Trubie recently introduced the idea of campaign play for Dice Masters. For those that have not seen his video, you can check out the details here:

The whole idea was based off of earning Victory Points for completing certain “missions” during a game. Each game started with a random selection of which mission you would be trying to complete. I won’t go into the specifics of the missions, as Trubie did an excellent job of that, but I will give you the basics below.

Terror Tactics: Victory Points are earned by KO’ing your Opponent’s dice. For every 5 characters KO’ed, you earn 1 VP.

Gather Intelligence: Victory Points are earned by “attacking” a Beacon instead of your Opponent. For every 5 damage you successfully inflict on the beacon, you earn 1 VP.

Sap Defenses: When your “sapper” goes unblocked, you earn a Victory Point.

Control the Bunker: Maintain control of the Bunker at the start of your turn to earn Victory Points.

What Did You Play?

The Team: WH40K Campaign Team.

I decided that I was going to sink my teeth into the theme of this and go full Warhammer. I wanted to focus fully on staying within the Warhammer set. I also wanted to stick to one “Team” as much as possible.

I will walk you through the thought process on the Team. Primaris Intercessor was to help with the fielding costs of this Team. They were going to be expensive, and any little bit of cost savings can help.

Primaris Reiver was there because Range. I could have gone with VD, but I wanted to try something else here. Also, the energy type would come in handy with the Stormboyz. Ok… I am cheating here. They do not fit the Team Affiliation that I was going for, but they gave me some more Range options if needed. The Intimidate might be helpful, but I honestly did not plan on buying them.

Varro Tigurius was my protection and my big body. He prevents targeting of my other guys (for the most part) and also gets buffed by having friends around.

Grey Hunter was another cheat. He did not fit the original Team theme, but I liked that he COULD be targeted with Varro active. Maybe someone would be crazy enough to KO him with Range? If I am bringing Grey Hunter, I kind of HAVE to bring Seething Corruption (the poor man’s Staff of the Forgotten One). Primaris Aggressor was put on to help with getting Grey Hunter KO’ed. The Global would let me buff everything that blocked Grey Hunter and easily KO him. Also, the ability of Primaris Aggressor was kind of interesting.

Robute Guilliman was my big body and also buffed the entire Team (mostly). Honestly, I was kind of struggling to decide what to put here. I figured this would be worth a try.

What this Team is lacking is ramp. I decided to give the Bloat Drone for his Global at try. Not the best Global in the world, but it was available in set and seemed worth a try.

The final addition was Bolter Drill to use as an alternate was to clear things out. I neglected to read that it only targeted your Opponent as I originally thought I would be able to target Grey Hunter with it. My bad.

Mission 1: Gather Intelligence

I decided to go to the Bloat Drone Global early and sacrifice my Sidekick to ramp up to my big guy. My Opponent also brought Into Battle that I could use to help with Prep. All of this is in theory. The dice gods were in full form in this game. After using the Bloat Drone Global to buy some stuff, Into Battle burned my by forcing me to roll the dice I desperately needed prepped. From there, I barely rolled a character.

He had 3 VP before I even got something in the Field. I was already behind and knew I would not be able to catch up. He put me out of my misery very quickly.

-1 Resource

Mission 2: Bye

I got to watch a couple of games that were running the Terror Tactics mission and Control the Bunker. I will let Gord give his opinion of the Bunker Mission, but it did not seem to go well. The Terror Tactics mission seemed to be much more straight forward.

0 Resources Lost

Mission 3: Terror Tactics

I was up against Gord, and will let him break things down to detail his Team. All I will say is I currently have a hatred for SP//dr because of Gord. Also, we both managed to KO over 30 characters. Gord won on based on VP when he brought me down to zero.

-1 Resource

Post-Mortem:

So, I ended the night with 1 Resource. The Team was nothing special, and really for this type of play you should build outside of the set. Warhammer alone is not sufficient.

Let’s talk about the Missions though. Seeing as I only participated in two of these, I will only give my opinion of them. I will share what some players thought of the other ones though.

Gather Intelligence was “ok”. To be fair, my Opponent rocketed ahead because of poor rolls on my part. Once he had the lead, I knew I could not catch up. We both felt there needed to be a cap on the number of times you could attack the beacon. 5 VP sounded good to us (that would be 25 damage, which is a lot) and would be a change we would institute in the future. There is no need for this type of a mission to take the game to time. Giving it an alternate end would make this much better. It would also feel more thematic as you are racing to get the information before your opponent can.

Terror Tactics was the mission that required the least amount of thought. Attack often and cause chaos leading to KO’s of their stuff and hopefully not too many of your things. This one worked well, but there was that fine line between racking up the VP’s and actually finishing the game. Gord and I probably ended up over time, and we could have gone longer. Again, I might suggest putting an alternate game end for this one to speed it up. Perhaps a morale tracker that decreases each time your Opponent gains a VP? When morale hits zero, the game ends. Just a thought.

I don’t know if Sapping Defenses was played tonight to be honest. If it was, I did not see it and don’t recall anyone commenting on it. The one comment on it was during the end of the night. We figured that it would just be a slow way of gaining VP. I would like to see this one played though.

Control the Bunker was the problem child of the night. I did not play it myself, but the players who did had some issues with it. Gord did play it and I will let him give his opinion of this one. It does sound like this one needs some work.

I liked the mission play part of this, but I honestly did not like the tendency for the longer games. I think if these missions had a different “out” they would be much better. We will probably look at these as a group and make some changes before heading into a second week of this format.

Huge thank you to Trubie for laying the ground work for a new format to try out. I love anything that gives you a new way to play this great game. I think with a little tweaking this one has some great potential.

Have you tried out these Campaign Missions? What were your thoughts on the ones you got to play? Any alterations that you would recommend? We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Thanks for reading!

– jourdo

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