So, an off-hand comment last week gave birth to the idea for a new variant. Casually, we joked that we should just play other Teams that were set up instead of moving our stuff around between rounds. We thought about it and said… Why not? So, let me introduce you to what we will call Dealer’s Choice Dice Masters.
I brought a deck of cards tonight and drew out a pile of red cards and a pile of black cards in numerical order based on how many people where there (in our case 6 tonight). The way we did things was we assigned each seat a number (1 through 6). Each Team was randomly dealt a card from the black deck and moved to the corresponding seat number. Then, each player was randomly dealt a card from the red deck and they played the Team that was at that seat number.
In between rounds, the process was repeated. The Teams were randomly moved between rounds and you sat at a different seat each round. It was possible you would end up with the same Team if the cards were in your favour, but you really did not know what you would be playing.
Our only rule for this night was that you couldn’t build a purposely garbage Team. You were asked to build something fun that you would actually play.
What Did You Play?
The Team: Guardians Rising.
So, this build was built for this event. We have a young player playing with us and I wanted to build something really simple that they would be able to understand without much trouble. I also wanted to mess around with the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Mantis and Cosmo were the Ramp engine here. Essentially, this is Hush ramp for Guardians. Also, any Guardian that got KO’ed would provide Ramp. Not a bad little combo. Groot was control by preventing annoying targeting effects against my Team.
Star-Lord was put there in case of Overcrush. With all the other Guardians present, he would be indestructible. Gamora was put there for a way to remove Blockers and her Global would help KO big problems.
The big hitters were Rocket and Drax for combat damage. Rocket would get boosted by other Guardians and Drax gave a static buff to all the Guardians. Yondu was my direct damage option as he would have lots of Guardians to play off of.
Teamwork was to add to the Drax/Rocket damage and Coordinated Strike seemed like a good removal option. With Groot fielded, I would be safe from its effects.
Let’s see how it ran… and if I got to run it.
Game 1:
No Guardians for me. I got dealt this Team, and was up against SR Yuan-Ti. This one was built by our younger player and I think it was more or less characters she liked. No problem. I knew the game was more or less over the minute he bought the first Yuan-Ti. I made it my mission to get a Flash through at least once. If I accomplished that goal, I would consider it a moral victory. I was burned as you would expect, but thankfully it took a while as there were not many cheap actions to buy. Psylocke proved to be decent removal against Yuan-Ti and her Battle Stacks. I did eventually die, but I did get a buffed Flash through exactly once.
0-1
Game 2:
Lady luck was on my side for the second deal. I got dealt this one. This was not the same Team I played against in the previous Round. We actually had multiple SR Yuan-Ti builds out tonight. That has never happened before. The Team was up against my Guardians build and it was being played by the same player who just Yuan-Ti’ed me. The game went as you would expect with lots of BS Attune damage for just buying stuff. However, I had to eat a fair bit of combat damage to keep my Attuners alive. Pretty sure I bought an ID card or Candlekeep to win. It was fun to burn the person who just burnt me though.
1-1
Game 3:
The cards were dealt again and me and Yuan-Ti moved to the same spot. I would be playing that same Team again. This time, it was up against a different Guardians build. Two SR Yuan-Ti Teams and two Guardians Teams. Who knew? This game went even faster as my opponent could not roll anything to same his life. Attune and giant Wasps took him down fast. He also let me buy up all of his Confront the Mighty’s which removed any characters he did manage to roll. I won by buying Big Entrance, mostly for the lolz.
2-1
Game 4:
We decided to end our night by playing the Teams we actually brought. We dealt cards to randomize the seating to determine our opponents. Funny enough, I played against Alan (who was the same player I played against in Games 1 & 2). This would be our rubber match and it would be Guardians vs Guardians. The ramp engine worked extremely well in this game. However, he had Yondu and Adam Warlock (to double When Fielded effects). I burned with my Yondu, but he burned way faster. The Guardians defeated the Guardians.
2-2
Post-Mortem:
This was a fun night. You really had no idea what you would be playing until you sat down at the table. It made for some interesting decisions. It was also neat to watch others play what you brought. Would they play it as you planned?
I will say that I really did not get a chance to play around with my build to know if it worked well. I did feel a little bad when I would field a dog and kill a dog for extra dice. Not bad enough to stop since it was really effective. Between the two Guardians Teams that were there tonight, there is probably a really good Team there. I am not sure the pieces I brought were the “best” but I wanted to keep things simple for the new player. I also got stuck in “theme” mode and needed to have the core MCU Guardians on the Team. I will definitely be revisiting this affiliation down the road. With the recent releases, there are some great tools for the Guardians to play with.
I encourage you to give this Format a try in your local scene. It allows major variety to your night.
Have you ever tried out something like this? How did it go? Let us know in the comments below!
Thanks for reading!
– jourdo