Hey Dice Master Fans, this will be one of the 4 posts regarding the different team building strategy you can use in the game. If you wish to learn more about team building, check up my post on Team Building basics first before reading this post.
Introduction
Control team are one that you don't want to play with. They have characters that control almost every aspect of the game, and they will make you pay for using essentials effect. Control team aren't as fast as an aggressive team, in fact, they are the slowest to set up. However, once they have set up all their characters in the field, your opponent would have a hard time continuing the game.
Type of Controls
Control team aren't that generic, there are different types of controller that controls an aspect of the game.
Global Abilities
Some characters helps a control team by penalizing your opponent for using global effects. Wasp will deal your opponent 1 damage each time he/she uses a global, Oracle on the other hand increased the cost of using a global ability. These characters might not be able to deal a lot of damage in combat, but they can hurt your opponent in the long term if your opponent's game is very dependent on global abilities.
Fielding Characters
There are some characters that help a control team by penalizing their opponent from fielding a character. Lyssa Drak makes your opponent pay 2 life for fielding a named character while Cerebro increases the fielding cost of a character, similarly these characters/actions cannot deal heavy combat damage but they will weaken your opponent overtime.
Actions
There are also characters that place a penalty for your opponent to use an action. However, unlike fielding characters or global abilities, not every player will use action die in the game, so you might not want to put too many of them in your team.
Preventing Character
There are times where your opponent has a trump card and he/she is intending to use that character to win the game, you can include characters like Joker or Loki in your control team and field them before your opponent fields that trump card. What is great about these characters is that they can lock out that trump card as long as they are active. This will totally screw your opponent's game.
Damage Reducer
If controlling your opponent's global, action and characters isn't enough, you can have these characters that help to reduce damage in your team. Captain America can reduce non-combat damage while Mera can reduce combat damage, adding these characters into your team will affect your opponent's game play. Imagine if they could deal you 10 overcrush damage or 12 non-combat damage, only to be reduce significantly.
Blanking Ability
I placed these 2 cards for the last because it's the best control card ever. These characters can blank out another character's text, and blanking is the most irritating thing you can do to your opponent, it makes their character less useful and you probably countered their game by blanking their character.
There are other characters that are capable of controlling your opponent's game, these are just few examples, basically, you need a controller in every aspect of the game to make your control team strong, so don't just focus solely on one as your opponent can always bypass your characters with another alternative, for example, don't put all characters that controls the way your opponent uses global abilities, your opponent can use actions instead for his/her whole game and your team is going to be less helpful if your opponent does that.
Support
Ramp
This may sound obvious, but having a ramp is important in your control team, it's because you want your characters to come out as fast as possible, and if you have no ramp, it will take forever to get your characters out. Also, do avoid putting too many ramps in your team as you need those spaces for your control team.
One More Chance, or infinity more as long as you can pay them
It is important that your control characters come out as soon as possible, but if your characters refused to come out despite your reroll, then having a reroll global would be perfect for your team, you can use as many chance as you can to roll your characters out.
Source of Damage
This is one important thing to take not when you are using a control team, often players get too excited in building a control team and they have all sorts of controller in play, but they forget about 1 thing, they do not have a source of damage. One great source of damage for control team would be non-combat damage from action die, your characters won't be attacking because they are in the field to control your opponent and your character slots are probably full by using having all the good controllers, so action dice are the best source of attack for you. Once your control team is all set up, there is nothing your opponent can do in the game, so you just have to keep pinging him until the game is over.
Weakness
Cards getting blanked
One major weakest to the control team is having their characters lose the ability they possess. Each controller is essential to the game as they are part of your master plan, when your opponent blanks them, it is really irritating as whatever plan you have set up so far is gone because of one action.
Well, lucky for you, Doomcaliber Knight is here, he can cancel an action die from Kryptonite or Prismatic Spray and your opponent can't do anything about it. You can keep him in your team as a reserve in case your opponent has any action cards that can blank your character's text.
Aggressive Team
Another major problem for the control team is facing an aggressive team, you will likely to get squashed before you set up your team well.
You can hold them back by either having a blocker early or use the distraction global to hold back for a turn. However, since Control team are weak to Aggressive team in nature, if you really can't hold back your opponent's aggression, don't feel too bad about it.
Conclusion
I will be very frank with you, control team isn't very easy to play. You need a lot of experience in playing and knowing the different types of team a player can possibly come up with, if you lack the knowledge and experience factor, you won't know which character to buy first and which character to blank out and that would not do well for your game.
If you don't feel comfortable playing a control team, do try other playing styles, you might perform better. I hope my post helps you understand better in building a control team and thanks for reading.
Hey Dice Master Fans, this will be one of the 4 posts regarding the different team building strategy you can use in the game. If you wish to learn more about team building, check up my post on Team Building basics first before reading this post.
Introduction
Aggressive team are fast, in fact, they are so fast that they might catch your opponent off guard and win the game within minutes. I might sound exaggerating, but this is what an aggressive team is capable of.
Strategy
Attacking Abilities
Aggressive team has only 1 thing in mind, attack and keep on attacking. So your characters are best to have a great attacking ability. Any ability that can deal direct damage to your opponent is a great ability, all you need to do is just attack with that character and your opponent takes damage.
Cheetah is one character that is suitable for your aggressive team. If you have 4 attacking Cheetah, that's 4 damage to your opponent even before you resolve combat damage.
Removing Blockers
Aggressive team needs to rush, you want to finish your opponent as fast as possible, so it is best for your attacking character to deal combat damage to your opponent. However, your opponent always have the possibility of fielding a sidekick in the early game that will block your attacking character with a sidekick to avoid taking damage.
One way to avoid being blocked by a sidekick is simply use character that deals damage to sidekicks or make the sidekick unable to block, that way no one can be declared as a blocker in the early game.
Cost
One thing about an aggressive team is that you need to keep the game short, because the longer the game, the more characters your opponent has in the field and hence, it increases the chance of your characters getting blocked. So it is best for you to have plenty of low cost character in your team, as you can purchase and field them in a shorter period of time,
Guy Gardner is one of the best aggressive character in the team. He is only a 2 cost and he gets stronger for every attacking character die, so 4 attacking Gardner and 4 attacking sidekick will give +7A to each of your Gardner dice! That could be disaster for your opponent's team.
Support
Even though your team is focused on attacking, you should have some supporters in your team to increase the speed of your aggression team.
Cost Reducer Effect
If your characters are low cost, it would be great if you have a cost reducer effect that can further reduce your character's cost. Having your character at a even lower cost would be great since you can buy more of them in a turn.
Big Entrance BAC is one of the most power cost reducer card in the game. Not only does your character's cost reduced by 1, but every time they are purchased, you can put them directly into your bag, so you have a chance to roll them next turn! So you can buy 4 Guy Gardner dice in a single turn and put all 4 of them directly into your bag.
Weakness
Distraction
An aggressive team is weak when every time you tried to attack, your opponent just remove your attacker from the attack zone. It can get very frustrating when your attackers can't even resolve combat damage.
As much as this global ability must be a nuisance, you can make good used of it. Characters with attacking ability that can deal damage to your opponent would make good used of it.
Take Black Widow for example, she can deal damage or weaken your opponent's character each time she attacks, so if she is distracted, it won't be an issue as you can attack with her again on your next turn since she is still in the field, so every turn she will just weakened your opponent.
Also, your opponent would need to keep a mask energy to distract your characters every turn, and keeping that energy to use that global will make your opponent lose the opportunity to ramp more dice or buy more dice with that energy.
Some player might be afraid of the Distraction global and will buy and field a Human Paladin to avoid getting their characters distracted. This is not a bad move but if you purchase Human Paladin, your opponent would not bother saving mask energy to distract you, and you won't be able to waste their energy every turn. Also, using 4 cost to purchase a Human Paladin would slow your team down.
So as far as distraction global is concerned, don't worry about your characters getting distracted every single turn. Your opponent can't possibly keep a lot of mask energy every turn just to distract your characters.
Constantine
This card is very annoying for your aggressive team. Because if your opponent have an active Constantine, he/she just need to name a character and when you field that character, that character cannot attack, it will definitely slow your aggression down and for your opponent to buy some time to build his/her team.
One mistake players often make when your opponent has a Constantine is they will buy 4 of a character dice and makes it very easy for your opponent to name a character for Constantine's effect. Since you are playing an aggression team, you should have a handful of characters that can do the job well for you, so purchase different characters to avoid getting them blanked by Constantine. If you purchased 4 different character dice, your opponent is going to have a hard time naming them, and even if your opponent manage to blank 1 of them, you still have at least 1 other character to attack for you.
If you are really scared of Constantine's effect, you can use the Kryptonite action to blank his text, since this action is low cost, you can fit it well into your aggression team.
Conclusion
All the cards above are just the very few cards that you can use in your aggressive team, there are definitely more, you can check them out in my reviews on each set that Dice Masters has.
Aggressive team can be deadly, but still, you need the right set of skills and some luck involve to make them work. If you aren't able to rush attack your opponent in time, don't feel bad about it, you might want to modify your team to make it better next time.
An aggressive team is fast, so you need to think and react as fast in the game to do well with them, it does takes some practice, team building is all about the experience and also have fun in the process. If you do need some more advice or help to build an aggressive team, feel free to ask me, I will be glad to help. I hope my post helps you understand better in building an aggressive team and thanks for reading.
