Chessex Advent Calendar 2024 – My Review

Now that Christmas is here and all the dice in the Chessex dice advent calendar have been unveiled, let’s take a closer look at the contents and recap the experience and the results.

The Outer Package

The calendar was delivered as a roughly 17x17x17cm box with doors on all sides except the bottom. This, in itself, stands out since most other dice advent calendars on the market are presented as a relatively flat, rectangular shape with all doors facing to one side.

Made out of relatively thin cardstock, this presented the first challenge and was one of the biggest issues that were encountered and affected everyone I’ve seen talking about the calendar online who had one. The box was conceived in a way that there were rectangular compartments behind each door that reached into the inside of the cube which were glued together. The back wall of these compartments wasn’t glued shut around each compartment and would bend when the calendar was shaken, e.g. during transport.

This led to dice frequently migrating between compartments during shipping, so that even though the contents were supposed to be in the same places for all calendars, in reality some compartments had extra dice or had other dice than intended or were even empty. Chessex already noted this as a significant flaw and announced in one of their newsletters that they would work on improving this for future years.

From a visual aspect, the box had a base colour of dark green with faint, subtle depictions of a sleigh with a skeletal Santa in it, pulled by three skeletal reindeer. One might presume that this was supposed to signify a gelatinous cube that swallowed up Santa and his reindeer. Personally, I’m not a fan of the skeleton theme that’s also somewhat evocative of ‘Undead Santa’ and would prefer something a little less macabre for Christmas, but I prefer it over some of the kitschier choices I’ve seen for other calendars. What’s interesting about it is that, when you turn the calendar, the angle from which you see the sleigh is a little different from every side, utilising the 3D cube design very well.

The calendar had a total of 25 doors distributed equally across the four vertical sides: one for every day from Dec 1^st to Dec 24^th, plus an “Open First” door at the top. The doors were basically perforated into the box material, like you’d expect with an advent calendar like this. As for the perforation, I ended up opening the doors with the help of a flat metal nail file since I was afraid I would tear apart or damage the box otherwise. It’s probably a fine line to walk between too sturdy and too loose for these perforations, so I’d prefer the door seal to be stronger rather than too easily opened.

The Contents

The content of the calendar was, for the most part, the same between all calendars, and the location of the dice behind the doors as well.

On day 1, there were actually two doors to be opened – an “Open First” door at the top and the regular door for Dec 1^st. Behind the “Open First” door was a Mega-hedral sized d20 in frosted opaque black. It was made from the Chessex Heavy material, so it had tangibly more heft than one might expect. The story goes that this d20 was supposed to signify a piece of coal that Santa Claus gives children who weren’t well-behaved. (Does that mean we’ve all been bad?)

Beneath the d20 were also three rectangular plastic boxes with a black lid (1 mini, 1 medium, 1 mega) that you can store the dice in afterwards. However, since the calendar included 3 regular polysets, 2 mini sets and several other loose dice, they did not all fit into the boxes, but I like that Chessex supplied at least some boxes for those who like using them.

The doors for the separate days contained a mix of different things on different days. Sometimes single pieces from a set, sometimes multiple pieces from a set, sometimes single dice that didn’t have a matching set. I will post a table at the end of this post that lists out what was supposed to be behind which door.

After having opened all the doors, assuming your calendar was not missing anything, you’d end up with the following sets and singles:

• 1 polyset of Gemini^® Candy Cane w/gold (regular size)
• 1 polyset of Festive Toybox w/white (regular size)
• 1 polyset of Vortex Ice Skating (regular size)
• 1 polyset Gemini^® Green-Red w/white (Mini-hedral size)
• 1 polyset Glitter Snow (Mini-hedral size)
• 3 Velvet Red w/white pipped d6s (16mm)
• 2 Brush d20s (regular size)
• 1 Starry Night w/gold CountUp&Down d20 (Mega-hedral size)
• 1 Heavy Coal w/grey Mega-hedral d20
• 1 Mega-hedral d20 in a random design from the following range
  • Festive Circus¹
  • Glitter Ruby²
  • Nebula Nocturnal w/turquoise¹
  • Scarab Scarlet¹
  • Translucent Red²
  • Translucent Teal²

¹ Regular release design, ² Limited release design

My Impressions

I had a lot of fun opening the doors every day leading up to Christmas and discovering what was behind them, and also comparing them with other dice friends’ specimens – not only to figure out whether we all got the same dice on the same days.

There was a good variety of different dice and different designs in there. While there was a clear focus on winter-themed or Christmas-themed designs, I very much like that the sets weren’t explicitly tied to Christmas (e.g. through x-mas logos or engravings) so that you can universally use them any time of the year without that being weird.

Gemini Candy Cane

The Candy Cane set was basically a clone of Gemini Red-White w/blue. While it did certainly resemble candy canes and the glitter in the gold material was a nice touch, the Gemini Red-White w/blue set would look almost exactly the same if you reinked them to gold.

Festive Toybox

The Festive Toybox set was a clone of Nebula Wisteria with added white swirls and perhaps marginally stronger colours. I’ve seen multiple people ask if/how Festive Toybox was different from Nebula Wisteria. Personally, I was pretty disappointed with my final polyset. The d8 and d4 were way too pale and didn’t match the rest of the set. Some of the dice, especially the paler ones, had visible bubbles and some dice came out too muddy. It would be a set that’s best curated, which isn’t really possible with an advent calendar at this price.

Vortex Ice Skating

The Ice Skating set was basically a clone of Luminary Sky that leaned more turquoise with a different ink colour. I liked it as such but in light of Luminary Sky and Cirrus Aqua, it felt like an unimaginative remake. The set might have been a tad more interesting if it used the same shade of greenish teal as the long oop and incredibly sought after Crystal Caste Silk Jade set. The d% in my set was also over-tumbled and had a matte surface, almost as if it was meant to have a Frosted effect, which didn’t quite match the other dice.

Glitter Snow Mini-hedrals

Glitter Snow certainly fit the winter theme but came out very similar to Borealis Icicle, minus the glow-in-the-dark effect. It was pretty cool that it was reminiscent of the old Orbits test set. I will say that while the blue glitter added a nice wintery touch, it was hardly visible and almost impossible to capture well in photos. I’ve seen people request that Chessex make Glitter Snow as a regular polyset, but I’m not sure that makes sense because if we disregard the ink colour, it wouldn’t be distinctly different from Borealis Icicle.

Gemini Green-Red Mini-hedrals

Although it made perfect sense to include it because of the colour combination, Gemini Green-Red was a remake of an existing set in Mini-hedral size, thus not hugely interesting to many collectors.

Singles

The three red pips felt more like a gimmick than actually useful dice. Someone on Reddit asked what you would actually use the all-1s and the all-6s die for. I have no idea. Choosing the velvety red as a colour also made sense in a Christmas context but I didn’t see anyone being enthused or inspired by picking a more or less plain red for these.

The Day 10 Mega-hedral d20 was a random colour from a range of their Mega-hedral designs. This included both limited release and regular release colourways, which didn’t match the product description that said these would all be limited release. Even though the Translucent Red and Translucent Teal colourways were limited release, I’ve seen some negative sentiment from people who felt these were too plain and not visually interesting. For me, door 10 was the least interesting out of the whole calendar, and perhaps even a letdown for some who were hoping to get a limited release d20 but ended up with something you can easily buy in stores that perhaps they already owned.

The Starry Night Count Up & Down looked really nice in bright daylight, but its discerning features were not actually noticeable in the conditions when this die would be in use. Most gaming tables I know have relatively dim light conditions which would make this design look just dark with a bit of glitter. The Luminary particles were a nice touch for the starry sky look, but also not something you see under normal gaming or light conditions. I also wish the Luminary glow was yellow or blue instead of green and I feel like maybe it could have looked cooler if they’d added some colour-shifting fine glitter as well.

The Heavy Coal d20 was one of the more unique dice in the calendar, but it only really worked if you knew that it was supposed to signify a piece of coal. If I didn’t, I would have said they could have picked a more interesting colourway or design. I wish they had put some explanations about why they chose certain designs in or on the box.

The Brush d20s were what I was most excited for. We shall note that the ones in the calendar were prototypes and the Danish factory is still working on refining them. I’m looking forward to their full sets debut in hopes of a better colour spread after they refine these a bit more. I think you could do really interesting things with that technique.

Online feedback about the Brush d20s was mixed, but a recurring theme was that there was too much variation between the specimens in different calendars. In fact, I’ve seen one of the black-white-yellow d20s that didn’t have any brush effect whatsoever and was basically an Opaque Black w/blue die. That this d20 made it past quality control when they packed these boxes is a little puzzling.

My Final Verdict

From my very picky collector’s point of view, I was a little disappointed because there weren’t that many dice in the calendar that were truly unique, innovative or striking. It was mostly the two Brush d20s and the frosted Heavy Mega-hedral d20 that I thought were cool and unique additions to my collection. As already explained above, the other dice were either a little gimicky or too close to existing Chessex designs.

What I liked was the fact that Chessex put effort into the product to make it special and not just package up existing dice at random for a quick “me too” product. Some people may not like the element of FOMO by making the dice exclusive to the calendar, but at least there wasn’t any artificial scarcity and (most) people who wanted a calendar were able to get one. (Granted, there wasn’t much coverage of the calendars in Europe this year, but this had to do with their European pricing policy, the release timing and then distribution issues at Chessex Europe.)

If you asked me whether I felt the price of $50 (68 EUR MSRP in Europe) gave you a good bang for your buck, as a whole I’d say yes. The dice you got added up to a value of over $60 MSRP, and there was the exclusivity factor of them not being available outside of the calendar on top of it. If you compare it to other dice advent calendars at a similar price (e.g. the Q-Workshop one), I feel like you get a lot more value out of the Chessex one.

Would I buy another Chessex advent calendar in coming years? Absolutely, unless they make significant negative changes to their concept or their pricing. My hope is that next year Chessex will stray from remaking existing designs with only slight modifications and do bolder designs that are truly new so that the “meh” effect isn’t quite as pronounced for those collectors who already own a good number of previous Chessex releases. Another wish is that they can lower the price in Europe a little — a 20 EUR difference is a lot for a $50 product and felt like a slap in the face for European customers.

Contents by Day

¹ Some calendars had the d8 on Day 3 and the d10 on Day 19.

² Chessex named these Velvet Red, but the colour is slightly darker than that of the out-of-print Velvet Red dice from the 2000’s.

Advent Calendar Gallery