EPTTo start, Dice Masters for dummies:
The game is kind of a mix between magic and deck building games like Dominion.
You bring 8 characters / actions with you that emulate your deck and 2 basic actions that both you and your opponent can use.
You start every game with 8 sidekick dice, comprised of a 1/1 pawn side, one of each type of energy(read:mana) being Shield, Fist, Mask, Bolt and the wild card '?'.
On my team tonight was:
Rocket Racoon - When he attacks he pings both players. Super cheap with high attack values and 1 defense. Great for getting out of the gate early and putting on pressure.
Rescue(read: Pepper Pots in an Ironman suit) - Defensive character, if the die doesn't roll on half the faces, I gain 1 life. Solid synergy with Rocket to offset the self ping.
Songbird - Super cheap blocker. Dice Masters uses a "Once blocked always blocked." system and the Songbird I had allows you to pay a Shield when you block with it to remove her from combat, effectively negating the attacker.
Speedball - Moderately priced character, average stat lines, and when he takes combat damage I have a chance to use one more die on my next turn.
Moonknight - Another average stat line with defensive leaning character that makes my Captain America cheaper to buy and makes the opponents' Avengers more expensive to buy and field(read: summon)
Captain America - Yup, another synergy I was able to pull out. Cap is defensive, and starting to get on the high cost side. His ability lets me KO either a character at a certain level or a sidekick depending on if any of my guys died by the end of my turn.
Deathlok - Big expensive character with Overcruch(read: Trample) and some other ability I didn't give a fuck about.
Pym Particles - Give a character +1 attack and Overcrush until end of turn
My basic actions didn't really matter and nobody knows what I'm talking about right now anyway.
So due to time constraints we ended up doing 1 round of Swiss.
Opponent 1:
First game I try and get out of the gate fast with Rocket and Rescue. Except Rocket never wanted to roll onto his character face and Rescue never wanted to roll on her energy faces. So I my early game fell flat on it's face. I tried shifting into a Speeball/Songbird defense but I couldn't keep Shields to have the Songbirds stay on the board and Speedball could only do so much. Surprisingly it was still a relatively close game. Then I had one really bad turn that left me with nothing fielded. Opponent crashes in on his turn with a big attack that blows the game open. From then on he constantly uses an ability from Luke Cage that pings both of us but since he's got a sizeable lead he just burns me down.
Moonknight shows up but does nothing special. Bought a Deathlok but never got to use him, same with Pym Particles. Captain America is MIA.
0-1
Opponent 2:
Rocket and Rescue show up early game and get me to a decent lead, but nothing incredible. Game bogs down when the opponent fields Venom, who is beefier than my early characters and pings opponents when a sidekick is fielded. He also has a horde of Radioactive Man(ugh) that have a chance to make players field sidekicks when they die. So the Rocket space program gets shut down and Rescue has to put out the fires before the world melts around me. She does this pretty well and Songbird rope a dopes Radioactive Man. Moonknight shows up to go toe to toe with Venom and they take eachother out. Captain America deals with Venom when he returns and sidekicks. My opponent makes a poor attack that I could trade favorably with and with a good roll I had enough attackers to close out the game.
Speedball was around, but did nothing special. Deathlock was MIA. Pym Particles was used in a couple attacks to get early damage in. Early Rocket roided out on the Pym stim with Rescure makes the inner broodwar watcher tingly inside thinking about M&M.
1-1
Opponent 3:
Was supposed to be a rematch with opponent won, but it was getting late and he's been working at the ass crack of dawn(starting at 4:30 and 5:30) for most of the week so he was tired and went him while he waited for my second game to finish.
2-1(I'll take it, I guess.)
All in all it was enjoyable. Kind of sad that I didn't get to actually play out game 3 or do round robin. The guy that went 2-0 had the Rocket/Rescue combo to and he also had the Black Widow Thor that basically Lava Axes you when she attacks. Sometime in the near future we're doing another draft with DC's Worlds finest(read: Batman vs Superman)
Bonus: People that read this or opened it and scrolled down get to watch a low budget recreation of the Civil War trailer:
