Hey everyone,
Long time no see! I had a bit of an accidental hiatus recently, mostly caused by work. But we still met for some Dice Masters games in the last couple of months, and you can expect some articles in the next few weeks as I catch you up with my most recent teams.
And for the first of these three articles, I bring you the…
Venomous Dreadnaught
The Team: Two removal engines with a…symbiotic relationship.
Ok, so if the title’s not a dead giveaway, this team is focused, first and foremost, on removal. Venom is a classic, making every non-fist on my opponent’s side of the board weaker. This negates sidekicks and softens up bigger threats, putting those characters in Dreadnaught’s…Range, as it were, making them easy to KO. Add to that Archnemesis, which allows me to take characters with high defense (e.g. Blob) and give them defense equal to their attack (sometimes KO’ing them instantly thanks to Venom). So yeah, my objective is to make it so my opponent has no board presence whatsoever.
But removal only works if I have some way to damage my opponent. I’m going for a strategy of “go wide” and damage through numbers. Doing this means relying on sidekicks, so I put in Green Goblin (NOT Gobby – that would’ve been too easy) and Agent Brand, both to make my other character dice stronger and get to 20 total damage I need to win.
Now, I’m aiming to purchase a 4 cost and a 6 cost, so I need some ramp or something similar. I went for Blue-Eyes for the global – it helps to put some of those higher costs within reach. And since I’ll be using Venom, the second he’s on the board, that global becomes almost one-sided because my opponent can’t have active sidekicks on the board anymore. Now, with that global, I should try to add a “When KO’d” effect for fun, so…let’s add backup removal! Hello, Nitro! KO him with Blue-Eyes and you can get most control out of the way. To make him better, I also put in Bold Last Stand. Because that global gives +2D per energy spent, even the highest defense characters are within reach of Nitro’s ability.
Now, I only have 2 cards left, and I need some more consistency, and some way to mitigate a lack of churn that could lead to a messy bag. So first up, The Bifrost. That one pulls double duty. First, the global can turn sidekicks into energy to give me that last bit needed for a big purchase (or an essential global). Second, that action allows me to entirely bypass my bag, fielding characters the turn they are purchased…so long as I have characters to field. And here is where Crystal comes in. She makes it easier for me to field sidekicks and trigger Bifrost’s ability. The same sidekicks I’m looking to have anyway as Blue-Eyes fodder, or to buff with Goblin or Brand. So that is one character I’m definitely fielding good about having.
And with all of that said, on to the games!
Game 1:
My first game was against a Bolt bonanza (Firestorm + Merlyn). My opponent had Shriek, and seeing I had too many removal threats, he blanked Goblin to slow my win condition. Needless to say, Venom came by to say hello, as did Dreadnaught. All I needed were a few more characters and I then charged in for the win. Rough matchup for him unfortunately.
1-0
Game 2:
I then faced off against a Brotherhood team. This one was a bit more intriguing because I had to be careful how many characters I KO’d – he used UC Madelyne Pryor (DPS) who would get stronger each time I KO’d his affiliated dice. Considering this team KO’s characters by the truckload, I was concerned. But that concern was misplaced – while Madelyne was certainly a threat, I had a big enough board to block her with no consequence, and forcing my opponent to keep fielding his characters (including R Blob) quickly took a toll. Archnemesis really shone here as it allowed me to KO Blob with Range easily. I kept doing smaller attacks to pick his characters off, waited for my moment, then charged in, KO’d everyone except Madelyne, and dealt more than enough damage to win.
2-0
Game 3:
My next match was against Jocasta, with R Black Panther serving as removal. This was a tough matchup for me not because of Jocasta (Venom + Archnemesis and/or Nitro can take care of her) but because of Black Panther. He’s really hard to get off the board with this team (I’ll elaborate in the post-mortem) and since I rely on numbers, Panther having a 50/50 chance (or more) to remove a character each time I field a character is just terrible for this team.
So of course, this went about as I expected. Everything was fine until Panther hit the board, then it all went to heck. One time I only had a high-attack character active with no way to prevent Jocasta from hitting, I took a lot of damage, and a couple of turns later my opponent simply had the numbers to charge in. She won.
2-1
Game 4:
For my last matchup, against Ultraman. This was an interesting one as it was a bit of a race. I knew I couldn’t keep a huge field since she uses One Against Many (one Kryptonite + Ultraman trigger and that could be nasty). So I ended up with an early attack that dealt 11 damage (including a lvl 3 Goblin), which was the right move – when she finally used Kryptonite with Ultraman, she chose not to attack with her UC Dwarf Wizard (which was unblockable) because she needed the blockers. She could’ve won with a second Kryptonite (she had one in the bag), but I got a Bifrost with some Agent Brand dice in Used, and that allowed me to field enough characters to charge in for the win.
3-1
Post-Mortem:
-Venom and Dreadnaught are a logical pair to use together in part because each one stands well on its own. My opponents often neutralized one with their control but couldn’t stop the other. Even just one was often enough to limit my opponent’s board presence enough to give me the opening to win. But despite that, I insist that putting both wasn’t a “win-more” move, it was a backup plan which was needed, and effective.
-Nitro with Bold Last Stand…didn’t impress me. It was too energy-hungry a combo considering I didn’t have much ramp. This stuck out notably due to Nitro’s nasty fielding costs.
-And that brings me to being up against Black Panther in round 3. That Panther’s stats are huge! I knew I could get within reach of KO’ing him, but it takes so much energy (2 to 3 shields plus the bolt to do Blue-Eyes’ global) that there isn’t much I can do for the rest of the turn unless I’m rolling massive (PXG-level) ramp. I overestimated Nitro’s ability to remove bigger threats. And because Panther’s removal triggers whenever you field anyone, I couldn’t rely on Venom (or anyone else) sticking around to make my job easier. It was really my worst matchup.
-Crystal was really the glue that held a lot of the shenanigans together. Being able to field sidekicks more reliably just made both the ramp and win condition far more reliable. So she was typically a good early purchase, and I saved Brand for the finishing touch (ideally purchased when I can field her with Bifrost the same turn.)
-Yes, I could’ve won much more easily if I put the SR Gobby instead of the common. But I wasn’t going to go that route. That is all.
So there you have it. I will have another article coming soon about another team I ran the following week. Want a hint? Let’s just say that after running a team with almost no ramp, this next team hit the spot. So what do you think is coming?
Let us know in the comments below, on our Socials (@dmNorthTV), or join the conversation on our Discord.