Have you ever played Axis & Allies?

It's a great game, and it's one of Danger's favorites. There's just one teensy problem: combat is tedious. If you haven't played, here's an example of how you resolve a combat:

Attacker (2 battleships, a cruiser, an aircraft carrier and 2 fighters) Round 1:
Announce you're rolling for the battleships, roll 2 dice, count 4 or lower as a hit.
Announce you're rolling for the cruiser and fighters, roll 3 dice, 3 or lower is a hit.
Announce you're rolling for the carrier, roll a die. If it's a 2 or 1 that's a hit.
Defender (3 destroyers and 3 submarines) Round 1:
Announce you're rolling for the destroyers, roll 3 dice. Anything that's a 2 or 1 is a hit.
Announce you're rolling for the subs, roll 3 dice. Count the 1's as hits.

It continues like this until combat is over. Like I said, tedious.

Luckily, Danger found a solution: special dice.

I see 4 battleships, 4 cruisers, 2 destroyers and 2 submarines.

Each die attacks at a different level. The die will show a skull for a hit and a slashed circle for a miss. The gray dice have 4 skulls, red have 3 skulls, black have 2, and white have 1.

Now, let's picture that same round:

The attacker picks up 2 gray dice, 3 red dice, and a black die, rolls them all and counts the skulls.
The defender rolls 3 black dice and 3 white dice and counts the skulls.

Danger designed the prototype die. It's a truncated sphere with 6 faces. Each side has its skull or slash recessed into it. I was worried it would be hard to read, but it isn't a problem at all.

We played a game and I was really surprised how much it improves the combat rolling.

I put the dice up on ShapeWays. I bought a set of 5 each. It set me back... uh... well... quite a bit of cash, but it was a fun project and it really does make the game more enjoyable.