These wooden dice are well made and definitely worth the price. Another Kickstarter success.
Name: Victory Renaissance – Mixed-Color Artistic Wooden Dice
Description: This is a set of 7 yellow/greenbrown sharp-edge wooden TTRPG dice. The dice are made of Boxwood. The font is a custom font (again) which has some elements of Passenger Display Regular (the thin top / bottom of the 8, and thin torso of the 2) but without the ball serifs. The bottom of the 9 / top of the 6 are very short thin lines and there are slight serifs on the top of the 7 and bottom of the 1. The font is reasonable but the thin lines on some digits makes readability suffer. The numbers are carved out and the font is inked in white. The 6 and 9 faces use very small dots to indicate their orientation. The d10s have edged waists. The d4 die is a large version of the Crystal / Barrel shape which works well for this set. The dice came in very cheap faux-leather covered cardboard cases with magnet lids and soft foam inserts with cutouts for the dice to fit very loosely.
Size:
d20: (Face->Face) 21.74 mm (Point->Point) 24.84 mm
Where did they come from: Kickstarter Campaign (XIU)
How much did they cost: 390 HK$ (about $49)
Material / color: Boxwood, green/brown/yellow swirl
Quality: Excellent
Readability: Poor to Fair
Value: Excellent
Overall Rating: 10/10
Attempts needed to roll a natural (20): 38
One Hundred d20 rolls: 3, 7, 9, 2, 19, 19, 4, 1, 13, 2, 14, 16, 19, 3, 18, 9, 8, 17, 4, 15, 11, 10, 11, 4, 3, 7, 7, 12, 18, 4, 3, 5, 12, 3, 15, 3, 18, 12, 3, 3, 11, 9, 1, 13, 16, 1, 16, 17, 5, 16, 11, 12, 19, 1, 10, 20, 3, 14, 17, 18, 12, 12, 8, 19, 20, 19, 1, 19, 8, 4, 5, 14, 7, 14, 9, 4, 20, 19, 5, 9, 7, 8, 9, 5, 3, 3, 8, 1, 7, 9, 11, 10, 2, 15, 12, 19, 2, 15, 7, 20
Mean: 9.97
Median: 9
Mode: 3
Chi-square: 22.800 **
This is the lowest Chi-square value I’ve seen since I started calculating it a few months ago.
Result: Balanced!
4d6 drop 1 stat block: 9, 10, 13, 16, 13, 13 (74 total) An Attentive Tiefling Wizard from an island that can’t be reached by boat who was disowned by his family.
For reference: the Standard Array method totals to: 72 and the Point Buy method totals to: 69.
Our wizard casts Magic Missile at a large CR2 Gelatineous Cube every round until it’s dead, starting with her 9th level spell and going down in level from there…
1st-level evocation
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 120 feet
Components: V, S
Duration: Instantaneous
You create three glowing darts of magical force. Each dart hits a creature of your choice that you can see within range. A dart deals 1d4 + 1 force damage to its target. The darts all strike simultaneously and you can direct them to hit one creature or several.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, the spell creates one more dart for each slot level above 1st.
Round 1: 9th level = 9 darts: 4, 1, 3, 3, 3, 1, 1, 3, 2 = 30 damage
Round 2: 8th level = 8 darts: 4, 2, 3, 2, 2, 4, 4, 2 = 31 damage
Round 3: 7th level = 7 darts: 4, 3, 3, 1, 4, 1, 1 = 24 damage
This is just barely enough damage to finish off the Gelatineous Cube and splatter it all over the walls of the dungeon where the cube roams.
Random Table Rolls:
Dungeon Room – Table #2: 91 – Goblin teeth (1d10)
NPCs: 50 – Lane Standish, Sailor, Female
(I’m in-between random table generators at the moment so I’m scrounging for tables wherever I can, mostly in books)
Final Thoughts: When I saw the kickstarter campaign for these dice from a dicemaker who I bought a set of stone dice from in the past (see: review #78 “Purple Rain”) with good results… other than one of the dice chipping, which is always a possibility with stone dice. His prices were very good: $65 for a set of 11 vibrant striped purple agate dice, or in this case, $49 for a set of 7 gorgeous wooden dice! What drew me in to backing the campaign was the color of the wood which was much more yellow/green in the Kickstarter photos. This happens often and not just on Kickstarter. When you buy dice online, you’re looking at the best possible photo of the dice. It’s their best day, they’re dressed up and polished and have professional lighting. Even though they’re a bit muddled, I’m still very happy with the look of these dice. The grain patterns on these dice is spectacular! There are so many different grains on these dice. Just look at the photos below and try to hate on these dice. Just try it!
The dice were shipped in very cheap in-line dice boxes made of semi-thick cardboard with faux leather lids. They had loose foam inserts to keep the dice somewhat secure. Unfortunately both of the cases were damaged in shipping so I threw them away. The dice were un-harmed thankfully. I never almost never end up using the cases that the dice are shipped in. The only exceptions are for dice that I worry about damaging if they are left in one of the divided plastic boxes that I use for dice. That’s maybe 3-4 sets of dice that get to live in houses separate from the condos that everyone else shares. The downside is that I have to remember that I have them so that they don’t go unused. Every dice set wants to take a trip to the game table.
One downside for this set of dice is that readability isn’t good on the d20 with it’s smaller faces which require a smaller font. The font is carved into the faces and then painted white. They did a really good job keeping the font neat. I keep saying: Make bigger dice! I don’t want everyone to start making dice sets based off of a 35mm d20 or anything but how about a 24mm d20? How great would that be?
This set has the “Crystal” / “Barrel” d4 shape which is probably my 2nd favorite d4 shape behind the tetrahedron. Disparage the caltrop / foot destroyer all you want but I still prefer that pyramid over all other d4s. Now if only more dicemakers would start selling rhombic d12 dice…. Rhombic d12s are the best shape of all. You can’t convince me otherwise. Not even you Alice!
Longtime readers will notice that this is my 3rd full set of wooden dice, and I think that they’re my favorite as well. It’s that grain… every side is a winner! I have another wooden set of dice waiting to be reviewed that are from this same Kickstarter campaign. We’ll see how they fair compared to these champs.
** I’ve added a new value to the reviews called “Chi-square” which is a calculation of the difference between of the number of times each value was rolled in the d20 roll test compared to the number of times each value would be rolled in a perfectly equal roll test. (perfectly equal means every value comes up the same number of times, or [total number of rolls / number of sides on the die]) Chi-square gives a sense of how far away from the statistical average the results of the d20 roll test were. It’s not a perfect measure of a die’s balance and fairness but it’s a good step in that direction. More information about die fairness / balance roll testing can be found here: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/70802/how-can-i-test-whether-a-die-is-fair
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