A couple of weeks ago, on the DM Unlimited Face book page, Jimmy Darwin O’Brien dropped a little reveal of a few spoilers from the upcoming Dice Masters set “Th Dark Phoenix Saga”.
You can take a look at the original post here: Jimmy’s Spoilers on Facebook. With all that’s going on at the moment (I’ve been catching up with work in the evenings so I can look after the kids during the daytime) it’s taken a few week’s for me to take pause and have a closer look at them, but I’ve finally got around to it so here I am to share a few thoughts on the spoilers with a classic BritRollerSix spoiler review.
Update! If you’re here because you want to see Dark Phoenix Saga spoilers then you need to know that since these came out we’ve had a number of further Dark Phoenix Saga spoilers here at BritRollerSix/The Ministry of Dice. You can find ALL of our card pics of every spoiler in our gallery here: Dice Masters Spoilers from Unreleased Sets or you can check out our spoiler vids (with thoughts & commentary) on our YouTube playlist here: Dice Masters Set Spoilers, Set Reviews & unboxings.
If you’ve not read a spoiler review before then all you really need to know going in is that I like to document my “first look instincts” and jot down what stands out to me about the cards, and discuss… well… whatever occurs to me about them really.
So… without further ado… here is the review…
Rally
A classic Basic Action Promo from the very first ‘Avengers Vs X-Men’ Organised Play sets makes a return.
First up – check out the sweet artwork from the new “Dawn of X” re-boot that kicked off last year, written by Jonathan Hickman. I can’t remember exactly, but I’m pretty certain this set is going to include full art Basic Action cards so this will be a beauty to get out on the table.
As to the game-text – a 3 cost Basic Action that’s going to get you 2 or 3 Sidekicks in the field from your Used Pile is definitely going to have it’s uses.
My most immediate thought is that it’s an excellent way to thin your dice cycle of Sidekicks to get to your juicier stuff much quicker. Clearing a handful of Sidekicks out of the Used Pile at the right moment, just before a cheeky ‘Atlas’ global, could be just what you need to fix your bag.
Then you’ve got the Sidekicks themselves. There’s loads of great stuff you could combo with this card. Maybe you could get them buffed up with cards like ‘Batman – Strikes Terror into Criminal Hearts’, ‘Charlotte Flair – The Queen’ or a well timed ‘Black Widow – The Widow’s Bite’. Another idea that springs to mind is to use them as fodder for a churn machine like ‘Foetid Bloat Drone – Plague Probe’, or find a way to KO them to have some fun with ‘Lord of Contagion – Plaguereaper’. You could just use it with the ‘Venerable Dreadnaught – Custodian of Knowledge’ to get some mad Range numbers up.
And that’s just what occurs to me immediately – there’s so many possibilities.
Cyclops – First Class
This card is of note as a glimpse of the new keyword in the ‘Dark Phoenix Set: “Founder”.
The keyword doesn’t have any inherent mechanics attached to it – its a tag to inform other interactions, and I’m super-curious to see what else comes with the ‘Founder’ tag.
Update! There’s been some more examples of the “Founder” keyword revealed since the time of writing this article. If you’d like to take & look and read some of our thoughts on the new keyword then you will find them here: Keyword Profile – Founder.
I’m especially interested to know if there’s going to be a low cost ‘Founder’ coming that would combo well with ‘Cyclops’ to rinse/repeat the character damage to keep your opponent’s field nice and low. Maybe there’s a new 2 cost ‘Beast’ who has the ‘Founder’ keyword? Time will tell…
Let’s not forget he carries the X-Men affiliation too so can be copied by ‘Hope – Pluripotent Echopraxia’. With both in play you could field a single ‘Founder’ card to fire 4 points of character damage across the field. He’s got some fairly decent attack stats too, so if that clears a field down you could be knocking 25% or more of your opponent’s life off.
Definitely one to keep an eye on and see what interesting synergies there are in the rest of the set.
Bishop – Tortured Timeline
I have definitely got my eye on this guy, for some very specific reasons I can foresee.
I’ve got my eye on this guy as a counter to all the spinning & re-roll shenanigans that are being used/will be used as removal.
Right now there’s ‘Becky Lynch – Maiden Ireland’. Already, in a short window before we got locked down, I’d seen the potential devastating effects of a well-timed ‘Becky Lynch – Maiden Ireland’ (I don’t have lucky rolls LOL) thinning or clearing a field with her ‘when fielded’ re-roll game-text.
AND, coming in the ‘Avengers – Infinity Gauntlet’ set, there’s even more tricky re-roll & spin down stuff. Take a look at this guy who made a bit of a splash at the Preview Draft in Memphis last year and was spoiled by the good folk over at DM North:
(Although, now I’ve popped that pic in here I’m wondering whether there is some kinda thing about whether that’s actually “spinning down”. Rules Lawyers Assemble in the comments below!)
In any case – that’s a sign of things to come, and ‘Bishop’ is the staunch, immovable blocker that you need with this sort of stuff knocking around.
Mystique – Relentless
Another card that teases some combo potential or card synergy that we’re yet to see, but gets us all frothy about the possibilities.
As far as globals go I’m not often a fan of 2 cost ones, and in a draft setting, with the chances of the same affiliation across teams high, I have to wonder if this is putting something out there that might carry a bit too much potential benefit for my opponent.
What I am curious about is what the ‘Wolverine’ cards in set are going to look like and how much combo potential there is going to be with this ‘Mystique’. There could very well be a nice double handed where there’s a ‘Wolverine’ that plays nice with that global.
Deadpool – #1 Draft Pick
The community be loving this next card for it’s comic-lore meta referencing, 4th wall break.
This card has sooooo much possibility in a set designed for the draft format. We’ve only seen a small selection of the cards but even without knowing what’s knocking about any card that reduces purchase cost is going to be useful. It’s a Common rarity too, so grabbing one up in a draft will not be too difficult, you’ve just got to hope you get to one first.
I mean… I don’t know that there’s much more to say – you need just one of these (don’t even need to scoop up more for extra dice really, unless you want to keep it from your opponents!) and you’ve discounted that pricier win condition and put it more in play.
There we go folks – a few thoughts on the cheeky Dice Masters spoilers that Wizkids fired out on the Facebook page Dice Masters Unlimited. It’s great to see them teasing at a reasonable pace, as well as engaging more over the social media channels with the DM community so a big “Thank you” to Jimmy at Wizkids for that.
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How do you feel about these spoilers? Excited? Unhappy? What stands out to you? LEt us know in the comments below…
