I picked up this game for my son for Christmas and we just started playing it this week. We already have X-Men Dice Masters. The games play exactly the same, but they have different characters and abilities.
Outside of the theme differences, the biggest difference is the TMNT set a complete set, no need to buy booster packs to collect. The TMNT set is also very cheap, I got mine for under $20. Other Dice Masters sets are $15 just for the starter kit and you will easily spend $50-100+ on boosters and still not have all the cards.
There are fewer characters (16) with the TMNT set. Each character has 3 different variations that you can choose from. Part of the game is building a team of 4-8 cards and choosing complementing versions of these characters.
One of the best parts of the Dice Masters games are the dice. Each character gets their own themed dice. Some of them are really good, some of them could be better.
How to play
The game starts out by picking 4 or 8 characters and collecting the appropriate dice for those characters.
Each player also picks out 2 action cards to take into the game.
When you chose your characters and your action cards, you collect your dice and put them on the sidelines. You do not get the dice immediately, you have to buy them as you play the game.
Each player also starts with 8 side kick dice.
These dice you get immediately and can put into your bag. They will be used to purchase stronger dice and field "sidekicks".
The little pawn dice you see above is a sidekick. It's a weak character dice that you are able to play with the starter dice.
Each turn you are able to pull 4 dice from your bag and roll them. The sidekick dice have four different types of "energy" that is used to buy dice, wild card energy, and the sidekick's face. If for example, you want to buy Donatello below, you would need 5 energy as seen in the top left. One of those energy needs to be a mask.
When starting out, you are unable to reach 5 energy with just four sidekick dice. So you are better off trying to buy a Baxtor Stockman for 4 energy (bolt) or an action card.
The pizza action card is a cheap 1 generic energy purchase. This is a good purchase if you don't have anything else you can do. If you are below 15 health, you get a free hp every time you roll the action die and get the action symbol. The action dice also have a 2 generic energy side. These are how you start to afford the more expensive dice.
Any card (but typically action cards) have a global ability that can be used by anyone in the game. Typically you have to use a specific energy type to activate it.
Once you start buying character dice, you can start fielding them and using them to attack. Although any dice you purchase you are unable to use immediately. You must finish all the dice in your bag and then refill the bag with all your dice and all the new dice you purchased. Each turn you pull out four random dice and you should start drawing character dice soon.
Source
Once you pull a character dice, they have four attributes you need to be concerned with. In the top left, you have the "fielding" cost. This is the amount of energy you need to put the dice in play. You have to pick a character dice when you randomly draw four dice from your bag and then roll the dice on a character side. Character dice have 3 faces that are 2 energy and 3 faces that are 3 different levels of your character.
Typical fielding costs range from 0 to 2 energy. Once a character is fielded, they can be used to attack or defend.
If you look at the above play mat (sold separately) you can see the play areas. Each player starts with 20 hps in a full game. Characters that are fielded go into the "field" area. You are then able to attack or leave them in the field to defend when your opponent(s) take their turn.
Once a character has attacked, they go into the used area. A character that is used to defend is left in the field until he attacks or is eliminated. This brings me to the next part of the character dice. The top right is your attack and the bottom right is the defense of a character. Most characters have special abilities that create synergy with other characters. For example, if you have Beebop and RockSteady, you can get +2 attack and defense to both characters if they are both out at the same time.
The game continues until one person is eliminated. All cards but the lowest level character versions have special abilities that activate when certain events happen in the game. Baxtor Stockman can summon all mousers that are in the used pile when he gets fielded.
Between all the abilities triggering throughout the game, the 3 different versions of each character, and the big selection of action cards you can bring into the game, there is a lot of unique gameplay. It's a very fun game, and well rolling dice is just fun. Especially superhero dice!
Actual gameplay
I highly recommend any of the Dice Masters games. There are a lot of themes and TMNT is just one of them. Last I checked there were 20-30 themes from TMNT, Deadpool, X-Men, Warhammer, Batman, and even Yu-Gi-oh.
While the TMNT is an all in one set, most of them you buy a starter kit (for 2 players) and buy booster packs to get better cards.
One thing I do not like about the TMNT set is the fact they have two Splinters for the good guys and Futuroid is a bad guy. In the series, Futuroid is a good guy. You can't just play him as a good guy as the balance was designed around him being bad. But that leaves you with 8 characters on the bad guy's side and 7 characters on the good guys. The good guys have two splinter sets (6 cards total) that represent two generations of Splinter. You are only supposed to play one or the other. So both sides have a weird issue. Otherwise, this game is fantastic and is a ton of fun. For $19-20 it is the cheapest way to get into Dice Masters.