Image

The Great D6 Roundup: Which D6s are worth your time?

There is something special about d6s compared to other dice. From a throw at a Craps table, lifting the cup for Cho-han, or making a move in the popular Powered by the Apocalypse system, rolling 2d6s just… it just feels official. Today, let’s take a quick and concise look at my favorite d6s out on the market today.
Note: some of these are not cheap. But that’s true of most dice I review, after all.

Floating Face D6s – Sly Kly Design ($24 per set)

These offerings from Sly Kly are incredibly different and interesting. I use them every week with reckless abandon.

The dice are actually a solid core of aluminum trapped inside a roll-cage of aluminum. They’re feather light and have the most interesting and enjoyable tinkle sound and roll. When they are dropped, the cage gives them some spring and they tumble quite a bit, chiming like a small bell.

Check out this video to hear and see them roll

Featherlight,  interesting, sturdy, well painted, and brilliantly pure metal – these things are true rolling with an additional level of randomness given by the roll-cage, offering a seriously awesome experience.

Hand Forged Iron – Grapevine Forge ($17 per set)

Mammoths. Utter mammoths. These dice from the blacksmith Jeremy over at Grapevine Forge weigh in at 33 grams! Over twice the weight of an entire 7 piece set of Chessex dice!

IMG_20170716_001345.jpg

They are, again, hand forged. No two dice will ever completely match. I think the “pips” style (dots on the sides) looks far better, considering their depth and how much of the face of the die they cover, but I’ve loved the numbered set as well.

Given the nature of these dice, they can actually be very fun to fidget with.

2017-08-20 17.42.352017-08-20 17.47.22

It’s like some kind of modern art, no? The heft, rough metal surface, amazing feel in the hand, and the sheet enjoyment of hearing nearly a pound of dice slam into the table when you roll is just fantastic. At 3/4″ they tower over traditional dice, but are still a great size to play with just as often as you can.

Anodized Alumnium – Zucati ($10 per pair)

These dice were offered as part of a promotion for people to check out the quality of Hal’s EleMetal(tm) dice series. I do believe if you contact Hal directly, he can help you acquire the dice you need without buying the full sets.

2017-07-12 14.40.57

These dice are extremely well crafted. You can tell, as soon as you have them in front of you, that a lot of care was used to make sure these dice are as premium as you can get. Each face is perfectly flat, the colored coating is extremely even and has never chipped.

The dice may be a bit pricey, outside of the promotion (I have no official word on the price per die), but if you can manage to snag a couple of these, they’re the most well produce aluminum dice I’ve ever seen.

Gothica – DieHard Dice ($9-10 per pair)

I only recently got these dice, and will be using them today, but I have to say I love the look and feel of these guys. I would love to have matching pairs for this photo shoot, but they have a lot of options to chose from – so having variety is better: Chrome and White, Gold and Blue, and Sinister Red. The website is very cluttered and hard to flip through, but there are so many options that I’m confident you’ll all find the dice you want with enough effort.

IMG_20171210_141142

Each face is enameled and very smooth, almost seamless with the exposed metal surrounding. The glossy finish makes these dice look extremely polished. They are, indeed, fingerprint magnets but who really cares?
They roll well, they look great, and are extremely striking; I can’t wait to see how they treat me in-game.

Overall

Look, there will always be people who say “who would spend that much money on 2d6s?!” – but if you play games that use 2d6s… you’re wasting quite a bit of cash, energy, and dice if you buy two complete 7pc sets just for two d6 dice.

You can go to local hobby stores and buy d6s from them 1/1, you can also order pounds of dice from companies like EasyRoller and have PLENTY of plastic dice for your Shadowrun games or 9th level fireballs, but buying specific high-quality d6s for your games is pretty rewarding, if it’s something you’re interested in, and in my experience – you grow pretty attached to them.

What cool d6s do you use? Link them below or on my twitter!

d6_bulk_dice
Courtesy of EasyRollerDiceCo

I don’t always advocate rolling, but when I do… be sure you have to Drop the Die.
Review by JB Little, Follow me on twitter for more “useful” information.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *