Some background on Drawlab Entertainment and their Legendary Metal Coins

Drawlab Entertainment was founded in 2013 and launched their first Legendary Metal Coins Kickstarter on March 10th, 2015 with that original project funding in under one day (something that was rare back in the earlier days of Kickstarter). That set contained eleven different coins and since then Drawlab has launched five more seasons of coins including the current season, season six, which is live right now on Kickstarter.

Every one of these projects has funded and delivered successfully and due to this, I think Drawlab is a company that you don’t have to worry about supporting via Kickstarter.

For this review, I’m taking a look at the coins that are included in the currently active season six Kickstarter. What we were sent is one of each of the non-stretch goal coins, which are broken into over nine different sets, all but one of which contain three coins each (the other set has only two). This is the Collector Pledge level, without any stretch goals. 

Since I received these coins the Kickstarter has been going well and a number of additional coins have been added to this and other pledge levels. 

This sixth set of Legendary Metal Coins features three concepts:

1. Forged Coin Sets: These are a new series of coins based on some of Drawlab’s older sets that feature more 3-dimensional effects. Note these aren’t old patterns being re-used, rather new coins based on the themes of some of their older sets. 
2. New Coins Sets: This season includes totally new designs, not based on any existing coins.
3. Adventure Sets: These are some rather unique and interesting “coins” that are really more tokens for use in your fantasy games.

The best way to see each of these coins, up close and in hand, would be to watch our Legendary Metal Coins Season Six Unboxing video on YouTube.  Along with showing off the coins you can hear my thoughts as I see all of them for the first time (and you get to see me stumble trying to figure out what a couple of them are).

Now that I’ve taken a look at all of these coins and have had them out and have been fiddling with them for the last few days, I want to share my thoughts on each of the sets I received.

What kinds of coins do you get in Legendary Metal Coins Season Six?

What I have done for this review is I’ve taken a look at all of the coins first and then taken a look at the two adventure sets. As for the order of this list, unlike our usual game recommendation format, I’ve actually broken down each section into my order of preference, from my least favourite to my favourite sets, so we save the best for last. 

Pixel Art Unit Metal Coin Set

This was my least favourite set of coins from what I received. That said I can see other people digging these, I’ve never really been into the whole pixel art nostalgia thing myself. 

All of the Pixel Art Unit coins are perfectly square.

Copper: A pixelated C with some pixellated cups on one side and the word “copper” and a pixelated dragon on the other.

Silver: A pixelated S with a few stacks of coins on one side and a fighter-type adventurer on the other side saying “Fear not my Lady!” next to the word “Silver”.

Gold: The letter G and a couple of pixelated bars of gold on one side with a pixelated princess on the other side saying “Help! Save me!” next to the word “Gold”.

Planet Metal Coin Set

These coins are oval-shaped and are almost all the same size with each coin being maybe 1mm larger than the last.

Copper: A shot of the Earth from the surface of the Moon on one side and a challenger style rocket launch on the other.

Silver: A satellite in orbit on one side and a series of three planets in orbit on the other with one appearing to be Saturn.

Gold: A galaxy on one side and a set of constellations on the back.

I found the planet set to be a bit of a mixed bag. The copper coin is really nice with deep three-dimensional artwork on both sides, whereas the galaxy, constellation, and planet sides of the other coins are almost flat. I had a hard time even making out what the constellations were supposed to be when first seeing that coin.

Norse Gods Metal Coin Set

Speaking of not recognizing what the patterns were on the coins, the Norse Gods set is the one that gave me the most difficulty during the unboxing video. These coins all feature a Norse god on one side and a Norse symbol on the other.

Copper: A god in a curling horned helm that I think is Loki with an abstract Midgard Serpent on the back.

Silver: A Norse hammer on one side and of course the matching god on the other, Thor.

Gold: Featuring Odin on the face and a Valknut on the other side. 

Overall these coins are nice. They have a worn, ancient, beat-up look, that fits well thematically. The problem I had with them is that there is so much detail on the god sides of these rather flat coins, that it can be difficult to see what you are meant to see. What I would really like is a Forged version of this set, with more depth. 

Atlantis Metal Coin Set

This set of metal coins really stuck out from the others due to featuring rather cool designs as well as not having perfectly round edges. Similar to the Norse set, these coins look beat up and well used, but they are even rougher than that. These actually look unprofessionally cast. They look imperfect, on purpose which I really dig. Note by unprofessionally cast I don’t mean Drawlab messed anything up, they are designed to look this way and I’m sure every set of coins will be of the same shape and quality.

Copper: Mostly round with a 3mm notch taken out of one edge, featuring a maze or labyrinth on one side and a trident on the other.

Silver: An abstract pattern on one side and an illegible script on the other (the script reminds me of the Rosetta Stone). On top of, or rather through these patterns is cut the letter A. You can actually see through this cut out A.

Gold: Roughly round with a mermaid and crab on one side and an octopus on the other along with some runes. This coin has a hole cut through it so it could be held on a rope or chain.

Forged Cultist Metal Coin Set

Now we start getting into the forged sets with the Forged Cultist coins. As I mentioned earlier the Forged coins are based on existing themes from older Legendary Metal Coins sets featuring much more three-dimensional patterns. I have to say I love this three-dimensionality. The patterns on these coins are so deep that I can trace them with my fingers, I just love holding onto these and rubbing them. It’s cathartic. I actually think they would be good fidget toys for stimming.

Copper: An Egyptian-style pharaoh’s headdress over a skull surrounded by tentacles on one side with an eyeball sporting more tentacles circled by runes on the other.

Silver: A mass of eyeballs and tentacles on one side with some kind of sci-fi-looking gate with more eyes and lots of runes and symbols on the other.

Gold: Four large open eyes in a bed of tentacles on one side and a six-pointed symbol inside a couple of concentric rings on the other.

Forged Dragons Metal Coin Set

Being part of the Forged series these coins all feature nice deep designs that can be easily felt by touch.

Copper: A large dragon head, face forward, on one side and a stylized serpent-like dragon on the other.

Silver: A large dragon head looking left backed by an abstract Celtic style dragon surrounded by a repeating pattern.

Gold: An ouroboros-style dragon eating its own tail around a scaled dragon egg on one side with a smaller heraldry-like dragon surrounded by Celtic knotwork on the other.

Forged Dwarven Metal Coin Set

These Dwarven coins aren’t actually round. These are more angular and geometric which I think fits dwarves well. Being part of the Forged series these also feature nice deep designs. 

Copper: A hexagonal coin with an anvil on one side and a dwarven helm on the other.

Silver: Also a hexagonal coin, this time featuring a two-bladed battle axe in front of a set of dwarven doors with a very “Warhammer Troll Slayer”-like looking dwarf on the other side.

Gold: A decagon featuring an abstract dwarven king complete with bejewelled braided hair and beard and a set of crossed hammers behind a shield on the reverse.

These Forged Dwarven coins were my favourite of all of the coins in this season. I love the depth to them and the design choices. Now I just have to figure out what game I should use them in. 

Adventure Potions Metal Token Set

Next up are the two adventure sets. starting with the Potion set. There are two of these each with a unique potion shape. They are two-sided with one side showing the potion full and the other showing empty. The full side is covered in a coloured glossy lacquer. There’s a red potion and a blue one.

While these are cool, they feel unfinished. I would have liked them more if there was clear lacquer on the backside instead of just having a divot there where the lacquer would go. These seem like they would be a cool way to track potions during a game, but I think you would want way more than just one of each potion type.

Adventure Weapons Metal Token Set

Finally, we get to the final set of “coins”, the Adventure Weapons. These are the most impressive of all of the coins I received as far as how well made they are and how they are crafted.

Each of these tokens features a fantasy weapon in a ring. They are about twice as thick as the other coins in this set. The outside edge of the coin forms the ring and the weapons are suspended inside them with the negative space all cut out leaving a rather three-dimensional representation of the weapon.

The tokens include a hammer,  an axe and a sword.

While the hammer is two-sided, both sides are identical. The axe is also two-sided and identical, which is odd as there are words around the outside edge that say “Warriors don’t show their heart until the axe reveals it”. While this is readable on one side it isn’t from the other, as the words are in reverse. I thought this was an odd choice. 

The sword is the most impressive of the bunch. On one side the sword is clearly in the front and you can see most of it. Behind it are two concentric circles.  From the other side, you can only see the part of the sword that is inside these circles.

While I do think these are really cool, I’m not exactly sure what I would use them for. Perhaps they would be useful as inspiration tokens in D&D or to represent a specific magic item or as first player tokens in some fantasy boardgame.

Are Legendary Metal Coins worth the investment?

The Legendary Metal Coins I described above fall into what Drawlab calls their Collector pledge level, where you get one of each coin. Remember that the sets I’ve highlighted don’t include any of the additional unlocked stretch goal sets.

Normally, outside of Kickstarter, you would buy these coins in twenty-four coin sets which contain ten copper coins, eight silver coins and six gold coins.

I knew I liked the look of these coins before I agreed to check out a set, and I have to say I was even more impressed seeing them in person. These are some of the nicest metal coins I’ve seen, better than almost every set I’ve seen come with a game.

One thing that did surprise me about the Legendary Metal Coins is that these coins are significantly lighter than most coins I have from my existing games. This was enough of a shock that I contacted Drawlab and asked about the weight difference. I was told that their coins are actually made of zinc which is then coated with various metals to make the copper, silver and gold colours.

Of all the coins, the ones that impressed me the most were the Forged sets. I greatly appreciate the depth that has been added to these coins. You can easily distinguish even the small features on the coins just by touch. This is great news for anyone with vision issues and works well along with the fact that most of these sets feature coins that grow in size by denomination.

As for the designs on the coins, I obviously liked some more than others, but that’s perfectly cool and fine. The advantage of having so many unique sets of coins is that there’s probably something here for everyone. While I may not be a fan of the Pixel Art set, I’m sure there’s a Zelda or Minecraft fan out there that will love them. I really do appreciate the number of options here.

One thing that did come up while I was looking at these is that a Tabletop Bellhop fan, Red Meeple Ryan, who also happens to be a blind meeple, asked if there was anything on the edges of the coins to set them apart. Sadly that isn’t something you are going to find here. All of the round and rounded coins have perfectly smooth edges, it’s only the beat-up style ancient coins, like those in the Atlantis set, that have any way I can see to tell them apart from the edge.

What I did do with this information from Ryan was to reach out to Drawlab and voice his concern and I’m very pleased to say that it’s something they will be looking into for future sets. It wasn’t something they had considered before but should be something they can try to do for some if not all future sets. 

Now one of the things I think needs to be mentioned here is price. A standard set of Twenty-Four Legendary Metal Coins will cost you $29.99 US. That’s more than a buck a coin. There are some bulk deals and pledge levels on the current Kickstarter that are cheaper and Drawlab also offers some other non-standard sets of coins that can cost more or less, but $30 gets you a standard set of coins.

No, that’s not cheap, but I don’t think it’s in any way unreasonable. These are some really nice coins and let’s face it, these are a luxury item. No one needs metal coins for their games. Metal coins are nice to have, a bonus, something you can do to bling out your games or add to the sense of immersion. Another concern is that twenty-four coins may not be enough for your favourite board game. To fully upgrade a game you may need multiple sets. Even with that in mind, for what they are, I think this price point is reasonable. 

Overall, I expected to be impressed by Legendary Metal Coins Season Six and I was. These coins are very nice and actually managed to exceed my expectations. While I did prefer some sets over other ones, all of the coins are very well made. I was particularly impressed by the Forged sets and also really liked the Adventure sets. If you are shopping for some high-quality unique metal coins for your games, Legendary Metal Coins from Drawlab is the place to look. I do not think you will be disappointed.

I can’t be the only one who loves using metal coins like the ones found in Legendary Metal Coins Season Six. I know there must be more of us out there. What are the best metal coins you’ve found included with a game and have you spent real money to replace any of the game money in any of your games? I would love to hear about it in the comments below.