MoDPDM@UK Games Expo – Dice Masters Tournament Report

For a number of years now I have gone to the UK Games Expo. Its a large tabletop games convention that takes place annually at the Birmingham NEC. The press release states its the largest convention for the hobby in the UK and the 3rd largest in the world. all kinds of tabletop gamers flock to Birmingham for a weekend of hard tabletop convention-ing for the event. Wargamers. LARPers. Card Gamers. Boardgamers. Role-players. You name it – there’s something for everyone.

Dice Masters has had a long history at the UK Games Expo. The first ever UK Nationals event took place there, and a number more since, and we’ve run MoDPDM events through the UK Games Expo too. It’s always been a great opportunity for the UK Dice Masters community to get together and roll a few bones.

This year, after a bit of back & fourth in the current Pandemic, the UKGE was a “go”. AND, when UK Government restrictions were announced to change on the 19th July, the opportunity to hold a tournament was back on the table. So, with a bit of a rush, we hustled together a little casual event to get the MoDPDMs we run over here back in action.

Read on to find out more about the MoDPDM @ The UK Games Expo…

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What’s an MoDPDM?

If you’re new around these parts you might not be familiar with the phrase “MoDPDM”.

Roughly 4 times a year the Ministry of Dice organise a face-to-face Dice Masters events in the UK, although, clearly, not in 2020.

We call them MoDPDMs, which stands for “The Ministry of Dice Presents Dice Masters”. They are intended to support UK players and UK stores by bringing the community on our little island together for some Dice Masters. We like to mix up the competitive and the casual, often running events with a variety of team building restrictions or house rules.

It involves us travelling all over the UK to host these, with this being our second event associated with the UKGE. With a little bit of hustle and some preparation we arrange the venue (a FLGS or Convention), set up ticketing, get some lovely swag for prizes, and run the tournament on the day.

This is the second MoDPDM we’re hosting at the UKGE (the first was at the Virtual Expo in 2020) and we were excited to be invited to host once again.

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The Event Details

As the opportunity to run the event was a bit short notice, and because in the current circumstances we anticipated a reduced turn out; we elected to go with a more casually focused format that we’ve used before.

This format was Golden Single Affiliation, with a few additional restrictions in place:

• We limit the Villain affiliation to secondary affiliations
• BACs must match your affiliation’s IP
• There was a short ban list (so you’ll not see any Hope, Tsarina or Green Goliath’s knocking about)
• Actions had to be thematic to your affiliation

We were running the event over a maximum of 4 Swiss rounds. This wasn’t going to be an issue because we were capped at a maximum player count of 16 (so we could spread out and socially distance effectively). There was to be no rounds at time; we have a house rule that highest life wins when the timer goes off.

OK – with all the context out the way – let’s take a look at the team lists…

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Players & Team Lists

We had a total of 10 players attend the event, including myself.

Here are their team lists…

Seth

Errr… I grabbed the teams by taking quick photos of everyone’s playmat, BUT, once again managed to miss one out (Seth’s) but putting my finger over the lens! Classic Chris. When Seth or his Dad reads this I’m certain I’ll get a message with the team info, and will correct accordingly 😉

Let’s see how long it takes for them to read it LOL

Me

Basic Action Cards

• Resurrection
• Thrown Brick

Characters/Action Cards

• Hawkgirl – Shiera Sanders
• Watchtower – JLA Headquarters
• Aquaman – Arthur Curry
• Hawkman – Anti-Gravity Belt
• Green Arrow – No Fancy Ring
• Firestorm – Host of the Matrix
• Batman – The Smart One
• Superman – Man of Tomorrow

Paul

Basic Action Cards

• Power Almighty
• Thrown Brick

Character/Action Cards

• Batgirl – Babs
• Bruce Wayne – International Playboy
• Batman – Fearless Leader
• Utility Belt – Anything You Need
• Alfred – MI-5
• Nightwing – Flying Grayson
• Dick Grayson – Brand New Bat
• Robin – Reckoning

Rob

Basic Action Cards

• Thrown Brick
• Thrown Car

Character/Action Cards

• Green Arrow – No Fancy Ring
• Hawkman – Antigravity Belt
• Firestorm – Jason and Ronnie
• Plastic Man – Patrick O’Brian
• Aquaman – Arthir Curry
• Batman – The Smart One
• Zatanna – Being of Magic
• Doctor Light – Actual Doctor

Alex

Basic Action Cards

• Villainous Pact
• Nefarious Broadcaster

Character/Action Cards

• Ebony Maw – Supernatural Persuasion
• Black Dwarf – Powerhouse
• Proxima Midnight – The Black Order
• Black Swan – Our Lady of the Apocalypse
• Thanos – Preparing the Way
• Supergiant – Mind Control
• Corvus Glaive – Madness

Mike

Basic Action Cards

• Static Field
• Truce

Character/Action Cards

• Wonder Girl – Cassie Sandsmark
• Raven – Rachel Roth
• Static – Virgil Hawkins
• Robin – Teen Titans Team Leader
• Dove – Danger!
• Starfire – Koriand’r
• Cyborg – Technis Imperative
• Hawk – Might Makes Right

Hugo

Basic Action Cards

• The Outsider
• Resurrection

Character/Action Cards

• Poison Ivy – Criminal Because of Love
• Scarecrow – Chose Poorly
• Hall of Doom – Headquarters
• Gorilla Grodd – Stronger Than You
• Black Adam – Banished
• Black Manta – Deep Sea Deviant
• Solomon Grundy – Cannot Be Killed
• Parasite – Maxwell Jensen

Stuart

Basic Action Cards

• Anger Issues
• Investigation

Character/Action Cards

• Iron Fist – Pulling Punches
• Jessica Jones – Ladies’ Night
• Luke Cage – Street Sweeper
• Hellcat – It’s Patsy!
• Clea – Star Crossed
• Doctor Strange – Book of the Vishanti
• Hulk – Banner’s not Home
• Eye of Agamotto – Reside Within the Amulet

Ben

Basic Action Cards

• Superhero Registration Act
• Whoever Assembles

Character/Action Cards

• Mary Jane – MJ
• Scarlet Spider – Ben
• White Tiger – Mystical Amulet
• Spider-Man – Tangled Web
• Miguel O’Hara – Spider-Man 2099
• Silver Sable – Wild Pack
• Madame Web – The Great Web Unravels
• Web Shooters – Webbing all Over

Martin

Basic Action Cards

• Investigation
• Counterstrike

Character/Action Cards

• Pepper Potts – Virginia
• Rescue – Resilient
• War Machine – Rhodey
• Motorcycle – Vroom!
• Avengers ID Card – Making It Official
• Iron Man – Bucket of Bolts
• Iron Manor – Celestial Slayer
• Iron Spider – Too Cool for Words

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My Team

As you can see above – I decided to run a Justice League team list. The combination of a recent house making dice access a little difficult, and recently discussing Green Arrow on a YouTube video, led me to pick them as my affiliation of choice.

I’m also pretty well known for being a spammy direct damage player, so wanted to go for something that won with combat damage. I felt it was too easy for me to revert to form and throw together a Boom Boom or Jubilee X-Men list, or a Black Manta Legion of Doom list.

The objective was simple – build a wall of Justice League characters then use Green Arrow’s game text to clear my opponent’s field for a big, 20 damage push.

Thrown Brick, Resurrection, Aquaman and Batman were going to help me afford to field characters. Firestorm was going to give me some targeted removal. Everything else was about maximising Attack stats – Hawkgirl spins up, Hawkman gets bigger, Superman gets bigger, and the Watchtower buffs everyone.

No bells, no whistles, no shennanigans, no janky globals or combo play. Just BIG Justice League characters. LOL

I know, right? It’s not like me at all.

Here’s how my matches went…

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The Matches

Round One – Ben & the Spider-Friends

First up I was facing our reigning World Champ, and DMUnited contributor, Ben Said Scott…

After a split beer can crisis (its OK folks, Ben had the technique to ensure no beer was wasted) we set to it, completing two games in our 50 minute slot.

In both games I stuck to the plan – Aquaman & Thrown Brick turn 1 & 2 for purchasing power, and then buy Justice League characters to work on my wall.

Ben did the same; picking up his Superhero Registration Acts for ramp then moving to Scarlet Spider and Mary Jane to start dealing some damage.

I knew that my team was a slow burner and had the capacity to do 20+ damage in one swing, so I suffered some early Overcrushing hits from the Scarlet Spider/Mary Jane combo biding my time. With this sort of strategy its important to not sweat the early damage and keep your eye on the prize.

A nice move Ben used against me was to increase Overcrush damage here & there by buying one of my Thrown Bricks and dropping it on my blockers in the Action phase of the Attack Step. The use of my Thrown Bricks was to become a theme for the day – everyone bought at least one off me!

Ben had a defence stat problem though – many of his characters were pretty low on the lower levels, and I didn’t need much of a Justice League wall to make the most of Green Arrow. With just a handful of characters I was able to clear the board and hit for lethal.

The second game went much the same way, although I’ll confess that Ben’s repeated whiffing of Superhero Registration Act (in an effort to ramp and buy his bigger stat’ed defence characters) meant I got a good head start.

With Batman, Hawkman and Watchtower the attack stats maths soon added up, and a timely Green Arrow brought me to two wins in the round.

1-0

Round Two – Mike & the Teen Titans

On to my second round and I was playing Relentless Nettles himself; Mike.

I stuck to the plan, setting about my ramp (Thrown Brick & Aquaman) and beginning to get my wall of Justice Leagues characters together preparing for my big swing.

Mike had a plan of his own. He started grabbing his control with Raven and Static. Mike’s team was an issue for me because he had some big defence stat’d Titans – and Mike knew it, grabbing characters like Dove to make my Green Arrow effectiveness minimised. I was also mindful of the Static Field he had brought too.

I stuck to the plan and continued to try and build my wall of JL characters to reach a high enough count to board clear with Green Arrow. BUT, as I grew my ranks so did Mike and it was becoming increasingly tough to pull ahead.

Eventually Mike picked up two of his Starfire dice, and was able to get both out in the field. He swung for an attack and halved my life in one go. I had no choice but to deploy my Green Arrow and go for a big swing, but my only hope was that Mike made a bad decision when it came to blocking and bad rolls when his Raven regenerate text went off.

He didn’t – and while I managed to give him a good bloody nose he was able to roll his characters back in to finish me off with Starfire.

1-1

Round Three – Alex& The Black Order

It was time to face Alex and his 1 cost Thanos…

We fit two games into our best of three this round. Alex moved swiftly in both games to get his Thanos discount engine going and bought more of the big guy than any one person reasonably should through our 50 minutes together.

Knowing that Thanos was going to prove to be an issue I employed two specific tactics to deal with it. First; at one point I just let him through and took the hit while I worked to ramp up for some Superman dice. I had noticed that Alex’s Used Pile was a dice heavy and figured I could get some Thanos relief for a turn or two while I got my own big boy out. Superman arrived and, with his Justice League stat bump, was sufficient to serve as a Thanos blocker without Overcrush whittling me down further.

Second; I needed two Green Arrows to deal enough board clear damage to get rid of the big purple one. In the same turn. In a rare and unusual state of clarity I was able to bag manage my way to doing this, allowing a double GA hit to clear Alex’s board.

With Superman outrageously stat bumped, and an open field, I was able to push for lethal.

With this winning strategy in mind I followed the same path, more or less, in the second game. I struggled a bit more to get my Superman dice bought and had to weather a few nasty hits again but with some perseverance and more than a little sweat I was able to replicate my first game success and push for lethal a second time. Green Arrow is AMAZING on a Justice League team.

2-1

Round Four – Seth & The Avengers

Into the last round of the day and my SoS had paired me with Seth, who was undefeated at this stage…

Seth’s Avenger’s team was going to prove difficult because, once again, his characters were well stat’d in the defence department. could see a cheeky Super Rare Ronin on the other side of the table too, which had the potential to ruin my day.

Luckily for me, Seth elected to go on the offence and race me for damage, leaving his Ronin alone for the early turns. He was also struggling to come up with the Masks to get the purchase made.

This allowed me to follow my standard first 3 turn plan: Aquaman, Thrown Brick, then Hawk people, until I was ready to move to the Green Arrow buy.

I was able to quickly build a field and bide my time until I was able to strike with a board clear. Those Hawkman dice get big in a hurry and gave me enough for lethal.

We racked up for the second round and, honestly, I just stuck to the plan, which ultimately paid off once again. Seth struggled with ramp again, finding the whiffs on his Investigations slowing him down.

I was able to fast build enough of a field to pull my move (my team’s only love LOL) and finish the round with 2 game wins.

3-1

Final Standings

If you look on the WIN system you’ll see I’m listed as the winner, but it was clear from the leaderboard and SoS that Seth was the actual winner and I came second. Another lesson in “never trust the WIN system” I suppose.

We dished out the prizes and everyone got a little swag to go home with.

It was great to see the guys and get some f2f Dice Masters on the go once again. Everyone hung around chatting and even a little draft kicked off too.

I want to thank all the players, the UKGE and Wizkids for the support. We hope that next year we’ll be able to continue the tradition of Dice Masters at the UK Games Expo and run something bigger and more competitive, but this was hella fun and a great way to ease back into the swing of things.

I hope you enjoyed my little tournament report. Let me know in the comments below what your favourite affiliation is to play, and we’ll catch you next time 🙂