Remember Dungeon Dice Monsters? Yup, time to talk about a 20 year old Yugioh spin-off which wasn't considered particularly successful. I would wanna say I timed this to match the 20th anniversary of the game, but in reality I saw the English starter set on Ebay for around $25 and jumped on it.
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| If you know, you know 😉 |
While waiting for it to arrive, I also rewatched the 4 episode anime mini arc (of which only 3 episodes featured the DDM game) and honestly, it holds up phenomenally well. Joey vs Duke was always an interesting duel for the simple nuance of them dueling with cards they just pulled out of random packs. This was a clever way to level the playing field as Joey did finish 2nd in the Duelist Kingdom tournament, so Duke beating him out of nowhere with his own deck would have decreased Duelist Kingdom's importance.
Atem then duels Duke and beats him in his own game, much like he did with Pegasus. This was a nice homage to early Yugioh where the Duel Monsters card game wasn't the primary focus, proving Atem can win at anything. Truly the King of Games.
Anyway, the starter set arrived and it included the following pieces:
1 Field
6 Monster Mini Figures
1 Monster Lord Figure
7 Cards
12 Dice
2 Crest Counters
10 Dungeon Pieces
1 Damage Marker Sheet
1 Instruction Booklet
After marvelling at the mini figures and the different looking cards, I spent some time learning how to play by reading the instructions and watching a tutorial on YouTube to make sure everything was consistent.
Overall, there were some minor differences between pretty much every single version of the game. The manga, anime, videogame, Japanese and English versions all have their slight differences. One thing I really like about the Japanese irl version is how instead of throwing the dice and choosing from a preset number of open tiles, the dice themselves are the tiles that open up just like in the anime. You can literally DIMENSION THE DICE in the Japanese version, which is a shame you can't do in the English one. This also means the Japanese version's individual booster packs came with their own unique dice to collect in addition to the mini figure and card. Another way in which the Japanese version is superior is through the inclusion of white and black dice, which don't exist in the English one. Black dice are of course notoriously badass in the anime for being able to do all kinds of crazy stuff on the field.
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| The Japanese Starter Set |
So... I ended up playing a few rounds and you know what? It's fun af. It honestly works really well as an extension/alternate version of Duel Monsters in a board game format. Needless to say I played it by myself, cuz I know about 1 person that can play Yugioh and exactly 0 people that have any interest in DDM. Despite that, the game flows really well and each turn is as fast as old school Yugioh where you set 2 cards and pass.
There are a few downsides to the game. The first is as mentioned before, interest in the game is almost non-existent, which makes sense as it's an out of print, discontinued, 20 year old board game, which is a niche, within a niche, within a niche.
This also means both the base game and its separate pieces have become rarer and more expensive than ever before. It's not like demand is super high or anything, but the supply is especially limited. Pieces are hard to come by and expensive because of their limited run. Couple that with the fact that Japan had more pieces than the rest of the world, so if you're going for a complete set of just want a few of the stronger mini figures and cards, you'll probably have to import them, adding to the cost of entry.
I honestly don't know how I managed to snag the started set for $25. I think it was because the box was pretty beat up and there was a small stain on the back of the game field, but apart from that everything else including the mini figures and cards was in mint condition. Guess I got lucky. Back to my original point of scarcity, you can also print out the cards you don't have and use those as proxies. It's not like there's a huge competitive scene and the vast majority of people who play the game (all 7 of em) play casually so no one's gonna care. You are kinda stuck if you don't have the mini figures though, unless you have some other toys or tokens you can use as substitutes.
The final drawback I wanna discuss is the existence of a few
broken monster abilities, like that of Magician Dragon who can pretty much nuke
the field, especially in a basic game. The game doesn't have an official banlist
to my knowledge, which I honestly think it's a good thing, as the existence of
one would just be taking itself too seriously. It's honestly more fun to pull
the cards at random and either shake in your boots all game if your opponent
draws Magician Dragon or torment the sucker on the other side with that nuke at
your disposal. Either way, there's nothing preventing you from using house
rules and making your own temporary banlist if you wish to, but I prefer more
of a wild west type game, where all hell breaks loose. In my eyes, this occasional lack of balance makes the game more interesting and unpredictable.
So yeah, just wanted to highlight my recent experience of trying out DDM. It's honestly a really fun and underrated game. If you have a vague memory of it, try jumping onto Ebay and seeing if you can find a deal on a starter set. It's worth it! Lastly, I wanna shout out the YouTube channel Dungeon Dice Dimension. These guys make great DDM content and upload pretty frequently so I encourage you to check em out to get a feel of how the game's played. That's it for now. Later!
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