10 WTF? Cards From the Saiyan Saga
It’s a well-known fact that the Saiyan Saga had some cards with really wonky wording. Even now, many of those cards are completely unplayable without the CRD telling you exactly what they do. The Saiyan Saga is a mess of cards that try to mix in a role playing element to the game, while completely ignoring any flavor text, card titles and images that accompany each card. Here is my list of the most mind boggling cards of the Saiyan Saga.
10. Broken Scouter
Not pictured: A Scouter of any kind.
Your power level was miscounted? WTF does that mean? Was someone cheating? You played the card, does that mean you were cheating? There’s no doubt that if this card was made today, it would be some kind of “Over 9000” reference, but even by Saiyan Saga standards this card was fairly useless. Hidden Power Level, Power Up to the Most and three different Dragon Balls did what this card did, but better. Heck, The Tail Grows Back does the exact same thing. Another one for the pile.
9. Straining Tripping Move
You get the full monty in Dragon Ball.
I’m confused by this card for several reasons. First of all, Goku is just standing there not tripping anyone. It doesn’t even look like he’s all that strained, but I guess a better name for this card could’ve been “Straining Goku Exposed Nipple Move”. It almost looks like he’s taking his time disrobing, maybe the original name for this card was “Straining Stripping Move”? In any case, the card effect itself is so terrible you have to ask yourself why it’s limited to one per deck? I petition that this card be unrestricted. And also renamed.
8. Vegeta’s Trick
Looking at this card image, I wasn’t sure if Vegeta’s Trick had something to do with how he scored with Bulma. You have to admit, weird Japanese fight imagery looks suspiciously like weird Japanese sex imagery. Anyway, if you can get beyond the card image, you get a particularly useless card that just moves around unplayed balls in an opponent’s deck. There was no time that this card was more useless than in the Saiyan Saga, which introduced more ball searching than any other set. Not to mention that at the time all those ball tutors were unrestricted, unlike this card. Also you could use non-combats in the non-combat step for some reason. What a crappy rare!
7. Saiyan City Destruction
Too bad there are no scenes of cities being destroyed by Saiyans in DBZ.
So now we’re destroying cities? And it heals you for some odd reason? I really don’t understand what’s going on with the bug mummy guy on this card, but it’s proper use was debated for some time. Did heroes use this on villains, nobly sacrificing some nearby city so they could stop punching things for a turn? Or did villains use this to ravage and plunder nearby towns, while the hero just kinda let it happen? Eventually there was a CRD for this card to make it a kind of terrible Teaching the Unteachable Forces Observation that you had to use on yourself…in combat …as a villain. So woohoo for useless non-combats healing two cards, speaking of which…
6. Respect the Spirit
The DBZ Earth sounds like an alright place. The Earth I live on is kind of a dick.
An upgrade from Saiyan City Destruction for heroes. Oh wait, anyone can use it? Then what’s the point of this card. The first sentence is “The spirit of the Earth heals you.” Well Earth is a crappy judge of character. Just about every villain that makes it to the Earth has designs to either dominate it or outright destroy it (and one of them actually succeeds). So anyway, this card has a confusing intro that really doesn’t mean anything because whether you want to live on the Earth or make it go boom, the Earth heals you. Please note that a small piece of the Earth had to be sacrificed in order to print thousands of copies of this card that were neither used nor recycled because you no doubt have an entire page in your trade binder that consists entirely of this card. I hope you’re proud of yourself.
5. Vegeta Lv. 4
Why yes! I do want to hear your Vegeta impersonation!
Now I know Score was under pressure not to put too much violent action into the game that could be imitated by idiots, but they really shouldn’t have put in cards with annoying behavior that could actually be imitated by idiots. Since this promo card was packaged in DBZ VHS tapes, most of the older neck-beards at my local shop who only played Magic the Gathering randomly had this card. In order to get this card, us Z players had to open a dialogue with these ham beasts and the results weren’t pretty. ALL of them only understood one thing about the card: “Vegeta Laughs.” So what Jabba the Hutt noise do you think they made over and over again whenever this card was brought up? That’s right, and they thought it was funny every damn time. I bet more pizza exchanged hands for this card than any other card in the game.
4. Chiaotzu’s Physical Defense
For unknown reasons, this card was an Ultra Rare. It’s terrible. It would be a better card if it actually stopped a physical attack. Nope, you play it as a defense to prevent one life card of damage (HEROES ONLY!). If that wasn’t terrible enough, even if you were the local douchebag rich kid whose parents bought you a playset of this card (because Ultra Rares = Good) and for some reason you had multiples of this card in a combat, you could only play it once. Why? Screw you, that’s why! Just play a damn $.10 block instead. And why is this even a Chiaotzu named card? Was “Tien’s Physical Defense” already taken? I mean jeeze, the guy takes up almost the whole image and being a Tien named card would’ve actually have made this card marginally useful in later decks.
3. Plant Two Saibaimen
So if I use this card with a Saibaimen MP, can I play my Lv. 4 as an Ally?
This card is misleading. First of all, there are clearly four Saibaimen in the picture. Second of all, you only get one Saibaimen with this card, not two. So why the hell is it called “Plant Two Saibaimen”? Do they even say that in the show? Vegeta and Nappa summoned more than two Saibaimen, so what the hell is this card talking about? And then you’re supposed to plant this card to use it I guess. Like do you literally go outside and put it in some dirt to use it? For a single Saibaimen, why don’t you just skip all the farmer bullshit and play Unexpected Allies instead. Or just concede the game if you are actually running Saibaimen in your deck.
2. Dream Machine Battle
Reset all damage? Were we supposed to be writing this shit down?
This battle never happened? Of course it did, we’ve been playing this game for the last fifteen minutes and now you’re playing this card that’s making us to start over as if we hadn’t done anything at all? I don’t even remember the set-up before we started this battle! And why the hell is Vegeta on it? He wasn’t in any part of the dream battle! They should’ve just named this card “Dick Move”, because playing this card literally means you wasted the time of everyone involved.
1. T-Rex Defense
WHERE THE HELL DOES THE DINOSAUR COME FROM?
Hey, do you remember that episode of Dragon Ball Z where Goku tried to punch Vegeta in the face a bunch of times and then a dinosaur showed up? Yeah, me neither.
I’m honestly surprised that the Burger King promo “Goku’s Attack” didn’t make this list. I always found humor about “You punch the defender for 5 life cards”.
There were enough cards that the list could’ve been double the size or larger.
With this first set Score ignored the first rule of game development. Playtest as much as possible. It’s painfully obvious with this set that Score didn’t care about making a balanced working game. Only cashing in on the DBZ license.
This article was awesome. I hope to see more things like this from retrodbz.
We also accept article submissions from fans.
I mean, you could have a separate article just about the worst picture choices in this saga. There were easily more cards that had misleading/bullshit pictures than ones that matched up.
Sooo gooood. Saiyan Saga is the most creative set in any card game I have played. So many random funny sayings and half the cards are uselss. Fun times. I wonder what the game was like to play when only this set was legal or even the first few sets. Must be why anger was so good, don’t have to plant things or do things with card draws or earth healing, just get mad and win.
when the game first came out, most of us had no idea what we were doing anyway. Everything was unrestricted, too. You had anger decks with 3x of each Non-Combat anger raiser (and you could use them all before combat), 3x of each Dragon Ball searcher, and 3x of every single combat ender, including Saiyan Truce Card. And you could use them all as blocks, too. That’s why it’s kind of funny looking back at the CRD and seeing some of the restricted list…a lot of it was a knee-jerk reaction to how limited and crazy the metagame was back in 2000.
Awesome article. Good laugh!
Great laugh!
“Straining (S)Tripping Move” is not the only of its line to use the phrase “force(s) (the defender)”, I am pretty sure. For the longest time I truly believed those were the earliest iterations of unstoppable attacks. I couldn’t be alone, could I?
As for those impressionable neckbeards, I wonder about their experience with #1!
Now, finally, a particular series bugs me… how about those “Honor Duel” cards?! DISCARD DECK? Right… Then look at the rare version, Hero Advantage, which calls itself a drill. I didn’t think it was possible for a card to not know what it was!