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.

Now that the Dice Masters 2019 Worlds are over, we’ve all arrived home, many of us with new Professor X: No More, Magnus! X-Men Animated Series promos, some of us with Yu-gi-oh Factory sets, and some UK dude with the DM 2019 World Championship title (seriously though, congrats Ben!), it’s time to return to our regular lives, and my little part of that is bringing you cards to build with which you may not have considered before.

Noxious Blightbringer: Tocsin of Misery

If you read my Worlds article, you know a little bit about this dude I want to highlight today. I actually had him originally on my 10-10 team as a place-filler, and it was only after that I decided to add him to my Worlds team. It was the only card on my team that my opponents all looked at, and said, “What’s that one do?”

Noxious Blightbringer: Tocsin of Misery is a character from the Warhammer 40K: Battle for Ultramar (BFU) Campaign Box. There are three versions of this 3-cost mask character in the box. He has two Warhammer-y affiliations (Chaos & Death Guard), and a When Fielded ability: When fielded, deal damage to target player equal to the amount of energy in their Reserve Pool (count energy symbols, not faces that show energy).

Why is this special?

With a When Fielded ability, you want a character with low fielding costs so you can field him over and over again without using all your energy for fielding costs. It’s also handy when that character has low defence, so that it’s easy to remove him either by blocking with him, or using an action die or Global Ability. Having low attack stats can be useful as well, as your opponent may choose to just let the character through for minimal damage, in hopes that he may get stuck in your bag.

Our Noxious Blightbringer checks all these boxes:

Max fielding cost: 1 energy

Max defence: 3

Attack: 3 on all character faces

Purchase cost: 3 mask (or 2, if you use Big Entrance!)

What else can he do?

What’s even better than buying a character with a When Fielded ability?

Renting him with The Collector: Taneleer Tivan!

Using The Collector’s ability, once per turn (that means once on your turn, AND once on your opponent’s turn), you may pay the purchase cost of an unpurchased character die minus 2 (to a minimum of 1) and field that character at level 1 for the turn.

Save a couple of masks, and you can field him each turn, dealing damage based on how much energy is left in your opponent’s reserve pool. It can force your opponent to make some poor choices, like purchasing more things that he or she does not necessarily need, in order to prevent energy from sitting in reserve. That puts you in the driver’s seat, so you can focus on your win condition.

Also, for a 3 cost character, with a 3 attack on all sides, and two affiliations, he’s a prime candidate to add to a Team Up team. Team Up is a fun action, which, when played, buffs all your character dice by the total of all the unique affiliations on your team, less one. Since our Noxious Blightbringer has two affiliations to start with, he’s a good utility player to consider on this type of team.

Our Noxious Blightbringer is a card that I think will see more competitive play in the future, because one thing that competitive level teams tend to do is save energy for Global or Character Abilities. When one is playing at a competitive level, one doesn’t usually flood one’s bag with excess dice. So if something one wants doesn’t roll, it sticks around as energy until the next clear and draw step. This is a card that looks at the rules of the game and how energy is spent or kept, and says, “I’m going to take advantage of this rule that unspent energy must remain in the reserve pool.”

What do you think about Noxious Blightbringer? Have you ever used him on a team?

We’d love to hear from you, let us know your thoughts or questions in the comments.

Until next time!

-jbouwme

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