Saving a few quid - make your own Bolt Action order dice

I spend the vast majority of my hobby time doing (prepping, painting, basing etc) rather than actually playing many wargames. But I have played a few games of Bolt Action over the last few years.

When I first got into this game I balked at buying the official order dice (around £15 RRP now) and made myself some counters. These worked but were a bit fiddly when playing. 

Making my on dice was on my list of things to do but there was always something else more appealing. But with the the increase in spare time over the last year, I have finally got to a point where I  decided to do something about it and make myself a few sets of order dice. 



I spent a bit of time searching the web and found some good posts where people had bought plastic dice and printed out labels. I looked into this but I still had to pay a bit for the dice and buy a pack of labels. I eventually bought a set of 120 Kurtzy Small Wooden Cubes sized 2x2x2cm from Amazon for £13.99. This works out to be about 11p a dice. I think the cheapest plastic ones are 20p each for a similar size. 
It was an easy job to create a table in MS Word with 2cm cells and create a simple design for each nation. I used standard printer paper, printed at best quality. As I kept the majority of the design white it wasn't too extravagant on the ink. 

It took a bit of time to cut them all out and stick them on with PVA but not too onerous when you get into the rhythm of it. I listened to a few "The Rest is History" and "We Have Ways of Making You Talk" podcasts while I was doing it.  I made a dozen for each of the first three nations - Brits, Germans and Japanese. 


All boxed up
I'm very pleased with how they worked out. I prefer them to the official ones which seem a bit bland to me. For the cost of one Warlord set I can make ten, all the other materials I already have. And mine can be recycled being made of natural materials - wood and non-glossy paper. I'll be making Red Army and USA sets next. 

If anyone is interested I'm happy to send the Word template on. Leave a comment below. 




Comments

  1. Chris7 April 2021 at 19:25

    love a little sweat to save some money!
    great work!
    wouldn't mine having the template if you are willing to share!

    thanks!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dr Beard7 April 2021 at 19:57

      Thanks Chris. I'm more than happy to share. Just need to know how you do that with Blogger. It's a quirky thing to use.

      Delete
  2. Truscott Trotter8 April 2021 at 10:57

    I like em and agree they look nicer than the 'official' dice 👍

    ReplyDelete

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