The Craftiest Workshop

Remember how I said that lining up my jars of game pieces would lead to other creative gaming inspiration?

We play a lot of board games. Some of those games have dice as part of the game and others have dice that is used for every turn. I have been finding that as games get more pieces or take up more table space, it becomes more difficult to roll the dice without knocking things over or dice ending up on the floor.

Another issue sometimes comes from people not really rolling their dice but dropping it in such a way to get the number they are looking for. A dice tower eliminates the desire to cheat.

We have one game that has its own dice tower. Wingspan comes with a cardboard birdhouse that you toss the dice in a hole in the back and the dice roll out the front.

I decided that I wanted to try to build one using the foam board that I got to make board game inserts. It was a bit of guessing game to figure out how tall to make it, how and where to put the ramps and how to decorate it. I managed to turn this into this.

Materials

sheet of foam board (Dollarama)

Smoke acrylic paint

4-5 egg cartons

sharp utility knife

metal ruler

pencil

cutting mat or board

hot glue gun and 5-10 extra glue sticks

I knew that I wanted it to be tall enough to get three ramps in so I made it a height easily divisible by 3. The three platform rests for the ramps would sit at the base, 3” and 6” marks with the 3” rest on the opposite wall. The ramps would start 1 1/2” higher to form the correct angle.

The longer walls were 4” wide X 9” tall.
The shorter walls that have the ramps glued to them were 3 1/2”wide and 9” tall.
Measure and cut the foam board so you have two walls at 4”X9” and two walls 3 1/2”X9”.

Start with the ramp on one of the 3 1/2”walls.
Cut a piece of foam 3 1/2”X 1 1/2”.
Glue the longer edge onto the wall at the 3” mark.

Cut another piece of foam board 3 1/2”x 2”. Mark the 1 1/2”mark on the wall. Angle the piece so it rests on the 1 1/2”mark of the wall and the edge of the previously glued piece. Add more glue along all the seams. Once the tower is put together, there will be no way to go in and fix these ramps if they come loose. It doesn’t need to look pretty as it will all be hidden inside.

Now take the other 3 1/2”wall. Cut another piece of foam 3 1/2×1 1/2”. Glue it at the 6” mark of that wall. Cut the 3 1/2”x 2” piece to make the ramp and glue it at the 4 1/2”mark angling down onto the straight piece you just glued. Reinforce with lots of glue.

The bottom ramp is a bit different as you need it to be long enough so the dice will roll out.

Cut a piece of foam 3 1/4” long. The width doesn’t have to be 3 1/2”. I used a narrower piece as it is just for the bottom ramp to rest on. The ramp should be cut 3 1/2”x 3 1/4”.

On the wall with the single ramp mark at 7 1/2” or 1 1/2” below the ramp. Cut that piece of foam off for the opening that the dice will roll out of. You can cut the top part so the opening is more rounded but leave the bottom 3/4” fully open left to right or dice might get caught.

Glue the two walls with ramps onto one of the 4” wide walls.

Glue the other 4” wall on to close the tower.
Start at one end or the other and add glue as fast as you can.

Here is a view from the top.

To create the tray for the dice to roll into, cut a piece of foam 3 1/2” wide by 8” long for the base. Glue the tower to it at one end. Cut two side walls and a front wall for the tray. The sides were 8” long by 1” tall and the end piece 3 7/8” wide by 1” tall. The foam adds 3/16 on each side.

NOTE: the sides of the tray might work better being 1/4” taller. In our first game, after rolling 36 dice, 3 had jumped the wall.

Before starting to decorate my tower, I painted everything except the bottom with Smoke DecoArt acrylic paint.

Now for the egg carton. You will need 4-5 egg carton tops. The only part you can really use is the lid so cut off the bottom and recycle it. Figure out what size of brick you want to make for your castle and start cutting. Just eyeball the bricks and start gluing them at the top alternating placement each row. If you get to the bottom of a wall and there is less space, cut half bricks and glue them on. The texture of the cardboard egg carton and the colour really makes it look like stone brick. I glued pieces on the top of the wall edges as well.

This process takes forever. I did the tower and tray in one day then worked on making the turret a second day.

Measurements for the turret was basically adding 1/2” all the way around to make the base of the turret 5” x 4 1/2”.. You have to cut a hole in the turret base before you add the walls for the dice to drop through. I cut 1” from the long and short edges right above the top ramp. The hole was 1 1/4” x 2 1/4”. The walls of the turret were 2” high with 3/4” high x 1/2” wide juts cut out at equal intervals.

Once I was totally done I tried all of these dice and they worked!!

We used the tower for the first time to play Roll Player. The black bag is full of dice.

You could black wash paint the whole thing then dry brush on more of the smoke coloured paint to give it a more realistic look. I am pleased with the look it has without doing those extra steps.

This was one of those projects that took a long time but, in the end, I was so pleased with the result. I may glue down some felt in the dice tray but I quite like the sound as they roll out without it. Like the card spinner in the photo above, the dice tower won’t be needed for every game but it will be a nice game accessory especially for those games requiring many rolls of the dice.