Out of the Shadows…is a series of articles highlighting fun, helpful cards that aren’t getting a lot of attention. They may or may not be meta-worthy, but are definitely worth looking at for casual play.

Polaris: Hail, Queen of Mutants

Polaris: Hail, Queen of Mutants is a character from the Dark X-Men (DXM) team pack. There are three versions of the Polaris character in the team pack, and all three are four cost shield characters.

Polaris: Hail, Queen of Mutants has a while active ability. While active, each player may only use 1 global ability each turn.

Just one Global Ability per turn. That’s all. That creates an interesting game state, wouldn’t you agree?

Why is this special?

Global Abilities are strong, and the more one plays Dice Masters, the more one realizes how much a Global Ability can change the course of a game. Global Abilities can help one do so many things over the course of a game, including, but not limited to, managing your bag with ramp & churn, adding attack or defence stats to your characters, preventing unwanted attackers, forcing attackers through that can’t be blocked, fielding characters, discounting the purchase of other characters, and those are just the ones off the top of my head.

Just a few weeks ago, I watched a live-stream game between Andy & Chris of The Ministry of Dice podcast (#MoD4Life), where Andy’s team had just two cards with two dice each on them. The other 6 cards (plus the two BACs) were there simply for Globals* – he had no intention of buying any of the characters or actions. Andy won both games. You can see these games on YouTube if you’re interested in checking them out. (While you’re there, hit like and subscribe. If they get 100 subs, they’re going to give away a prize.)

Can you imagine, being only permitted to use one of those Global Abilities each turn? It could have completely changed the course of the game in Chris’ favour.

*For tournament purposes, Andy should have had at least one die on each card, but this was just a casual online game and so he didn’t gather the dice he had no intention of purchasing.

What else can she do?

Within the current game meta, there are a lot of teams that combine using a Global Ability to cause direct damage. Some examples of these teams include Iceman: Right on Schedule combined with Magic Missile (here’s an Iceman/Magic Missile team build) or Unstable Canister and The Atom: Professor combined with Energy Field (check out this Atom/Energy Field team build that won Can Nats). These teams rely on using multiple Global Abilities to cause a lot of damage on one’s turn (and, in the case of The Atom, potentially on both player’s turns, since one can activate the Energy Field Global Ability on one’s opponent’s main step, when priority is passed). If you have our Polaris in the field, your opponent will only be able to activate one Global Ability per turn, slowing the damage down considerably.

This makes it nearly impossible to remove her from the field using a single Global Ability…unless your opponent happens to be running Hela: Even in Death. Your opponent could ignore or blank of her text, remove her by using an Action Die or Character Ability, or a combination abilities…but all of that takes some work to get our Polaris out of the way.

What I really like about our Polaris is that she doesn’t shut down Global Abilities completely. Each player can still use one per turn, and therefore, the use of that Global Ability needs to be strategic.

Polaris is a good substitute for rare Wrecker: Enchanted Crowbar from The Mighty Thor (THOR), whose text reads “While Wrecker is active, players can only use the Global Abilities of active characters.” Wrecker will shut down all Globals on Action Cards, and any character that is not in the field. He can really slow a game down to a crawl…and as a rare card, not everyone has access to him. Anyone can own Polaris, all one has to do is buy her team pack.

As long as the meta remains focused on Global Abilities and direct damage, Polaris will remain a very strong card against any team reliant on Globals.

Do you have a favourite Global Ability that you couldn’t do without? If you built a team with our Polaris, what cards would you use to ensure that she doesn’t affect you as much as your opponent? We’d love to hear from you, let us know your thoughts or questions in the comments.

Until next time…

-jbouwme

Like this: Like Loading...