Long time no speak! It has been a long time since I wrote up something actually related to Dice Masters gameplay. This past Tuesday, the stars aligned, and I was able to participate in The Weekly Dice Arena. They were running a MODPDM prep, where you needed to build a Modern 10/10 Team.
For those unfamiliar with the 10/10 Format, you build your Team from 10 different sets. You cannot have more than one card from any one set on your Team… except in this case. In the MODPDM Format, they are allowing two cards from the Infinity Gauntlet set. The idea here was to allow this set to shine a little more than the pandemic has allowed it to so far.
With this in mind, I took my current first draft Team to the WDA.
What Did You Play?
The Team: MODPDM@WDA.
Let’s start with the win condition… Jubilee. It is obvious how she works. Field her for burn damage and swing with her to put pressure on your Opponent. With the option of directing her damage to either the Opponent or a character, you have the flexibility of removing blockers for a potentially big swing. I am maxing out on her dice as I want her cycling as much as possible.
Everything else is to make Jubilee work better. Yawning Portal is the early purchase to buy Jubilee for even cheaper, as well as a way to negate her annoying level 3 Fielding costs. With the Supreme Intelligence Global, Yawning Portal should be cycling easier. The Collector serves to power the Yawning Portal discount with his Global, but opens the door to shenanigans with his ability should the opportunity present itself. Energy Field is the engine to allow The Collector to work should I want to go that route.
Let’s talk about some of the tech now. My gut says that God Catcher and Becky are still going to be tops in the 10/10 Format. For that reason, I put in the “other” God Catcher. The theory being is that I get a big character should you choose to use those characters. Is this a good deterrent? Who knows, but it is a cheap bolt that could serve multiple purposes.
Asuka is the next tech pieces as Jubilee can be easily shut down by lots of things. For that reason, Asuka is necessary. Her Intimidate ability will remove the likes of Black Widow, Drax, or Typhoid Mary. Basically, anything that could prevent Jubilee from hitting the Field can be removed with Asuka.
Since I am a very Bolt centric Team here, I included some Globals that could benefit from that energy type. Iron Lad is my main Ramp engine, and should be fairly easy to trigger with my Jubilee plan. Finally, I am including Excessive Ordinance for the Bolt buff Global. In a pinch, I could also buy the action for another removal option on those annoying characters.
That leaves one slot for this guy…Vision:Behold! What is his purpose on this Team you might ask? I had some major shenanigans planned with him, but realized they did not work how I hoped. I forgot to remove him from the Team link. Maybe something will happen where I can actually use him tonight? Otherwise, he is a wasted slot.
So the plan is in place. Buy Yawning Portal to buy ALL THE JUBILEE DICE!!! Then field and burn until I am eventually set up to swing for the win. Sprinkle in the other pieces as needed.
How did the Team perform? Let’s see how it ran on The Weekly Dice Arena.
Game 1:
Game 1 was against my fellow Canadian SuperK. You can check out her account of the WDA here. This one was on stream, and you can check out the VOD on Twitch at FinalRossBattle. She was going with a modified Pizza Burn Team using the Rare Corvus Glaive with Poxwalker to whittle down my life. Without much defense against this on my Team, I had to hope to out race Corvus. I had the absolute worst first turn where I rolled only a mask and shields. If you noticed in my Team build, these are fairly useless energies for me. I was forced into a T1 Nefarious Broadcast purchase.
Eventually, we both got our engines running but Corvus proved to be a little faster off of my slow start and I was bleeding damage. My early Nefarious Broadcast purchased proved useful as it disrupted SuperK’s ability to ramp on my turn, and leave useless energy in her Reserve Pool. We continued to trade damage, but she was consistently ahead of me in the race and I was soon down to my last 2 life.
A critical missed Black Widow opened the door for me as she had to keep her Corvus in the Field as a block instead of recycling it. This allowed the magic to happen where multiple Jubilee’s hit the Field at once and cleared out her blockers. With the stats and buffs from spare energy, I had enough to come back for the win.
1-0
Game 2:
My second game was against Rawtravel and his Becky (you know the one) Team. I probably should have gone for God Catcher early in this one, but chose to stick to the Yawning Portal and Jubilee plan. I got pretty consistent burn in this one until Becky hit and punched me for a very large chunk of damage (as she does).
I made the pivot to God Catcher to try and deter her from doing her thing, which led him to pivot to Poison Ivy to take care of my God Catchers. His pivot slowed down Becky enough to allow the Jubilee’s to start hitting.
I was able to hit with a Jubilee board clear with enough damage to finish the job. I got lucky that the God Catcher was enough to keep Becky back long enough for Jubilee to do her thing.
2-0
Game 3:
The final game of the night was agains the King of Jank himself Jackalopespam. He brought a classic Bobby Heenan/Bloat Drone Team. He quickly locked out Jubilee with Drax. I chose to get fancy to bring Asuka in with Collector instead of straight up purchasing her… which was a mistake. It did allow me to bring another Jubilee out, but Bobby/Drone was tricky to work around. Once it KO’ed Jubilee, it was really hard to get her back in. I was forced to hard buy Asuka and he doubled up on his Drax dice. With two in the Field I was in trouble.
I resorted to purchasing Excessive Ordinance to help with the removal, but it was too little, too late to prevent the lethal across the board. The loss of life from Bobby/Drone softened me up plenty and forced a lean Field on my side. This opened the door to a lethal push with his remaining characters.
2-1
Post-Mortem:
As a first draft of this Team, it worked pretty well. The Yawning Portal engine definitely made it easier to get to Jubilee and helped to get her out to do her thing. The bolts definitely paired well with the Iron Lad Global, which was not hard to trigger given dealing damage is what Jubilee does easily. Supreme Intelligence was critical to keep Yawning Portal moving around as needed.
God Catcher definitely did the job it was meant to do by providing a threat when Becky showed up. Definitely a keeper. Asuka was decent removal, but became an issue with recycling her. Still not a bad option to have Intimidate available on the Team.
I liked The Collector for the Global, but really did not find him useful as a character. As a result, I don’t think I would keep Energy Field on the Team going forward. Excessive Ordinance was an excellent way to dump Bolts into a Global for that final push, or to help KO Jubilee.
That leaves Vision. He was a mistake at the beginning and was a mistake at the end. Definitely room for almost anything else in this slot.
Overall, I was happy with how the Team ran on the night. I definitely saw some of the flaws that need to be addressed here, and that should be easy enough to change up for version 2.
Will I run this on the MODPDM weekend? Nope… but I think it has some potential.
What do you think of the Team? What would you change to make this a better version for the MODPDM? Let us know in the comment below!
Thanks for reading!
– jourdo