Tuesday 6 May 2014

Bolt Action - Dice gubbings

I'm finally decided to split my Bolt Action coverage across a couple of my blogs with anything to do with the mechanics of running the game hosted here on Kitnoob (as I am guessing that if you are reading this then this sort of thing interests you)!

First off, I received a little cheap wooden dice tower the other day. I have noticed that while playing dice driven games whilst also drinking alcohol that over-enthusiastic dice throwing can scatter the dice all over the room! So I bought this so we can herd the bones...


To be honest - particularly now I've seen this device first hand - I think even I could have made something similar, or maybe even better (or at least more attractive). For Bolt Action - which requires the use of quite a lot of dice at one time - I may modify the design to allow for a wider slot at the top and tray area at the bottom. (A nice side project!)

Aside from the normal D6 dice (look at me using the correct war-gamer terminology!) I also needed a couple of sets of the special Bolt Action order Dice.

Now at £10 a set my brother cringed at the expense! So my brother did some Googling and soon came up with some templates which allow you to print out some 'paper dice' you can glue together to make your own order dice with...


These little card order dice served us well for out demo game but were a bit unimaginative in design for my liking so I did some sketching over my lunch today and came up with this new set of designs for my German's dice set...

*Spot the typo!*
They are a bit monochrome but that's because I have a mono laser printer on my desk at work! I intend something a bit more colourful for my American and Finnish order dice.

The other problem with the printed dice were that - even with a moderately heavy card stock - they were a little flimsy (as I found out when I stood on one). So I found a rather splendid source of 'blank' D6 dice over at blankdice.co.uk (isn't the web a wonderful thing)...



These blank dice are 20p a pop, so while the proper Warlord Bolt Action dice sets are £10 for 12 order dice the blank dice approach can net you 12 similar dice for just £2.40! Plus you get the chance to design your own unique order labels (blankdice.co.uk have a set of downloadable templates to help you make your own labels).

I'm still muddling around with my order dice designs but when I have finished them I will post them up in case anyone likes the look of them.

3 comments:

  1. I have a funny feeling your brother stumbled across the same blog that had the template and a link to the blank dice that I did. Saved a bunch of money.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Probably James, it didn't take me long to find it on Google. I was really gob-smacked at the cost of the proper BA order dice (and add one of their fancy dice bags and the cost rockets). My brother and I were still smarting a bit after buying the rule book! :)

      Delete