Your character sheet is ready. Your campaign is prepped. Now let’s talk about the gear that makes the table feel like an actual adventure. Here’s what’s worth buying in 2025.
Dice: Where to Spend Your Gold
The dice market has exploded. Here are the brands worth knowing:
- Mystery Dice Goblins — Tops multiple best-of lists. Known for creative designs and innovative sets that go beyond standard acrylic.
- Dicebound — A rising star. Their second Kickstarter funded in under 30 minutes and raised over 00K. Watch this brand.
- DNDND — Thematic sets based on mythical creatures, ancient runes, and cosmic themes. Available in resin and metallics. Great aesthetic range.
- Beadle & Grimm’s — Premium class-specific dice sets for D&D 5e. Expensive, but genuinely beautiful.
- Die Hard Dice — The reliable workhorse brand. Consistent quality, huge variety, well-priced.
What’s trending: Liquid core dice — sets with swirling liquid trapped inside — are the current premium obsession. Also popular: dice with real dried flowers, metallic foil, or glitter suspended in resin. Pricing runs from for quality acrylic sets to 5+ for liquid core or solid metal.
Battle Mats: The Foundation of Your Table
A good battle mat transforms combat from abstract to tactical. The best options right now:
- Loke Battle Mats — Their modular “Books of Battle Mats” connect together to create large, varied terrain layouts. Their 2025 Terrain Set added reusable scenery stickers — a genuinely clever innovation.
- Melee Mats — Praised for durability and grid quality. A strong all-rounder.
- TidyBoss — Budget-friendly double-sided 24×36 mat with multiple terrain types and included dry-erase markers. The best value option.
Material matters: neoprene is the preferred choice for durability and a non-slip surface. Most mats now come double-sided with both hex and square grids, which covers every game system you’re likely to run.
GM Screens: The World’s Greatest Screen (Still)
Hammerdog Games’ World’s Greatest Screen has been the gold standard for customisable GM screens for over a decade and nothing has displaced it. The design is simple and brilliant: laminate pockets let you slide in your own reference sheets, player-facing art, or encounter tables. It supports wet and dry erase markers, comes in portrait and landscape orientations, and is available in multiple colours including black and purple — ideal for dark fantasy tables. If you don’t own one, fix that.
For DMs who want everything in one unit, all-in-one modular systems from Etsy makers are growing in popularity: combos that include dice tower, battle map, combat tracker, dice box, miniature storage, and GM screen in a single collapsible structure. Higher cost, but spectacular table presence.
Miniatures: The 3D Printing Revolution
This is the biggest shift in the accessories market. Resin 3D printers — particularly the Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra and Creality HALOT-MAGE S 14K — now produce miniatures with layer resolution so fine they’re essentially indistinguishable from commercially cast minis. Platforms like MyMiniFactory and Printables offer thousands of free and paid models.
The practical result: many dedicated players now print everything and buy almost nothing retail. WizKids, the dominant pre-painted miniature brand, is under real market pressure for the first time.
If you’re not ready to invest in a printer, the traditional options remain solid:
- WizKids — Pre-painted, ready to use, widely available. Great for casual players.
- Wargames Atlantic — High-quality unpainted minis at genuinely accessible prices.
- Modiphius — Premium unpainted minis for serious painters.
For painters, the Redgrass RGG360 Painting Handle Kickstarter raised 3K in 2025 — evidence that the miniature painting accessory market is thriving alongside the printing revolution.
The Bottom Line
You don’t need any of this to play D&D. A pencil, a character sheet, and a set of dice will get you through. But the right accessories make the table feel like a place worth gathering around — and that matters more than any single stat block or encounter design tip. Invest in what serves your table, not what looks good on a shelf.
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