I’ll admit it: I’ve hit the wall as far as Magic the Gathering goes. I know, I know..blasphemy! It’s true though. Lately, no matter how many times I re-tuned a deck, or bought a barrage of singles from eBay I’d ask myself “why?” I only play the game once a month. Is it really worth spending time and money on a game that I play for maybe an hour every 30 days? The answer has become clear to me over the last few months. No. Will I still play when asked? You betcha. Will I still buy new expansions? Yup. But the amount I spend will be drastically reduced. The thing is that when you co-host a podcast about gaming, you can’tjust give up any game. Especially a game that is such a huge part of the gaming industry, and in my teen years was a big part of my life. “Okay Chris, that’s all fine and good but this is an article about Dice Masters”, you are probably muttering to yourself. Well, with Magic taking a backseat in my gaming life , I’ve been taking other games more seriously, particularly Dice Masters.
Shawn mentioned that he had purchased a couple starter sets of Marvel Dice Masters for him and his boys and that he was impressed by how easy the game was to pick up and how much fun it was. At first I kind of brushed it off and thought to myself,”Eh, I’ll get around to trying it.” I was currently enamored with Heroclix at that point in time so between that, MTG, and W.O.W TCG, I wasn’t really in a rush to try something new. Especially something that at first glance looks really simplistic and not collector-friendly.
Before the last podcast recording session, Shawn agreed to teach me the game to see what I thought so at the very least it could be fodder for the podcast. I bought 10 boosters of the D&D set thinking that was enough to play with. Yup. Mistake. You definitely need to buy a starter set if you are new to the game. We ended up using his AvX starter set for our first game. I chose Human Torch and Spider-Man and he went with Beast and another character that I can’t remember right now. It’s late, don’t judge me. After a few minutes, I was comfortable with the game, and also. I was hooked. Shawn was right. The game is fun. Really fun. I kicked myself for not purchasinga starter set myself. I ended up winning the game thanks to getting lucky and rolling a Human Torch die at full power. I was able to keep Shawn at bay and unable to get anything going on his side of the board. Although, to be fair I think he was sand-bagging a bit in order to let me get a good feel for the game.
Now that Dice Masters had it hooks in me I found myself scouring the web for Dice Masters forums later that night. I was surprised at what I found. Although simple on the surface, there are different metas just like MTG. Surprisingly, control, ramp, and aggro are all archetypes shared by both games. Being a sucker for a good control deck in MTG,I’ve gravitated towards that strategy for building my DM team.
I can’t recommend this game enough. If you are looking for a fun, quick, low cost game then give Dice Masters a shot. Starter sets will run you $15-$20 and booster packs are only a buck a piece. It’s not all rainbows and kittens though. Some people have complained about the quality of the dice and the fact that the cards in the booster packs come a little bent (not creased though, big difference). I think I’ve only noticed a few dice with chipped paint so far and I’ve remedied the bent card problem by storing them in a card album for a day or so. Works wonders. Those issues aside, I’m pretty happy that I was introduced to this game. Feel free to leave your opinions/thoughts on Dice Masters below. Like it? Love it? Hate it? Let us know what you think! As always, thanks for reading!