On to the subject at hand.

The title has nothing to do with buying or not buying Dice Masters. The answer is, obviously, buy. This is about when it's smart to make a purchase of a die. To help make my point we'll start with a story.



Chip Kelly, former head football coach of the Oregon Ducks had a unique way of playing football. He looked at a lot of statistics and saw that it was actually very beneficial to ignore certain tenants of the game that many have held as gospel for a while. Huddling before a play was suddenly deemed unnecessary. The spread offense moved quickly, creating a high-rep scoring machine. He began making high-risk, high reward plays in specific situations that led to one of the highest scoring BCS college offenses ever. Onside kicks were used not in late-game desperation but mid-game, to steal a possession. He went for it on fourth down at times that some would call crazy. It all had to do with statistics and the values of certain plays at certain times.

How does this relate? Because I think that there are little bits to this game that should be analyzed so that we can judge the true value of the energy that we have to spend and how that changes depending on when we want to spend it. I'll show you what I mean.

One crucial decision point in many games is the one that comes up where you can afford to splurge on one of the bigger characters, maybe a five or six, but if you reroll a die or two, there's another excellent option that you could take that is just as good or better.

I'd argue that given this sort of situation, you're better trying for the re-roll. Here are my reasons.

1) Just because you can pay for something doesn't mean you must. The sure thing isn't always the best thing.

2) The smaller-buy play will often set up your infrastructure better than the splurge and conversely...

3) Stretching yourself out and buying the bigger guy right now means that you might not have the support to use him correctly.

Because of this, the high-cost die is just not always a good play after your first roll. 

It's better to push your luck and reroll a few dice to try for the other option. If it fails, there's a high probability that you'll still have enough energy to make your big buy, and at that point it's become your best option instead of a possible option.

If it succeeds, now you're set up with the infrastructure that you need to make your squad work the way that you built it to work.

Buying it right away is tempting. It's a good character, you put it in your squad for a reason. But the lower cost support cards are there for a reason too and enhance the effectiveness of the deck. Can that card stand up on its own? Remember that this is as much a deck building game as it is a CCG, and having a really good cart without any means of supporting it in either of those formats doesn't benefit you.

I'm not saying that this is never a good play. All I'm saying is that before you exercise such an option, ask yourself - objectively - if there is another play that while less "sexy" could be a more optimal move. Sometimes the rerolls only come because we didn't get the character face that we want. Sometimes there's the tendency to only see what the dice offer right away after one roll rather than what they could offer with a little time. 

Next time, take a step back and make sure that the play that you can make is the play that you should make!