A short while back I got my grubby mitts on the first TMNT box set and shared my opinions on it.

My big complaint (although I don’t think it came across as that) was apart from the two two character team lists for the first learning game. There was no team lists for a two player game.

So new players who bought this box of dice and cards were left to figure out what to do with all these remaining cards and dice.

Is it really fair to throw new players (who might be young as it is an IP that appeals to a younger demographic) in the deep end like that?

In an ideal world this and other sets would have come with team lists or preconstructed teams ready to play.

So the aim of this post is to suggest possible teams for owners of this Dice Masters set to play with.

If this proves popular or useful when I slowly catch up on sets that I missed during my really long hiatus from the game after giving some initial thoughts on the contents I’ll do a similar post.

I will also warn you that I may not have played the suggested teams at time of writing the post! But the intention is that I will, and the post will be updated with any tweaks. Currently as I write this post if you have read my life, the universe posts I’m working 7 days a week for the next two months until my notice period is up for my current job. And my only gaming opportunity is a Tuesday evening. My stats for the next two months are going to be abysmal.

TMNT vs Shredder

This is obviously the first couple of teams that players will want to do. The classic confrontation between our heroes in a half shell and their arch enemy.

Looking at the cards available I think this is how they might be expecting users to use the set. However the turtles side doesn’t have eight characters! It has two Splinters(different art) but you can’t use two Splinters using the official deck construction rules! So you are a character down for the turtles side.

I chose the four basic action cards below because I thought they would fit in with both teams.

In the team lists below I give the card name followed by the number of dice in brackets.

TMNT Player

• Casey Jones: Mutant Hunter (2)
• Fugitoid: Professor Honeycutt (1)
• April: Ninja in Training (3)
• Raphael: Anger Issues (3)
• Leonardo: Leads (3)
• Donatello: Donnie (3)
• Michelangelo: Mickey (3)
• Splinter: Sensei (2)

Basic Actions:

• Give Me a Break!
• Cowabunga!

The idea of this deck is to use Casey Jones as a way to swing in with your other dice unblocked. Delivery a killer blow.

April is there to try and get any turtles out of the bag as quickly as possible and to thin out sidekicks. As is Splinter.

With the turtles themselves I’ve tried to combo off the fact there are other turtles fielded or reduce the cost of purchasing turtle dice.

Shredder Player

• Mousers: Spare Parts (3)
• Foot Ninja: Ninja Syndicate (3)
• Fugitoid: Neutrino Scientist (2)
• Baxter Stockman: Evil Scientist (3)
• Rocksteady: Armed and Dangerous (3)
• Bebop: Troublesome (3)
• Krang: Technodrome Commander (1)
• Shredder: Oroku Saki (2)

Basic Actions:

• Special Delivery
• Reckless Abandon

The aim of this team is rush out and do as much combat damage as possible as quickly as possible using characters that have been buffed.

Mousers is there to punish the opponent for fielding characters that have a when fielded ability. It gets a +1 to attack and defense. Sadly it doesn’t stack.

Foot Ninja is there to go under the radar, gets buffed up by the number of sidekicks. Unlike Mousers there is no limit, and includes sidekicks fielded by our opponent. So potentially this could be very large indeed. Using the Cowabunga! Action die with it makes a solo buffed Foot Ninja deadly.

Baxter is there is get Mousers out quicker once they hit the Used area.

Fugitoid is included to try and slow down the opponent and buy time to get our plan into action.

Rocksteady and Bebop are there to get a boost off of each other.

Krang is just a body to have if we need a hard to remove big hitter.

Shredder is just a source of direct damage and another big hitter.

Next time in one of these posts…

I’m going to end this post with a sneakpeak of my plans for these posts. The next box set on my list to purchase is the WWE one. These days I’m a closet WWE fan. But I’m sure when this arrives the post will have you bored rigid with my WWE memories. Plus my friend Gavin (he who has a playmat somewhere) is a WWE fan, and will gladly play this set with me. In fact we are thinking of dipping our toes into Heroclix and its WWE stuff. But that’s a totally different rabbit hole to fall down.

Let me know what you think of these teams. If you played them how you got on.