This past weekend, the folks at Breath Weapon X held the third of their Community Tournaments… aptly titled: Breath Weapon X Fest 3. It was an online event where 24 players from across the world took part in…
What is Dice Masters XL you ask? Well, it is the brain child of Wizkids own Jimmy, who came up with the idea of making Dice Masters bigger. You can read all about the details of this Event here, but if you want the Cole’s Notes version you can check it out below:
- You will start the game with 30 Life instead of the usual 20.
- Instead of 8 cards and 2 Basic Actions, your Team will be made up of 10 characters/actions and 3 Basic Actions.
- The maximum number of dice has been increased from 20 to 24 for you to include on your build.
- Your Team will start with 12 Sidekicks instead of the normal 8.
- Each turn, you will draw and roll 6 dice instead of 4.
Other than those changes, the rules of the game are the same. Reduce your Opponent’s life to zero to win the game. This event made use of what is known as the “Orange Ban List” that removes some of the more powerful cards from the card pool.
What Did You Play?
Even with a ban list in place, there were so many choices to build with given the Golden card pool. The question was what was I in the mood for. I toyed with the idea of a Satchel Team, maybe Infinite Giganta, possibly something more meta? I decided to break out something that I have not played in an exceptionally long time, and is really fun to to run… Pennyburn.
For those unfamiliar with the combo, it revolved around the uncommon Alfred Pennyworth from the World’s Finest set. Alfred has one of the most unique abilities in the game, where if he is KO’ed, he has the chance to return if you can successfully roll a Batman or Sidekick die from the Used Pile. Your odds of this increase dramatically if you focus on the Sidekick die as it has a 5/6 chance of rolling the required energy face (compared to the 50:50 of Batman). For the most part, Alfred is nearly indestructible. Cool ability, but not exactly a win condition by himself.
Enter these guys…
Bruce Wayne creates and engine to KO Alfred, which will allow Aquaman to deal out Retaliation damage. But wait… Aquaman is Justice League affiliated, while Alfred is Bat Family. How will Retaliation work?
I am glad you asked that dear reader! There are actually a couple of options to make this work. Both the Trusted Friend Basic Action and the Rare Dick Grayson (both from World’s Finest) have a Global Ability to give a character the Bat Family Affiliation. So, to make Retaliation work on this Team, you need to give Aquaman the Bat Family Affiliation before you KO Alfred.
You also need a way to start the engine. Bruce Wayne does not work by himself. You need to start things off by KO’ing Alfred an alternate way. There are numerous ways to achieve this goal with Globals, so it is really a pick your favourite tool here. For this build, I decided to go with the Rare Green Goblin from the Avengers vs X-men set. Green Goblin has a Global Ability that allows you to KO a Sidekick for a Bolt AND deal two damage to another character. One Bolt equals two Alfred KO’s.
Now we have the damage engine in place, but how does it work? This involves a few steps to get going, but once it does, you have the potential to OTK your Opponent (as long as the dice rolls are in your favour).
- The first step, obviously, is to have your Field set up. To pull this off, you will need two Alfred dice (ideally), one Bruce Wayne, and one Aquaman. Four dice in total is not unreasonable to achieve. The other part of this step is to make sure you have a Sidekick in your Used Pile. The combo does not work without that.
- Next, as already explained, you will need to give Aquaman the Bat Family Affiliation. Make sure you have that Mask in your Reserve Pool to do that.
- You need to KO the Alfreds with the Global Ability of your choice (in this case Green Goblin). That brings the energy requirements for the combo to one mask, one bolt, and a Sidekick in Used.
- When Alfred is KO’ed, both he and Bruce Wayne trigger. As the active player, you decided the order of how these abilities trigger.
- Choose to attempt to bring back Alfreds first. Assuming you roll the energy face on the Sidekick from your Used Pile, he returns to the Field Zone at level one. This deals one Retaliation damage from Aquaman for each of the Alfreds that were KO’ed.
- Now trigger Bruce Wayne who will deal two damage to a character die for each of the KO’ed Alfreds. Deal two damage to each of the Alfred’s who just returned.
- They are both KO’ed again (as their defense is 1 on level 1) and the cycle repeats until to fail to bring back Alfred.
If you are lucky with your rolls, you can do loads of damage with this engine. The great thing about it is that you can even trigger it on your Opponent’s turn. What happens if you fail your rolls though? Well, you will still get a trigger from Bruce Wayne that you can use on your Opponent’s characters if that helps. Otherwise, you need to find another way to capitalize on those KO’s.
We are already committed to a Bat Family centric Team here, so slapping on Vigilante Justice on your Team should be helpful. If this rolls when you are ready to fire off the Pennyburn engine, each KO will deal the Retaliation damage AND will remove a non-Bat Family character from the other side. A board wipe is possible if you string enough KO’s together. Have enough damage in the Field when it is cleared, and you can march in unopposed.
Remember Dick Grayson? His character ability gives him stat buffs when Alfred is KO’ed. Put him in the Field before you trigger the combo and you will have a giant character in no time. However, given the high 6 cost, it might be better to consider Ork Nob. Ork Nob has a similar ability, but lower buffs/KO. He more than makes up for it though with his low cost and high max die count. Pennyburn could potentially power up an Ork army to send against your Opponent.
So, there is the core of this build. It just needs some accessory pieces now. You’ve put up with the long winded description on how the combo works, so I will try to speed through this part a little faster.
First, let’s have a look at the utility pieces that help make the magic happen. Having the Sidekick in Used at the right time is critical to the whole combo working, so Create Food & Water’s Global will hopefully help that happen when things are not set up properly. Rip Hunter’s Chalkboard is there to bump things to the Prep Area as fast as possible in order to get the combo organized quickly. Supreme Intelligence is there for when the Alfred rolls whiff. You can zip him back over to Prep when you are unfortunate enough not to roll him on a character face when needed.
Since this is Dice Masters XL, we have more than enough slots to work with, so let’s add in a little more utility. Although Ramp does not appear to be a big deal in this Format, Resurrection is there for the Global that may help you set your bag right when things go wonky. Oracle is there to disrupt Globals, and I am expecting to see PXG a lot in Breath Weapon X Fest 3.
The final piece of the puzzle was some protection against strategies that work against combat damage (such as Static Field). Batgirl will prevent both Dick Grayson and Ork Nob from being bounced back from the Static Field Global. I don’t know how often I will resort to the combat strategy, but at least I have something to help it.
Phew… that was a long one. Thanks for putting up with that. If you are still here, read on to see how the Team played in Breath Weapon X Fest.
Round 1
Round one was against DavidC and his Captain America infinite damage Team. Could Alfred perform his magic right out of the gate?
Round 2
The second round of the afternoon was against one of the co-hosts of the Breath Weapon X Fest 3, MrMcCat himself. He was running a Volo-centric Team. Check out the video of the match below.
Round 3
Finally PXG shows his face with rawtravel. Lots of nasty control to stop my Team from doing what it needed to do. See if the Butler could still do it in the video of the match.
Round 4
For round 4, we jumped back across the ocean to face the NefariousBroadcaster. Old school Johnny Storm and Hulk rose from their AVX graves, along with a pesky Raven that would limit my opposing targets. Let’s check out how the match went below (thankfully… someone was keeping the right score in this one).
Round 5
NEVER SAY DIE THOR!!!! Not the character I wanted to play against with my Team. However, a boogeyman from the past showed up in Colossus. There is a solid combo that could hit the modern meta with the soon to be released Dark Phoenix Saga (assuming rotation stays the same).
Post-Mortem:
When this Team works… it works. Even though Alfred started to get tired as the afternoon went on, I had a blast running it the entire day. In the Dice Masters XL Format, there are more than enough tools to make the combo happen. In a regular game, you need to be a little more selective in your card choices.
I really liked the inclusion of Ork Nob here. It provided both a cheap source of Masks and a smaller, cheaper version of Dick Grayson. I think with some refinement, this might be a better choice than Dick. Green Goblin provides the perfect Global to get the whole Pennyburn train running. Thank you to ccm00007 for pointing me towards that Global.
I liked pretty much everything else on the Team except Batgirl. While she provided an excellent ability here, I never once considered purchasing her. Definitely a flex spot that can have something else. Resurrection was another one that I did not use a lot. With the Dice Masters XL Format, energy was never really hard to get. Ramp felt not as important in the game. While helpful, it is for sure a card I would consider replacing with something else.
Overall Pennyburn is a always a fun combo to play. I’ve played it before and I will certainly play it again. The Dice Masters XL Format gives it so many tools to play with.
Enough about the Team, let’s talk about the Event itself. Breath Weapon X Fest was a blast, and the Community is always fun to interact with. Whether it was the players themselves, or those hanging out in the Twitch chat, it is always a pleasure to hand out with everyone. The Format itself was quite fun too. Bag management was much more difficult with the extra dice in circulation, but not having to really worry about having enough energy to buy something was a nice change. However, if I play in this Format again, I want to aim for the bigger characters. You know the ones that you never play with because they are just too expensive? This feels like the Format to dust those cards off.
Thank you again to the gentlemen from Breath Weapon X for running this Event. Thank you to Jimmy for sharing the idea for this Format with the Community. Thank you to the Community in general for being as awesome as you always are. Thank you in particular to comicsmike (who could not play in the Event) for helping me clean up my original mess into something a little more streamlined.
Did you play in Breath Weapon X Fest? How did you find the Dice Masters XL Format? What changes would you make to Pennyburn to make it more effective? Grayson or Orks? Let us know in the comments below, on our Socials (@dmNorthTV), or join the conversation on our Discord.
Thanks for reading!
– jourdo