PUBLISHER: WIZARDS OF THE COAST | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
At this point it’s almost become a tradition that upon every major release of a new Dungeons and Dragons book we are going to get a lovely dice set to accompany it. We really enjoyed previous releases such as The Explorer’s Kit and the Baldurs Gate Dice , which combined high quality random number generators with player handouts. The new dice pack is a similar sort of idea, but this time designed to tie-in with the new release, Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden.
If you’re face to face with some sort of hideous monster, be it the hideous Tomb Tappers, the adorable Chwingas, the highly marketable Snowy Owl Bear or even the great wyrm Avrieaturace, you’re going to need some dice to roll.
This set of dice are dark blue and translucent, but are crammed with a sparkly material inside so the result is like looking into tiny rainbow nebulas. The twenty-sided dice are smaller than the previous sets we’ve seen and that’s a good thing; some people like chunky dice and others prefer a more discrete shape. They are very pretty and you get a blu-ish/purple effect that looks weird and alien. Given that Rime of the Frostmaiden is heavily inspired by movies such as
The Thing and Alien this is very appropriate and we suspect exactly what they were going for. Not only does the game have cosmic horror stylings, the adventure features a weird mineral which you could easily describe by showing your players these dice.
As always, it’s the standard array of D&D dice. We get four six-siders , two-ten siders (each inked differently to work as percentiles), one twelve-sider, one eight-sider, one four-sider and, of course, two twenty-siders.
It’s not just a dice set, of course. We get player hand-outs and a box that doubles as a rolling mat, so your dice don’t ping off under the table and get captured by your cat. The box is solidly made, felt lined and makes a pleasing sound when you roll. It’s also pretty and shiny, with the muted blues of winter and shiny stylised snowflakes. It looks very Forgotten Realms.
The player hand-outs are also very useful. We get a set of cards, with a lovely illustration of a monster on the front and a description on the back. These are a really nice way of showing the players what horrible thing is trying to eat them without awkwardly waving the actual book at them.
One of the cards appears to be a missive from Forgotten Realm’s hero Drizzt Do’urden, which is a nice nod to D&D’s history.
We also get a map of Icewind Dale, which is great as the one in the book is a little bit awkward to remove. Another invaluable player aid. In short, this is a very well presented kit and though you absolutely don’t need it, if you’re planning on running Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden (or have a friend who’s a huge D&D fan), then we strongly recommend this box of dice.
