There are a lot of different personalities for you to choose from in the DBZ TCG. Some are good, most are terrible. These are my picks for the worst. It was hard to narrow it down to just ten, so I had to come up with a foolproof test to determine if they qualify. The test was simple. I just asked myself, “If this personality’s power simply read ‘Physical Attack’, like Yajirobe from the Saiyan Saga, would it be a better card?” The answer was a resounding yes for all of them…
10. Future Gohan Lv. 1 – CCPP
Sucks so bad, you can't even read him. Basically he lets you have two of the same Saiyan styled drill in play.
There are few instances in the series when Gohan isn’t whiny or annoying in some way. The bleak future in “The History of Trunks” was one of those times. So why did Score make this personality so terrible? I mean, the best part about him is that he can stop a physical attack, which quite honestly puts him head and shoulders above the rest of the lot on this list. But what the heck is up with having two Saiyan Style Drills in play at a time? Do you know how many Saiyan Style Drills are legal in Focused? Seven! Only seven drills, at least three of them doing little more than adding +2 to your attacks. Saiyan is not a drill heavy style, so who knows why Future Gohan would have such a pitiful power that revolves around them. Seriously, just run Yajirobe with one Orange Joint Restraint Drill. Somehow that’s a better combo than anything you’ll be doing with Future Gohan.
9. Goku Lv. 2 HT – Trunks Saga
Why are all the good looking cards always so dumb?
There are several Goku personalities in the Trunks Saga that revolve around him not taking any life cards of damage for some reason. The rewards are paltry: an ally and some power stages. Not all on the same card of course, if that were the case then this card would be unused because of its mediocrity rather than its craptitude. The worst case by far is the Lv. 2 Hi-Tech card that merely powers you up to full if you escape combat unscathed. Yippee! Basically the only time this power is realistically going to activate is if you pull the right stop-all defense card. You can’t even enter combat just to end it because the power needs to be activated first. Just use Yajirobe with some Hidden Power Levels, that’ll do the trick.
8. Videl the Heroic Lv.1 – Kid Buu Saga
You can tell that this card already knows how terrible it is as a personality when its power pretty much just lets you play as another character. Hey dingbat, just play as Gohan! It’s a better choice in every conceivable way (even if the opponent is a Majin). For that matter, so is playing as Yajirobe.
7. Olibu the Mythical Hero Lv. 1 – World Games Saga
A Greek tragedy.
As far back as the Saiyan Saga, there have been characters that let you draw additional cards as you enter combat. Olibu craps on all of that. Olibu will MAYBE let you draw a card when entering combat. Or he will just make you lose the top card of your deck for no reason. The worst part is, Olibu isn’t even really a gimmick character like the World Games Saga Vegeta that needs a huge or specific discard pile to function. He’s not even geared to be a super heavy physical attacker that requires a majority of your deck to be Physical Combat cards like his Lv. 1 does. Would he have been too broken if he simply just drew an extra card when entering combat? Instead you get a character who might give you a physical attack or might just damage you instead. At least with Yajirobe, you always get a physical attack.
6. Frieza the Revived Lv. 4 – Trunks Saga
The most significant villain in Z. Let's make some asshat like Vinegar more playable.
Frieza is THE villain of DBZ. He is CRAP in the TCG. I could never get my head around this, there just isn’t a personality set that really does him justice. He has multiple Lv. 1 personalities, but any higher than that and you are stuck with whatever you got in the Trunks Saga starter. So here is his one and only Lv. 4. Holy Tim Tebow does it suck! First of all, it has absolutely nothing to do with the previous three levels from the starter that focused on pumping damage. You’ve got to wonder, what the heck happened here? This power would suck on a Lv. 1 character! Why would he not just perform a physical attack, that would be a gazillion times better! And get this, the power is even worse than if it just said “Your opponent’s Energy Attacks do -1 Life Cards of Damage.” The power kicks in AFTER you take damage, so let’s say you only have four life cards left and you take an energy attack. You lose the game before Frieza’s power would save you. An attack doing five life cards would still take a Dragon Ball away from Frieza, even with this power mitigating the damage! What a piece of crap!
5. Android 16 Lv. 1 HT – Redemption Promo
Because the most significant thing that Android 16 did in Z was convince Gohan to lower his anger?
Android 16 is such a hard case. His MP stacks are mediocre at best and he’s the only Android that is completely useless as an ally. I’m kinda lumping all of the Android 16 personalities in this one entry, since his Lv.4 is essentially the same thing as that pile of crap Olibu. Then there is his HT Lv. 1. He “rewards” you for passing on combat. And by reward I mean, he doesn’t really do anything. It’s like someone wanted to make him a stasis personality, but then did it in a way that was not only pointless but also just plain useless. He avoids combat, but for what purpose? To lower your opponent’s anger? You aren’t going to be winning a lot of games with the avoid-combat and lower anger strategy.
4. Jeice the Avenger – Lost Villains Subset
Spice. Jeice. Crap. Not much of a difference either way.
I don’t even know where to begin with this one. It talks about doing a bunch of stuff if Spice is your main personality, but then that means Jeice has to be your ally and then stop an attack or something and then if there’s an ally at the bottom of your discard you can put him in play, but you better hope that it’s just one ally because the other cards get removed from the game? That’s a lot of what ifs for who cares. So I’ve found out that this card has errata and it actually references itself now instead of Spice. I don’t care, it’s still a terrible card. It might as well just work with Spice as your MP. Or anyone as your MP for that matter. Even if I was playing a Jeice ally deck, I’d still run the Frieza Saga Lv. 1. And if I was running a Spice ally deck, I’d still run the Frieza Saga Jeice Lv.1 as my ally. If you’re going to make a gimmick personality, at least make sure that personality doesn’t already have a superior version available that works even better at whatever gimmick you are going for.
3. Saibaiman Lv. 4 – Saiyan Saga
I'll wager that this power has never been used once in the history of the game.
There is only one plausible scenario for you to be able to use this guy’s personality power. Both you and your opponent have to be playing Saibaiman as your MP. There are actually ally rules specific to Saibaiman that state if anyone is using Saibaiman as an MP, no one can use it as an ally. And then here’s the kicker, YOU’VE ALREADY WON THE GAME IF YOU GET TO YOUR LEVEL 4 AGAINST ANOTHER SAIBAIMAN! Sure, I guess maybe a Where There’s Life There’s Hope will let you use his power once, but even in Saiyan Saga we weren’t running Saibaiman as an MP and I refuse to believe a match of Saibaiman vs. Saibaiman would ever occur by pure coincidence alone. For Tebow’s sake, just give his Lv. 4 Saiyan Energy Deflection again.
2. Gotenks, Super Saiyan 3 Lv.3 – Fusion Saga
With all the pieces you gotta run to make this guy happen, you may as well just go for Dragon Ball victory.
It’s not that the power is bad, just the mechanics. Seriously, this should have been a win condition with all the crap you had to set-up to get this guy out. His power should’ve been “Constant Combat Power: You won the game.” The only way you could even consider getting him out would be to run a Lv. 5 character, so you could run the Lv. 3 allies. Sure, you could try to make Gotenks your MP by running Kid Trunks, Teenager Lv. 1. All the other Fusion MPs are needlessly complicated to play and incredibly fragile once they hit the field, but Gotenks Lv.3 really takes the crown. Actually playing him in a game is a braggable accomplishment in itself.
1. Chiaotzu Lv. 2 – Saiyan Saga
Would you believe that there are actually two other cards that make you blow yourself up?
Suicide is never the solution, but it remains an excellent option.
I kept wanting to figure out a way to make Olibu effective, but I think his card powers that increase freestyle attack damage are even worse, was the idea to declare freestyle TW? With that world games mastery?
I remember pulling Gotenks Lv 3 from the Fusion pre-release I went to…after spending a week trying to make it work I ended up selling it to a collector for a pretty nice price.
going through and making sets of all the old cards, there are SO many awful, awful personalities. The dealbreaker for me though, is when we would be waiting and waiting for a super-cool personality to come along, and then it was crap.
I hate to say it, but personality powers didn’t really start to get ‘right’ until very late in the game, Kid Buu had some great ones and even *shudder* DBGT. It just felt like Score was always too ‘afraid’ to give the personalities anything really decent.
Your personality is your deck. It’s a bold statement and shows off what you need access to every turn, on a constant basis. With how difficult it was to level up in regular Z, if they weren’t rewarding your efforts, what were they doing?
Agree with most, but maybe a tad Harsh on Olibu. Card advantage is always a good thing and although your opponent will know a card in your hand and it’s conditional there’s worse powers out there. It can combo with the Red CS mastery though there’s so many better MPs with that Mastery. I’d take Olibu over Yajerobe though.
I believe that out of all of these, Future Gohan’s placement on the list is peculiar. In hindsight, his personality power is indeed very weak, but I think it’s necessary to consider that the card was printed in-between Cell Games and World Games. His power might have been designed with the long term of the game in mind.
I’ve used Olibu pretty effective before, and I mean Future Gohan isn’t terrible, the rest are though. Also no Bubbles, he wasn’t even tournament legal.
honestly Gotenks should be playable as a main personality i think i mean its easy enough to beat him if you use Majin Buu’s stomach to instantly kill him yeah he is very powerful sure but i ran him against my friends Tien orange physical deck and lost horribly to a saiyan saga personality. Not to mention they made WAY to many Gotenks named cards to not have him be a MP.
Turles should get a special mention, I think. Not for his powers themselves necessarily, but for how Score judged them. “Because of Turles’s incredibly speedy anger gain, he cannot win by MPPV!” Turles was 1-3. 1-3 characters were rarely winning by MPPV anyways, but hey it was possible.
Turles’s power gained him 1 anger. That was it. There were plenty of other characters that did that, 1-3 and otherwise. All of them had MPPV open to them. But not Turles.
I can’t find reference to this rule in the crd: ” There are actually ally rules specific to Saibaiman that state if anyone is using Saibaiman as an MP, no one can use it as an ally”
Where is that rule?