He may look cute, but he is just a little ball of mischief. For the record I didn't name him!

One of my early favourite cards from Dice Masters is the Loki Gem-Keeper card. It was a staple in teams especially ones that aimed to control the other player. The ability to shutdown a character and stop it being fielded is powerful.

For Loki Gem-Keeper to work it needs to sit in the field doing its job stopping that character being fielded. To aid in this Loki has a high defensive value but a low attack value. The Level 1 version with careful management can be used as a blocker and stay on the field, but when you get a level 2 or 3 version you have a great blocker too.

The nice thing is if you have Antman on your team with the global that allows you to swap the attack and defence values of a dice you also have a potential killing blow as well.

In the DC set that's just been released Loki Gem-Keeper has been replaced by The Joker Clown Prince of Crime. Same cost, same effect, slightly worse defensive stats but slightly better offensive stats. Is the trade off worth it? I'm on the fence about it, undecided. I think that The Joker is more dangerous than Loki, so having a better attack is more thematic.

Now I am a big Joker fan, so when it comes to choosing one for use in a team my heart will pick The Joker every time. But sometimes the head has to rule, and if I'm going to do the Antman global then I'm going to have to go Loki.

Onething I'm playing with, with some of my teams is the use of overcrush to do the damage to the opponent. It forces the opponent to think about which dice blocks which attacker. It negates using sidekicks as blockers for those with high attacks because the excess damage carries over. Into this scenario having them allocate a sidekick or low defence valued blocker to a Loki Gem-Keeper and then pulling the switcheroo on Loki's stats could be the game winner. A one off trick, then the surprise next time won't be there and they will be looking for it but that distraction may let another hitter through.

I'm not going to look into how to buy the dice for either because there are so many ways now in the game to do that whether it's reducing the cost or drawing extra dice to roll to get the required energy to purchase the dice.

I like Loki the character, and having a dog that lives up to the name does make life interesting. Loki Gem-Keeper still has a place in the current meta of the game in my opinion. Despite my love of The Joker I think Loki edges it over Joker. What do you think?