The reception to Dungeons & Dragons Dice Masters: Battle for Faerûn was tremendous, but there was one thing the set did not offer that many players asked for: named personalities from the Forgotten Realms. Fortunately, with the upcoming release of Dice Masters: Faerûn Under Siege, these unique characters get to join the dice-battling action on the tabletop. One of these welcomed additions in the new set is everyone’s favorite drow elf: Drizzt Do’Urden.

Drizzt is an adventurer with great stats. In fact, he has the best attack and defense stats of any adventurer in Dice Masters, making his fielding cost of 1 on all levels a bargain.

Adventurers give players defending against them a difficult choice: block them, potentially allowing them to gain Experience and deliver more damage in the future, or allow them through, losing life equal to their attack. Drizzt makes this even more difficult, since his attack is relatively high, especially compared to other Adventurers.

Drizzt is also equippable, so he will be able to take advantage of the new gear found in Faerûn Under Siege, such as:

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Chainmail Armor and Flaming Sword are a first for Dice Masters—introducing gear as Basic Action Cards. This should be a boon to players in Rainbow Draft events where they have characters who would benefit from having gear equipped, but are unable to draft any gear to complement their strategy. These cards will also allow players to bring gear with their constructed team without needing to use any of the space on their team—space that could be used for characters that are eager to take advantage of gear.

Ring: Greater Gear will be a highly effective combo with any version of adventurers, like Drizzt. The ability to damage—and potentially KO—opposing character dice on your turn will help your adventurers gain more Experience tokens. You’ll be able to create challenging scenarios for your opponents where you’ve already KO’d their non-Monster character dice before they are able to block. Furthermore, if you are able to equip this ring on its double burst side, those Experience tokens can do a lot of work for you in eliminating your opponent’s characters.

Drizzt: The Exile

Everything we’ve already discussed makes Drizzt an outstanding bargain for his 5 purchase cost, but he is even better than that. The common version of Drizzt, Drizzt: The Exile, makes each opposing active Evil character effectively act as an additional Experience token on him. With 17 Evil characters in the set, there will be no shortage of opportunities to take advantage of this ability, making Drizzt an even better deal for his purchase and fielding costs. In some cases, this means that Drizzt will further tower over smaller monsters like Goblin: Lesser Humanoid and Intellect Devourer: Lesser Aberration. In other cases, such as facing down a horde of Evil character dice, he’ll be ready to take down the Spider Queen, Lolth, and other incredible Evils all by himself!

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Drizzt: The Hunter

Drizzt: The Hunter has the same purchase cost and Experience ability as Drizzt: The Exile. This alone makes him a very strong character, as mentioned before.

But The Hunter brings something brand new to the game: Character tokens. These tokens have a predetermined attack and defense, are considered to have a fielding cost of 0, count as character dice, and can’t be spun up or down. Furthermore, they can only exist in the Field Zone. Guenhwyvar, Drizzt’s animal companion, is represented with this new game mechanic. With decent stats and a high likelihood of being unblockable, this magical black panther will be a great way to get some damage through to your opponent.

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The question with every unblockable character is, “How can I make its attack value as large as possible?” Faerûn Under Siege has some great tools for helping Guenhwyvar really maximize the hurt on your opponent, such as:

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Mordenkainen’s Sword will go a long way toward boosting Guenhwyvar. Potentially giving a character +8A and +8D is a huge up side. Even at only +3A and +3D, the buff from Mordenkainen’s Sword is as much damage as an additional unblockable character die. The card’s Global Ability will no longer be an effective option for your opponent to spend their NPC dice on, either; they may KO one of your smaller character dice, but it opens them up to extra damage from Mordenkainen’s Sword.

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Gnome Ranger: Master Lords’ Alliance is just an all-around solid pick for extra damage. Each and every extra character die you get out translates into extra damage, so Drizzt being able to generate Guenhwyvar Tokens complements Gnome Ranger’s ability. Further, everything you’re doing to get Drizzt experience will also give experience to your active Gnome Ranger. While Gnome Ranger works well in any group, she works best with other Adventurers.

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Half-Elf Bard: Master Lords’ Alliance is another card that has a big up side. That up side can get very large if you have multiple attacking Half-Elf Bard dice, as each one would separately boost other attacking dice. Don’t be surprised to see Drizzt and Half-Elf Bard spending some quality time together when Faerûn Under Siege releases. Since they both have the Good alignment, we’ll see an even bigger splash from Good teams.

Drizzt: The Legendary Hero

We’ve already seen how Drizzt can beef up his own stats to take on large opposing monsters, and how he is able to summon faithful Guenhwyvar to assist him in battle. The third version of Drizzt in Faerûn Under Siege showcases his ability to cut through hordes of opposing monsters. His predictable fielding cost is also a benefit—unlike some characters who might be expensive to field at a higher level, Drizzt reliably enters the Field Zone for a single energy. As you field him repeatedly to take advantage of his ability, this will become important.

A primary source of ramp in Battle for Faerûn and Faerûn Under Siege is the Swarm ability. Players relying on Swarm need to keep those Swarm dice in the field to leverage the ability. Drizzt: The Legendary Hero puts a stop to that by knocking out those dice, preventing Swarm from triggering.

His ability to KO Swarm characters is only as useful as the number of such characters in the set. Fortunately, as with Battle for Faerûn, there are plenty of characters with Swarm in Faerûn Under Siege, such as:

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More than just a larger number of characters with Swarm, characters with Swarm are spread across a wider range of costs and energy types. Swarm is fantastic. Maybe even good enough for its own article sometime…

Drizzt gives you a lot of flexibility. You can either KO characters with his ability to clear a path for your attackers, or you can keep them in the Field Zone to make sure your Adventurers gain experience. Many Dice Masters games are won by breaking a stalemate, and Drizzt gives you the possibility to do exactly that.

If you’re looking to make a team that revolves around taking advantage of Drizzt: The Legendary Hero, here is a fun team to try out:

Adventuring with Drizzt

Drizzt: The Legendary Hero (4 dice)
Dwarf Wizard: Paragon Zhentarim (2 dice)
Half-Orc Barbarian: Greater Zhentarim (2 dice)
Giant Spider: Greater Beast (2 dice)
Magic Helmet: Paragon Gear (2 dice)
Red Dragon: Epic Dragon (1 die)
Halfling Thief: Minion Harper (4 dice)
Human Paladin: Lesser Emerald Enclave (3 dice)

Basic Actions:
Cone of Cold
Mordenkainen’s Sword

We’ve spent a lot of time looking at Drizzt, now let’s take a look at some other cards that are good to combo with him.

The Adventurers

Dwarf Wizard is going to help remove abilities from characters that would prevent Drizzt from being as effective as possible. Depending on your opponent’s strategy, what that means will change. Sometimes it will mean that a character preventing Drizzt from being fielded will get ignored, other times it will remove protection from your opponent’s Swarm characters. Effectively using Dwarf Wizard will require a lot of practice, which is exactly what you’d expect from a skilled wizard.

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Half-Orc Barbarian is one of the coolest cards here because she’ll gain experience faster than most other adventurers. There are some interesting interactions with Half-Orc Barbarian and Giant Spider: Greater Beast. Giant Spider can make sure that your opponent’s NPCs aren’t available to block Half-Orc Barbarian, while Giant Spider’s Global Ability can make sure that one of their Monster dice is forced to block.

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Human Paladin and Halfling Thief are two of the stand-out Adventurers from Dice Masters: Battle for Faerûn. They both have low purchase costs, respectable stats, experience, and nifty abilities. Halfling Thief is going to help you draw through your dice, you spend a single energy to field her and, in many cases, get to roll a new die immediately. Human Paladin protects your character dice from a multitude of effects that are popular in competitive Dice Masters, including a Global Ability to protect you from big direct damage.

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The Gear

Magic Helmet helps prevent your Half-Orc Barbarian from getting KO’d during combat, but isn’t a bad choice of equipment for any of your adventurers. It offers a little something unexpected and will give you a lot of combat tricks.

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The Monsters

Red Dragon will get you some cheaper access to action dice with its Global Ability, and is a good source of ping damage. Sometimes you’ll purchase Red Dragon and steam roll with it. However, with so many other tricks in this strategy, you’ll rarely get there when Drizzt is slaying your competition.

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Giant Spider is a really efficient source of blocker removal. Furthermore, if you don’t roll Bolt or Shield energy for buying Basic Actions with Red Dragon’s Global Ability or Halfling Thief, you can pursue a line of play that involves buying an early Giant Spider. Worst case scenario, it will be a source of Shield energy for purchasing Drizzt later.

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Basic Actions

Cone of Cold is going to help clear out blockers. It helps get your characters experience, especially if you’re playing defense. If you’re desperate, you’ll be able to target your own character dice with the 1 damage while choosing opposing dice with the 2 and 3 damage portions of the effect. As with all Basic Actions, you run the risk of your opponent trying to capitalize on it, and in the case of Cone of Cold, they can use its ability to KO your character dice. There are some solid substitutes for you to explore, as mentioned earlier in the article, if you find this is a problematic scenario. Cone of Cold’s Global Ability is also going to help your Half-Orc Barbarian gain extra experience by KO’ing blockers, who you can make block with Giant Spider’s Global Ability.

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Mordenkainen’s Sword is an option mentioned earlier in the article for pumping Guenhwyvar, but why would we pair it with this iteration of Drizzt? Simply, we have many ways to remove blockers to make this die super effective. Many of your characters won’t be so easily dealt with (just look at Human Paladin!) so you can afford for your opponent’s character dice to get some beefier stats if your opponent purchases a Mordenkainen’s Sword die.

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Obstacles

A team made up entirely of Adventurers will have some issues with Lolth: Demon Queen of Spiders. Each time you field an Adventurer while she’s active, you’ll be taking 2 damage. That means that you’re up against a clock to win the game if she’s staring you down.

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Elf Thief: Lesser Harper is another quirky card within the set that players will use to disrupt your ability to keep a flow of energy for Global Abilities. While it doesn’t make a huge problem for the strategy outlined above, it will make Magic Missile a less effective option than players might be used to.

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Overall

When you look at this team in a card-by-card and die-by-die way, it seems like there are more possible scenarios here than you would expect to see in a typical game of Dice Masters. That’s absolutely true. With experimentation, you’ll discover which strategies work best against opposing strategies, and you’ll begin to pursue those in the right moments. You’ll practice different plays based on which energies you roll. In some games, you won’t need to purchase some of these dice at all. You may even find better card options than those presented here as you explore the cards and dice from Dice Masters: Faerûn Under Siege. We hope you’ve enjoyed these ideas and have some fun playing with Drizzt!