(Editor’s Note: Apparently, this is our 200th article on the page. If you had told me when we started that we’d make it through these years and 200 articles, I might not have believed it. But, it’s proven to be a fun diversion and here’s to another 200 at least! Huzzah!)

I already wrote an article about the Dicemasters rainbow draft that the boys and I did for the World’s Finest set. I stated at the end of the article that I would not allow anything, not even the new Magic set, to distract me from my regained interest in the game. I was right about Magic. Hour of Devastation has barely even registered on my radar. However, I did not anticipate comic books becoming such an integral part of my life again.

It started off innocently enough. Similar to my last extended trips into the Marvel and DC universes, I got sucked in by a gimmick. Two gimmicks, in fact, this time. DC hooked me with a Wonder Woman movie that looked like it might actually give them more than just Batman. (Spoiler Alert: It does.) Marvel’s mega event, which I have recently learned will only serve to lead into their super ultra mega event, has me buying multiple books per week.

One last story before I continue with my overall impression of the set. Chris went to catch up on recent comics and found several of them sold out. Since hearing that, I”ve been trying to figure out a way to get the books that I missed by taking a week off. Going forward, I’ll be okay because I just need to set up a pull list. But, among those I missed was Secret Empire #5. No!

But, this article isn’t about comics. I actually have two comic wrap up articles and a solo podcast to discuss comics coming this month. It just goes to show how much comics have been consuming my life in the last two months. Therefore, I need to shift my focus away from the books and to the dice long enough to write this article. Let’s do this.

The last time I did a Dicemasters set review as way back during the Age of Ultron days. I wrote up a top 10 in the style of an interview with Ultron. I am not going to do anything of the sort this time. There are several reasons why.

First, I only have limited (zing!) experience with the set. I’m not going to do extensive research on an old set just for a gag. Second, it is an old set. When I reviewed Age of Ultron, it might have even been a preview. Hey, we are sometimes on the ball here at 2 Generations Gaming. Third, and finally, I’ve resurrected a perfectly fine format to do reviews and previews.

The Good

As a noob who gets most of my enjoyment from how much fun I can have with a set, this seems like a very good set overall. In my previous article, I mentioned that I was able to find a couple of different synergies for my time. After a failed attempt at building a “Super” team, I settled on a hybrid Super/Bat Family team that worked very well together. The boys were able to hold their own, too.

Aiden went with the classic Villain archetype. Liam mostly put together a “good stuff” team, and our game was very close and back and forth the whole time. He may have even been able to beat me if we played according to the actual rules. Even Quinn, the youngest at 6, picked Krypto as one of his cards and then proceeded to try to build a “Super” team of his own. I think that he might have been the one who was cutting me. As Chris would say, “freaking ungrateful kids.”

All four of us were able to build a suitably strong deck. That didn’t happen when we did the Pokemon event. That might have had something to do with the quality of the set. It might just be that Pokemon is not as good of a game for limited as Magic or Dicemasters. Who knows? What I do know for sure is that I’d like to test the theory with both games more.

The Bad

There wasn’t much bad that I can attribute to the set. Not only were we able to put together good teams for the event, but we also had fun discovering each card and some of the dice in the set are very cool. Harley Quinn’s die, for instance, is one that I remember being remarkable for the design. However, as Chris said, they’re only dice. While they can play around with both color scheme and hero icon design, it is still limited and the ultimate design is just a 6 sided die.

While that, by itself, isn’t bad, it’s not the greatest when you compare it to other games. Miniature games, most notably the other super hero game of Heroclix, naturally offer a much wider variety of design. The miniatures can take the art from the cards (another aspect of Dicemasters that showcases creativity) and give them life as 3D models. I understand that this is nit picking and somewhat comparing apples to oranges. However, I’d be lying if I said that Dicemasters is in any way comparable to the other games that I like playing.

The Ugly

So, I couldn’t even really make an argument for the bad of this game, so I’m certainly not going to have much to say on the subject of “ugly”. All I will say is that Aiden had almost no mercy for his younger brother. He was a stone cold killer even though it was Quinn’s first time playing Dicemasters. Still, it didn’t sour him on the game because he said that he wants to play again and can’t wait to open the rest of the box.

Mine and Liam’s game was ugly because we didn’t follow the rules completely. Instead of recycling our KO’d dice back into our next roll, we put them back into the pool to be drawn who the heck knows when. Again, I have no idea how it might have affected the game other than he had something that did one damage to each fielded character, so we could have recycled dudes as new dice much quicker than expected. I must have a guilty conscience about that because I keep bringing it up. We are going to have to replay that game soon to clear my guilt.