Marvel Dice Masters: Avengers vs. X-Men

When I first heard about this game I was on the fence, I own Quarriors and whilst fun, it needed the expansions to really fix a game that traded off the fact it contained all those cool dice. So when Wizkids proposed this new Marvel licensed version I kinda suspected more Quarriors with different dice, cue cash in.

Well I was wrong, the returning Quarriors designers Mike Elliot and Eric Lang have completely overhauled the original rule set making it play much smoother and quicker and most importantly more fun.

To address the elephant in the room, yep its a collectible game but at a low price point especially compared to its closest rival Magic, and you get dice with this not just cards. Quality wise its of the standards we’ve come to expect from Wizkids with most of the dice easily identifiable and I only had a couple with some dubious paint over the symbols and I have to say they look cool. The card stock is pretty thin mind and once removed from one of the booster packs will require flattening over night beneath a copy of Twilight Imperium before you can realistically use them without looking like a stack of pringles. I picked up a bunch of boosters and have to admit to having some glee at popping open each new pack and watching what dice tumbled out, i don’t remember feeling that giddy rush of excitement from opening something since my days of collecting stickers for my Return of the Jedi album. The most heart stopping moment was when a Green Goblin die dropped out and my heart gave a flutter as I pulled the cards free in anticipation of a SR, only to find that during the sealing process they had become glued to the packet. Several tense moments and heart palpitations later left me with a damaged but serviceable common Gobby phew.

So anyway lets get onto the game, is it any good? Yes is the answer. Is it better than Quarriors? Again I’d say yes. The starter version of this game requires far deeper strategic thinking than Quarriors and has much more interaction. And whilst there is some choice to be had in this set, you are going to need to buy some boosters to make the most of what this game can offer. This is also far more of a mashup between deck builder and dice game than Quarriors managed, and I suspect this is originally what was envisioned for that game. So once you’ve taken the dive and amassed a collection of heroes from the boosters you can really start to build a deck to play to what ever strengths you enjoy, some heroes compliment each others abilities and can be combo’d together for devastating attacks, once playing the luck of the dice rather than the random draw of cards dictate how you build and play your deck. Its a simple but deceptively thinky version of the original Quarriors and I like what they’ve done.

You start each game with 8 basic dice with symbols for each of the 4 different energies you will use to buy your heroes, a basic sidekick character and a question mark that you can use as any of the symbols. Once you’ve bought some heroes and rolled them you can field them onto the play area, then either choose to attack your opponent or hold them back to defend. Many of the cards offer perks for having already fielded heroes which will boost attack and defense, or even damage any dice held back by your opponent for the same purpose. Your overall goal is to whittle down the opposing players 20 points of health by breaking through his wall of heroes defense he will be trying to build up.

The fighting works exactly like Quarriors with the character dice having 3 levels of power and a cost to field, a attack score and a defense. When you attack an opponent your attack is blocked by whatever characters he chooses to defend you with, if your attack is more than that dices defense then its knocked out of play and has to be re-rolled on his next turn, the same will happen to any of your heroes beaten by a defenders attack. However if your attacker survives without taking damage above its defense score then it goes back to the fielded zone ready to attack again on the next turn. If your opponent has nothing there to stop your attack then you deal that amount of damage from his 20 health and then your dice is used and will be cycled back into your bag.

And that essentially is the game, build your deck and then field your heroes using their powers to boost your attacks or defense scores. There are also some basic action dice available for either player to buy that give modifiers dependent on which cards you choose.

I really like what they’ve done with this, its a simple game to teach so it will certainly bring in fans of the comics with little or no gaming experience, but it also has enough meat on its bones to satisfy the more hard core among us. Yes you are going to have to sink some cash into this to get everything, but with the variety of powers and cards on offer you can still field a decent force and learn the ropes without having broken the bank. It comes down to a few simple questions you have to ask yourself, are you happy to buy into the collectible model and will you know when to stop?

Dice Masters is a fast-paced (unless your opponent over-thinks all his moves, hehe), very accessible ($0.99 per 2 random die & cards) dice game.

Components

A team consists of 8 basic dice, 6 action dice and up to 20 character/item dice (which can be a mix from the 8 character/item limit you can bring as your team, taking in consideration the Max amount of die for each one of them)

This can be obtained within a Starter Pack ($15 – still very accessible) or can be shared by someone who already owns it (since the starter has everything for a 2-player setup)

Time

Once the rules (pretty confusing in the instruction booklet, pretty easy once you get to play) are learned and you have played 1 game, the flow of the game goes really fast, which is something I like about this game.

Game mechanic

Pretty much an offensive dice-building game where your main objective is to lower your opponent’s HP to 0, centered in a Marvel (soon DC) theme.

I believe the success the game its due to the very accessible price for the boosters and also the amount of dice one can handle in a match (its just something about rolling from 5 to 15 dice at the time, lol), aside from being a fast game.

Each turn you grab 4 dice from the the die bag and roll them. You choose to keep any (or all) of the die you rolled, then proceed to roll the rest again.

If you chose to keep energy, you can buy a character/item/basic action as long as you have enough dice as marked in the upper left corner of their card and at least 1 of those dice has a face as the one in the card (bolt,mask,shield,fist – no need for a specific energy when it comes to buy basic actions)

If you get a character’s die face (once you have some of them in your bag) or a sidekick face, you can field them by paying their cost, which needs from 0 to 3 energies.

In the case of the action die (an exclamation sign), you don’t need to pay them. You just use them in your main turn.

Once you buy, field and/or use all your dice, you can go ahead and attack or pass your turn.

When starting your next turn, if you are unable to pull 4 die from your bag, you grab everything in it and put all the used die inside, grabbing the ones you need to have 4.

Rinse and repeat 🙂

One thing that changes the amount of die you roll at the beginning of your turn is that when a character is knocked-out, it doesn’t go to your used area, instead, it goes to a Prep area, where it stays until your next turn and then it is included (as extra) with your 4 normal dice from the turn.

This is just an overall review of the game and their mechanics, of course. Once you start playing, you will see there are more advance things to learn, like the “in transition” area and the timings of abilities, along with Global abilities.

Opinion

Wizkids took a great thematic and grabbed a nice, cheap and fast gameplay (also addictive…catch ’em all!) into a mix and got himself a winner.

Best enjoyed casual at the beginning (since OP gameplay requires more strict rules – but this changes once you master all of them!), this can be played by anyone and at any time.

I know I am going to take some heat from some people but I played this last night as it is similar to Quarriors but just a little harder but I prefer Quarriors. If you know Quarriors and you’ve played MtG this will be easier for you to pick up. It has elements of Q in it in that you pick people/dice but it’s different in that your people can’t be chosen by someone else. You roll and attack with your dice but there is more strategy cause unblocked dice do dmg then are lost by the player and defeated dice are returned to be used the next time and I’m probably confusing people. I do recommend playing it but maybe play Quarriors first. If you enjoy it great but I’ll play Q over this anytime.