Friday, August 17, 2018

"Homemade" Saga Dice

This is a set of "homemade" Saga Ordenstadt dice that I've recently made for myself. I put homemade in quotes, because it's not really fair to say as most people don't have a laser engraver in their home. With maker spaces becoming more common these days, more people do have access to them now. Projects on the laser aren't any harder than painting a figure once you get access to the equipment. Studio Tomahawk, the publisher of Saga, provides the dice graphics for people to make their own dice. As long as they're for your personal use, I believe this is an activity permitted (encouraged?) by the rules publisher.

Earlier I posted a photo sample die that I made. After some corrections to the settings of my laser I believe I have things dialed in nicely. This is a fairly laborious job involving a lot of masking of the dice with painter's tape, laser engraving the pattern onto each face, then removing the masking tape. The latter is particularly labor intensive due to the very tiny bits of tape left in some portions of the pattern. These need to be 'weeded' off each face with a hobby knife, tape, etc. Each die is then washed with water and a soft cloth.

They're not perfect, but they'll roll fair and are serviceable. For armies I just want to try out I make more sets. I did purchase two official dice sets for the armies I intend to play the most. For comparison, the Studio Tomahawk Ordenstadt dice are shown below: