The BattleLore Dice

Even before I'd even received my copy of BattleLore I knew there were reported problems with the dice. Some people had found that after using them for a period of time the coloured symbols on the dice began to 'bleed' or rub off on their hands. Days of Wonder, to their credit, acknowledged the problem and issued the following statement:

"The production dice are wearing out faster than acceptable. While we discovered this issue too late to fix it in the current batch of games, we will be offering anyone with a defective set a free replacement. New, more durable, screen-printed dice are being manufactured as of this writing. As soon as they are ready, we will be airshipping them to our warehouses for delivery to you, at our cost. All that will be required of you will be registering on our web site, using the web card number that comes on the back of every game’s Adventures Booklet. We will be setting up a special page, dedicated to this issue, as soon as these replacement dice become available."

I had a really close look at the dice the other day. I was a little disappointed. Although they were bright and colourful they didn't appear to have the same quality as the Memoir '44 dice (Days of Wonder's previous Commands & Colors game). The BattleLore dice were marked in places and the paint looked like it could easily chip off. You can see tiny spots of colour on the white areas of the dice which appear to have come from being rubbed and knocked together in transit. One of my dice even had a bit of a dint in it that can only have happened in the production phase prior to putting them in the game box (click on the photo for a close up picture and look at the die in the far left of the middle row).

To prevent the 'bleeding dice' problem I first washed them in warm, soapy water to try and get off any marks. This wasn't that successful as the majority of the marks remained. After letting them fully dry I then sprayed them several times (allowing sufficient drying time between coats) with a varnish I use for protecting painted miniatures. Time will tell how successful this will be but I plan on taking Days of Wonder up on their offer for replacement dice.