Besides metal coins and inserts – both of which are usually game-specific – poker chips are one of the most popular ways to enhance the playing experience. The most common used variety among enthusiastic board gamers are Iron Clays by Roxley Games. I recently replaced my Iron Clays 100 set with the larger Iron Clays 200 set and thought I quickly write about them while I still have both here.
So what are Iron Clays? They are high quality plastic chips approx 39mm in diameter and a substantial 9.3-9.4g of weight, mostly due to the iron core inside them. Compared to regular poker chips or cheaper chips found in some board games, they have two main benefits:
- Their pattern and colours are rather neutral and thus fit many games
- Their pattern and denomination aren’t printed on but part of the plastic
In comparison, here are the chips that came with my second-hand copy of Age of Steam Deluxe Edition. Note they are much smaller, very light (because they are pure plastic) and the printing has rubbed off on some of them.
Iron Clays were originally popularised during the Kickstarter campaign for Brass: Birmingham and Brass: Lancashire as the deluxe editions came with a set of them in the box. Note though that this wasn’t a full set of Iron Clay 100 but a reduced set that was sufficient for what is needed to play Brass. An upgrade set of 22 chips was released for those that wanted to fill the gap in their set.
Iron Clays 100
The smallest regular set available for purchase is called Iron Clays 100. Back when I was looking into buying a set, I had first considered just picking up a second-hand deluxe copy of Brass: Birmingham but then decided against it in favour of a) the larger set of chips and b) the enhanced portability of having a separate box.
It contains:
- 40 x 1 chips
- 20 x 5 chips
- 10 x 10 chips
- 20 x 20 chips
- 10 x 100 chips
which in practice I found sufficient for Brass and a lot of games I play (e.g. Carnegie, Lisboa), even if some frequent exchanges of denominations were necessary if we ran out of some of them. For games that involve higher amounts of money like Indonesia, they just won’t suffice though.
Although the cardboard box they come in looks quite nice, it’s basically just a wrapper for the plain plastic tray inside it. I remember I originally had hoped for some form of nice insert and was a bit disappointed when I opened the box for the first time, especially considering the 71€ MSRP.
Iron Clays 200
There are larger sets that are basically the same but just contain more chips. I recently got myself the Iron Clays 200 set to also be able to play Indonesia with them. The box is now a darkish-red and double the depth, but otherwise similar.
On the inside, it’s the same unsatisfying plastic trays as with the Iron Clay 100 with a simple cardboard separator between them. However, this set now also includes the 50 and 500 denominations. I wouldn’t be surprised though if having just 20×100 with no 200s will also cause some artificial juggling with denominations during play.
Iron Clays 400 & Wooden Kickstarter Version
Roxley also offers an even larger set that comes with four trays worth of chips and even a 2k denomination, but I don’t think I’ve ever played a game where that would have been necessary.
There was also a luxurious Kickstarter version of Iron Clays that came inside a wooden box and I’d loved to buy instead of the standard Iron Clays 200 (despite having no need for the decks of cards at all 😂). However, I’ve never seen one come up on the second-hand market and it’s out of stock everywhere for a long time now.
Conclusion
It might be an expansive purchase, but I’ve enjoyed owning these for a while now. While I still prefer game-specific metal coins wherever I have them, I use Iron Clays as my default if whatever in-game currency just doesn’t feel right. For games like for example Concordia where nice metal coins just feel more appropriate, I still use my set of Maracaibo metal coins as generic default.
I haven’t seen any wear and tear on my chips over the years and the hand-feel is nice, but the colours of the patterns and the way the pattern looks feels a bit too obviously plastic for my taste. They definitely don’t look as nice and bold as in the Kickstarter image seen above but a bit more muted. Still, I haven’t seen any poker chips yet I would have preferred over Iron Clays.
So my general recommendation – if you are in the market – would be to go with the Iron Clays 100 but be aware they might not be sufficient for larger player counts or games with high values of currency.