Dice Masters is a collectable dice-building game.
Title: Dice Masters
Year Published: 2014
Designer: Mike Elliot, Eric M. Lang
Publisher: WizKids Games
Players: 2
Game Time: ~15 Mins
Set-up Time: <1 Mins
Ages: 10+
Theme: Various
Mechanic: Dice Building
How to win: Defeat your opponent.
Game Description
Marvel Dice Masters: Avengers vs. X-Men is a collectible dice-building tabletop game designed by Quarriors! creators Michael Elliott and Eric M. Lang.
Set-Up
Set up is simple. For a ‘full’ game as I call it each player brings 2 Action cards and 8 character cards. These characters must be different and have a different sub-title too.
You can have up to 20 dice split among the character cards but you can not go above the Max number of dice allowed by that card and also each card must have at least 1 die on it.
Each player gets 20 life and play begins with a random start player.
Dice Masters Game Play
Who better to go through gameplay than the official Marvel Entertainment YouTube Channel?
Game End
You win and the game ends when you reduce your opponent’s life total to 0.
Dice Masters Round-Up
Being from a Magic the Gathering background I love the collectable game where you can build decks. Also, it’s cheaper than Magic and you don’t need to collect anywhere near as many cards but you do need the dice.
Most cards are average or have clearly better versions which are generally sorted by rarity, but not always. Super Rares and generally the best cards but Rares aren’t necessarily better than the Common or Uncommon version.
As for gameplay, that choice of deciding what to do with combat is a great one. Do you block and KO your opponent’s creature which means they get that die back the next turn? Or take the damage and get it back in their bag… there are only so many times you can take damage.
Combat is the best part of the game and is 90% of the game really unlike Magic where it’s only really 50%.
I’m still undecided about the ‘open information’ part of the game. Everything you have in your Team is out there, unlike almost any other game where you have a deck of secrets that are uncovered as the game goes on.
Hoping to see more strategy come in with future sets.
Dice Masters Rating
Very fun game while tournaments are ongoing, but it needs expansions.
I give it 7/10
Dice Masters Initial Review June 2014
Technically not the first time I played this but the first time I played it properly.
It was in an organised play tournament.
I’ve played a fair bit of tournament Magic and had average success. I always managed to finish around the middle apart from the odd freak horror/success where I under/overperformed. I do enjoy Magic but the cost for a deck can far exceed the cost of a tabletop game.
Marvel Dice Masters doesn’t remove this cost but it greatly reduces it.
I’d played a couple of games before this tournament with a couple of cards and dice to get the ‘mechanics’ of the game down but I didn’t have any idea of tactics.
This tournament was a constructed/sealed hybrid where we brought 2 Actions and 5 cards with a max of 3 dice for each. You then have 5 boosters that you use to make up the other 3 cards. I just picked cards with interesting effects to see how they played out.
Here are the 5 cards, in order, that had the biggest effect in the 3 games I played.
5 – Human Torch ‘Flame On!’
The eventual tournament winner based his deck around this. When he is active, he deals one damage to a character or an opponent when you field another character. Combined with Power Bolt (An action that deals 2 damage to a creature or player) and defensive creatures. His deck was finely crafted 🙂
He beat me 2-0 both times thanks to this character.
4 – Hulk ‘Green Goliath’
Not only is this hulk big, but if the player or Hulk takes damage he deals 2 damage to each of the opponent’s creatures. When Hulk came out I couldn’t cope with it and I have to just take his attack to get him off the table.
3 – Hawkeye ‘Longbow’
When Hawkeye is fielded he deals his attack value in damage to an opposing character. This is bad enough but seeing as he is best used when being drawn from your bag you can recklessly attack with him after. Generally, he will take out two of your guys, or kill a guy and deal 3-4 damage with an attack.
Very powerful and quite cheap
2 – Storm ‘Goddess of the Plains’
When Storm attacks, you re-roll each of your opponent’s characters and each roll that doesn’t roll a character again is put in the prep area. Storm is great at wiping out an opponent’s defensive line. Yeah, they get the dice back in the next turn but for now, you’re free to attack. She saved me one game when I forced my opponent to re-roll 6 Sidekick dice and they all failed to come back into play.
1 – Green Goblin ‘Goblin-Lord’
Funny how things work out. In Magic my favourite deck is ‘White Weenie’ and I play it all the time. It was the first deck I bought and the last two sets of Magic I played in Tournaments I played White Weenie decks. It basically involves playing cheap White creatures and trying to win quickly before your opponent gets going.
I ‘accidentally’ played this type of game in this tournament. When Green Goblin is active he gives all of your Sidekicks +1A and +1D. So I essentially got him on the field and tried to roll as many sidekicks as possible, and it worked.
This character had a big hand in all 3 of my tournament wins so was my Dice Masters MVP for the day 🙂
Jesta ThaRogue