The thing I love about games such as MtG, Vampire the Masquerade Rivals, Netrunner, Ashes, etc is the deck construction.
I love putting some cards together that express an idea, a plan, and playing them. Sometimes it works, other times (more often) it doesn’t. You either give up on that idea or make some tweaks.
Decks are living things! As new cards come out I’m always evaluating whether there are cards that would fit into one of my decks, and if they would are they better than what I already have?
So naturally it’s a side of Dice Masters that I like and enjoy.
It’s also a side I need to do so that I can play with Nathan. I will need preconstructed teams for us to pick up and play. After all he has zero cards and dice. It also has the knock on affect of giving me decks I can use with friends.
I’m also going to need to build teams if I want to play in events in person or online.
The Basics
So what are the basics for building a team in Dice Masters?
Over on the official Wizkids Dice Masters site there is a page about constructed with the rules on.
A constructed team is when you select
“… eight Characters or Action Cards, and 20 corresponding dice. And… select two Basic Action Cards.”
However it’s not as simple as that, and like owning a gremlin there are some rules we need to remember when selecting and building our team.
- Each card must have at least one die assigned to it.
- No die may have more than its max # of dice assigned to it.
- No player may bring more than 20 Character or Action Dice.
- A player may not bring two characters with the same name, even if they have different subtitles (i.e. Wolverine: Wanted, and Wolverine: Canucklehead).
- Each player must bring exactly two different Basic Action Cards.
And that is all the advice that Wizkids give in building your teams for constructed.
But like life it’s never as simple as that there are other things you need to take into account when selecting your team.
What cards can I use?
Before building your team and taking into account the other things that I mention below. You first have to decide what format you are building for.
The format defines which Dice Masters sets you can select your cards from for your team.
There are two official Wizkids constructed formats, Modern Age, and Golden Age.
Modern Age is the Dice Masters version of Standard in MtG. At the time of writing legal sets to chose your cards from are any sets from and including Avengers Infinity Gauntlet. Although once the House of X set drops this will change. There should be an official post about this on the Wizkids Dice Masters site nearer the time.
Golden Age is the Dice Masters version of Vintage/Modern in MtG. The easiest way to describe this is its every set that’s ever been released for Dice Masters.
There is also a format called Global Escalation. I’m not sure how popular this is but it was a format voted for by fans I believe in a survey Wizkids ran. On the survey it was described as an “unlimited constructed tournament where cards without Global Abilities that made the finals of World Championships…US Nationals … will be disallowed.” So basically a Golden Age format with a very particular ban list.
Just to complicate things more there is also an official Ban list. This list is a list of cards banned by Wizkids by format. Why would they ban them? To keep the formats healthy and competitive. Some cards are just broken especially with cards they were never designed to be used with. So it’s worth taking the ban list into account whilst building your team.
There are also a few unofficial formats that content creators, players have come up with. You can look up any rules for those formats as and when you need them.
So having selected the format, you know what cards you have to choose from. You are now ready to start building the team.
The make up of a team
The team we are building is 8 cards. Plus 2 basic actions. No more. No less.
In those cards we have to do a bloody lot. In reality we may not be able to do all of them.
I like to choose a card to build around. This card is usually one that I plan to win the game with. This is my win condition.
Obviously winning the game involves knocking our opponents health down to zero. This can be done by direct damage or by combat damage.
With my chosen card I need to be able to describe how I’m going to win the game. It could be as simple as “I’m going to swing in with my character and do lots of combat damage to my opponent in one go”.
It is possible to have more than one win condition. A plan B or C so to speak. But you will need to also be able to describe what those win conditions are.
Black Panther Resisting Doom with its “while Black Panther is active, if you attack with 6 or more different fantastic four affiliated characters, you win the game” could be your plan B for a fantastic four affiliated based team. Equally it could be your plan A!
Not being able to describe how you can win the game could mean you haven’t fully understood how that card works, or how to play it properly.
Next we need 2 or three cards that either combo with our win condition or have a synergy with it.
Let’s take current darling of the competitive scene Master Mold Endless Sentinels. This card could potentially with the right support cards be getting you three tokens a turn! But only if you are able to field it each turn.
The type of cards we would want to use with Master Mold are ones that allow us to KO our own characters. Preferably a global ability.
The reason I say a global ability and not rely on a character dice is because as long as we have the right energy for the global ability we can trigger that global ability before damage is allocated (I would recommend becoming familiar with the timing of when you can activate global abilities throughout the different stages of a turn).
That’s where a card like Dark Phoenix Destructive Force comes in. Depending on other cards selected you only need one die on her. She is there for that nice global ability. Which synergises nicely with how we want to abuse the ability of Master Mold each turn.
So our plan is buying Master Mold as quick as possible, and as soon as we draw him, field, attack, and KO each turn to create as many tokens as possible. Our win condition most definitely is overwhelming our opponent with these tokens and smashing them with combat damage.
So that is an example of the sort of synergy or combo we are looking for.
You can also see from the Black Panther card that affiliations can be powerful and also combo or synergise nicely with each other giving stat boosts etc.
Master Mold isn’t a cheap die to purchase. It’s 6 shield energy. And the card you select may be just as costly or even more expensive! The problem is we are only rolling 4 dice a turn. Or are we?
Don’t forget any dice we have in our prep area we are also rolling at the start of our turn along with the 4 drawn dice.
Obviously any KO’d characters go to our prep area. But using character abilities, global abilities, and action dice it is possible to get more dice in the prep area. The more dice we are rolling the more likely we are to get the energy needed to buy the more expensive dice in our team.
We also need to consider churn. Or how quickly we can get through our bag to refill it from the used area and start accessing all those great dice we have purchased in the meantime. Now our ramp abilities (which ever form they come in) can help with this! Especially if they are allowing you to take side kicks out of the bag or used area and place them in the prep area. Thus giving us a greater chance of drawing the dice we want. Or our ramp could be in the form of an ability reducing the cost of our next purchase.
So far we have looked at the types of card to use to get us the win. But what about our opponents threats? We need some way to get rid of them. So at least one card needs to allow you to remove a particular target die on your opponents side (handy for those big hitting one off threats) or get rid of all of the characters fielded by your opponent. Aka a board wipe. Believe it or not some people like to spam out lots of cheap little characters and inflict a death of a thousand cuts by overwhelming you with numbers. You may need both types. A card may be great at removing lots of small threats but no good for much larger ones.
If we have cards that give us ramp and churn, plus targeted removal and a board wipe. That’s our 8 cards already. But we have something else to include card wise as well!
I have an admission and don’t hate me for it. I like playing blue in MtG. Being able to disrupt or slow down your opponents game plan is not going to win you the game. But it does buy you the time for your plan to kick in. So having a card or two that allows you to throw a spanner in the works of your opponent is important also. That spanner could be forcing them to reroll a fielded character for example. Or it could be an ability that switches off your opponents card abilities.
How many dice?
Remember you are giving your opponent a big hint about which cards are really important to your game plan and which aren’t by the number of dice you have on them. Generally if a card has the max number of dice allowed it’s pretty important. But as I showed above in the Master Mold and Dark Phoenix example that’s not always the case. The card maybe there just for its global ability.
Final advice
Remember whatever global abilities you have on your team they are also available for your opponent. And vice versa. It may be unavoidable that you really need a global ability that is great for an opponent no matter what team they are playing. However the more specific and less general you can get them the better.
Try not to make your team all expensive cards. It makes it very hard for you to get dice out quickly. Giving your opponent time to kill you off before you even get a chance to follow your plan. Ideally you want a nice cost curve that builds from one or two cheap two or three cost dice up to that expensive one you want. So that you can buy characters from turn one and start getting your plan into action asap.
Don’t forget to test, test, test, your team. Make notes about what worked, what didn’t. Did you need more dice than you allocated for a particular card. Make a note of which teams yours didn’t do well against. Why? No team is perfect. But repeated plays and tweaking them will make them stronger. Just don’t play it once and if it doesn’t work bin it. One play is not enough to decide if a deck works or not.
A final bit of advice look at other peoples decks especially from major competitions. Try and work out why they chose the cards they did. What are the synergies etc.
Team building can be fun and rewarding despite the impression I give above.
