# of HQ dice

[whitebeard]

Believe it or not, they are actually harder to find than combat dice!

Yeah, I don't believe it. That would be like saying the WHQ barbarian is easier to find than a WHQ green marker die... those dice will be in a cheap incomplete set on eBay much more often than the barbarian.

In both cases the dice are easily replaced as a set. I would just use similar sized red Cheesex dice. I do understand the desire for a uniform feel of wood from combat to movement dice though.

I ended up with 6 red wooden dice and 18 combat dice. I bought dice and spell cards separately, then I wanted more minis, so I bought an incomplete set which had all the dice and models.

6 combat dice was always fine as we do not play with weapon/combat artifacts outside of the power of the base system. But having one set on either side of the table is nice. I'm repairing a set now and with 18 in play you need to pick them up because rolling sometimes gets confused with dice that are already on the table... The little guys have trouble just dropping the dice in front of them.

[Goblin-King]

It's not like they are *impossible* to find.
But think about it... For starters there's more combat dice in circulation.
People may also randomly have used their movement dice if they needed regular D6s in another context and forgot to put them back.

I rarely see a complete set of combat+movement dice.
I almost never see just the movement dice.

The problem with "cheap" incomplete lots is that much of it is often doors and furniture, with little of actual value.
It's not £20 for ALL THIS. It's £20 for JUST this?!

But of course I could get them today if I wanted

[knightkrawler]

It's not like they are *impossible* to find.
But think about it... For starters there's more combat dice in circulation.
People may also randomly have used their movement dice if they needed regular D6s in another context and forgot to put them back.

I rarely see a complete set of combat+movement dice.
I almost never see just the movement dice.

The problem with "cheap" incomplete lots is that much of it is often doors and furniture, with little of actual value.
It's not £20 for ALL THIS. It's £20 for JUST this?!

But of course I could get them today if I wanted

G-K is right about this.
I've bought and sold many HQ lots and game systems over the years.
Right now I have probably three full games left to sell, with some things missing, a card here, a figure there...
Guess what's missing most?
I have left 15 combat dice and 1 original red die for those three game systems...

[Goblin-King]

YES! I knew I wasn't insane!

[knightkrawler]

YES! I knew I wasn't insane!

Oh, but you are, dude, you are.
But it doesn't matter. The truth is in you...

[Goblin-King]

Even a broken clock is right twice a day

[torilen]

Those colored dice floating around from...Germany?
They have different colors to represent different faces on the dice.
Some colors might have a different ratio of shields or skulls or something.

I have my own ratios that I would like to set up, hence I've thought about making
my own.

Example - black dice would have 4 skulls, and one white and one black shield.
Yellow dice would have the normal ratio, but one skull would offer TWO skulls
Orange dice would be like yellow, except two skull faces would offer TWO skulls
Red...all three skull faces would offer TWO skulls each.

[whitebeard]

It's not like they are *impossible* to find.
But think about it... For starters there's more combat dice in circulation.
People may also randomly have used their movement dice if they needed regular D6s in another context and forgot to put them back.

I rarely see a complete set of combat+movement dice.
I almost never see just the movement dice.

The problem with "cheap" incomplete lots is that much of it is often doors and furniture, with little of actual value.
It's not £20 for ALL THIS. It's £20 for JUST this?!

But of course I could get them today if I wanted

I just looked up RotWL on eBay and I could not find a pre-owned unpunched set. And the prices were stupid. I picked-up KK not so long ago (minus the box) for cheap, but no such luck here. Considering I already have surrogate skeletons, zombies, and mummies, I will simply print the quest book and the two room tiles. I play on a different scale board anyway, so reprint is best.

While I was on eBay I looked up the Base System partial sets and you are correct about the movement dice. I never really cared about getting those and I ended up with fullsets anyways. My experience was apparently not the norm. The missing barbarian in my WHQ and the barbarian in my second HQ points to kids separating these from the set, then losing interest and never putting them back, or collectors piecing them out. And the same may hold for the combat dice. But borrowing the d6, perhaps when "graduating" to D&D?, appears to be much more common as you suggest.

[Daedalus]

Let me ask everyone here, why would they include only 6 (USA) or 4 (Europe) combat dice in the HQ starter box? I mean heck, I thought 6 was bad, I didn't know our brothers across the pond only got 4! . . .

Why didn't they include more dice?
Did they ever sell dice separately in packs commercially officially?
How many dice would you have wanted to be included in the starter box?
When you played HQ back in the day with only 6 or 4 dice, did it the lack of dice hamper your game? (Drove me nuts personally)

1) The EU number underscores the reason, in my opinion. Hasbro-MB worked on an economy of scale, sending their product to as many shelves as they could force on their anchor-store distributors. A low buy-in cost of $20 figured prominently in their marketing plan, as they needed the parents to justify buying their game over another child's gift. Those two reasons couple to make the cheapest production cost for the most appealing product the only choice for a toy exec (as I see it.)

I don't know the cost of several more wooden dice, but even a small number multiplied by ten's of thousands of sales can't be passed up by a businessman. They delivered on their promise of a (fantastic) working game, and the minor complaints of kids hardly factor in when job one is achieved. Well, at least a 50% increase in the number of combat dice came about, so some sort of feedback was in place.

2) Hasbro is not in the specialty game market as with a company like Fantasy Flight. They have never sold individual components, as far as I know. Hasbro only offers expansions, ready to be played by kids.

3) We're I an adult in the testing groups (only children were mentioned in the only interview regarding the subject), I would have wanted 12 combat dice. That comes from playing experience bred from D&D, where saving the time and trouble of reaching for dice far outweighs the cost of buying readily available, supplemental dice. As it is, I'm already often reaching for fantasy-enhancing substances such as alcohol.

4) We had the box insert, but we only used it for figure and furniture storage.

Also I find it impossible to find ordinary red wooden dice in the right size.
Believe it or not, they are actually harder to find than combat dice!

That's surprising. I had read once on BGG that the red dice were already in production for many Milton Bradley games. Perhaps they used different sizes for different games?

I have 22 original combat dice and 16 acrylic that are 16mm from Germany. I believe I made a seperate post a while back about the German dice. The dice themselves are very high quality but they do not roll as well as the original HQ dice for some reason. I get more shields than anything else. We have been trying out both dice during our games and keeping track what results are rolled. The old wooden dice roll pretty well for skulls, shields then black shields. But the German dice are opposite.

Has anyone else noticed this? Perhaps there's a manufacturing defect.

Believe it or not, they are actually harder to find than combat dice!

Yeah, I don't believe it. That would be like saying the WHQ barbarian is easier to find than a WHQ green marker die... those dice will be in a cheap incomplete set on eBay much more often than the barbarian.

This is the first I've heard of green marker dice--mine are red. How rare are they?

Even a broken clock is right twice a day

If it's very fast it can be right even more often.

[Decipher]

Those colored dice floating around from...Germany?
They have different colors to represent different faces on the dice.
Some colors might have a different ratio of shields or skulls or something.

I have my own ratios that I would like to set up, hence I've thought about making
my own.

Example - black dice would have 4 skulls, and one white and one black shield.
Yellow dice would have the normal ratio, but one skull would offer TWO skulls
Orange dice would be like yellow, except two skull faces would offer TWO skulls
Red...all three skull faces would offer TWO skulls each.

Those German dice are the same ones I have. Like I said, they roll terrible for some reason. I honestly believe if those dice had 5 skulls and 1 shield, it would roll a shield more than skulls. I've been wanting to eBay mine for a long time now, but never got around to it.