Last night was our weekly lcg/ccg/tcg night at Fenland Gamers.

We would once again be drafting Dice Masters. But this time using the Dark Phoenix Saga display box (contains 8 draft boosters) that I picked up for £40 off eBay.

Which was a bloody bargain. These retail at £80 plus usually. So being able to pick one up so cheaply was not an opportunity I would be turning down.

Hopefully I can get a bargain Secret Wars to draft in the future.

Our session was attended by Dave, his friend Zack, and myself.

Zack had not played the game before but was familiar with MtG. So we had a learning game where I cracked open a draft booster (I’d not included the two origin packs this time). I chose a couple of basic action cards, and a couple characters for each of us to learn with. With Dave helping/advising him, Zack and I played a greatly cut down game of Dice Masters.

Zack picked the game up quickly, helped by his MtG experience.

After the game we cracked open three draft boosters and commenced to draft our cards.

The teams lined up as follows:

My Team

• Psylocke: Telepath
• Kitty Pryde: Right of Passage
• Lilandra: Politician
• Corsair: Recruiting a Crew
• Mister Sinister: Biologist
• Professor X: Uncanny Leadership
• Storm: Cloud Cover
• Rogue: Mrs. X

Zack’s Team

• Professor X: House of X
• Wolverine: Pure of Heart
• Iceman: Frozen Fists of Fury
• Storm: Extreme Weather
• Angel: Wings Over the World
• Bishop: Tortured Timeline
• Blink: Skilled Combatant
• Cable: I’ll Do This All Day

Dave’s Team

• Corsair: Criminal Record
• Toad: Looking for Comradery
• Gladiator: Psi Resistance
• Colossus: Skilled Painter
• Blob: Depowered from M-Day
• Master Mold: Targeting Mutants
• Bishop: I’m Back!
• Lilandra: Politician

Basic Action Cards

• Mutation (randomly selected from discarded cards)
• Making the Team (Zack’s choice)
• Power Bolt (my choice)
• Lab Test (Dave’s choice)

Which Multiplayer format did we go with?

The multiplayer format we went with was Hunter (see yesterday’s post for a description of it and others). I thought this would be the easier format to go with having a new player with us.

Each of us chose a basic action card from the ones we drafted to go in the middle as a common pool, plus a fourth was chosen randomly from the remaining discarded basic action cards.

We also went with the first player handicap for everyone but the last player on their first turn.

I really liked this format. I hadn’t played Hunter before in Star Realms. So had no idea what to expect!

This format does force some hard decisions on you. You want to swing in and hit your opponent on the left. But at the same time not wanting to leave yourself wide open to an attack from the person on your right.

It was a delicate balancing act that was not easy to pull off.

In our game I did get an initial free hit at Dave who was on my left. And then after that chipped him away with a Power Bolt. Which was how I knocked him out. Freeing my attack phase up for getting in a sneaky unblockable attack on Zack.

But in the later half of the game I started making purchases that’d allow me to deal with Zack’s scary team. Wolverine and Ice Man were not a nice pairing.

That planning may have been for nothing if Zack had rolled better and been a bit more aggressive.

But in the end I ended up victorious.

Yeah I thought Dice Masters worked as a multiplayer game. Can’t wait to try the other variants that I covered.