Dice Masters: Battle for Ultramar
If you’re a fan of Warhammer, you like rolling dice. Let’s not pretend that’s not true. If you’re looking for a new way to scratch that itch, Dice Masters is for you!
I don’t think I’m spinning any fake news by saying that Dice Masters is a popular series of games. They have 28 different expansions to choose from, with franchises like Yu-Gi-oh!, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, TONS of comic material and now, Warhammer 40k!
Gameplay
Dice Masters is a competitive dice rolling game with pool building mechanics. Each player’s goal is to deal enough damage to their opponent to reduce them to 0 health. They do this by buying, rolling, rerolling, fielding, attacking, blocking and activating. And each of those things is done with dice, of course!
What I like the second most about Dice Masters, is the simplicity of it on the surface. Especially with the included player mat which shows the order of operations, so to speak.
What I like first most is rolling dice, obviously.
For the most part, dice start at the bottom of the mat and work their way upwards. Before the game, players choose which characters they want to have access to throughout the game. Then during the game, they will be able to purchase dice from those characters, adding them to their dice pool.
Each character has multiple character cards, with different tactics and play styles. This allows for tons of customization of how you want your strategy to play out. Without going into too much detail, the basic premise of a turn follows these steps:
- Draw 4 dice from your bag and roll them (then re-roll the ones you don’t like).
- Use those dice to either…
- Buy additional dice
- Ready an attack
- Attack
Each die in your pool has either Energy or Character. The Energy is what you’ll use to buy additional dice, activate abilities and Field Characters. Fielding a Character basically means “move into attack position”.
Each Character die face has the unique character symbol in the center, energy required to field it on the top left, then its attack and defense scores along the right side. Some cards and dice have a Burst, which is a special effect. The character card will provide the details on that.
Once a character die is fielded, attacking is pretty straightforward. Declare which dice are attacking, the defending player assigns blockers from their fielded dice, both players assign damage and any damage left over is applied to the defending player. The first player to get their opponent to 0 health wins!
Final Thoughts
Like I said before, Dice Masters is simple on the surface. The complexity of it comes from the characters you choose, the dice you buy and the strategies you implement. For additional fun, some cards have Global effects, which both players can use. So your own strategy can shift based on your opponent’s abilities.
Stay tuned, because later this week we’ll be doing a BoLS Unboxing on Battle For Ultramar Campaign Box so you can get a better idea of what sort of goodies you can expect.
~Thanks for reading!
