Review: Easy Roller Copper Metal Dice Set, Large Dice Bag, & Leather Dice Cup
When Shane told me Easy Roller Dice was sending out a few items for us to take a look at, I drove all the way out to Tampa from Orlando to help him out with the review. We’ve got a Polyurethane Leather Dice Cup, a Wyvern Reversible Microfiber Self-Standing Large Dice Bag, and a set of metal dice — the “Legendary Copper Metal Dice Set”.
Product Links: Legendary Copper Metal Dice Set (Amazon) | Wyvern Large Dice Bag (Amazon) | P/U Leather Dice Cup (Amazon)
Easy Roller Dice Website | Easy Roller Dice Amazon Page
Polyurethane Leather Dice Cup
Dimensions: 3 x 3 x 3.5 inches (7.62 x 7.62 x 8.89 cm)
This cup retails for around $17 and includes five standard 6-sided white dice. The cup serves as both a storage for the dice and a dice roller. The dice cup has a padded interior to prevent noise when shaking the dice. The set of five dice with a cup is typical of a Yahtzee or gambling set, but I’m approaching this review from a tabletop gaming perspective. This cup is pretty handy for rolling large amounts of dice for a single attack, like five d4 for a magic missile or a large handful of multicolored d6’s for an enchanted weapon.
The interior texture is a royal blue velveteen reminiscent of a card table; soft but with some grip. It’s a tasteful and more tactile alternative to an entropy tower. You still get to roll your dice while ensuring a random result.
One caveat is that I would not feel comfortable using this cup to roll metal dice with sharp metal corners. I was afraid to actually try, but it seems like a sharp set of d4’s would easily poke holes and dents into the walls with some vigorous rolling during a heated moment of a campaign.
This item is a bit superfluous for the average role player, but if you really want to roll in style, this dice cup should be on the list of rolling apparati to consider.
Wyvern Reversible Microfiber Self-Standing Large Dice Bag
Dimensions: 7 x 5 x 5 inches (17.78 x 12.7 x 12.7 cm)
If you are into RPGs, you’ll probably have several sets of dice. Having a bag to hold all of them is convenient for taking your set with you. The bag is emblazoned with a dragon, is reversible for red on black or black on red colors, and is pretty large and hefty.
The material is red and black velveteen with tassels to tighten and carry the bag with, and will be very kind to your plastic dice. Just be sure to keep only plastic or only metal dice in the bag, as harder materials tend to polish off edges and corners of softer ones. We don’t have anywhere near enough dice on hand to test the claim of 200 dice capacity, but after putting about 20 dice in, 200 might be a low estimate of how much it could hold.
At $12 dollars retail, this bag is an excellent value for the serious role player.
Legendary Copper Metal Dice Set
Finally, we have the “Legendary Copper Metal Dice Set” retailing at $40. Included in this set is the standard assortment of dice — a D-20, a D12, two D-10’s for percentiles, a D-8, a D-6, and a d4.
With ordinary plastic dice, you can get a reasonably accurate measurement of its balance by placing it in salt water, letting it settle, and trying to disturb it to see if it prefers one side over another while it’s floating. This will tell you if the die is unbalanced or not. However, with metal dice unless you have access to mercury or another liquid that is more dense than the metal, this method is not freely available. We picked up vernier calipers to measure the sides of the dice to make sure the dice’s dimensions are evenly balanced so they don’t favor one side. The scale I am using is accurate to within 100 microns.
Like most metal dice, they are fun to roll, cool to the touch, and make a serious impression at the gaming table. The color of copper lends itself well to both fantasy and steampunk settings. These dice have sharp metal edges, and should you ever drop a d4 on the ground, it WILL live up to its reputation as a caltrop. Be sure to roll on a mat. Metal can and will scratch surfaces and glass if you aren’t careful.
I took several measurements of both the Easy Roller Legendary Copper Metal Dice and the Chessex set to be as accurate as possible. Measuring the lopsided dice – the D-4 and the D8 – are more difficult to obtain with this tool, so the measurements may be off.
I took the liberty of using my calipers to take width measurements of each of the Easy Roller and Chessex dice. I compiled the results into a spreadsheet to find the standard deviation for each dice individually.
Measurements Spreadsheet
As you can see, the Easy Roller Dice have a little more variance than Chessex dice on average. I find this strange, as metal dice should not be going through the same polishing process that makes standard plastic dice so lopsided. The notable exception is the d20, which is possibly the most important and most used dice in any role players arsenal. The Easy Roller d20 has about half as much variance as the Chessex, an encouraging figure, but still only consistent to about a quarter of a millimeter.
While there are more accurately manufactured dice out there, in both plastic and metal varieties, you probably aren’t looking for casino levels of precision on your dice rolls at this price point. If so, you’ll probably want a set from GameScience or Tracer Metalworks. $40 is actually a very good value on metal dice, which typically retail between 7-14 dollars per dice depending on quality.
I wouldn’t hesitate suggesting products from these guys. They have a solid selection of tabletop accessories available on their website, as well as on Amazon if you prefer that route.
