This is part review, part blog post. Bear with me.
I needed more dice for the Dungeons & Dragons campaign August and I were hosting. Since I was the only one with any experience with the game, as well as the only one with any dice, I knew the boys coming over would need a set each. Rather than telling them to go buy a set of dice, which could be a risky proposition since they probably didn’t know what to get, and since I wanted at least another set for myself, I figured I would just pick up a bunch of bulk dice.
Looking online I was presented with a few options, various bags of dice, or a pound of dice or whatever, but ultimately I chose to go with Wiz Dice’s 100+ Random Polyhedral Dice. Yes, I read some of the reviews but I figured for the price it would be cheaper to get a few sets this way rather than individually even if they didn’t match colors.
I came close to getting a couple separate sets of 15 dice or maybe a few sets of 15, but ultimately decided to get the “more dice per dollar” option.
What did I get? 110 total dice, of which there were, including the “one guaranteed complete set” (along with a dice bag), 15 complete sets of dice and one partial set. This seemed like a big win.
There are, however, some problems with what was received. Was I ultimate happy or unsatisfied with the products? Let’s look over things.
11 “unusable” dice which dropped the total down to 99 dice. This also dropped the number of complete sets down significantly.
That was still alright, since purchasing a set of dice can run around $5 each, give or take a couple of Dollars depending on how fancy they are. I wasn’t looking for anything fancy, just some basic dice for the group to use, and frankly, I was expecting to lose a few.
What of those dice that were deemed not worthy? Well, most were still usable, just a bit more difficult to read. Nothing too bad, but nothing I would want to take to a convention or use in a serious gaming group.
Actually, most of these sets were good enough my purposes, and if the kids I was running the campaign for wanted to continue borrowing these dice to play with, I was fine with that. I have a couple of sets of higher quality dice that I use for myself – of course they were more expensive.
There is another die in the shipment that wound up being completely unusable. It is a shame because it was from one of the cooler looking sets. Billed as “factory firsts” there was obviously one that did not fit that bill. Aside from some that didn’t get their numbers imprinted fully there was one D8 that has a massive hole in it. I do not know how this made it past quality control, and that it would be included as a desirable product is puzzling.
Then there is the bag. One of the selling points for this product is a guaranteed complete set of dice along with a dice bag. I wasn’t expecting a large bag, but I was expecting a bag that was big enough to house one of the complete sets that would last. I was partly right. The bag does house one of the complete sets of seven dice, but after less than one day one of the strings broke. The bag still works, but not at the level of proficiency as designed.
Despite these issues I still recommend picking up the product. There are enough usable dice to make the purchase worthwhile. These won’t necessarily be your “go to” dice for gaming, but there are plenty of usable dice in there to get started as well as having plenty of extras on hand for when you need them.