So 99% of the time, the online ads shown to me are worthless. I’ve grown accustom to placing them on a mental auto-ignore. But every once in a blue moon, an advertisement actually shows something that might interest me. One advertisement popped up for North to South Gaming, a family run business out of Texas, that was advertising free dice. Well, free for the product. They asked for help covering the cost of shipping which was reasonable. In return, they would be sending a random sample of two dice sets. A regular size and a mini-sized set both made with acrylic. They arrived in a package that looked like this.
This is the logo of North to South Gaming. The box itself was very well packed. The interior contents were protected and did not arrive with any damage. The glass tube the that the mini-dice came in had some bubble wrap around it as well. It also didn’t take very long to arrive. However with the holiday season quickly approaching, If you are thinking of ordering any, I’d recommend doing it sooner rather than later to avoid any delays.
This is a close up of the very nice glass tube with the North to South Designs logo. There is a cork that is used to keep the dice inside. The photo may not due the color justice to how the mini-dice look. The color of this set was an off-pink. Some of the numbers didn’t really stand out very well against the dull background. It may have been the light in my office, causing the numbers to blend in with the die. I don’t see myself using this set very often. However, in all fairness, I’m not a big fan of mini-dice. The last set of mini-dice that I picked up, I ended up losing a die or two fairly quickly. As I was handling this set, I was worried that I’d accidentally drop one and never find it again. Especially since I have two cats that like to knock the shinny clicky-clack sounding things around to the dark corners where they hide all of their “toys”.
The mystery dice arrived in a wrapped package covered with gaming sayings. My daughter liked reading the different phrases. She believes that they may have come from one of the online RPG group videos.
Inside was a plastic box (again with the logo) with a very nice set of blue-green sparkly gaming dice. I did not see any defects on this set. On the photo above, it looks like there is something just below the “18”, however that may have been from the plastic box. On the D20 itself, there is no mark. I was really impressed with this mystery set. I could see myself using this at an upcoming gaming convention that I plan to attend in early 2023. I am a little worried that the box itself may get crushed in my massive dice bag, so I may keep this set separate until the con.
Here are the two sets in a side-by-side comparison. This photo was taken in a different room than my office and without a flash. The photos that I had taken with the flash seemed to blur out the numbers on the smaller set. So again it might be a lighting issue there. When I compared the mini-dice with my surviving members of the last set, the older set had no problems with the numbers being read. I also compared the larger set with my Chessex set and my Dollar Tree set. The NTSD set was the same size and weight as my previously purchased sets. When I did my few test rolls, the randomness was present.
If you are looking to support a small business, I could highly recommend the mystery set. If you are good with mini-dice, you probably won’t go wrong with this company as well. There are several other sets of dice available from different materials and colors that looked interesting as well. Let me know if you picked up a set and what you thought.