WizKids recently put out a release, following up on some earlier issues.

Supply and Demand

First off, they gave an update on the supply issues Marvel Dice Masters has been seeing since launch, and unfortunately it's not great news - well, it's good to hear, but not exactly good for people looking to get their hands on product.  They've stated that additional starters will be out in late June, and booster gravity feeds will be arriving in late July, but it seems like they're saying that demand is still so high that most of these waves are already spoken for.  The bright side: WizKids has increased capacity - they're saying they are, or will soon be, the largest die manufacturer in the world - and will be getting another wave out in September; they indicate that these reprints should not impact the next set (I assume they mean Uncanny X-Men). Hopefully that will finally bring us level.

While it's great to hear the game is so popular that even with amped production and multiple reprints, it's still selling out in preorders, we're now months into release and things haven't stabilized.  If it's sounding like it'll be September before things really start to level off, that doesn't bode well for the OP - sealed deck hybrid will become impossible without boosters, which will make it harder for FLGS to turn a profit from hosting organized play.  It's good to hear that the additional waves will impact Uncanny X-Men, though - there were some worries that given the need to get more base set product out, it would delay UXM, and maybe D&D DM.

Rainbow Draft

Speaking of tournament play, they outlined a new tournament play format!  It's called Rainbow Draft, and it works more or less like your standard booster draft: players open some packs, sort the cards into piles and pool the dice into the center, then take one pile per 'round' of drafting (dictated by number of packs - they recommend 12 packs in 2 rounds of 6),  look at and select one card from it, and pass the rest of the pile to the next player.  Once everyone has all their cards, everyone takes the dice matching their cards, and uses it to create a team of 8 - no core you get to bring along for this, outside of the basic actions.  WizKids is stating that they expect it to be very popular for tournaments; we can read between the lines and assume that means that it will be the favored OP format going forward.

The format has some interesting gameplay and logistics ramifications.  Gameplay-wise, not having a solid core you can rely on means that it will be very luck-of-the-draw; you're only getting 24 cards to make a team of eight with, and we're well aware of how lopsided the energy costs for this set are, so picking something useful and especially something cheap in those first few drafts will be very important.  Related to this - you can't use starter characters, at all.  If you're wondering what that sound was, it was the collective gasp at not being able to use Beast Mutate #666.  That's probably the most relevant loss, but there's several other good characters lost there, and it also means that dice for the eight characters that appear in the starters will be pretty rare; don't expect to have more than one Storm die available even if you're lucky enough to draft it.  It also removes almost half the two-cost cards; I suspect Black Widow will be a hot pick in this format.

Logistics-wise...there's a few things that just don't make sense.  First off, we're in a booster pack shortage - they even acknowledge this makes talking about tournament formats hard - but this format recommends using more boosters per person.  Secondly, the suggested groups and pack amounts don't divide so well with the current gravity feeds; they recommend six players per draft group, but that winds up being one and change booster feeds.  It'd have made more sense for them to recommend five per draft group - that way you'd need two gravity feeds per ten-man OP tournament.  They do say you can tweak the numbers, but I wouldn't recommend bumping the number of packs down to ten - I'd worry about winding up with a really bad selection of cards to build a deck with.

We'll keep a lookout for more news from WizKids on supply issues and OP developments as they come in.  Until then - happy rolling!