Rolling Dice (keeping them separate) in ISS Vanguard

Why have an article (and video) talking about ROLLING your dice. You likely already KNOW HOW to roll your dice!

However … with ISS Vanguard, one, two or even three other players can ASSIST the current player with their dice roll. Any crewmember in the same Sector as the current player is able to assist by rolling 1 of their dice (some crew have skills that let them roll more than 1 or to assist from other Sectors). All the dice rolled by all players are considered ONE ROLL POOL. In some reviews and playthrough videos, the dice are combined to show you (the viewer) how they all are one big roll pool. The problem with this is that each Section must get their SAME die back. One reviewer actually admitted that they messed up and the assisting Section got a WRONG die back after the roll was over (and they didn’t notice it until several rounds later). See that review here (see timestamp 4:28):

=> Five Minute Review

With that in mind, here is my short 7 minute video showing three different dice towers / dice trays and how they work with ISS Vanguard (one is definitely excellent for ISS Vanguard):

The first dice tower I show as an example is a VERY nice looking tower! It is available on Etsy:

=> Spiral Staircase Dice Tower

This dice tower has a tray large enough to hold the MANY dice that can be rolled later in the campaign, but it does not have a way to help see the full Roll Pool with two assisting players. In the video, I actually DID get the dice mixed up when returning dice to the assisting players.

The next Dice Tower in the video is one designed as a TWO PLAYER Dice Tower where dice are kept separate for two sets of dice. This helped, but had it’s issue as well because the tray is too small and after a while the tray won’t be big enough for the amount of dice that can be rolled.

=> Two Player Dice Tower

Finally … here is the Dice System (yes it actually is a SYSTEM) that works perfectly with ISS Vanguard:

=> Excellent Dice Tray System

What is nice (almost essential for ISS Vanguard) is the small side trays. Each of the four Sections get their own correctly color matched side tray. Anytime a player assists with a die roll, they roll their die into their own side tray and then can pass the tray over to the current player who snaps it into place on the side of the main triangle tray (due to the magic of magnets).

Note: I had some back and forth correspondence with Andy at Newhamr as he was preparing a dice tray system for ISS Vanguard and he sent me a copy to test. On the other hand, I did not receive any product or payment from Awaken Realms – I paid $514 for my game via Gamefound just like the rest of you did!