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What are your experiences with unique faction dice? Do you prefer them over vanilla ones or not?

Almost without exception, they make the game more difficult than it needs to be. All the numbers on dice should be apparent at a glance from across the table and most of them are not.

Especially the ones with two special symbols- I very much dislike the fact that I have to pay attention to the opponents dice rolls and keep track of what they say the sixes are, and if they're sticking to that. I very much resent that fact that the special dice make me more likely to think even innocent opponents are cheating.

All depends on which ones.
The AoS skaven ones were great.

The squig dice are just plain terrible, in both looks and use.

I don’t mind faction dice, but some are just ridiculous now with symbols on every side as opposed to just the 6 like older ones.
So they slow things down and don’t really even look that great.

I tend to stick to chessex dice as I just pick up clear ones or coloured depending on the faction I’m using.

According to a YouTube video commentary, the Nurgle dice were banned from a tournament because they were just too hard to read.

I found the Ultramarine ones also very difficult to read, mostly because IV and VI are visually so similar. If they had made the 1 be "I" and 6 be "Ʊ" then I think it would've been fine.

They're neat collector's items, mostly...though I use the Thousand Sons dice a lot of the time. As noted some as stupid hard to read...those Sisters dice...eurgghh.

Very much depends on the dice. The Custodes ones are great - the skulls for the ones really stands out and Custodes mainly care about 2+ for hits and saves anyway, so it's useful. They're also very squared and easy to read. They're the only dice I use when playing the army, so I just take 15 seconds to tell my opponent before the game the skull is the one and the army symbol the six.


The Tzeentch ones were illegible and some like the Nurgle ones are apparently unbalanced and biased.


Even though I'm collecting Sisters, I'm giving their dice a pass because of readability issues.

If you're referring to GW's? They're mostly complete garbage.

1) Often poor non-contrasting colour choices...which is dumb.
2) Symbols on both the one and six faces...which is dumb.
3) Using bizarre or tiny symbols in place of pips...which is dumb.
4) Making them extremely limited in terms of sales time frame so that even if you wanted to collect them you'd struggle...which is dumb.
5) Releasing stuff like the Eldar dice which featured Aspect Shrine logos instead of generic or Craftworld logos...which is dumb.
6) Releasing stuff like Deathguard dice which are poorly assembled and unlikely to actually be balanced (a small rubber piece inside a plastic frame)....which is dumb.

It's one of the bizarre areas where GW fails consistently. Solution? Produce a simple quality contrasting D6 with a symbol on the six face, and call it a day. Oh, and keep them in stock for more than two months.

I just go to Chessex for my custom 40K dice, and find it 10x easier and exceptionally cheaper. I use them so often I tend to get friends dice as gifts for Christmas, etc. All of the dice are contrasted well, and with a simple army matching symbol on the six. No questions, no arguments, no bs.

I also always get 10 of one colour combination and 20 of another, so that you can mix in special weapons, or split between weapon types, etc.

Generic Necromunda/Adeptus Titanicus styled dice:


Nurgle Renegade CSM dice:


My custom Craftworld Eldar dice:


etc. I've done a half dozen other sets, but don't have pics uploaded here.

Voss wrote:
Almost without exception, they make the game more difficult than it needs to be. All the numbers on dice should be apparent at a glance from across the table and most of them are not.

Especially the ones with two special symbols- I very much dislike the fact that I have to pay attention to the opponents dice rolls and keep track of what they say the sixes are, and if they're sticking to that. I very much resent that fact that the special dice make me more likely to think even innocent opponents are cheating.

So much this. I had to put up with a Tau player once who insisted (Yes, I asked him to knock it off and use my dice, but no avail) using the order dice for everything. So fething frustrating as they cannot be read easily from a distance.

I don't mind easy to read dice - pips or #s (no weird color patterns &/or "creative" ways to show #s, no weird shapes either {a buddy has round oblong d6}) with the faction symbol on the 6.

If I have to spend more than a casual glance to tell what was rolled, please use something else.

As a rule of thumb if dice has 2 symbols then I don't use it for rolling. Period.

As such while I might buy sister dice if local store has I would use them as miracle dice markers. Specifically because they are so god awful to read in a hurry I don't WANT to roll them reducing odds of accidentally picking them up to roll dice! That ugly readability and my MD tray I bought ought to remove that danger. Don't want to lose that 6 for MD because I accidentally picked dice up and rolled it

I once had a small set of 6-8 GW dice, loved them but they slowly dwindled in number and there weren't enough for rolling attacks anyway so I always used community dice or my opponent's dice.

Now I bought a big batch of basic single-colour dice, best wargaming decision ever. I have them in a colour I like that nobody else does which prevents mixing dice pools which can be a huge headache. If my buddies find a dice under their couch one they'll know it's mine and I bought them cheap in bulk so I'd have to lose a lot before I have to get nw ones.

I exclusively use these dice.

I have Curse of the Wulfen dice, they were easy to read but didn't like to roll.
It sucks knowing that your 'roll' was terrible well before it stops moving so they live in the bitz box.

I'll be using the SoB dice as miracle dice, the "limited edition miracle dice" can feth right off anyway. for any other rolls and as wound markers I'm using Chessex dice.
Ill loudly announce what the miracle dice result is, for a single dice it's not that hard to read.

Generally I hate GWs faction dice as a gaming tool,but most of them look great and I usually just deal with it if someone wants to use them as their normal dice. i don't want to ruin their fun with the dice, it's not like it's the players fault.

 Elbows wrote:

5) Releasing stuff like the Eldar dice which featured Aspect Shrine logos instead of generic or Craftworld logos...which is dumb.

You're wrong about the Eldar dice, I love my Striking Scorpion dice, they look cool and are easy to read (which makes a nice change from most GW dice) as are the Fire Dragon dice a friend has. I rather liked the idea of them doing the Aspect Shrines instead of the Craftworlds as well.

I'm not wrong, you just disagree with my opinion. Watch the way you word things. It was a stupid decision. It's akin to having "Tactical Squad Dice", or "Devastator Squad Dice". There is far broader appeal if they had released simpler Craftworld dice.

The only special dices that I use are the Adeptus Custodes ones that are really tame by GW standards. A skull on the 1. The Adeptus logo on the 6. The rest are just normal dots.

The rest are normal dices.

Most gw dice are pretty illegible. The fw ones aren't bad though. Still wish I got some Night Lords dice before they went oop.

These dice look especially bad, and I wanted to like them. Oh well, the expensive prices also helps with that. Whoever gave the ok for the design is a really odd duck and I doubt plays the game.

The GW dice with symbols on all the numbers look terrible. Why for the love of god have they made all the weird aspect dice instead of having the aspect symbol on the 6.


I don't know why they cant just stick on their copyrtighted faction/lore symbols on the 6 and call it a day.. I might even buy some then..

pips only or if anything symbol on the 6

I like the custom Killteam faction dice. You get the annoying Killteam logo for ones, but your faction symbol for the 6.

I grabbed the Ork, Gellarpox, and Admech dice to use for my (orks), Death Guard, and Imperial Knights. I also use basic chessex if I need alot of dice rolled.

During my first GT this year, the swag bag had some of the Eldar Aspect Warrior dice, and I was lucky enough to get Fire Dragons Orange, which actually have decent sized and clear numerals, unlike the ridiculous Howling Banshee dice that have a giant rune take up the whole facing.

Those squig dice? The new Sisters dice? Holy ****.

I still use the dice from the old Games Workshop dice cube: the one that was actually a cube, contained 27 dice, and was itself a giant die. The day they replaced them with these monstrosities is the day they turned evil in my opinion.

I use these dice combined with my objective markers.

Depends on the unique faction dice.

I love unique faction dice, but only if they are readable. I use custom Ork dice, but the GW genestealer cult dice I bought I never use, because they are very hard to read.

Conceptually they're great. GW is just horrible at execution on dice.

I won 80 Deepkin dice in a Twitch channel raffle. I can't see myself ever using them, even if I had a Deepkin army, because they're so damn awful. But somehow Sylvaneth dice are even worse. The sisters dice are just plain bad.

It doesn't have to be this difficult. Clearly contrasting colors, clearly legible pips, faction symbol on the 6, done.

The GW ones are almost universally terrible. Some have been completely illegible, like the Tzeentch dice. I don't mind the Blood Angels ones as the blood drop symbols they use are close enough to the regular pip arrangement to still work. The only problem is the tiny number of dice they actually provide, which means they usually end up just being used to track wounds or CPs.

What I really don't get with GW, is they could make life easier for themselves and everyone else by having a standard dice and just replace the 6 with an appropriate faction symbol. Then maybe produce them in a unique colour for each army. Instead they seem to put loads of effort into designing dozens of different custom dice, all different from the rest and their success rate of useable dice is somewhere around 10%. The new Sisters dice look like another complete failure.

I like and universally use regular, standard plain d6. The normal type you get in a GW boxed game or the old 27 die dice cubes. I like my dice to be easily readable at a glance, symbols other than pips just make this harder for me.

The khorne dice posted above are the first custom dice that are close enough to usable for me, and the reason is the actual shape of the khorne symbol- it echoes the shape and size of a six on a pipped die. The end of each 'eyebrow 'cheekbone' and 'maxilla' horizontal are where the six pips would be. That makes it visually similar to the six, but also means it couldn't work for any other digit.

The eldar dice posted above to me are unreadable, because the rune looks visually similar to an arabic number 3 or maybe even a 5 yet represents a six. So at a quick glance my brain reads it as a three, even though the other 5 faces are in pipped form.

 Elbows wrote:


I just go to Chessex for my custom 40K dice, and find it 10x easier and exceptionally cheaper. I use them so often I tend to get friends dice as gifts for Christmas, etc. All of the dice are contrasted well, and with a simple army matching symbol on the six. No questions, no arguments, no bs.

I also always get 10 of one colour combination and 20 of another, so that you can mix in special weapons, or split between weapon types, etc.

Generic Necromunda/Adeptus Titanicus styled dice:


Nurgle Renegade CSM dice:


My custom Craftworld Eldar dice:


etc. I've done a half dozen other sets, but don't have pics uploaded here.

Oh these are very cool indeed.

Tbh, I agree the GW dice are often a bit daft, but I don't think they're really intended for serious/hardcore/competitive players – I think they're more just meant to be a fun little collectible thing.

Pity it's so hard to find custom 12mm dice.