Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Aside from the weird serial number and rules differentiations that Dave already pointed out, it's my firm belief that both the Yu-Gi-Oh and D&D sets will impact the greater competitive Dice Masters meta by exactly zero. Zip. No significance. "Why would you say that, Chris?" you might ask. And that's a fair question, so let me explain.
WizKids is a company that is really good at securing intellectual property rights and then making pretty neat little miniature games out of them. They've been doing this for a long while with a game called HeroClix. I'm sure you've heard of this, but if you haven't, it's a tactical miniatures game where Marvel & DC superheroes battle it out on a grid map. It was easy for WizKids to translate their IPs over to Dice Masters when they launched this new game and it's the reason they could launch Dice Masters to begin with.
Though it is true that the bulk of HeroClix sets are DC & Marvel, there are a ton of additional, secondary sets of Heroclix that have come out using the HeroClix basic rules. What other IPs, you might ask? Well, there was Halo and Street Fighter. You've got Star Trek Away Team 'clix as well as Lord of the Rings and Pacific Rim - oh and Iron Maiden (?!?) sets. I almost forgot - there are Yu-Gi-Oh ones too, since that's our hot topic today.
So what's the point of listing all these? If HeroClix is the parallel to Dice Masters in terms of product line, we're going to get a lot of extraneous sets that people will love/hate/love to hate. If anyone's worried about the impact of these extra sets on the meta...don't be. I say that with confidence due to the fact that - to this day - the only sets legal to WizKids Official Tournament Play (called Modern Age) are DC & Marvel sets*. That's. It.
If you don't believe me, take a look at the Official Tournament Rules document form Wizkids. Down at Section 2.1.1 we find the tournament legal sets. If you don't wanna try to find it, I've copied it here for you:
The following HeroClix sets comprise the Modern Age. Any sets not included on this list are considered to be Golden Age: Superman, Battle for Smallville Fast Forces, The Incredible Hulk, Smash Fast Forces, Infinity Gauntlet, Galactic Guardians, Annihilators Fast Forces, The Avengers Movie, The Avengers Movie Starter, Dark Knight Rises, Giant-Size X-Men Fast Forces, War of Light Fast Forces, Chaos War, Chaos War Fast Forces, WizKids 2012 Exclusives, Justice League New 52, Justice League New 52 Fast Forces, DC HeroClix - 10th Anniversary, Marvel HeroClix - 10th Anniversary, TabApp, Batman, Batman Fast Forces, No Man’s Land, Sreets of Gotham, Streets of Gotham Fast Forces, Amazing Spider-Man, Batman:Gotham City Strategy Game, and any Marvel, DC or Street Fighter sets* released after any Modern Age set.
Having said that, why not a little variety? Remember - you don't have to buy it. I don't say that condescendingly. Buy what you want to play with and play with that. And if all you want are DC and Marvel sets, and you want to play competitively - you're in luck. That seems to be WizKids MO and I don't expect it to change.
- Chris
* There are mentions of Street Fighter sets in Modern Age, which appear to be a future release. I don't know anything about that, but it's undeniably there. I guess we'll see where it goes. :)
Yessir. This is what I've been saying. YGO and D&D are just fine, but they are and will be peripheral sets.
ReplyDeleteThis makes sense, but I bet you Wizkids waits to see sales data before making that decision.
ReplyDeleteMy love of Heroscape and the "let's throw everything together" mentality it brought makes me sort of hope that mixing and matching from different sets will be included in at least some tournaments. Hulk vs Batman vs a Beholder vs some-spikey-haired-Yugioh-thing vs Tranformers vs a Borg drone vs whatever sounds fun. Very hard to balance probably, but yeah, fun.
ReplyDeleteThis game is easy to try and find ways to make it work with our favorite properties. He-Man! Can you imagine a He-Man set??
ReplyDeleteLast April we saw a Transformer's set teased by someone as a prank. That being said, stick with what you love. If enough people in your area are playing it, awesome...if not you have a nifty little collectible game that you can play at home with your family/friends.
Now, about that He-Man idea...