Dice Masters Review
Overview -
Dice Masters is a 2 player collectable dice and card based
game by Wizkids (based around the same booster mechanic as games like Magic the
gathering). At this point the game is now on its 7th expansions set with new
ones being released about every quarter.
Themed seemingly around nothing in particular, the main franchise for
Dice masters is currently Marvel (3 sets with 1 upcoming) vs. the rest such as
DC that's now on 2 expansions then Dungeons and Dragons and Yu-Gi-Oh on 1. There are also rumours of a TMNT expansion
set on the horizon.
For a Marvel fan like me this stuff is sweet
Components -
There are 2 parts to Dice masters, the dice themselves and
the cards that go with them, both are good quality, the dice especially are I
would say about 90-95% clear depending on the set you play, some now and then
can be a strange colour mixture to a point where they aren’t exactly clear and
you have to strain a little to see exactly what they do/are.
The Cards to indicate the characters you use have very nice
art work, generally stolen directly from comics or other publications, they are
made from decent cardboard and I've never had issues with one being
damaged. That being said the majority of
the cards come in boosters and as such since there are only 2 per packet can
quite frequently get bent, this isn’t the end of the world as a bit of time
squashed under a book in a sleeve will usually sort that right out.
Though not directly a game component, there are also game
mats you can get to play on to make the game easier to know where things should
be, I do recommend these mats are they are pretty good not to mention of nice
quality, my only flaw on them being the lack of artwork since they are more
functional than pretty like the Magic the gathering ones tend to be.
Gameplay/how it plays -
Dice masters is a quite simple game at its core, you pick a
selection of 8 heroes from the pool available (gained from either buying £1/1$
booster packs that give you 2 cards and 2 dice) place them down in front of you
with also 2 action cards (these come in the basic starter set) and 8 of what
they call sidekick dice (basic get you started white dice that also come in a
starter set). You then place dice on top
of those cards that you can purchase mid game with energy.
You then place all your dice into a bag and pull out 4 and
roll them, on the dice each one basically has 2 types of symbol an energy
symbol (there are 5 different types, think the different colour mana in games
again like magic the gathering or the types of resource LoTR LCG uses) and 1
symbol that is the actual sidekick/character side. The energy symbols allow you to purchase dice
from the tops of your card and place them into your bag (this part of the game
plays like marvel/alien legacy or other similar deck building games where your
force grows slowly stronger as you play) and the sidekick symbol becomes
playable as a creature of sorts, that stays on the board and is able to fight
the other player.
The Character side has 3 numbers on it generally, top left
is the cost to play the character to the board and become active (deploying or
casting in many other games) the top right is the character's power and bottom
right is its toughness.
This also goes for the character dice that you purchase as
the game goes on, though those dice will usually never have 5 energy symbols on
them, instead they will have 3 faces with characters (3 different levels, each
one stronger than the last) and 3 sides with energy specific to that character
(with some symbols having 2 as a kind of double energy boost).
After you have rolled your initial dice and bought your new
characters and put them into your newly bought dice discard area, the game goes
on until you run out of dice in your bag, at which point you put all the dice
from the discard area back into the bag and start again fresh. This time though you have the new heroes
coming out to help both bolster your energy buying power and playing as
characters into the board to fight your opponent.
Creatures that are successful in their attack are removed
from the board and placed in discard though creatures that die instead are
placed into a holding area to be rolled for free again the next turn in
addition to the dice you roll from your bag.
The Dice bags that come with the game are known as sick bags are they aren't great quality
So that’s it, I believe I just made a simple game sound a
bit complicated, however it really is simple once you get used to the basics,
roll dice, buy characters, play characters, fight the enemy, roll more dice
again, rinse and repeat over and over adding a few abilities to mix things up
and keep it interesting plus action dice that add an extra layer of abilities
to the characters (such as firing a magic missile that can hurt players or
characters, buffing your combat ability or drawing extra dice that turn).
Conclusion -
Dice Masters is a pretty good enjoyable game, the dice are fun
to throw, collect and look at, the cards look good and are fun to collect, the
character mechanic is tried and tested and blatantly stolen from magic the
gathering but that’s a good thing since its so refined. The actual dice collecting army-forming part
is again stolen from other card builders (never played dominion but I get the
feeling its like that as well as legendary).
Each game if you don’t change the heroes can get a bit samey
and when you are learning the basics it is very hard to know when to attack and
when not to, so you end up each forming a huge wall of creatures that never
dare attack anything out of fear of getting battered the following turn while
they are waiting to return to the battlefield.
It's very nice to see that they went with a system that puts
out very powerful common cards as well, no longer do you require a list of pure
rares and super rares like many magic the gathering decks (sorry to again
compare this game to magic but it is clearly its number 1 inspiration, that and Quarriors) costing
a small fortune, here you can make a deck very cheaply and only need rares and
super rares in certain character list formations you may want to go with. Even still you would only usually need 1 of
those rare cards meaning the cost to setup is incredibly cheap.
Your collection can get out of hand very fast, thankfully they do these nice collectors boxes that even come with a nice material dice bag
Also the boosters as above are crazy cheap for what you get,
buying online you can tend to get a box of boosters RRP at $90/£90 (for 90
packs) for about $50/£50, quite a saving.
Each booster box usually has every single common in it and the majority
of the uncommons plus about 15 rares and 2-3 super rares. Now call me crazy but for a CCG type game 50
a quarter is not that bad at all, plus you only need to grab the sets you
actually have interest in, personally I'm a marvel not DC fan so I bought the
avengers set but not the DC war of light set.
The game is generally played in draft or constructed formats,
so has something for players that like either of those styles of play. Games usually take between 30mins and an hour
depending on the types of character list being used and experience of the
players involved.
Each set can either be played with itself or with other
sets, yes that means you can pit marvel against DC or even combine them both to
have Spiderman team up with batman and an elf from dungeons and dragons if you
like.
A solid fun game that can be used as a gateway game to quite
a few other titles using all their basic principles. It can be very cheap to get into and only slightly
expensive if you choose to 'go pro' with it.
Useful Links -
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