FAQ before you settle an argument.
Beyond that, plenty of fantasy and historical rulesets use a die with mixed number faces and one failure face under a different name. If a game asks you to roll a variable distance and gives failure its own printed result, this is the shape of dice it wants.
How Often Will You Misfire?
One face in six, so 16.7% on any single shot. That number feels harmless until you fire the same machine several times in a game.
| Shots in a game | Chance of at least one Misfire |
|---|---|
| 1 | 16.7% |
| 3 | 42.1% |
| 5 | 59.8% |
| 8 | 76.7% |
Fire five times and a misfire is more likely than not. That is the design rather than a badly made die, and it is worth knowing before you build a list around a battery of them.
Do You Need a Dedicated Artillery Dice?
No. Use the doubling above and a plain D6 covers it: roll, double the result, and treat the 12 as a Misfire. Every outcome stays exactly as likely as it would be on the printed dice, it costs nothing, and there is no table to memorise. Say the conversion out loud before the game so your opponent is reading the same thing, and at an event check the pack or ask the organiser first.
What a printed dice buys you is that you stop doing arithmetic mid-turn. The number you need is already on the face, the word Misfire cannot be mistaken for anything else across a table, and nobody has to remember which D6 in the tray was the war machine's.
Our artillery and misfire dice use the same 16mm resin bodies as the rest of the range, engraved and hand-painted, and they sit alongside our Old Realm Era fantasy dice if you want the war machine to match the army rolling it. They are unofficial accessories for fantasy wargaming and are not affiliated with, endorsed by or licensed by Games Workshop.
The Short Version
Artillery dice are D6s marked 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and Misfire. The numbers feed whatever the war machine's rules ask for, and the sixth face fails the shot and sends you to that machine's misfire table in the rulebook. They are thrown alongside a scatter dice for anything that drops a template, and a normal D6 stands in perfectly if you double the result and call the 12 a Misfire.