Tonight we decided to play a Format that our local scene has been talking about playing for at least a year. We’re calling this one “Altered Perspective”… well, that is actually a lie. I can’t really use the original name of this one. We’ll stick with Altered Perspective. The idea is basically looking at your rolls differently. Instead of using the face that you roll as you normally would, you now look at the face(s) that are facing towards you.

For example, if this was my roll: I would instead alter my perspective and use these faces:

If a die landed such that you could see two of its sides (without moving your body significantly), you could choose which side to use. You would lock in your choices and once you did that, play resumed normally. For Thomas Wayne, I could choose to lock in the character face or the double energy face. For Satchel, I would be stuck with the double energy face. More of less, this Format should make getting your desired face much easier.

What Did You Play?

The Team: Altered Perspective.

I didn’t really build to the Format here, but instead built with the intention of being able to statistically hit my rolls with more frequency (in theory). I decided to dig into my bag of dice and pull out a Satchel for a win condition.

This is a blast from the past card that unfortunately fell from Modern during the Rotation. It never really got a chance to shine before it was taken away from us. With this type of a card, you basically want to load up on Continuous actions. It really doesn’t matter what they are, they just need to be in the Field Zone. Focusing on an action dependent win condition also means I would be super vulnerable to Scarlet Witch. Right off the bat, Parallax made the Team to avoid this problem.

Now, with our goofy Format Switch was not AS big of a deal as we ruled that she would only come into play AFTER the dice are locked. She still would be a pain, but not nearly as bad. That is where the Parallax Global comes into play.

This type of a Team is also very vulnerable to attackers, so Static Field was an early addition. As long as I had the energy, I could keep attackers back. Guardian of Faith immediately became my secondary BAC as it served as a blocker to help keep me alive and happened to be a Continuous action, meaning it would help power the Satchel.

Satchel is unfortunately a very expensive action die to purchase. I needed a discount Global here, and went all the way back to Thousand Dragon. It is the same as many of the other action discount Globals, with the exception that it can be used more than once per turn. That could be handy to actually buy my Satchel now.

So, I have a plan to get my Satchel and keep myself alive. Now I need something to make Satchel useful.

The first tool was the Rare Kyln. This one actually proved to be a little confusing (more on that later), but the idea was to get multiple Kylns out in the Field and suck up opposing characters (temporarily). This would hopefully slow down my Opponent long enough to get to my Satchels.

I decided to pair this with the Uncommon Chipmunk Hunk. This guy produces a Token at the beginning of your turn that you can then sacrifice to The Kyln making it a little more one sided. When the Token is put under the Kyln, it no longer exists in the game and is removed.

I wanted to try and minimize the chance of my Opponent putting Sidekicks under the Kyln, so I included the Rare Nova Corps to the build. The idea here was that I would attack with a character and wipe out any low defense characters on the other side. This however meant that I needed at least one decent character (not named Chipmunk Hunk) on this all action Team.

Since Continuous actions were the name of the game, Gadgeteer seemed to make sense to me. Why not try and get these out faster with this ability? Instead of the ever popular The Question, I decided to focus on someone else. Thomas Wayne had this ability and also happens to be a Bat Family character. Why does this matter? Well, this pairs nicely with the Common Utility Belt that will buff Bat Family members AND is also a Continuous action die. If Gageteer fires off, I can use Static Field to bring him right back and try it again next turn. If he is let through, I can toss on some Utility Belts to make him a much bigger threat.

In theory this kind of made sense. How did it do in practice? Read on to find out.

Game 1:

The first game was against our resident youngster who was running her Brotherhood Team with the Mystique who gets huge. I decided to go for Chipmunk Hunk and Thomas Wayne right off the bat (heh). Once they hit I started loading up on Kylns. With the new rolling rules, it was actually difficult to miss on what you were looking for so it did not take long for things to pile up. While there was one Kyln out, things worked great. Chipmunk Hunk would make a Token that I would immediately feed to The Kyln and make more room for her stuff. When that second Kyln hit, I realized the error in my build. Chipmunk Hunk could no longer keep the Kyln happy by himself. They started to suck up my stuff too. I had to try and get rid of my Field as quick as possible and start cycling Satchels. Once her stuff started to thin out thanks to The Kyln and the Satchels started to fire, it did not take long to burn her down.

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Game 2:

This game was against a Batiri/Attune Team. Realizing that Chipmunk Hunk did not really work how I wanted him to, I went for the Thomas Wayne only route. I used his ability to get Utility Belts out at a fairly decent pace. However, it was about this time where I realized that I had made my second error with this Team. I had spent too much time setting things up for the Satchel, that I never really got a chance to buy my Satchel when I needed it. I never had enough in the Field to adequately block and forcing myself to save masks made it difficult to purchase my actual win condition. At my first opportunity to buy a Satchel, I took it… leaving an open Field with no energy saved back. Basically, I was DOA here.

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Game 3:

The final game of the night was again up against Batiri Battle Stacks. He also had a nice Uncommon Obelisk that would do some heavy hitting. Learning some lessons from my first couple games, I tossed the characters out the window for this one. I just bought Kylns until I could afford a Satchel. Sprinked in some Guardian of Faith dice as a cheap purchase and that was it. I never had a character in the Field in this game (well two Sidekicks at one point, but they immediately attacked). I took some early lumps, but once the Kylns hit, I used Static Field to keep his stuff around to get sucked up on the following turn. His Team depended on having characters in the Field and The Kyln was limiting that ability. Then it was just a matter of the Satchel cycling through. This was probably the most efficient game of the night.

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Post-Mortem:

Let’s talk about the Format first. When I started this site, I wanted to share all of the different Formats that we try out locally to keep the game fresh. Some are good, and some are not so good. Either way, I wanted to share them regardless of how they turned out. I think unanimously, this was not a popular one. It took so much out of the game. I think from a personal perspective, I missed maybe 2 or 3 rolls. I never missed a Satchel as I always had the choice of which face to choose with that die. It just was not really all that fun to always hit what you need when you need it. The randomness of Dice Masters is part of the fun, and this took too much of it away. While the Format was interesting to try, I don’t see us every playing it again. We’ll call this one a Format Fail.

Now for the Team itself. I really went into this thinking things would work one way but learning that they actually didn’t. While I liked the idea of Chipmunk Hunk, he failed hard with multiple Kyln dice in the Field. The same can be said for Thomas Wayne. He worked really good to get dice in the Field, but The Kyln backfired on me when I didn’t plan properly.

This felt like two differently functioning Teams that got masked together. The two halves have definite potential, but were not peanut butter and jelly.

Thomas Wayne and Utility Belt have some serious potential. This is a combo that I want to play around with further, but on this “Satchel/Kyln” Team they did not work.

I never once considered purchasing Nova Corps Uniform. When I finally figured out how to run the Team, I realized that this did not really fit. I would probably drop this in favor of some Ramp (which I was sorely missing). Probably Atlas, PXG, or something similar.

Satchel itself is super fun to play with. When I focused the Team properly, it worked well. Even though I never used Parallax once all night, I would keep it around only for the protection against Switch. Thousand Dragon made it easier to actually purchase Satchel, so it still feels like a good fit.

Guardian of Faith proved to be a good fit as well. It gave me access to both a Blocker and a Continuous action die, which on a Satchel Team are both good things.

The Kyln proved to be the most interesting piece of the puzzle. I knew I needed more than one to really make this Team work. As a result, it made the other half of my Team not function as planned. When I threw caution to the wind and gave up on characters, this worked very well. Now, the question that came up… and one we really were not 100% sure of… is what exactly happens when there is more than one Kyln out? You obviously need to “feed” all of the Kylns. However, do you need to feed them evenly?

Say you have two Kylns out, and your Opponent has two characters at the beginning of their turn. Do they have to place one character under each Kyln, or can they choose which Kyln to pile their characters under? The wording on the card is not exactly clear here, and as far as I know there is not an official ruling on this one. It would definitely affect the distribution of dice under The Kyln based on this. This is absolutely a card I want to play around with more, but I want to understand exactly how it is meant to work. Hopefully Wizkids can give us some clarification on it as it has so much potential.

So… would I play this again? No. Would I play parts of this again? Yes. I think the whole Thomas Wayne/Utility Belt thing needs some exploring. There is definitely something there. The Satchel/Kyln half of the Team was fun as well. I would just focus the other slots with some more pieces to make this pair work better. More masks are absolutely needed to help Static Field work better.

Let’s ignore the Format here. What have you built to make the Satchel work? What are your thoughts on the Rare Kyln? How do you feel it works when there are more than one in the Field? What has been your best use of Gadgeteer (other than Question/GDM)? Let us know in the comments below.

Thanks for reading!

– jourdo

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