Ah, yes, the shiny click-clack math rocks. While many games now do great things using playing cards, tarot, tokens, or sheer narrative oomph, there’s still something to be said about rolling the bones. Digital dice rollers may make forgetting your bag at home survivable, and enable playing above board across vast distances, and may even make resolving a roll much easier.  The die-loving audience doesn’t take pride and joy in the different apps, discord bots, and VTTs, however. No, they enjoy the physical product, and often claim the moniker of dice goblins gladly. Here’s something a little different for us: a vendor that’s honest about what their clientele want, and who introduces a little mystery to it.

Mystery Dice Goblins don’t actually sell only mysteries. The Horsham, West Sussex-based math rock seller will gladly exchange dice for funds in the standard you-get-what-you-see fashion, but when MDG’s Lee and Lucy reached out to us it was the Mystery Dice sold in opaque packets that were offered up for us to take a look at. Not surprising, considering the name.

There are a few different options when it comes to getting your Mystery Dice, but the apparent standard that we were sent three of is a pack with a seven-die set sold for $9.00 each, which is a few dollars cheaper than most of the involved sets if you bought them specifically. The site boasts that there are 100+ different options that you could find within your pack, and looking around the site that seems to be true. There are some sets featured in Mystery Dice pictures that seem to be sold out on their own, though, so that number might dip up and down from time to time.

Aside from being generally pretty, like what I’m pretty sure is the Dark Red glitter set, all of the dice I received were quite legible. I find this to be, frankly the most important aspect of a die – if I have to lean over the table, squinting, shining a phone’s light at the die to figure out what my result was, it’s a bad die.

Alright, a completely different style and color! While for a fair bit more lucre you can get metallic Mystery Dice, acrylic/resin is the standard. Still, sets like the Archaic Green and White have a respectable heft to them. They don’t feel cheap, they have a good… I suppose you’d call it feel, and they make the appropriate click-clack sounds on your surface of choice. Also, tearing open the packs and finding out what I’ve got is a fun (heh) roll of the dice, so that’s pretty on theme with being a dice goblin in the first place. Now, for pack number three…

Ah, a different color with the Archaic Blue and White. A healthy reminder that, while not Buyer Beware, Buyer Be Aware is in full effect: just like tearing open booster packs for your favorite card game of choice, so too are the Mystery Dice a gamble. You get a break on the price and the thrill of surprise in exchange for the risk that you won’t be 100% thrilled with the result. I still very much like this third set, but I had been hoping for a third style. Alas that Polyhedros, Lord of Dice, was not with me. A pretty useful demonstration, though, which I’m grateful for.

Offering free first class shipping within the UK and standard international shipping to the USA, Canada, and Europe, Mystery Dice Goblins certainly seem to offer a quality product across the board at reasonable prices. With the holiday season bearing down on us with reckless speed, I’d particularly recommend a Mystery Dice pack stocking stuffer – or three – for the dice goblin in your own life.

Or, you know, just give in to your own dice goblin nature and see what you get for yourself!

Thanks to Mystery Dice Goblins for sending us some dice to review and roll! I’ll be bringing them to Games on Demand on PAX Unplugged very soon…