Welcome to Barovia Treasure Packs

 the Welcome to Barovia blind bags from Sirius Dice contain thousands of different possible combinations.  There are 55 different dice sets, 31 possible ability coins  and 7 different dice bags making, according to my calculations, at least 11,965 possible sets in each blind bag. Each of the dice pouches bears a symbol derived from some aspect of Ravenloft.

Dice

 For you dice goblins, we recently received a large shipment of dice and have both restocked the loose dice as well as the polyhedral and d6 sets. Loose dice are 75 cents for plain opaque, $1 or translucent and $1. for speckled/marbled.

Character Dice

 We managed to restock the character dice sets from Beadle and Grimm's . Out of stock for months, we have all of the D&D character classes but expect to sell out of them fairly quickly.

Mystery Dice

 We now stock three different types of Mystery Dice. We have an inexpensive set from Foam Brain at $12, another set from Sirius Dice that includes a dice bag and ability coin for $25 and one that comes in a storage box from Black Oak Workshop for $29.99

Dice Calendars

 Before they go into storage until next year, you can pick up dice calendars and Pokemon calendars for half off Dec. 23. 

Also if you come in and play Pokemon between 11 and 1, we will give you a free Pokemon Prize pack. You can also get one by spending $100 on Pokemon in one purchase.

Advent Dice Sets

 On Dec. 13 both of our Advent dice calendars will be on sale for 25% off. Castle cards do apply.

Oddly, we could not keep these in stock last year but have moved much more slowly for 2023.

Fuse

 For those of you who like fast moving games and dice games. Suitable for 1 to 6 players, each player pulls a set of cards with different alignments of dice on them. The object is to roll dice, attempting to mach the numbers and patterns rolled with the alignment on the card. Matching a card clears it from the set in front of the player. The players have to remove all of the cards within 10 minutes in order to defuse the bomb. 

The game does have a phone app that provides a snarky timer with sound effects, but the game does not need the timer in order play. Great replay value and a great little game at $29.99

Beadle and Grimm Dice

 Mildly bemusing that the Beadle and Grimm dice sets spend a lot of valuable package space describing the character class for each dice instead of actually showing the dice. The number one question we have with these dice is: "Uh, what do they look like?" We finally printed out a picture of one of the sets and posted it behind the dice, jsut to give people some idea as to what they are getting. If you are selling a product and its image is very important, be sure to put a picture of it on the package.

Metal Dice

 Just a reminder that, if you spend the money buying one of the cool sets of metal dice we have on display (or buy them some place else) a dice tray is probably a good investment. These are metal, after all and rolling the solid ones can certainly damage your tabletop. In addition, especially if you purchased one of the hollow sets, rolling them on something hard could damage the dice. Purchasing a felt line dice tray is a good investment if you want to keep your metal dice in good condition.

Also, because of their heft, metal dice tend to roll further than you may be used to with plactic dice and a dice tray will keep them corralled in front of you.

32nd anniversary

 Come in this weekend and get a free Pokemon Button and a free copy of the DCC ?Quick Start Rules. Get  a Free Sirius dice with every 3 stamps earned on your Castle Card. Get a ticket for the Sunday drawing for coming in, wearing a Castle Perilous Shirt, tagging us on social media and for each stamp you earn on your Castle Card. Drawing will take place around 4:30 on Facebook on Sunday

Siuius Sundays

 While quantities last, with every 3 stamps earned on your Castle Card on Sunday, you will receive a dice from the Sirius Dice box . You select a number and we give you the corresponding dice. If you pull a gold die, you can redeem the code in the box for a $70 set from the Sirius website. If you pull a silver or copper die, you get one of the sets we have set aside in the store. If you pull a red d20, you get the free d20.

Dice

 As we have a whole lot of RPG players entering the hobby  and they all want dice, we have expanded our dice offerings with more dice cups and dice towers. If you have watched any of the online RPG shows, you will have notice that many of the players and DMs like to use dice towers in order to more randomly roll their dice and control where they roll. If you still like to roll your dice, we also have a selection of fold  up dice trays in assorted colors. We also just restocked metal dice and have a pretty large selection 

Scouting for Food

 We are a scouting for food drop off point. Drop off at least 10 non perishable items by this Sunday and get a free set of dice.

Inked Dice

A discussion of inked dice came up in a recent game. Long time player will remember that the first polyhedral dice came uninked (and were pretty ugly to boot). Almost all dice made today are inked, which means they are tossed into a inker with the powdered inking material and tumbled, so that the powder fills the indented numbers. Unfortunately, this process slightly rounds the edges making the dice less true than what are called razor edged dice, such as casino dice or Game Science dice.  Over the years, players have developed a preference for already inked dice, rather than doing it themselves with a marker or crayon and have proved willing to accept the tradeoff.

Buy/Don't Buy Dice

Found these in a drawer in the office. The Buy/Don't Buy dice were a gift from Flying Buffalo and only 10 sets exist.

Firefly Games

The release by Upper Deck of its Firefly Shiny Dice and the announcement by the company that it will release a Firefly deckbuilding game using its Legendary game engine means that there are now four different companies that have released games based on Firefly:

-Upper Deck has the dice and deckbuilding games, as noted above
-Margaret Weis Productions released the Firefly roleplaying game, the company also released the Serenity RPG back in 2005
-Gale Force 9 puts out the Firefly board game
-Finally Toy Vault produces the Firefly Out of the Dark card game

No idea how this happened as typically a company gets a license for a property and then has the rights to produce all products within a category for that property. Having different companies produce games using the same license at the same time is very unusual.

Metal Cthulhu Dice

This is just way cool. Slightly larger than the current plastic Cthulhu die and solid steel.  Expected to arrive in July 2012, priced at $14.95

Have a Dice Day!

Just looking at the number of different lines of dice we stock in the store.  Chessex is the dominant brand and our best selling line, mainly, I think, because of the plastic box packaging and the new color sets that are released several times a year.  Surprisingly, at least here, the more expensive speckled and marbled colors outsell the flat colored opaque ones.  I think our customers like to go through the sets and find one they haven't seen before to add to their collections.  The flat colored opaques are common enough that everyone can find a set if they wish, but a Glow Blue/Yellow, now that's a color you won't easily find in other dice bags around the table.

Koplow is a dice line that has existed much longer than the Chessex line, as Koplow dates back to 1974, while Chessex was founded in 1987. Due to Chessex' much wider availability through distribution in the 1980s and 1990s, more stores adopted the Chessex line over Koplow.  Koplow dice, for our store, have never achieved more than marginal sales with their Train Dice Game the best selling item that we stock from the company.

A second line that does OK for us, not nearly as well as the Chessex colors, is the Valiant Games line.  For years, Valiant allows us to custom design sets for the store and even tag them with the store logo. Their pricing structure allows us to offer a 9 dice bagged set with our logo on the hang tag for the same MSRP as a similar Chessex set.  However, customers still seem to prefer the Chessex line, likely becasue of the familiarity of the packaging and the ever changing selection of colors.

A third line that did much better when it first released was the Crystal Caste.  The company came out with a line of oblong dice that really piqued customer interest.  A bit pricier than the more standard Chessex and Koplow dice, the Chrystal Caste dice sold extremely well when first released, but that fascination waned and over the last few years, thought it still sells the oblong crystal dice, Christal Caste has recast itself, so to speak, as a more mainstream dice company, offering dice styles similar to those from Valiant, Chessex and Koplow, as well as a few innovations, such as the d1000 and semi-precious stone dice.