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Dice Masters

This is the third in a seven part series on superhero games. Today’s entry is on Dice Masters.

To start with, we have 5 starter packs:

  1. Uncanny X-Men
  2. Avengers vs X-Men
  3. Justice League
  4. The Amazing Spider-Man
  5. Age of Ultron

And we’ve bought a lot of booster packs which give you more Character cards and dice.

Each starter set is basically the same. You get three different types of dice: Basic Action, Character, and Sidekick. You also get three different types of cards: Character, Basic Action, and Color Reminder. Finally, you get two dice bags which are okay.

You decide which three Basic Action cards you want to play with (they give you extra abilities during the game), then assign those card to three different colors (like Blue, Pink, and Green). You then place three dice of the same color on each of the cards. During the game you can buy these colored dice which then give you the chance to use the ability on the Basic Action card.

Each player gets 8 white Sidekick dice which go into your dice bag.

There are 8 characters in each starter pack, and each character has three different Character cards. So when you decide you’re going to be Captain America, you also have to decide which Captain America you will be. Then you would take the Captain America dice which will go on the Captain America Character card. During the game you can buy these dice to give you the chance to use the special ability on the Character card. You get to choose 2 Character cards (there are villains as well as heroes).

During your turn you randomly pull 4 dice from your dice bag to roll. Depending on your roll you take various actions (like buying dice or attacking your opponent). Used dice will go back in your bag once it’s empty. If your opponent KOs any of your dice, you get to roll them on your next turn in addition to the 4 you always get to roll.

Depending on how many dice get KO’d and any special actions that give you extra dice, you can end up rolling a lot more than 4 during your turn.

If you haven’t played the game before, you can use the Demo Game setup listed in the rules. This is a shorter game (10 life points instead of 20) just to give you an idea of game play. The only Demo Game I had an issue with was the Justice League one. Martian Manhunter: J’onn J’onnz and Batman: The Dark Knight definitely seemed to have the advantage over Wonder Woman: Champion of Themyscira and Zatanna: arataZ annataZ. Professor just destroyed me in this match.

Because it is such a quick game, it’s fun to try out different combinations of Characters and Basic Actions (some combos just do not work). A few of our favorite Basic Action cards: Ambush, Transfer Power, Gearing Up, Focus Power, and Save Civilians. Choosing Character cards takes a bit longer because we have so many, and we haven’t even come close to playing with them all, so we haven’t quite settled on favorites yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the Spider-Man cards becomes Professor’s favorite.

It can be difficult to have a strategy that always works. We’ve tried getting all our Character dice first, we’ve also tried buying up the Basic Action dice first, and we’ve tried a balance. It really just depends on the Characters and the Basic Actions, so strategy changes game to game.

The game is fairly simple, quick, and compact, so that’s pretty nice. And it’s fun to roll dice (isn’t that right President Gamer?).

In the next entry I’ll discuss Heroes of Metro City.

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