Marvel Dice Masters

Marvel Dice Masters, from designers Mike Elliott and Eric M. Lang (the pair behind Quarriors!), is a fast, competitive dice-building game for two players. Each of you starts at 20 life and commands a team of Marvel characters represented by custom dice. Roll, buy, field and attack until one hero’s life hits zero. It’s a duel of engine-building and combat maths that plays in around half an hour.

The dice & how you roll

Every character die is a custom six-sider whose faces are split between energy and character sides. Energy faces (there are several energy types) fuel your turn; character faces show the hero in one of their power levels, each printed with an attack and defence value.

You build a team before the game by choosing character and Basic Action cards; each card comes with a small stack of matching dice that live in your bag. Draw and roll dice each turn and you never quite know how much energy or muscle you’ll get — the bag-building tension at the core of the design. Because the same character can appear at different power levels depending on the face rolled, a hero you fielded as a weakling last turn might arrive at full strength the next, which keeps every roll worth watching.

How to play

A turn runs through set steps:

• Clear and draw. Refresh your dice, then draw a handful from your bag (typically four) and roll them.
• Main step — buy and use. Spend energy to purchase character or action dice from the cards in play (bought dice go to your used pile), and pay energy to field character faces you rolled, moving them to your Field zone.
• Attack. Send fielded characters at your opponent. They choose which of their fielded characters block; unblocked attackers deal their attack value to the opponent’s life, while blocked fighters trade attack against defence.
• Clean up. Used and knocked-out dice go to the used pile; when the bag empties you refill it — exactly like reshuffling a deck.

Character abilities and Basic Actions add global effects, and some cards force interaction (stealing energy, dealing direct damage, buffing a hero). Timing those effects — a direct-damage burst that finishes an opponent, or a buff that turns a fair fight into a rout — is where close games are decided. The winner is whoever reduces the opponent from 20 to 0 life first.

Strategy

• Curve your purchases. Buy cheap, efficient dice early to build energy and tempo before reaching for the expensive game-enders.
• Keep the bag lean. Like any deck-builder, a bloated bag buries your best dice. Buy with purpose, not for the sake of spending.
• Mind blocking maths. Attacking is only worth it if the trade favours you — a big attacker walking into a fat blocker can be a bad deal.
• Plan your energy types. Cards want specific energy; a team that needs three types can stall if your roll gives the wrong ones.
• Exploit fielding costs. Some strong characters are cheap to field but pricey to buy, or vice versa — build a team whose costs your energy engine can actually pay.

Common mistakes

• Over-buying dice. A cluttered bag means you rarely draw the hero you need — the classic dice-building trap.
• Attacking into bad blocks. Swinging without reading the opponent’s field trades your attackers away for nothing.
• Ignoring energy type needs. Building a team that demands mismatched energy leaves you unable to pay for your own plan.
• Forgetting character levels. Fielding a level-1 face when you needed the level-3 punch weakens your attack unnecessarily.
• Racing life without defence. Going all-in on attack can leave you open to a faster clock — sometimes a blocker saves the game.

Rolling a mixed bag of dice never lands the way you expect. Throw a handful in your browser and see how the energy-versus-character split might feel.

Keep reading: the original dice-bag builder Quarriors!.