Hello Dice Masters Fans! Last night, the Team of the Month (TOTM) returned after a brief hiatus due to the One Big Weekend held in April. This month, the challenge was to build not 1, but 4 mono-energy Teams to participate in what we called “Energize”. You can find the details of the format here.
This was a fun casual night with great people and (what turned out to be) a great format. Here were the Teams that participated:
Ben Scott
Dan L
Kim
Matt J
Matt B
Michael I
Reg S
Ryan W
Laurier B
This is not a Format that I had played before, but I really liked the idea of it. I enjoy things that take a little control out of the players hands and force them to work with what they have. This Format offered that in spades. You really did not know what combination of cards you would be playing in a given game. The Team you would play was left up to the roll of a die (or dice in this case).
The challenge for me in this build was trying to decide if I would build 4 Teams that would work independently, or attempt to stitch these pieces of Frankenstein together somehow. I chose to go the independent option myself (for better or for worse).
For my Bolt Team, I went to one of my favorite combos: Iron Man/Pepper Potts (you can read the original article on these two here). Flood the Field Zone with Pepper Potts with Iron Man active and attack over and over again. Boom Boom and Thrown Brick were for Ramp and burn damage. Parasite was to help make Pepper bigger… but I brought the wrong one to the games. I lived with my error and this basically became a dead card for me.
I got to only play this Team once on the night, but it was by far my favorite of the bunch. I love the Tony/Pepper combo and Boom Boom/Thrown Brick is not too shabby on its own. I would probably keep this build exactly as it is… but bring the right card with me next time.
I decided that I would finally play around with Strike on my Shield Team. Aquaman made the cut because of his cheap cost. Amber Golem was to help with recycling the King of the Ocean in order to gain better use of Strike. Bizzaro helped with making Aquaman’s attack just a little higher (really, this was the only way to pump him with this energy type). Domino was on this build just to try out Energize (but I didn’t use it all night).
This Team proved to be the most interesting for me. Strike was not terrible in this case. Aquaman is cheap enough that you can usually get him out early and hit at least once with him. Then the challenge is recycling him to repeat the process. Looking back at the build, Domino could have (and probably should have) been replaced with something like Blob. The threat of control is not a bad thing here (but was not what I was going for tonight).
My Mask Team was a no brainer. I was going to try and line up the new Dani Moonstar with Doom Lance. Poison Ivy and Ra’s al Ghul were my back-up plan. Mister Miracle was to help with recycling my Doom Lance dice after they rolled… in theory. This mini-Team is one I want to expand upon in the future as I think it will be really fun to run as a more optimized full Team build.
This was my most disappointing Team of the night. Scarlet Witch made short work of it the times I got to play it. Dani was also uncooperative in her first game. I fully believe this should have been one of the better of the mini-Teams, but it just misfired on the night. I still like the basic build, but it needs some help to make it better.
The Fist build was my most difficult. I really did not know what I wanted to go with. I figured a Batman/Sidekick strategy would be worth trying here, so I added in some Ally’s to buff the overall number of Sidekicks. Dark Beast was, again, an experimental card to see what Corrupt did (Spoiler: It did nothing tonight).
I was very indifferent on this Team. I neither liked it or hated it. I am sure there are better Fist combos to be had out there. While this is a decent combo, it just didn’t call to me like the other Teams did when they were in play.
I decided to say “to hell” with control for the evening and just let things run. There are lots of holes and weaknesses in these builds, but it was more about just running different win conditions and see what worked. There was really no synergy between the different energy types, and that was probably to my detriment. All of these Teams worked as independent machines.
With only 4 cards to work with though, it was difficult for me to put all the necessary tools to deal with all of the problems onto each build. Also, I wasn’t really in a defensive mood on the night. Other players did bring control to the table and those options definitely made their Teams work better. I feel to be successful here, you definitely need to find the right balance.
As I actually had the chance to participate tonight, I did not get a chance to see the variety of Teams in action. I encourage the other players to drop their thoughts on their Teams in the comments below.
Round 1
- Laurier (W) vs Ryan
- Ben (W) vs Matt B
- Kim vs Michael (W)
- Matt J vs Reg S (W)
Round 2
- Ryan vs Matt B (W)
- Matt J (W) vs Kim
- Ben (W) vs Michael
- Laurier vs Reg S (W)
Round 3
- Matt J vs Michael (W)
- Laurier (W) vs Matt B
- Ryan vs Kim (W)
- Ben (W) vs Reg S
Round 4
- Matt B (W) vs Kim
- Ryan vs Matt J (W)
- Dan (W) vs Michael
- Ben vs Laurier (W)
The TOTM Leaderboard looks like this now…
Congrats Ben for holding on to the top spot. Thank you to everyone who showed up for a fun night of Dice Masters. A special thank you to Ryan W and Matt B for their first visit to our monthly event. It is always great seeing new faces joining the online scene. This was a very entertaining Format, and I encourage you to try it in your local scene. It makes your basic Team Building much more challenging, as well as making your actual games a little more unpredictable. This is definitely one that I can see making a return to a future TOTM (… and maybe even a future WDA???).
See you at the next TOTM!
– jourdo
A thoroughly challenging format, lots of intricate play here, even if you had a strong combo setting it all up with only 5 slots, it’s hard to make it fire perfectly.
It was a great format. I went with the idea of 2 defense and 2 offence cards on all energies. I made sure the offence were in sync with the other ones so it didn’t matter what rolled. Cards like wong that pump sidekicks and unblockable really did well.
Very fun event! Made 4 teams that seemed to have the best 4 cards of that energy type, without thought to how they might pair up with the other teams. Next time I’ll build one 16 card team and split it up into four. Brought wrong BAC for one team, making it all but useless. Oh well.
Really enjoyed the fellowship of this great group. Everyone was very welcoming and patient when my noobness showed. Thanks to everyone and can’t wait for the next one!