TGN Review: Kraken Dice Iconic Blue Set

I don’t collect a lot of things. My board game collection is actually rather small. I only play 2 minis games, and the amount of each is relatively tiny. But when it comes to dice? … Well, I have a saying, “No such thing as too many dice.” I love these little jewels. I’ve got all types and am always looking out for new places to get them. In the past couple months, I’ve come across Kraken Dice. In that short time, they’ve quickly become my favorite dice company. My most recent purchase just showed up, and so I figured I’d tell you about them and about why I love this company so much.

So grab your Crown Royal bag, it’s time for another TGN Review. This time, it’s the Iconic Blue dice set from Kraken Dice.

I’ll get to the specifics of Kraken Dice as a company in a bit, but first, I want to just tell you about the dice. Here, you can see the whole set. In terms of size and durability and feel and such, they’re what you would expect from someone like Chessex. They have a good feel. They roll well. I love the swirled/smokey pattern inside the dice. And the teal/seafoam color is nice.

I have two criteria when it comes to me saying a die is good or not. The first is that it needs to be a decent random-number generator. I don’t need them to necessarily be super-machine-precision, Casino-quality. But as long as you don’t always tend to roll one or a small group of numbers, that’s good for me. A bunch of throws of these dice show that yes, they are decent random-number generators. So that quality is met.

The second is that the dice have to be readable. If you can’t see what you rolled, then it’s sort of pointless. In this view, I intentionally got a picture of what it’d look like if you tossed the dice out onto the table. The gold lettering on the teal shows up well. That far-off D10 is a bit tough to read, but it’s still legible with just a bit of a lean forward. So, again, these dice pass. I’ve seen so many dice that have bad coloring or overly-intricate patterns. Kraken Dice has decided to keep these very simple, and I think it works well.

So, that’s the dice, themselves. But many companies have similar dice. So why do I sing the praises of Kraken Dice so much? It’s the details.

First, their packaging. As you can see, they have a little wrap and sticker they put around the dice in the box. They also have crinkly paper that they use for fill. Instead of just some foam peanuts or something, they actually make the fill match the dice. It feels like you’re really opening a present, instead of just an order of dice.

Next, the dice bag. This set came with black die bag that has a laser-etched acrylic tag on it, showing the name of the set, and even the number from the set. This set was an LE set (more on that in a bit), so there were only 800 sets. I know that I have set 478 out of that 800. No, it doesn’t change the dice at all, but again, it’s the little touches.

Following that up with the little touches are the stickers. When you order from Kraken Dice, they throw in stickers. It’s a really little thing, and I don’t know of many other dice companies that do something like that. And yeah, the cynic would be all, “that’s just advertising for them.” Hey, I don’t mind tossing a cool sticker on my laptop or tacking one to my cubicle backboard as a way to show my love of the company. They deserve it.

After that, we have the set count. Most dice sets are 7 dice. This set has 11. Kraken Dice gives you 4d6 and 2d20. Apparently, the owner’s wife was playing D&D and was thinking about Advantage/Disadvantage, and asked, “So… why don’t you put 2d20 in each set?” And so, they did. And it’s awesome. Usually, you’d have to buy 2 sets to get the extra d20, or hope that the dice are sold individually. Here, you get your extra dice right in the set.

The d20s also have the Kraken symbol on the 20, instead of just the 20. This lets me know that these dice are actually unique to Kraken Dice. It’s a little thing, but I’ve seen so many dice sets that a company says are “just theirs” but then I see them on another site as well. I’m not going to find that Kraken on dice from another company.

Kraken Dice also really cares about quality control. These dice are looked over very carefully by the people there and any defect will invalidate the die from being sold. When this set was coming out, they said that they had some issues with various sets and had to set some aside as not being good enough. However, the customers wanted the dice, anyway, after pictures showing these defects were posted. Many people thought they were rather minor, and would still gladly take a set. Kraken put these up a “B-sets” and had a slightly reduced price on them.

Finally, I love the company because of their responsiveness to customers. They are very active on their Facebook page, answering questions and replying to customer comments. I mentioned that this dice set was limited-edition. Well, the set I got was from the 2nd wave of releases. The first sold out in 5min. This second set also sold out in about that time (despite having limits on how many you could order each time). In my furor to get my set ordered, I had a typo in my delivery address. But I sent in a customer service request and got a rather prompt reply that the issue would be fixed. Obviously, it was, since I now have my dice.

So, yeah, you can get dice from dozens, if not hundreds of companies out there. But I, for one, will be going back to Kraken Dice for my purchases. They obviously take the time and effort to make dice sets that people want, with their customer first in their mind, and add in cool extras to your purchases. You can check out their website here.