DBM Gets Huge With Lord Slug

Tuff Enuff was my favorite format.  Anyone who knows me knows that.  I was never fortunate enough to win a regional, national, or world-level event, but I won almost every single Tuff Enuff event I managed to participate in.

Why was Tuff Enuff so much fun?  The answer is pretty simple – Diversity.

Dragon Ball decks were all pretty similar, for a very long time.  In the early days of the game, you just ran 3x of each Non-Combat tutor and all of the Dragon Balls.  Once restrictions came down, the focus on defense cards and combat enders came to pass.  Then Trunks HT was released…the pattern continued forever, until the very end of the game where we had cards with similar abilities across each Style.

Tuff Enuff was a revelation.  Beatdown/Survival decks had infinite combinations that could succeed.  Every Style, Every Personality, and then eventually every different Mastery could be combined into something unique.  Of course, some combinations were significantly more powerful and viable than others.

I’ve always been kind of a pest when I play CCG’s.  Not that I’m outwardly annoying (maybe some of you would disagree), but I like to play decks that interfere, meddle, and surprise people.  Once Tuff Enuff came on the scene, I was determined to find a way to stay alive longer than anyone else could figure out.  A war of attrition would be my battleground.  How could I achieve this?  More over, how could I achieve it in a unique and memorable way?

Lord Slug.  Released in the first Capsule Corp. Power Pack, along with cards like Are You Tuff Enuff??? (with its 100 endurance), and the awesome Namekian Style cards launched in Cell Saga and Cell Games Saga, Lord Slug seemed like the answer.  His level 1 served only to advance his level.  And while his Level 2 was ridiculously unremarkable, his Level 3 was so…  very…  COOL!

Scientifically proven to add inches to your deck!

Double regeneration.  That just screamed abuse to me.  I scoured past sets for every single card that could “Put cards back in your life deck”, as the power read.  Lord Slug’s level 1 required Dragon Balls to trigger.  Dragon Balls in a TE deck, even though I couldn’t win by them?  You bet!  Namekian Dragon Blast could do up to 11 life cards of damage if I had all 7 out, and I would probably need to chip away at my opponent’s life deck at some point.

The regeneration was awesome – it pestered the opponent beyond belief, but the deck still was more pain than gain.  Hand advantage wasn’t really there – Namekian Mastery obviously helped, but beyond that there wasn’t a whole lot putting more cards in my grip.  I needed to maximize card value, which is something any gamer from any CCG will tell you.  I needed each card to do MORE in order to make up for my inability to carry more than 5 cards on an average turn.

Semantics are an interesting part of any CCG.  Rules, cards, errata are all open to interpretation unless they are very carefully written with a uniform set of terms and phrasings.  Let’s be honest guys – our game was not the most eloquent in the early years.  We can all pick at least 1 absolutely ridiculous Saiyan Saga card that we love to quote as a joke.  This led itself to errata (or our “CRD”) very early in the game’s development.  As we brought in new, talented, consistent developers for Trunks Saga and beyond, the cards became clearer and less issues popped up.

Lord Slug had an interesting Level 3 wording.  Effects that “put cards back in your deck” would be doubled.  That’s a lot of cards!  Anything that told you to put one on the top, put one on the bottom, or shuffle them back in would trigger the effect.  Concentration Drill was a never-used promotional from Trunks Saga.  The card text read: “Whenever you put cards on the bottom of your life deck, you may shuffle them in instead.”

Hmmmm.  So this was interesting.  Not only was it an effect telling me to “put cards back in my life deck”, it also turned something we do every turn, the Regeneration/Recycle step, into a card effect.  In theory, if I played 3 of these Drills, each one would trigger Slug’s effect.  And since it was a floating effect, each time Concentration Drill triggered Slug’s effect, it would also trigger the other Concentration Drill(s).  You can see where this is going.  Let’s do some math:

Regeneration Step: putting 1 card on the bottom of my life deck.  Lord Slug triggers (2).  Concentration Drill triggers, Lord Slug Triggers (4).  CD #2 triggers, Lord Slug triggers (8).  CD #3 triggers, Lord Slug triggers (16).  We just turned the free regeneration step from 1 into 16 cards by using Concentration Drill stacking!

Earlier I spoke of “maximizing card value”.  Keep in mind the stacking won’t work for cards that ask me to shuffle — they won’t trigger Concentration Drill.  But anything that asked me to put cards on the bottom of the life deck would work.  Namekian Dragon Blast became the biggest card in the deck.  Let’s say I had 3 Dragon Balls in play.

Energy Attack doing 7 life cards, and allowing me to regenerate 3 cards.  3 + LS = 6; 6 + CD = 12; 12 + CD = 24; 24 + CD = 48.  3 Concentration Drills just allowed me to shuffle 48 cards back into my recycle deck.  Holy Crap!

Needless to say, there was an errata after the event (which was Nationals 2002 if I recall).  Concentration Drill + Lord Slug was a lot of fun, even though the finals of that TE event had to be played in a hotel since the tournament ran so long.  The deck obviously had little-to-no standard play potential; but still rings true in my mind as one of the first “oh crap, that’s cool” concepts I was able to manufacture.