Freelance Traveller

Ako Dice and Clones

reviewed by Jeff Zeitlin

Ako Dice. https://www.ako-dice.com
US$20 per pair
Clone Dice. Several “brands” via Amazon.com.
US$25 (approximately) for six dice.

Genuine Ako Dice, in the box (above) and loose (below)

Ako Dice

A few years ago, there was a Kickstarter for some cool-looking dice. Those dice were eventually released as Ako Dice, and proved reasonably popular, though expensive. They’re still available, and the manufacturer has expanded into other styles of dice, but these are the original Ako Dice.

Because red and black are the colors of Traveller, I purchased two sets, one in each of the two colors. Additional colors available are purple, gunmetal, rose-gold, silver, gold, and blue.

They ship in a slide box containing the pair nestled in dense foam rubber, which does not fill the box, allowing you to easily remove them from the box.

The main reason for the expense of genuine Ako Dice is that they are aluminum, anodized to give them their color, with the ‘pips’ CNC-engraved in the form of lines that wrap around the edges. The inner surfaces of the ‘pips’ are textured, and tend to reflect light in a way that seemingly increases the visibility of the ‘pips’. The dice are 16mm across, and don’t actually seem any heavier than most plastic/resin dice of the same size. In some admittedly non-rigorous testing, they don’t seem to have any bias, even though you might think they do because of more metal being taken off on the ‘six’ side than the ‘one’ side. They have a nice feel when rolling, and because of their weight—or lack thereof—they’re unlikely to mark or damage a wood or cork surface.

The price can definitely be off-putting; one can find piles and piles of dice for much less – but these just plain look nifty.

Ako clones, in the box (left) and loose (right)

Clones

The market for Ako Dice is primarily based on the ‘rule of cool’; as I said above, they just plain look nifty. It was inevitable that someone in a part of the world with lower production costs and perhaps a bit of disdain for intellectual property rights would start producing a product similar in appearance. These visual clones of Ako Dice are sold on Amazon—and probably other shopping sites like Temu—under several ‘brand’ names, mostly resembling not-quite-entirely-random sequences of letters, like ZHOORQI, HNCCESG (the ‘brand’ of the ones I purchased), FONVGOGO, and others. These dice look like Ako Dice, but differ from them in some important ways: they’re distinctly heavier than the genuine article (I suspect that they’re steel or stainless-steel rather than a lighter metal), the base color of the metal doesn’t appear to be anodization as with the genuine article, but another process that hides more of the natural texture of the metal, and the ‘pips’ are filled with colored enamel. However, possibly because of the color issues, they still lack a certain something relative to the genuine article. Within my ability to measure, they’re the same 16mm as the genuine Ako Dice.

I wouldn’t use these on a cork or wood surface; they’re heavy enough that an emphatic-enough (or excited-enough) cast could nick the surface. They’d be fine on the typical cafeteria-style table, though, and would perhaps on such a surface give a louder (and perhaps more satisfying) clatter than genuine Ako Dice.

I purchased the Assorted Color pack; this comes with one die ‘pipped’ in each of red, orange, green, blue, purple, and glitter-blue. They also appear to be available in reflective-finish rose-gold with white ‘pips’ and in matte-uncolored finish with either purple or pine-green (darker than the green of this set)  ‘pips’.

I received these in a lidded sturdy cardboard box with sponge-foam inserts. In the same sort of non-rigorous testing that I submitted the genuine Ako Dice to, these didn’t appear to be biased, either.

Conclusion

Given the general cost of plastic or resin dice, and their widespread availability in off-the-shelf games like Monopoly or Yahtzee, or in bags or tubes or loose-by-the-pound in gaming stores, I can’t say that either of these are necessarily worth the money that you pay for them, as dice. However, there’s something about the feel of metal dice, whether light as the genuine Ako Dice or heavy like the clones, that you just don’t get from plastic or resin, and if you’ve handled someone else’s Ako or clone dice, you might decide to get a set or three of your own.