Dave's Dicelings Rant: Wave 1

[Dave Van Domelen]

Dave's Kinda-Transformers Rant: Dicelings

Themberchaud (red dragon)
Rakor (black dragon)
Beholder
Owlbear

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/misc/Dicelings1

These are D&D monsters that turn into large 20 sided dice (D20s).
While these have a lot of the trade dress of Transformers toys, and are
made by Hasbro, they are not branded as Transformers, hence not going in my
Transformers review directory. They're branded for the Dungeons & Dragons
Honor Among Thieves movie.
My set arrived in early January 2023, ordered from Pulse. Themberchaud
and Rakor share the same transformation and articulation but almost none of
the same parts.


CAPSULES

$14 at Hasbro Pulse, spotted at Target for $14 the day after my
pre-order arrived.

Themberchaud: Getting it solidly back in D20 form is a bit tricky, mine
tends to pop open when rolled too vigorously. Otherwise about as good a
transformation as you're gonna get from an organic form hidden inside a
geometric one, with good articulation. Mildly recommended.

Rakor: An almost complete new mold rather than a simple redeco of
Themberchaud, it has the same good and bad points, although its horns are
more likely to get warped. Mildly recommended.

Beholder: The most solid of the D20s, but due to some molded details it
is utterly unfair (it's almost impossible to roll a 1 or 2 on it). Decent
beholder with handy carry case built in. Mildly recommended.

Owlbear: The most complex transformation and most ambitious monster
mode, and I don't think the designers or the budget were quite up to it. It
does some things very well, and others very poorly. Overall, it balances out
to a mildly recommended rating.

While I'm not exactly enthusiastic about any of these, I'd say the
dragon molds are better than the other two, if you're looking to try just one
Diceling.


RANTS

Packaging: In minimal-plastic cardstock boxes on cards, the background
color is black. The cardbacks are 7.5" (19cm) tall and 6.5" (16.5cm) wide.
The lower left corner has the actual box, which is a little under 3.5" (8cm)
wide, 3.75" (9.5cm) tall, and 2.5" (6.5cm) deep, with the upper right corner
partially truncated. The front of the box part has a picture (render) of the
D20 mode, the top has small pictures of both modes with the "CHANGES" (in
several languages) claim. Not Converts, not Transforms. The left side
repeats the main card art but is mostly taken up by the claim of "PLASTIC
FREE PACKAGING*" and "*Except tape and glue" in five languages. The right
side of the box has a QR code over a D20 line art, it just goes to
playdnd.com, a generic parental guide thing. (The Pulse page has minimal
character information, but does advise people to keep an eye out in the movie
for the character/monster.)
The card has render of the beast mode in the upper left, while the right
side is dominated by painted-style art of the monster, with the movie logo in
the upper right and the Dicelings logo in the lower right. The top of the
cardback has larger pictures of the two modes, with the transformation steps
listed in the style of Transformers packaging, against the background of the
main card art. Lots of legalese on the bottom of the card and the bottom
face of the box.
Inside, the D20 mode is held between two corrugated cardboard pieces
that keep it steady, and tissue paper is wrapped around the entire die as
well as being placed between parts presumably to avoid paint damage. The
instructions and the usual massively multilingual safety sheet are folded up
and jammed in there.
The instructions are very similar to Transformers instructions, in black
and grayscale with red accent color, although they made sure to use different
fonts.

Dice Mode: Other than the two dragons, the dice modes are all slightly
different, but there's a few things they have in common. All are 2" (51mm)
between opposite faces, they all have the D&D dragon ampersand in place of
the 20, they all have molded but not painted numbers on all the other sides.
Sometimes the panel boundaries for transformation cross the center of a face,
in which case the number is off-center so that it doesn't have to be split.
The sides have magic runes or whatever around the edges where allowed by the
seams.
The balance is okay, I don't see them being particularly unfair, but
excessive rolling can make the seams pop which makes doing fairness testing
difficult. Suffice to say, there's just enough irregularities that I
wouldn't let players actually roll them in a game. In fact, the Pulse pages
for these say, "Just don't use this d20 for your tabletop game!"
These aren't my biggest D20s, but that's because I have a number of
novelty dice that are rather big, including an inflatable D20 that's the size
of a large beach ball. They make for a decent handful, though.


THEMBERCHAUD
Red Dragon
Transformation Steps: 8

D20 Mode: All red plastic with no paint except the gold on the dragon
ampersand. Some visible joints are a slightly brighter plastic, and under UV
light the joints stay dark while the rest of the plastic glows orange.
It was really tight straight out of the package, to the point I needed a
knife to get the panels open. That might have been due to the tissue,
though, because while I could eventually massage it shut, it doesn't hold
that well. The 1 face is full of joints and hinges, so the number is kinda
tucked in a small space off center. The dragon ampersand is raised no higher
than the numbers and all the faces are reasonably flat.

Transformation: As with a lot of shellmasters, you pull the shell sides
apart, unfold them into wings, and then sort of pull the dragon out of a
fetal position. It's easiest to get the shell apart by putting your thumbs
on the corners of the 20 side (dragon ampersand) and your fingers pushing in
on the 1 side. The waist is supposed to rotate 180 degrees, but I found it
works okay either way. Since the dragon has a lot of soft plastic and ball
joints, it's not unlikely that a limb will pop off by accident during
transformation.
Going back to D20 mode is difficult if you don't remember exactly where
things go (or use the instructions, I GUESS), since it's really just folding
an organic thing into a small enough ball that the wings can fold around it.
The neck needs to be centered so that the tail tip can wrap around the neck
spines, and the forepaws need to be rotated 180 degrees so that they can fold
up enough. Then the massage begins to get the shell to stay closed. I find
it works best if you get it closed, then open one shell side and press the
body in against the other closed side, repeat on the other side. Because
everything inside is rubbery and organic, there really isn't a way to be sure
things are seated correctly before you try and fail to get it to stay
closed.

Dragon Mode: Well, it's a decently organic dragon with unfolded dice
panels as wings. It's meant to be a quadruped, but it can be put in a
bipedal stance if you swing the wings back enough. While the whole thing is
red with a few bits of light tan bone/claw paint, there's a total of three
types of red plastic. Still, under normal light it's a pretty unified look.
Straightened out as much as possible, the dragon is 7.5" (19cm) from
snout to tail tip, with a wingspan of 7" (18cm). Any piece that has dice
detailing on any part of it (so the wings, most of the tail and torso, lower
neck) are made of the "UV glows orange" rigid orange-red plastic. The
non-glowing plastic used on the joints visible in D20 mode is also used on
the two middle segments of the rear legs and the one middle segment of each
foreleg. The hip pieces, feet, upper neck, all parts of the head, and the
tail tip are a rubbery orange-red plastic.
There's a light bone-tan paint on the horns, neck spines, spines along
the top of the tail segments, teeth, horn-beard, claws, and the scutes under
the neck and torso. The eyes are painted yellow. The wing membranes are
painted a slightly teal-shaded bright blue.
Lots of articulation, in part because of transformation joints. The
root of each wing is a hinge inside a swivel cylinder. Each wing has three
transformation folding hinges, two of them pinned. There's a sort of swivel
in mid-torso for transformation, but it's hard to use it with the wings
getting in the way. The neck has a hinge at its base for lifting up and
down, a swivel about halfway up, and connects to the head with a ball joint.
The lower jaw is hinged. The tail has lots of joints. From the root
outwards, there's a hinge that snaps into D20 position, a hinge and swivel
universal joint, another hinge, another hinge and swivel joint, and then a
hinge for the very tail tip that's off the main line of the tail. All the
hips and ankles are ball joints, and they can pop off pretty easily thanks to
the use of rubbery plastic. The forelegs have a single hinge elbow, while
the hind legs have a digitigrade style pair of hinges. Oddly, the front
elbows don't bend very far in the direction they're supposed to go in this
mode, but bend backwards pretty far for transformation.
Interestingly, there's a 3mm socket in the roof of the mouth, so that if
you happen to have 3mm peg Fire Blasts (like, say, from R.E.D. Bumblebee)
they can be placed in the mouth as fire breath. It's rubbery enough that a
1/8" Lego rod can be jammed in there too.

Overall: This mold is probably the best at doing both modes, even though
the D20 shell is hard to get all the way closed compared to the Beholder. If
you just want to try out the concept, getting this or Rakor's probably your
best bet.


RAKOR
Black Dragon
Transformation Steps: 8

D20 Mode: Black plastic with metallic yellowish green on the dragon
ampersand. It looks the same mold-wise, but all the shell pieces are
different on the inside faces. In fact, the only parts it shares with the
red dragon (I am not going to keep looking up that name) are the feet and
maybe the cylinder swivels at the wing roots on the 1 face. Different scale
patterns, different wing membranes, etc.

Transformation: Same as the red dragon, although the horns give a bit
more trouble going back to D20 mode. I had the same problem with not being
able to get everything exactly right in D20 mode, so the shell gaps a bit.
Since it's black plastic, though, the gaps aren't as obvious.
The third time I transformed it back to D20 mode I accidentally got
everything in the right places and it closed with no gaps. I doubt I could
reproduce that again.

Dragon Mode: It has the same jointing as the red dragon, but as noted
above almost entirely different pieces. The horns suffer from being crammed
into D20 mode, though, and mine were bent askew like a dragonic bad hair
day.
Same size as the red dragon, and all the plastic is black. There's
probably the same three types of plastic as on the red dragon, but they all
look about the same under regular and UV light. The metallic yellowish green
paint used on D20 mode is also used for the wing membranes, which are molded
to look more tattered (although they paint over the holes and kinda ruin the
effect...I might just paint the holes on mine black). The claws and the
upper sides of the horns are painted a light tan-gray (taupe). The more
thorn-like spines on the neck and tail are painted a sickly light green,
which is also used for the bit of fin membrane on the tail tip, and the eyes.
The teeth are more of an almost white bone color. The scutes are painted a
pale gold.

Overall: Same good and bad points as the red dragon, it really comes
down to your aesthetic preferences or whether you like black dragons better.


Beholder
Transformation Steps: 6

D20 Mode: Dark orange plastic with metallic purple on the dragon
ampersand. This one definitely is not a fair die, though, as the 19 and 20
faces bulge outwards with scute/scale patterns and domed number locations.
As a result it is very difficult to roll a 1 or 2, since the faces opposite
them are too rounded. In fact, if you gently set the die down with 1 or 2 on
top, it will tend to roll off. It takes a gentle touch to get it to stay on
1 or 2 even intentionally.
It's a pity that they did that to those two sides, given that of the
three molds this is the easiest to keep closed in D20 mode.

Transformation: Relatively straightforwards, mostly just flipping panels
open to reveal eyestalks, and positioning the rubbery eyestalks. The body
itself needs to be shoved forwards a bit inside the remaining D20 frame to
let the mouth open. The main seam for the eyestalks is between faces 15 and
5, squeezing faces 1 and 2 together helps pop it. 13 and 18 are the other
two that need to be opened, and if they give you trouble you can just push
through from the inside once the face is opened up.
The four panels that join between 15 and 5 each have a single eyestalk,
two more rubbery ones are on the sides of the face and can be pulled out once
the four main slices are lifted. The 13 and 18 panels each have one molded
eyestalk and one rubbery one attached to it.
Definitely the easiest to transform back to D20 mode. As long as you
don't get one of the rubbery eyestalks in the wrong place, it closes nice and
solidly.

Beholder Mode: Well, it's a beholder in a box, with diamond-shaped cheek
guards (the 19 and 20 on the upper triangles, with molded beholder flesh),
and then a sort of handle shape with the 5 face on the bottom and a bar with
bits of other sides connecting it to the top part. So, a convenient carry
handle for your beholder.
The main face is a rubbery plastic that's about the same color as the
D20 shell pieces, while the four rubbery eyestalks are a lighter and more
yellowy orange plastic. The cheek sides and the lower teeth are all one
piece of the lighter rubbery orange plastic, but the upper teeth seem to be
part of the upper head part. The ten eyestalk eyes are painted white with
black cateye pupils. The main eye is white with a violet iris and a
triangular black pupil. The pebbly skin on the face has a dark purple wash
to bring out details. The gums are light tan (red dragon horn color), the
teeth are white, and the tongue and the roof of the mouth are glossy dark
purple.
The top four eyestalks have hinge roots and then ball joints about
halfway up, so the only way to get them to not be all one clump is to
separate them front to back. The two eyestalks directly attached to the face
have ball joint roots. The side stalks don't really have meaningful joints.
The jaw is hinged, it opens the most if you have the face pushed forwards as
pretty far on the hinge at its top.

Overall: An evil pumpkin. Okay if somewhat kibbly monster mode, but the
monster flesh molding in D20 mode kills its ability to be used even jokingly
as a die.


Owlbear
Transformation Steps: 8

D20 Mode: Warm light gray plastic with a metallic copper dragon
ampersand. The visible hinge pieces look the same under normal light, but
are blue under UV so that's two kinds of plastic.
Unlike the dragon mold, this has so many seams crossing the faces that
they don't even bother trying to fit the numbers into open spaces, you just
get a lot of numbers split in two or more pieces by panel borders. While
hard to get back into this mode (see below), if you do it correctly it can be
rolled repeatedly without popping open. However, so many edges are irregular
that even if the center of mass is at the geometric center (which I am unsure
about), it's not going to roll fairly. I mean, not as bad as Cheaty
McBeholder, but while I'd almost be willing to allow the dragons in a
non-serious game, the owlbard is pretty much out.
The hole in the 13 face for the rivet that allows one of the movements
for transformation is a little tight of a fit, but it will hold 5mm pegs.
It gets covered up in monster mode, though.

Transformation: This one gets a bit more involved than the others. The
dragons have almost all of the D20 shell turning into wings, while the
beholder is already round. But this does more shell origami to get the wings
put together, and it has the torso/head/backflap piece rotate 180 degrees to
swap top and bottom. It really feels like several of the panels should fold
even further, btu I guess allowing that would have made it more difficult to
get it back into D20 mode. The feet pop off REALLY easily during
transformation, in part because the ball joints with soft plastic are kinda
weak compared to the stiff knee joints, it migh be better to remove them
entirely and put them back on when you're done.
Transformation begins at the 17-3-16-8-10 vertex, pull apart any two
adjacent triangles (17 and 3 seem easiest) and the rest are trivial. The
wing parts (all but the 8 face) then pull out to free up that torso rotation
I mentioned. The rest is pretty straightforwards, although the wings don't
fold as much as I'd like.
Getting back to D20 mode requires a lot of simultaneous tab fitting and
joint massaging, although if you do manage to get everything in place at once
it's surprisingly stable. There's four double hinges that need to be pretty
close to exactly symmetric in their bending or the faces won't fit together.

Owlbear Mode: They tried. I mean, credit for attempting something that
isn't just a shellmaster like the dragons or already almost D20-shaped like
the beholder. The wings are the main point of aesthetic contention for me,
with a lot of triangles jutting out in random ways. At least the 8 face
folds down against the back instead of sticking out like a feathery cowlick,
which helps. There's molded feather details all over the place, really only
missing from the inside shell parts that are the inner faces of the arms.
The paws and legs are furry rather than feathery, for the bear part of
owlbear.
A mere 2.75" (7cm) tall, but with the gorilla-like arms the monster has
come to be known for, giving a maximum hug-span of about 6" (15cm). The
blue-glow light warm plastic is also used on the ball parts of the ball and
socket elbows, the ankles, and the internal torso struts and shoulder roots.
A rubbery light warm gray plastic is used for the head, legs, and feet.
Everything else is D20 shell plastic.
Lots of paint, specially dark brown speckling on all of the feather
details. It's also airbrushed onto the paws and painted onto the main
claws. The thumb claws on the hands are unpainted (and have an oval peg and
socket thing going on to hold D20 mode together). The beak is dark brown
with a little bit of red for the inside of the mouth. The owl "mask" is
painted bone white, the eyes are blue with black pupils and outlines.
The head is attached by a ball joint at the back bottom edge, so the
head can do some of the weird owl things. No waist. The shoulders are ball
joints on the end of transformation hinges, the elbows are ball joints. The
wrists are swivels and pop out if you try to make them act like ball joints,
while the paws are hinged (the thumbs are part of the same piece as the
wrist). Ball joint hips and ankles. There's a transformation hinge at the
top of each ankle piece, but it's not really a useful point of articulation
except for some minor shambling. Unless you use an arm as a third support,
staying up depends entirely on the strength of the ankle ball joints, but
fortunately the rubbery plastic gives them lots of friction to work with.

Overall: I understand why they had to try on this one, since the owlbear
featured prominently in the trailers, but it feels like it might've been just
a bit beyond the design team and should've been saved for a potential second
wave.


Dave Van Domelen, now back to actual branded Transformers.

[Irrellius Spamticon]

Based on a quick skim of this review I went to Target and the Beholder was the only one the employees hadn't hidden away. They didn't have an official spot and the Beholder was just thrown out with the Marvel Legends,

They also had a lot of Gelatinous Cube, which appears to be a Jellolike cube you pull stuff out of. I don't wvwn know if it's more than once or if it's a 1 and done toy.

I like it, it's more of a flesh-tone beige to me. $13.99 it feels like a decent price. Definitely better than the $17.99 for the Super7 ReAction figures or the $22.00 "clearance" price for Marvel Legends.

Also what's so bad about being unable to roll a 1 or 2? I'd think that's a bonus not a negative.