3 times a charm

I originally was going to post about a pet peeve that I have, that is on a subconscious level. But when I got to thinking about it it is actually three separate pet peeves about one subject -dice manufacturing. I don't know what it is but I am a purist when it come to how my dice look, I won't let my correctly made dice mix with the "defective." (Really, I don't keep those stupid dice with all the others, and I think I might try to subconsciously lose them too.) Anyways here are the three ways that I see dice being made that get my goat to no end:

The first 'defective' design of a die is to have a big red dot instead of a normal sized black pip. I am sure that the origins of this die comes from some game, because it seems like it is fairly common and it is done intentionally and consistently... it is not like they don't know what they are doing when they made the die. I find this type of die only mildly annoying, say a 6 out of 10, where 10 is very very annoying, on the annoying scale. I probably would still play a game with this die if it came with it, and there was no normal dice in range to grab instead.

The next annoying dice design is a little bit more subtle than the big freakin red dot, but more detrimental, all the opposite sides don't add up to seven. There is a standard convention that some inexperienced dice manufactures in China might not be aware of; if you roll two dice the number that comes up the most often will also be the total of the opposite faces on the die. For example in our friendly six sided die, when two of them are rolled 7 is the most common sum. So the opposite faces of the die should all total 7. This means that, for example, the two side and the five side can not share an edge. Once I notice that a die that I am using is made incorrectly in this fashion it is quickly banished from play and excluded from all other dice so as to not infect them. But I will still keep them around "just for emergencies." This kind of die fetches an 8 out of 10 on the annoying scale.

The dice design flaw that annoys me to no end is when the pips in the dice are not laid out correctly. There is a universal standard for the way the dots on a die should look. Do not stray from this standard! I absolutely can not play a game with a die that had it's pips laid out by some whippersnapper that thinks the dots can just be placed all willy nealy. Gah! It pisses me off. On the annoying scale this rings in at a 10. I will actively lose dice with improper pip placement, or if the die is lucky I will just throw it away to put it out of it's misery. I avoid these dice like the plague.

So why do I even bring this up? Because when Wizkids released the new "Star Wars PocketModel Trading Card Game" the box that it comes in has a picture of the contents. Notice anything about the dice?
That's right, the pips on the two side of the dice are placed incorrectly. When I noticed this I almost decided to not buy the game due to the dice that they included in the game. But luckily I still decided to buy the game (I was just going to throw the dice away), and luckily the contents shown varied from those in the box... I got two normal big red dice.

Whew, that was close.