{Dice Fight}
(Week One - Single Energy)
Building a single-energy team for a weekly Dice Masters event
Raise Shields!
This week's Dice Fight is all about that single-energy strategy, and we've got some fun plans to try out. Win or lose, it is going to be fun either way!
With a focus of flooding the board with sidekicks, using Range to keep the opponent down, and then pushing through with buffed attackers, we're in for some excitement.
What's Going On?
Dice Fight is a weekly online event run by DM: United focusing on fun variations on normal Dice Masters gameplay. I've been trying to get into these events so I can my fix in, so let's see what this week has in store for us!
This week's format is Single Energy - in short, every card on your team (BACs excluded) must be of the same energy type, and every global ability on your team must use that energy type (or be generic). No crossover characters, all one type of energy! There is also a ban list meant to eliminate problem cards and push players towards some more fun and outside-the-box plays.
With that out of the way, let's check out my team for the week! I've built several single-energy teams in the past as a casual player, just to give myself a challenge and flex my creative muscles, but the one I had the most fun playing was my Shield-energy team.
So What's the Plan?
We've got a few interlocking pieces here to cover, so let's break it down in three parts: the combo, the control, and the tech.
The Combo
Alfred is a double-duty all-star in this team. With his ability to recover from KO's like nobody's business, plus his Ally keyword, he gives us a solid blocker that also functions perfectly with Atlantis. Furthermore, since his ability says you "may" roll a sidekick, you can choose to let him get KO'd if you know Atlantis is coming up!
With Alfred and Atlantis churning, drawing, and fielding sidekicks, Venerable Dreadnought comes in to give the entire board Range 1. Now all of those little guys can shoot down your opponent's characters to clear a path for them to come through unblocked!
The final piece of this team is a bit of an offbeat option: Maria Hill. Her ability basically says that if she attacks and isn't blocked, along with another Shield character, both of them will go to your Prep. This means your unblocked attackers are ready to go next turn, your Gazers are ready to Intimidate again, etc.
All these pieces come together to give us some powerful board effects and an engine that keeps itself running.
The Control
Range provides us some control, but for some more substantial control elements, we can dip into two options: Gazer and Gelatinous Cube.
Gazer gives us a cheap source of Intimidate, which does two things: it clears out any tokens we might have to contend with (looking at you, God Catcher), and it lets us temporarily bypass problem dice that Range can't deal with - really big guys, anything that prevents non-combat damage or can't be targeted, etc. Additionally, if he attacks and isn't blocked - along with Maria Hill - he goes right back to Prep to be used again the following turn.
Gelatinous Cube - Master Ooze has two features. First, it can block any number of sidekicks. So if we face any sidekick teams, we've got one big guy to block them all. Second, his ability lets us lock up a critical piece of our opponent's game plan. If we can use Range to take out one of their important pieces, we can have the Cube hold on to it indefinitely.
These components give us just a little extra control beyond our clearing abilities with Range.
The Tech
Finally, we have a few different things that add some finesse and tech to our strategies.
We have the obviously-useful global abilities on Becky Lynch and Resurrection. One gets our dice straight into Prep when we buy them, and the other gives us more ramp and churn. Neither of these should come as a surprise to anyone spending shield energy.
Foetid Bloat Drone gives us a couple of things: he's got a global that lets us dump a sidekick for some more draw (either to get them cycling or to potentially restart a stalled Atlantis). He also is a decent body on the field that can help flood our board with sidekicks when our Range strategy starts to fire.
Finally, we have Transfer Power. A decent die on its own, the global is what we're here for. We are hoping to clear our opponent's board with a combination of Range and Intimidate, but that doesn't do us much good if we're only getting a couple of 1A characters in for damage. Transfer Power lets us steal our opponent's attack before we KO them, so our Maria Hill and Alfred can swing in for even more damage!
The Aftermath
Unfortunately this week, our team was only able to participate in the first round before life interfered, but that first round was a doozy! Our opponent was running a Bolt-based team and we were off to a slow start.
The first turn, we failed to roll a single shield energy even after the reroll, so we opted for purchasing Resurrection and passing the turn. The following turn we finally hit the energy we needed, and grabbed an Alfred and an Atlantis to get our engine moving.
A couple more turns passed relatively uneventfully, purchasing a few dice and fielding a couple of sidekicks. Then it happened: the dream turn, the turn that we built for.
We pulled Atlantis, Alfred, and two sidekick dice. We already had an Alfred and Dreadnaught in the field. After roll and reroll, we had one energy, Atlantis showing an action face, a sidekick, and a level 1 Alfred in our Reserve Pool. Using Atlantis, we fielded a sidekick which drew and rolled two dice, hitting another sidekick character face. We did this four times in a row, plus used Resurrection to grab another Alfred.
Our board was stacked with sidekicks, and we had purchased 3 Maria Hill which all hit the field this turn. We bought all three Gazer and attacked with all our Maria Hill and Alfred dice. We burned our opponent's board down, hit for 8, and moved all those attackers to Prep.
The following turn was another big hit as our board refilled, thanks to Maria Hill, and we hit again. The following turn ended the game when Gazer came through with Intimidate and Range sealed the deal.
As expected, Venerable Dreadnaught was a great asset, and Maria Hill pulled her weight admirably. Atlantis remains as fun as ever to generate those massive, dozen-dice turns that it is capable of, especially when using Allies.
Closing Notes
Thanks so much to DM: United for hosting these events, and thanks to the wider Dice Masters community all the fun times we've had so far. We look forward to many more games and many more events!