Sam Machkovech































On the occasion of Dungeons & Dragons' 45th anniversary this November, series handlers Wizards of the Coast celebrated by announcing a rarity from the company: official, limited, super-pricey dice. Are you as old as, or older than, D&D? Does that make you feel so allegiant to the game that you'd like to own a gem-infused 20-sided die with a set of aluminum dice to match?

If so, Wizards had you in its sights with its $300 Sapphire Anniversary Dice Set. Only 1,974 were made (get it?), and from the look of things, they haven't sold out as of press time. While we'd never recommend spending so much money on tabletop dice—we tend to lose our cheapos thanks to errant, booze-soaked tosses amongst friends—we figured we'd at least photograph and describe the set that surprise-arrived at the Ars Orbital HQ earlier today.

The above gallery tells most of the story, though it only goes so far to convey the glory of a shiny blue sapphire inside of a 20-sided die. We've yet to rig up our dice-rolling robots to test Wizards' claim that an in-laid gemstone doesn't negatively affect rolling weight for a D20. Instead, I rolled the thing 100 times while uploading this report's images, and my tally was... drumroll, please... two critical hits, and three critical misses. Hmm.

There's also a non-sapphire D20 in the set, should you wish to protect the set's most valuable die; either way, the set comes with a convenient felt-lined rolling tray, which you'll want for a full complement of aluminum dice by default.

That mix of an in-laid sapphire and the set's limited nature probably combine to inflate the price, but that's it in terms of complaints. The font, the blue-on-aluminum styling, and the carrying case's attachment to a rolling tray are all solid stuff. Should the dice's aluminum stylings intrigue you, you could head directly to their producers at Level Up Dice and get a similar set for $135 or less . (We'd never suggest spending that much on dice, either, but it's sure less than $300.)

Listing image by Sam Machkovech