Dice Masters

I’d like to momentarily depart from my usual content and talk about my latest obsession [strike] hobby: Dice Masters. First, let me back up and lay a little groundwork. I am a huge nerd. A little while ago I talked about an anime on Greenscreen. I’m here to confirm that I am one of Those. I enjoy comics and board games and all those geeky convention-type things. So, yes, Dice Masters is a tabletop game. It’s even a tabletop game with a nerdy theme. But it’s the Age of the Geek right now, and Dice Masters is super fun, so I’d like to share a bit about it.

Dice Masters is best described as Magic the Gathering with dice. It has sets of corresponding cards and dice that you use to build teams with which to compete. A full team consists of up to eight character cards and two Basic Action Cards, each with appropriate dice. In addition, you’ll have eight sidekick dice which do not have corresponding cards. During a game of Dice Masters, you’ll start with only the sidekicks available for use. Certain faces of those dice are considered energy, with which you “buy” the other dice on your team. I don’t want to get too deep into the nitty-gritty of the rules, so if you want to really learn to play, there are some really great videos on YouTube.

The thing I love most about Dice Masters is that it’s collectible, like the Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh TCGs back in their say, but it’s infinitely more manageable. The publisher, WizKids, splits the cards and dice up into different series of around 150 unique cards. So you can collect only the sets you want, and getting the entire series is totally achievable. The other neat thing is that, although there are 150 unique cards, there might only be 50 unique characters. There are three different versions of the same character card, all of which use the same dice but which have different special abilities in a match. So if your goal is to have the best possible team for a match, you can achieve the four maximum allowed dice per card even if you only have one copy of the card you want, simply by having multiples of another version or versions. This makes it easier for those not as interested in collecting or younger, more easily frustrated players.

There are four other details that make the collecting aspect of Dice Masters better than some other collectible trading games I’ve tried. First, the starter sets. The starters are designed to work extremely well straight out of the box, like base Magic or Yu-Gi-Oh decks. What’s even better about Dice Masters is that one starter set is enough to get two people playing. Simply give each player four of the eight character cards; there are enough sidekick and basic action dice to get going right away.

When you’re ready to build your own team, you can buy booster packs of two cards with corresponding dice for $0.99. That was one of the main selling points for me. Granted it’s only two potentially new characters – the cards are random – but $0.99 is hard to beat. And sometimes one new card is all you need.

If you’re looking to complete a set, you can actually purchase an entire gravity feed display. Those behemoths contain 90 packs – they’re the displays you’re supposed to buy the individual packs out of. They’re a little pricey, but you do get a small bulk discount. If you play it like I did, you can get them on Amazon and use cashback or other rewards points and pay $30 out of pocket. I’m only missing a few cards from my set, and most of my dice are maxed out. Finally, WizKids prints promotional Official Play cards with special text or alternate art. Often you can get OP cards just by taking part in official events at your Friendly Local Game Store.

To top it off, there’s more than just cards and dice to collect. There used to be collector’s boxes that came out with each set, but WizKids seems to have done away with those. A pity, because they were the most convenient way to store your dice. They also put out official playmats and dice bags, just to make things more fun. But if you’ve got a favorite dice bag from D&D or a playmat from Magic, there’s nothing to prevent you from using those. The WizKids playmats do have outlines for the different zones during play, so they are helpful, but they’re definitely not required.

Overall, I’ve got to say that Dice Masters is my favorite tabletop game right now. (Okay, okay, it’s a TCG, sort of.) We’ve got a FLGS that we play dice at, and the folks there could not be nicer or more fun. Everything from casual play to tournaments with those guys is a blast. And ultimately that’s the best thing about Dice Masters: the people.

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