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Comped Capsule Review Wes Johnson December 10, 2003 (Excellent!) The Bag of Dice Holding combines an innovative and impressive design, customization and functionality that makes it the end-all-be-all of dice bags. Wes Johnson has written 45 reviews (including 5 dice bag reviews), with average style of 3.93 and average substance of 3.76. The reviewer's previous review was of Shades of Fantasy. This review has been read 5115 times. |
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Introduction
There are dice bags and there are dice bags. The Bag of Dice Holding (BoDF) from the gamers is an impressive combination of function and design that blows away any other dice bag on the market today.
Miscellanea
This was a review item provided by The Gamer’s Bag. As always, my review is wholly impartial and testing is done in an empirical manner to determine the overall performance of the reviewed item.
The Process
I approached The Gamer’s Bag a while back to finish off reviewing their line of dice bags, as I had been provided with examples of their other well performing dice bags: tiny, small, medium and royal lines. The folks at the Gamer’s Bag asked me to go through their website and go through the ordering process as a customer would. I am glad I did, it really reinforced my statements in earlier reviews that The Gamer’s Bag provides a level of customization for quality dice bags that nobody else offers.
One of the real world hats I wear is labeled software quality assurance, so this was right in my bailiwick to look at. I went through their website wearing the customer hat. The options and extras for the bag are straightforward. The only thing that is a special exception for the Bag of Dice Holding is the materials for the bag need to be typed into the additional comments section as its design is such that you get two materials and their website design does not accommodate that at the moment. The BoDH product page states this clearly so the client is aware. The hundred plus patterns and material options are neatly presented with names and corresponding pictures so you know exactly what your dice bag will look like.
There are also a bunch of sundry options that a gamer can tack
onto their dice bag for some further customization at a slightly increased cost.
Some of these options include monograms
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Now that you know a little about the company and the process lets get to the review!
The Bag
The Bag of Dice Holding is a easily the most clever dice bag design I have ever seen. The outer shell of the bag is two layers (the outer and inner patterns selected when ordering). The sewn onto this inner side of this approximately 14” diameter circle is a 10”diameter circle with the inner pattern face up and the outer pattern pace down. This pocket layer is sewn in a manner that looks like a sliced pizza, save there are 8 triangular openings where the crust would be on the pizza. So integral to the inside of the dice bag is a center area that holds a ton of dice and 8 smaller pockets that can hold a select number of dice.
About an inch and a half down the side of the outer layer of the BoDH is the drawstring, which goes through a pair of grommets (eyelets) 180 degrees apart from each other. The ends of the string are capped with nice decorative pieces to keep the string from getting inside the bag.
For a more visual example of the BoDH in action, click here
The BoDH I received to review was the following:
Outside fabric: black (smoke 1)
Inside color: red and gold (polished gem 2)
Grommet color: gold
Drawstring color: gold
The Testing
As with my previous dice bag reviews; I used five testing measurements with the bags filled to capacity. In this series of reviews I was provided with an estimate for how many dice each bag can hold and went with that recommendation.
Capacity: I fit 275 randomly selected dice
into the BoDH
Test 1, The
Five Foot Drop: Passed
Test 2, The
Fifteen Foot Drop: Passed
Test 3, Lateral Pressure: Passed
Test 4, Squeezing Around the Center of
the Bag: Passed
Test 5, Squishing Against The Floor: Passed
Additionally I did a test to see how well the interior pockets held their contents. This was done by loading a moderate amount of dice in each of the eight side pockets, leaving the center section empty and closing the bag. I shook the bag around for ten seconds The side pockets held their dice.
The Analysis
The Bag of Dice Holding performed very well in all of the testing phases. Be assured, it will hold your dice without worrying about them going on walkabout. The only thing to note is to make sure that the satiny drawstring is tied in a double or butterfly knot.
The storage in the BoDH is impressive. It held slightly less in my testing than the Royal Bag, but it was fairly close. I used a wide array of dice and possibly they could have been arranged/compacted better to get to the manufacture’s 300 dice threshold. With the side pockets and center storage areas this bag is not limited to dice! I could envision a 1-2 miniature container fabricated to fit snuggly in the interior.
The
Final Word
Given this review is being done in the holiday season the Bag of Dice Holding is a really spectacular gift for any gamer….even if it is for yourself! The quality of construction, customization and design make the BoDH the most impressive dice bag I have had the pleasure to review in this series of reviews in gaming accessories.
A fun plus side to the BoDH is that it is a reversible renaissance festival styled floppy hat! I strongly suggest emptying the dice bag before attempting this...
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