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I ordered some Miniature Scenery buildings for my desert table project, and added, almost as an afterthought, one of their newer items, the Dice Tower.

It sells for $35 AUD, which translates into roughly $26 $US, or 17 Pounds (plus whatever shipping costs). What you get is a tool that can double as a piece of terrain.

As with all the miniature scenery stuff, what you're buying is precut MDF boards that you assemble into a project. Once you get a feel for how they work, they go together really fast. You use normal modeling clippers to cut out the pieces, sand off the rough edges (I used my dremmel for this), and then glue them together with elmer's glue (wood glue or glue-all, or if you want to spring for it, you can even use GW's PVA glue).

This specific kit is designed really nicely, in such a way that most of the connections are hidden from sight. Unpainted, the finished product looks like this:



As you can see, the only joins that are really visible are the ones holding the dice bay, and four slots on the top.

The inside of the tower has a few angled surfaces that the dice bounce off as they fall through the tower, and into the tray at the bottom.

But, how does it work?

I had my lovely assistant on hand for photographing the desert windmill, so we decided to show off the tower in action.

The test was to take a full box of chessex 12mm dice and toss them all in at once.

The painted tower. It will probably sit next to the desert table, although, in a pinch, it makes acceptable, if impassable, terrain. It would certainly fit in on my city board.



We're just going to toss the whole brick in there.



I think the Rolling Stones have a song about this...



No spillage. A few dice ended up cocked, pressed against the edge, but it was easy enough to toss them back in. The most important thing was that even tossing a whole brick in at once, none came out of the tray.



Tossing the handful back in, we check the results:



And, the dice look pretty decently randomized. 36 dice yield what appears to be six 1s, nine 2's, five 3's, six 4's, three 5's, and seven 6's - Averaging 3.33 - a little low on this roll, but certainly within acceptable limits.

This might become part of my standard tournament kit, I love the idea of not having to worry about damaging models with errant dice rolls.

Redbeard wrote:

This might become part of my standard tournament kit, I love the idea of not having to worry about damaging models with errant dice rolls.

Isn't that why GW added Kill Points?

Redbeard wrote:This might become part of my standard tournament kit, I love the idea of not having to worry about damaging models with errant dice rolls.

Has this actually ever been a problem for you? I can't think of a time when I've damaged another model with dice (having said that and having now tempted fate, I can guarantee the next time I get my Stormblade out a single dice will rip it in half). But really, how often do you roll dice in such a manner that they can break things?

Damaged? Perhaps not. Hit, knocked over? yup. It's mostly when you are using slightly larger (16mm or casino) dice, and have to roll more than just a couple.

That's a great idea. I have a table that suffers really badly from dice bounce.