Dice Masters Team Building

In this article, I will be sharing with you on how to build a good team for Dice Masters. Before you read, just take note that this article is meant for beginners who just learn to play the game and need some help to come up with a good team. PS I have no dislike for anyone or any characters, all my sources are based on my opinions and it’s purely strategic, no hard feelings! 

Before we start, why is it important for a player to build a good team?

No matter what kind of game you are playing, drafting, constructed tournament or casual play, YOU WANT TO WIN. Your opponent isn’t going to sit there and let you finish him/her off, so you need to find a way to win before he/she does.

Step 1: Main Source of Attack

This is the part that most beginners lack, when they build a team, they have no clue on how to win, so they would end up building a wall of characters that sits in the field and turn after turn, they have yet to deal damage to their opponent. When you play the game, you need to make sure that you have a source of attack, because you don't win the game by being pure defensive. In dice masters, the 2 main source of attacks are combat damage and non-combat damage. 

Combat Damage

Combat damage are damage produce by characters in the field. It is very common for players to win the game via combat damage, because you can deal 1 to up to 20 or more combat damage in an instant. However, combat damage are not that easy to trigger as your characters are often blocked by your opponent's character. So for combat damage to go through you can use the following methods: 



1. Overcrush - Characters with overcrush deals their excess damage to your opponent after knocking out it's blocker(s). You could use action or character's ability to trigger this effect, characters with overcrush should have very high attack value. 

2. Unblockable - I don't think I need to elaborate more on this. Characters with unblockable abilities should have decent attack value. If a character doesn't have unblockable ability, you could use effects that make your opponent's character unable to block. Similarly, you could use action effects or character's ability to make a character unblockable.

These 2 are the main source for combat damage, however,  if there are any other opportunity for you to deal combat damage, do not hesitate to do so. 

Non-combat Damage



This damage comes from action effects or character's ability. They are the easiest to deal as they can trigger once you use an action or trigger a character's ability. However, the damage dealt by non-combat damage are rather low, maybe 1 or 2 damage, and characters that can deal more non-combat damage would need longer time to set up.  

Step 2: Playing Style

After choosing your main source of attack, you will now choose a playing style for your team.. Playing style helps with the way you play the game, each style features a different strategy a player can use within the game and each style has it’s own pros and cons.

Aggressive

An aggressive team is fast and they can finish your opponent before your opponent can have time and resources to react to your attack. Since an aggressive team is based on speed, you need to have characters that are cheap and good. 

Control

A control team is used to counter any and every character in the game! Although the team itself is powerful, it takes a long time to set up, as many of a controller characters are high cost. A controller must prevent your opponent from doing a certain action in the game and your opponent will have some sort of penalty if they want to reactivate those actions. 

Combos

 + Avengers Characters
+ Bolt Characters 
+ Sidekicks 

There are different types of combos that can be made in the Dice Masters game, a combo team is a team that has characters supporting a certain combo and can finish your opponent in no time. Combo doesn’t mean that all characters must have the same text or affiliation; it just means that abilities triggered by those characters will support each other. There a lot of combo available in the game, most commonly are basic action combo, sidekick combo, pure energy combo, avengers combo, villains combo, JLA retaliation combo, lantern combo etc. 

Mid-Range

Mid-Range style is like a team that doesn't have synergy with one another, your characters just attacks, defend and support. One great thing about Mid Range is that you are adaptable to the game. A mid-range team must have all kinds of things prepared, offensive, defensive, preventive and supportive, they don’t work as well as a combo but they can still function just as well without any similarities between those characters.

I will be doing an article that will elaborate more about all 4 playing styles in the game.

Step 3: Picking your Cards

Now that you have chose your playing style, it is now time to build your team. You should search for characters that are based on your playing style. When choosing a character, there are some factors that you would want to look at.

Cost
Cost plays an important role in the game. A character that has a lower cost means you can buy them easily. As most of you who played the game before can see, to roll out a character is only a 50% chance, so you have another 50% to get energies, having a low cost character providing energies instead of characters wouldn’t be so bad as compared to a 7 cost character that shows an energy even after reroll. 

Stats
A die also will show you the fielding, attacking and defending value; a lower cost character should have relatively low stats. An average cost character should have reasonable stats. A high cost character should have high stats. If any character can provide you better stats given their cost, such as, 3 cost with high attacking value or 6 cost with 0 fielding cost, then you might consider choosing that character for the stats part. If you are using combat damage as a source of attack for your team, choosing a character with high attack value would be more viable.

Abilities
Now we move on to the main Meta of the game. What makes a character so powerful? That would be the ability that it possesses. To judge character ability, just provide yourself with some questions; are this character’s abilities worth the cost? Are the abilities something I want or need in my game? Can I make good use of the ability? 

There are various types of abilities in this game:
Attacking - Triggers when attack, characters should have reasonable attack value and abilities that makes it want to attack.

Blocking – Triggers when blocking, characters should have reasonable defend value or blocking abilities that make your opponent think twice about attacking.

Fielding – Triggers when field, characters should leave the field easily so you can trigger this ability over again. 

Active - Triggers as long as the character is in the field, this character should have high defense value so it can stay in the field long enough for the ability to trigger, or it must be cheap enough to buy a few of them so your opponent have trouble getting rid of them. 

Situational – Has different ways to trigger the ability, such as having another character in the field or having some situation like rolling 4 dice of different faces. Since this ability is situational, you need to make sure that your team have use of them or it would take up your precious space in your team.

Action cards also shares the same factor when picking them, so make sure that you have an affordable and useful action in your team. 


Team building is up to your creativity and there are many ways to play it!

Recommended Cards

For any playing style, there are 2 types of characters or actions that is recommended to help your team. 

1. Ramps - Ramp are basically characters, global ability or action that help you to generate more dice to roll. It would take ages to buy a 6 costs character without ramps, so help yourself by using actions or characters that ramp enough dice for you to buy your character faster. If you don't want to use ramp, you could use cost reducer action or characters to make purchasing much easier. 

2. Preventor -  A character or action that can knock or lock out a target character that is bothering your game.They will be helpful to your team when you face a character that is use to counter characters in your team. 

Step 4: Dice Limit

Now that you have chosen the characters and action to build your team, it is time to allocate their dice. 

Since most card allow 4 dices to be placed on them, you should have the appropriate number of dice in order to use them. Low cost attacking character should have more dice placed on them since you are going to use them for attack, so the more the merrier. Expensive character should only have 1 or maximum 2 card on them, because you probably wouldn't buy all of them. 

Building a Team with your collection

Now that you have read the importance of a good team, what team should you build? If you are a new player, i suggest you to build a team with characters you like. If you have yet to start your collection on Dice Masters, then i suggest you to read on my review for each series and then select those characters that you fancy.

Usually I would suggest players to buy singles, if you know what team you like to build, buy that card and dices that you are missing and start playing. If you have your own collection, you can try to build a team with characters you have. Start with a base team, either something you have or a team you like, play games with those team regularly and then find ways to modify your team as more series are release in the future. Once you learn how to master one team, you can try to build another team. This would be the simplest and cheapest way to build a good dice masters team. 

Conclusion

Dice master is something like rock paper scissors, only more complicated. Each team you build will have a counter against your team. An aggressive team will finish a control team before they get a chance to do all the set up. A control team will break a combo team, and preventing or locking characters and their abilities and eventually lose the game. A combo team has better synergy than a mid-range and can then defeat them. A mid-range team will be ready for an aggressive team and can slow them down, and eventually take the win. So don’t be surprise or disappointed that your opponent can defeat your team, it’s basically luck and strategy combine into one. Just go ahead with a game play you are comfortable with and start playing! Most importantly, have fun while playing! I hope that my article helps and thanks for reading. 

Dice Masters Rules and Tutorial

Hey Dice Masters fans, in this post, I will be guiding new players or former players that are not very familiar with the game even after reading the instruction book. Before reading the post, you might want to buy a starter set first so it is easier for you to understand the game and also you can use it for reference as we move along.

What you need

- 8 sidekick dice

- 8 character cards and corresponding dice 

- Play Mat

- Dice bag

Introduction

In Dice Masters, two players take on the role of masterminds directing the actions of a team of powerful super heroes/monsters/adventurers (represented by dice) to battle each other! Each turn, you roll your dice to see what resources you have available, buy more dice, send your team members into the fi eld, and then strike at the enemy mastermind. Reduce the opposing mastermind’s life to zero, and save the day! 

Winning the game

Before anything begin, you need to know the goal for the game and that is to win. Both player will start with 20 life each and as soon as your opponent’s life reaches zero, the game ends and you win! If both players would reach 0 at the same time, the game ends in a tie. 

Chapter 1: The Basics

Inside your starter set, you will see a number of white dice, take 8 of them out for the purpose of this tutorial. These dice are called sidekick dice, they are the most simplest dice in the game and you will be starting the game with it. 

There are 6 unique sides on a sidekick dice, 4 of them being the main 4 energy type in the game: Mask, Bolt, Shield and Fist. When your die rolls on one of this side, it will provide 1 energy of that type. 

The side with the question mark face is known as the wild, when rolled on this side, it can be used as any of the main 4 energy type. 

The last side of a sidekick die shows a pawn with numbers at the edges, this is known as a sidekick character. When rolled on this side, instead of providing you with energy, it acts as a character that will be fighting alongside with your heroes and villains in the field. 

Chapter 2: Characters

What makes this game interesting is that you will be able to use heroes, villains and monsters from Marvel, Dc comics and Dungeons and Dragons universe to help you achieve your victory. Inside your starter set, whichever set it is, you will have 8 characters with 3 different card and 2 of their dice that is included in it. 

Character Cards

Every character dice is represented by a character, and every attributes of the character can be found on their character card. 

Cost of character - The number of energy you need to purchase this character's die

Team Affiliation - The team symbol possess by the character, not all character have affiliation.

Character Art - Nothing significant to the game, just a cool art.

Card Name/Title- Name of the Character

Subtitle - Different versions of a character will be differentiated by their subtitle

Collection Number and Series - Shows you which set is this character from and also the collector number.

Card Text - The ability possess by the character

Rarity Line - Represent how rare is this character card. 

• White/Grey - Common/Starter
• Green - Uncommon
• Yellow - Rare
• Red - Super Rare
• Purple - Chase
• Blue - Promo

Dice Limit - How many dice you can have on this character.

Character Dice - The faces of the die that is correspond to this character card.

Character Die

Each character that you use will have a corresponding die that comes with it, this are called a character die.  

Despite having different colours, design and statistic, every character die have the same contents with regards to their dice faces. 

A character dice will have 3 energy sides. These sides will produce a specific energy type. There will be 1 face that will provide 1 energy and 2 faces will provide 2. 

The remaining sides of a character die with a character symbol and numbers on the edges is the character face. Similarly to a sidekick character, this side of a character die provides you a character that you will be able to use in the field. However, each side of the character face has a different level. Referring to your character card, the character face on the extreme right is a level 3 face and to the left is level 2, then level 1. Level 3 character will have higher stats and some character will have different abilities at different level. 

A character side of a dice will show you a few numbers and asterisk (if any). This number represent the stats of a character and will come in handy when you play the game. 

Fielding Cost – How much energy you need to pay to put this character into the field.

Attack – The damage dealt from this character.

Defence – The number of damage that can be received from this character before it gets knocked out.

Burst(s) – Special or additional abilities for this character. Note that Burst effect on a character card is mandatory. 

Team Building

The first step to the game is to build a team of 8 characters that will fight with you, choose 8 character cards and then place them on the table. If you have a starter set, just use all 8 different characters provided in the starter set. Once you choose your 8 characters, it is time to place their character dice on them. 

Team Building Rules 

1. Characters in your team cannot have similar card title, which means that you cannot have a Beast from the Age of Ultron Set and a Beast from Avengers vs X-Men set in your team. But you can have Phoenix and Marvel girl in your team, although they are technically the same person in the comic but they have different card title. 

2. You may place as many dice as you want on a character card as long as it doesn’t exceeds the maximum limit that is indicated on your character card but must at least have 1 die. 

3. The total number of dice you can have in your team cannot exceed your maximum health. In a normal competitive tournament, the maximum health for any player is 20, so you can only place a maximum of 20 dices on your team for all your characters. For the sake of this tutorial, just place the 2 dice on your characters provided in your starter set. 

Chapter 3: The Play Mat

The play mat is optional in the game, but for beginners, it helps you to provide a clearer picture when you are playing the game. After some time, you will get used to the different areas of the mat and will eventually be fine without it. Mat can be obtain from your instruction booklet in the stater set, or bought it separately. 

Out Of Play

Reserved Pool - The place where you roll your dice and keep your dice results, your dice will stay in this area unless a game effect moves it somewhere else. 

Field Zone - The place where you field your characters into and they will be ready to attack and defend at your command. 

Attack Zone - When you choose to attack or defend with a character in the field zone, you put them in the attack zone.

Prep Area - The place where all the characters that are knocked out land into. 

Used Pile - The place where you place all the dice that are used to purchase something or characters that were unblocked. 
Out of Play (Not in the play mat) - Nothing can happen to dice here. Energy spent during your turn goes here, so do Action Dice you use during your turn or unblocked characters.

Don't worry if all this terms sound very alien to you, just know that this areas exist in the game and we will touch on them later. 

Chapter 4: Turn Order

Now that we have covered the dice and the play mat, let's proceed to the turn orders of the game. 

Note: If you are unsure of the turn order when you start playing the game, you can always look at the back of your instruction book. 

Clear and Draw Step

During your turn, before you do anything, move all dice that are still in your reserve pool to your used pile. This includes all your unused energy from the previous turn. This won't be necessary when you just begin your first turn. 

Now, put all your 8 sidekick dice in your bags, every turn, you randomly draw 4 dice from your bag. If your bag has less than 4 dice, draw all of them, then place all the dice from your used pile into the bag and draw until you have drawn 4 dice in total. Place all dice drawn into your prep area.

If, after refilling the bag from the used pile, you are still able to draw only 3 dice or less, take 1 damage and gain a generic energy for each die below four that you drew.

3 dice - 1 damage and receive 1 generic energy

2 dice - 2 damage and receive 2 generic energy

1 dice - 3 damage and receive 3 generic energy

0 dice - 4 damage and receive 4 generic energy

We will talk about generic energy later so don't worry about it for now. 

Roll and Reroll Step

Roll the four dice as well as all of the dice that were already in your prep area. After you have rolled your dice, you may choose to reroll any, all or none of them. Then reroll all the dice(s) as a group.

You do not get a second reroll opportunity so choose wisely. Whichever dice face you get from the dice roll will be the result. 

Main Step

In this step, you may do the following actions in any order you wish. You may perform any of the actions as many times as you like as long as you fulfilled the criteria for those actions.

·         Purchasing a die - To purchase a character die, you must pay its cost by using energy. If the character card shows that it is a certain energy type, one of the energy used to pay that cost must be that type of energy. From the example, you need to pay 4 energies to buy a vision dice (any 4 energy including a bolt). You can only purchase dice from your team. Once you purchased a dice, put it into your used pile, then place the dice you used to purchase that dice to Out of Play. 

·         Fielding Characters - When you field a character, you must pay energy equal to the character’s fielding cost. This cost can be paid with any type of energy, even generic. You cannot field a character if you cannot pay the energy cost. Energy used to pay for fielding cost goes straight to Out of Play when spent. 

If you do wish to or cannot purchase anymore dice or field anymore characters, then you can end your main step. Now move all unfielded character die to your used pile. 

Attack Step


In this step, you will now declare any characters as attackers if you wish to attack. Unlike the main step, the attack step’s actions must be followed in the following order:

• Declare attackers – You may declare any character in your field as an attacker. When you decide to attack with them, place them into your attack zone. 

• Declare blockers – After you declared an attacker, your opponent can now declare a blocker. Similarly to declaring attackers, your opponent can declare any characters in their field as a blocker. However, the difference is that he or she may put 2 or more blockers to block one attacker, but may not put 1 blocker to block more than one attackers. 


• Assigning damage - Both players then assign damage. Damage occurs simultaneously, each attacker(s) deals its attack to their respective blocker(s), and each blocker deals its total attack value to the attacker. If an attacker has 2 or more blockers, the player can choose to split its damage to each blocker or assign its damage to only 1 blocker. 

Attacking characters that were unblocked assign it's damage to the defending player instead of a character. That damage will be deducted from the player’s life total. Move that character die into Out of Play. 

Once all damage has been assigned, knock out each character that took damage greater than or equal to its defense. When a character is knocked out, move it to that player’s Prep Area. 

Clean-up Step

Characters that blocked or were blocked but not knocked out return to the field.

All damage to all characters is reset, so character defence is back to their printed defence. Your dice that have energy faces remain in the Reserve Pool.

Move all dice from your Out of Play into your used pile. 

Now is time for your opponent to do the same thing according to the turn order. Both of you will proceed with the turn order until one of you end the game. 

You have now learned the standard game play for Dice Masters, you might want to practice a few rounds with the sequence before we go to the next chapter. 

Chapter 5: Action Dice

Apart from character dice, you may also use action dice to help you achieve your victory in the game. Action die can be found in both your starter set and in foil packs. Starter set action are called Basic Action card while equipment, gear and vehicle cards from foil packs are known as action card. 

Basic Action Card

Similarly to a character card, a basic action card have the same context. However, unlike most character card, a basic action card's purchase cost doesn't have any specific energy type, so when you want to purchase a basic action die, you do not need a specific energy to do so. The dice limit of a basic action card uses the word "Use" instead of "Max", so you must put 3 basic action dice on the basic action card. 

From your starter set, you will be given 4 sets of 3 basic action dice, each being different colour. A basic action die consist of 3 faces with a number '2' face. This are generic energy, when you rolled on these faces, the basic action die will provide you with 2 generic energy. Generic energy can be used like any other energy but it does not provide a specific energy type. 

The sides with the exclamation mark is an action face, when you rolled on those faces, you will be able to use the effects stated on your basic action card. There are also bursts sides of a basic action die, some basic action card have special or additional effect in your die rolls on the burst face.

In addition to your 8 characters, your team needs to have 2 basic action card. You will have 10 basic action cards provided in your starter set. Each basic action card must have 3 basic action die. You may use any colour of the action dice as long as each action cards have a distinct colour. Now use the action indicator provided in your starter to indicate which colour is for which action so that players wouldn’t be confused by what colour their action dice represents. One unique thing about Basic Action card is that you and your opponent can buy each other's basic action die. 

Action Card

Action card is another type of action available for the game. 

The Dice faces of an action card is unique on it's own, it has 3 faces of a specific energy, 1 face that produce an energy and 2 faces that produce 2 energies. The other 3 faces will show a symbol to represent the action (usually an object, gear or equipment), unlike characters, this symbols do not have numbers on their edges, and when rolled on these faces, you may use the action effect indicated on the card text. The burst sides also react accordingly to the additional or special effect on the card, if any. Unlike a basic action card, you and your opponent cannot purchase each other's non-basic Action die. 

When can you use an action? 

Once you rolled on a action face on an action die, you can use action when you are allowed to, using an action requires no additional cost. You may use action during the following step:

- Main step, in additional to fielding a character and purchasing a die, you could also use your actions during your main step. 
- Attack step, only after you declare your attackers and your opponent declare blockers, you could use your action. 

Once you used an action die, it goes into your Out of Play. During the clean up step, any action that is left unused will be put into the used pile. 

Chapter 6: Global Abilities



Some of your card text has a text in red font underneath the character ability or action effect. This are known as the Global abilities. Global abilities are one time power up, boost or debuff that you can use by spending energy. 

Global abilities can be used anytime when you are allowed to. To use a global ability, simply spend the energy stated on the card and then use the power up, boost or debuff. The used energy will then be put into Out of Play. 

Similarly to buying a basic action die, you could use a global ability from a character card that belongs to your opponent, vice versa. Some global are usable once per turn and some unlimited, some are reactive global while some are passive, you can learn more about Global abilities in one of my post. 

When can you use Global abilities

- YOUR Main Step, in additional to purchasing a die, fielding a character and using an action, you could also use global abilities. 
- YOUR attack step, only after you declare your attackers, your opponent declare blockers and you played an action (if any), then you are allowed to use global abilities. 
- After YOUR OPPONENT'S main step, yes you didn't read it wrongly, you are allow to use your global abilities on an opponent's turn, however, you must wait for your opponent to pause his/her main step and before he/she starts the attack step, for you to use global abilities. 
- YOUR opponent's attack step, when your opponent is able to use global abilities during the attack step, you could use them as well. 

When the active player choose to end his/her main step and the opposing player doesn't want to use any global abilities, if the active player choose not to attack, then no player can use global ability for that turn. 

Chapter 7: The advanced rule

Character abilities

Apart from the stats provided by your characters on their die, most character possess abilities. There are a few types of abilities in this game:

Fielding Abilities - When you field this character die, immediately triggers it's ability. 
Attacking Abilities - When you declare this character die as an attacker, trigger it's ability.
Blocking Abilities - When you declare this character die as a blocker, trigger it's ability.
Active Abilities - As long as a copy of this character die is in the field, the effect will trigger. Unlike the other 3 abilities, an active ability from a character only trigger once no matter how many copies of the die is in the field. 

Bonuses

Some character abilities, actions effect or global abilities allow you to boost a character by giving it additional attack or defend until the end of the turn. This means that your bonuses are gone when you reached your next clean up step. 

Timing Conflict

If there is a timing conflict for any effect or abilities, the active player resolves the effect first.

When using a global ability, the active player can use as many as he/she desired before passing the priority to the opposing player, who can only use 1 global ability, then the opposing player will pass priority back to the active player. This will continue until both player do not wish to use anymore global abilities. 

Fundamental Rules

1. Card text always supersedes basic rule text. 
2. Unless otherwise stated, game effects can only target character dice that are in the field. The Attack Zone is considered part of the field.
3. If two cards directly conflict, the one that says “you can’t” beats the one that says you can. 
4. You cannot avoid paying costs. 
5. A player cannot gain life beyond the game’s starting amount. Excess gains are wasted. 
6. Level 3 character die cannot be spun up, neither can a level 1 character die be spun down.

Conclusion

This is just a basic way to learn the game, if you still couldn’t understand the game by reading, or you want to know more about the game such as tactics and strategies for the game, you should always head down to a local store and meet up with the community so they could teach you or even give you useful tips in the game! Hope all of this helps and thanks for reading!