Review Summary: 'And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,

And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted—nevermore!'

Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven, 1845

Blurb from the publisher: 'The Crow Tree Dice Tower is the perfect decoration for your gaming night.'

What you get: Your EUR 35 or equivalent will buy you the e-Raptor Crow Tree Dice Tower, a dice tower for use with literally any game where a tree with crows perched on it makes sense. The tower is made up of six pieces of high quality plywood and when assembled (no tools or gluing needed) has dimensions of 24 cm (height), 7,70 cm (width) and 23 cm (length). From the moment one throws the dice to the moment they hit the ground and rest, the dice will have touched three different angled platforms.

The tower is a full print and has designs on every single surface of every single component. In case the name wasn't enough of a hint, its main corps is a gnarled, barren tree with branches. On it perch three crows per side, each of them in a different position. Two are resting thoughtfully, while the third appears to have either arrived or is ready to take off, its wings flapping wildly. The tower does not have a solid wooden base. Like most towers, it sits upon its frame.

The strong points: There is only one song that does justice to Poe's poem.

The Crow Dice Tower's theme looks niche until you realize that it fits almost every single boardgame and RPG out there. Think about it: is there a fantasy game without ravens? Aren't horror games synonymous to crows and barren trees in the middle of nowhere? From Call of Cthulhu to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and from Forbidden Lands to practically any miniatures wargame (Fallout: Wasteland Warfare and Freebooter's Fate included), this dice tower feels that it was custom-made for that particular game. It is gorgeous no matter where you look it from, and its full print guarantees that there is always a new detail to marvel over. The designs are expressive and serious. They retain a playfully mysterious style without becoming cartoonish. Every area is painted and the tower comes out as real. Seeing how it is composed of only six pieces, you need less than one minute to assemble it. The tower's mouth is adequately big to roll a medium-sized pool of dice without missing the mark.

When it comes to engineering, e-Raptor is ahead of the competition. Its interlocking pieces use the wooden locks that e-Raptor inserts in almost all its products. You don't need brute force to assemble the tower; you only need to cleverly insert and click the joints where needed. Disassembling the tower is an equally easy affair, even though I prefer having mine permanently assembled. Once built the tower is solid and can take quite some damage. No glue was needed; the thing feels as if it came together in one piece. I wouldn't recommend stomping on it, yet clumsily hitting it or even dropping it from the table didn't appear to cause damage.

E-Raptor has done a great job when it comes to packaging the tower. Recognizing that the coloured wooden panels could get stuck upon one another, a thin films separates one from another inside the box. That is something that the company does systematically in all its full print products. Bonus points for consistency.

The weak points: The Crow's Tree Dice Tower does not have a solid wooden base for the dice will ultimately rest. Its stability relies on its exterior frame. Thus, the quality of your rolls are directly linked to the flatness of the surface where you place the tower. This is not a biggie, seeing how most of the time towers are based on tables. Just make sure your tablecloth is not creased.

A better balance should have been struck between the length of the resting area and the orientation of the tree. The dice resting area is medium sized, thus by definition you cannot use enormous dice pools. The tree however extends frontwards, not backwards. The reason is obvious: the tower has to remain stable, and firmly anchors its center of gravity in its bowels. Yet, the frontward extending branches are lower than I would have wanted them to be. The end result is that, depending on the angle you are looking the tower from, the results are not that visible even if you are sitting right in front of it. If you are standing (e.g. you use this tower in a convention game or in a tournament), you will need to stoop in order to confirm the results. More thought should have been put into this.

Dice towers may distract from their game if their theme is not relevant. If you desperately need a dice tower any of them is good enough, on the other hand however I also understand that in a hard sci-fi game this tower would feel absolutely irrelevant.

All full print towers share the exact same problem. Every time you roll your dice you are effectively destroying its platforms. Roll after roll, the full print of the platforms is getting dozens of micro scratches, of bumps, of scrapes and minor injuries. The more time passes, the more the effect will be exacerbated, until it resembles a worn-out football field where nobody tends the grass. It's a very weird feeling, seeing a gaming accessory getting damaged so insidiously just because one is using it normally. If I were e-Raptor, I would have immediately started selling the platforms and the base as spare parts. I am sure that some of us would like to have their tower look always brand new.

Conclusion: The Crow Tree Dice Tower is one of the simplest, yet it is also one of the most impactful, the most thematic dice towers that the company has produced. It is not a perfect fit for enormous dice pools or for standing games, yet if atmosphere is what you are looking for you cannot go wrong with it.

To find out more about e-Raptor and its Crow Tree Dice Tower take a look at http://e-raptor.pl.

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