Here’s all the dice releated news from March that have caught my eye.
Disclaimer:
This newsletter is impartial, editorial content and is not aimed at commercially advertising products. I don’t receive any payment or free products for any content in this newsletter. Products mentioned here are things I personally find interesting and would like to keep the dice community informed about.
New from Chessex
Nothing exciting from Chessex this month. The new Nebula sets were released on March 11, as announced. They are now available as 7-die polysets, 10 d10 sets, 16mm and 12mm bricks and also 30mm pipped dice.
New from Die Hard Dice
In mid-March, Die Hard Dice released two new sets of dice. One of them is a metal set called Dark Arts Contagion — a metal set in their Mythica mould in gold with green and black enamel faces.
The second set is part of their Avalore line, and an addition to the prismatic line in dark, available with gold ink (Daydream), silver ink (Nightmare) and uninked (Visions).
End of March, three more Avalore sets were announced. Two of them (Unity and Tigress) go towards Asian American and Pacific Islander charities, and the third set is called Black Dice Society in the spirit of the horror setting Ravenloft. The Unity set is a dark green with teal glitter (inked in bright silver), while the Tigress set is a warm dark brown, reminiscent of coffee beans, offered either uninked or with gold ink. The Black Dice Society set is a black set with a subtle gold shimmer, and comes either uninked or with gold ink.
New from HD Dice
Nothing terribly exciting from HD in March. The only new dice they advertised were opaque white sets with bright ink in different colours.
New from CozyGamer
CozyGamer has more exclusive dice in stock, this time fruit-inspired dice with inclusions — strawberry, lemon and orange.
Also new (I think) are resin dice with blue flowers inside in their new custom font with logos.
New from URWizards
URWizards has recently added petri pour resin dice to their lineup, which are currently being offered in a blue-teal and a blue-purple colourway and their Yeet & F*ck and their regular font design.
They are also offering a new font style they call “frost ancient”.
New from Q-Workshop
In mid-March, Q-Workshop teased their upcoming Kickstarter to expand their Witcher designs. They call these Hybrid Dice, and it remains to be seen how this design will actually look. You can sign up for e-mail updates about this Kickstarter at q-workshop.com/HybridDiceKS.
Also released were photos of their regular Witcher designs. They are offering three character sets each for Geralt, Yennefer and Dandelion, and these are now available for pre-order from their webstore at a price point of 23.37€ per set.
They also teased a sneak peek for a new glow-in-the-dark set that is as of yet unnamed, and there’s a new Starfinder set out there as well.
To follow up on the monthly dice subscription topic, the subscription box for March was sent out at the beginning of the month as scheduled, and it contained a total of 28 dice (3 sets and 7 loose dice). If you’d like to know more and see photos, Q-Workshop published the contents on their Facebook page.
Last but not least for Q-Workshop, some of you may have seen this Facebook post where they teased ice dice made with groundbreaking technology. Look at the date. April Fool’s, guys. 🙂
New from Haxtec
These aren’t quite as nice as the HD ones, but for anyone who’d like to have a more monochromatic version of the Ancient style dice, Haxtec now has grey ones available.
And jumping on the new inclusion dice trend, Haxtec is offering several new options, including honey bees, ladybugs, love letters and sushi pieces.
New from Hymgho
I’m not sure which of the dice in their store are really new (as per their Facebook post), but I don’t recall seeing those Dragon Scale ones in the photo before.
Looks like they’re also ramping up for a Kickstarter, so let’s keep our eyes peeled for that one.
New from Udixi
Udixi released new galaxy designs in March in different colours. Photos are below.
New from Dakota Irish
I probably missed a few Dakota Irish exclusive releases in the past, but here’s two newer ones that I’ve seen — Irish Stout and dolphin inclusion dice.
Kickstarters
Scroll down for this month’s compilation of currently active dice Kickstarters.
The fact that I’m listing Kickstarters here doesn’t automatically mean I highly recommend them, or that they are trustworthy and legit. I try my best not to list anything that looks dodgy or that I couldn’t in good conscience recommend, but it’s always possible that a project looks great on paper but ends up not delivering what it promises. I may add my own commentary to the text if I’m not convinced about certain projects, but ultimately it’s at everyone’s own discretion whether they want to back any of these Kickstarters or not.
Pixels Electronic Dice
Pixels Dice started teasing their electronic dice probably a year ago, and people were already excited then. At over $3 million US dollars and more than 22,000 backers, this is one of the biggest dice Kickstarters in history.
Pixels Dice are resin polyhedral dice with LEDs inside that make the numbers of the dice light up as you roll them. The dice come with an app that lets you customize the colour of the lights, and the result of the die roll will also be transferred to the app via bluetooth and can be displayed on your mobile device. There’s a battery included in each die, which can be recharged with a wireless charging station that will be included. The dice are said to last for 20,000 rolls with a single battery charge.
The app’s API is open source, and they are currently working on getting Pixels Dice integrated into the popular virtual tabletop platforms Roll20, D&D Beyond and Foundry.
The dice themselves come in four different colours you can choose from: Onyx Black, Hematite Grey, Midnight Galaxy and Aurora Sky. Due to the complexity of the electronic aspect, you’d imagine these don’t exactly run cheap. A single die (any of the 7 polyhedral shapes) will run you $39, a full polyhedral set $199. There’s also other options like a pipped d6 or a Fate d6.
There’s 4 days to go on this one, and it’s already fully funded.
URL: http://kck.st/3ekAjYR
Massive Gelatinous Cube Dice 2
In the wake of their success with the first Gelatinous Cube dice kickstarter, Severed Books is now following up with new versions of these massive 2″/51mm dice that can also be used as miniatures.
The two new designs in this kickstarter are a milky white glow-in-the-dark version, and a clear version with red blood swirls. Different ink colours are also available in red, black or uninked. For those who don’t really want the massive version, there’s also the smaller 1″/25mm variety you can back, and a version you can play checkers with.
For $3 you can get the 3D file, for $15 you can get the large Blood Swirl version, and for the GITD version you have to pay a dollar more, namely $16. The checker set will run you $35. There’s also several other stretch goals and extras.
This kickstarter will run for another 11 days and is fully funded with several stretch goals unlocked.
Wine Dice by Legendary Pants
Legendary Pants brings us another kickstarter, this time wine-themed dice sets. The designs are all modeled after different wine or wine adjacent beverages, most of them translucent or variations on it with a custom Legendary Pants font.
The sets only come as 11-piece variants (regular polyhedral set plus 3 extra d6s and an extra d20), and each set will cost $14. Perhaps a word of caution, some of the dice they photographed as samples seem to contain bubbles, so it’s not that unlikely that the final product will also contain bubbles.
The campaign will run for another 5 days, and it’s fully funded with all stretch goals unlocked. Interestingly, Legendary Pants initially wanted to run this campaign on another tabletop-specialized crowdfunding platform, but moved it to Kickstarter later (presumably because there wasn’t much traction outside of Kickstarter).
Googly Eye Dice
The Evergreen Burrow is offering dice in a kickstarter that have googly eyes inside. You know, those little plastic eyes that you normally find on toys to imitage eyeballs.
The dice are translucent clear resin with back-to-back googly eyes embedded, and they come inked in red. They were designed by the Evergreen Burrow but are being mass produced. One set costs $28, and the kickstarter has just reached its funding goal. There are several (as of yet unlocked) stretch goals like custom font or comic-style cyclops standees. There’s 27 days left to back this one.
Hieroglyphic RPG Dice
Awesome Dice has a kickstarter currently running for sharp-edged inclusion dice with a hieroglyph logo on the d20. Copying the Dispel Dice’s holographic inclusion style, they are currently offering different colourways with different logos: Anubis, Scarab and Eye of Horus. If you back one of the higher tiers, you can also gain access to a downloadable pdf of homebrewed, ancient Egyption-themed D&D subclasses.
You can get a single d20 for $15 and a full polyset for $50. There’s another 12 days left in the campaign.
Not Cursed Dice Series 2 – (Faux) Gemstone Edition
A company called Not Cursed Dice is offering sharp-edged resin dice that emulate the look of gemstones. They attempted a similar kickstarter in late 2020 that barely reached a quarter of its funding goal, so now they’ve refined and downscaled their offerings — with success.
You can back for sharp-edged resin dice with a matte finish and a custom font, modeled after the following gemstones: moonstone, hematite, amethyst, jade, lapis lazuli, rose quartz, sunstone. The kickarter text says they are handcrafted, but it’s not transparent whether they are actually making these themselves or having them produced to scale.
One d20 costs you $24, a full polyhedral set $47. All pledges include free US domestic shipping. There’s 23 days left for this project. It is fully funded with one stretch goal unlocked.
Heavy Metal Collection Vol. 1
This kickstarter for metal dice is well on the way to being funded, they offer 21 different styles of metal dice that they say are 25% larger and heavier than standard dice. The designs are modeled after fantasy themes or RPG classes, such as barbarians, bards, dragons, goblins, witches, etc. The design itself is always the same, just with different colour combinations. They have a total of nine additional designs lined up as stretch goals.
You can get one d20 for $15, a 6x d6 sets for $32, and a full polyset for $50. The kickstarter has 34 days to go and is currently just under 85% funded.
Dragon Dice Frostwings Reprint
In the mid-90’s, TSR developed a collectible dice game for 2 or more players, called Dragon Dice®. The company SFR, Inc. now publishes the game, and they are reprinting dice for the Frostwings species, which they are running as a kickstarter.
The dice themselves are speckled 6 and 10-sided dice with different logos that go with the game, and there are also several stretch goals, some of which have already been unlocked. The dice packs you can get start at $26, with several different add-on options.
The kickstarter will run another 29 days and it is fully funded.
LibrisArcana April 2021 Monthly Exclusive Dice
Libris Arcana has apparently opted to now use Kickstarter as their pre-order platform for their monthly exclusive dice subscription, so this is not a traditional kickstarter. They offer two sets for April that are fire and ice themed. The Fire set is a clear, red, black and yellow tumble-finished set that you can get for $16, the Ice set a sharp-edged handcrafted set for $40 in white, blue and teal. You can get both sets as a combo package for $50.
There’s 22 days to go to join this Kickstarter pre-order.
News
What else is new in the dice world? Take a look!
Dispel Dice vs. Ice Dice
Some of you may remember the controversial discussion from a while ago when a Chinese resin factory posted in the dice groups that Dispel had cheated them out of money, and so they started selling overstock of Dispel Kickstarter designs that were, at the time, named Ice Dice (also later sold by a brand named Ausp Dice). The Chinese factory claimed that Dispel had ordered several hundred sets of dice that the factory went on to produce, and then Dispel withdrew the order without payment, so that the factory was now sitting on overproduced, unpaid stock.
In a recent Wyrmlyfe video (Wyrmwood’s regular video blog), Karen Wang, owner of Dispel Dice, was asked about her side of the story, and this is what she said (filler words removed):
There was a rumor going around that basically I had ripped off a factory that I had been working with. I taught this factory how to make my dice, they weren’t even making dice when I started. They did resin jewelry parts.
Honestly, I had looked in both America and China for someone who was making sharp-edged resin dice with inclusions. We were trying to work with these factories and we taught them my process. We gave them access to my molds, my masters, and basically what ended up happening was, I visited and they were not what they represented themselves to be.
They weren’t producing in a way that I was comfortable with, and I was just like, I’m not gonna make dice like this. They made pictures of a factory that wasn’t their own, that’s probably the first [red flag]. I didn’t wanna get in a situation where I couldn’t deliver to my backers. I don’t wanna make dice like this, I would rather return the money, you know? My mom worked in a sweat shop, and, just… I wasn’t gonna do that.
When they ask her about how she’s now producing her dice, this is what she explains:
We built [the current factory]. We control end-to-end production. We can enforce our safety standards. We have nicer equipment than what I use. […] We make a product that’s better quality, it’s safer, it is more expensive, but I feel better about shipping it out.
Wyrmwood also asks Karen to speak to the criticism that Dispel Dice were advertised as handcrafted, and that some people have said that taking the production to China doesn’t align with the term “handcrafted”. This is her response:
[The dice are] poured by hand. We have people working on them by hand. I think there’s a lot of artistry between all the people who are swirling the colors, because depending on the design, there’s a different ratio to colors, especially if it’s a two-color pour. But it is being made in a setting at scale. And I think that that’s the differentiation that people wanted. I’m happy to drop it, but it is being made by hand. I just wanted a specific type of dice to exist, and then I was like, oh my God, I can make even more.
If you’re interested in following what’s going with the Dispel Dice/Wyrmwood Kickstarter collaboration, Karen is sometimes featured in the Wyrmlyfe videos where she gives updates and talks about her dice making process and her first Kickstarter.
Scammer Shop Update
With the new, extremely successful Pixels Dice Kickstarter that has now surpassed the $3 million funding mark, the scammer online shops are going a new round to extort unsuspecting customers’ money.
If you see an ad or an online shop offering “light-up dice” that look exactly like the Pixels Dice, don’t trust these. Some names in connection to the Pixels Dice are Alycemall, Kingkas DIY or Mounsiee Store. An updated list of known scam shops is available here.