I love this game, but let’s face it… there are a few places where it could’ve been better. There are just some rules that made sense at the time but then grew quickly outdated. Other rules never made any sense at all. This article isn’t meant to criticize the original designers and contributors to the way the game turned out or to insinuate that I could’ve done it better (I couldn’t have). I’ve also had the benefit of 10 years of watching what worked, what didn’t work and where the game finally ended up, so this is really a Monday morning quarterback/armchair general article of my opinion. It would be impossible to implement many of these changes, while others are already house rules that we abide by (and may incorporate into future events). So without further ado, here are some big changes I would make if there was ever a DBZ CCG re-re-do (ugh, Re-Z…).
10. Sixty-card deck size.
Right off the bat, I’d standardize a deck size to try and bring in some consistency in the way decks were built. I would say that your MP stack, mastery and Sensei would not count towards the deck size. No more 50-card speed decks or 90-card monsters. Since the most basic win condition is dependent on the amount of cards in your deck, this is pretty much a great equalizer. Also, from a player’s standpoint, it would make decks easier to carry since 60 cards (plus a side deck) seem to be the standard deck size for most games and what most deck cases are suited for. We’ve all been there when our fully sleeved decks and sensei decks get stuck in the deck box. Heck, even the deck boxes that Score made for the game were often too small to fit everything.
9. Give the styles something unique to do.
Need to discard/remove allies? Non-Combats? Drills? Well you’re in luck because every style has a way to do those things, and even if they don’t then there are plenty of Freestyle cards to pick up the slack. To me, that is a problem. Every style has an answer for everything. You can effectively run multiple pieces of tech seamlessly in your deck with any color. There is no balance to keep the styles in check or encourage a variety of decks. For example, let’s say that Ally decks start getting really popular. What you might see is people adding more ally tech to their decks, but it’s unlikely that someone will build a new Garlic Jr. the Void Master deck to counter the upswing of allies. But let’s say there was one style that worked very well with allies and only one style that could effectively remove allies. You would see an increase in the deck style that was anti-ally, which in turn would spawn other decks and create a semblance of a color wheel like you see in Magic. As it is, all decks are simply a card swap away from being meta to the point that there are counters to the counters of counters.
Immortality is anti-ally tech.
8. Team stamp characters/cards.
As it stands now, the game attempts to do this without actually doing it. There are Majin, Androids, Celestials, Saiyans, Nameks, etc… But beyond that, there is just a simple division of Hero and Villain, and pretty much those two broad categories are it as far as factions go. To me, it never really made sense for Android 14 to be Piccolo’s #1 ally after fusing with Kami, or Jewel being an ally to Supreme West Kai. And when it comes to support cards, there is no overall theme to the broad Hero/Villain categories, which essentially means all you can do is make power cards to benefit one or the other.
If I was making the game new, I’d create factions or teams to stamp characters and certain cards. The team breakdowns would be easy and you could come up with numerous: Z Fighters, Turtle School, Saiyans, Frieza Soldiers, Androids, Ginyu Force, Majin, Crane School, etc… Here’s the thing: I would only team stamp the level one of each character and make it so you could only have level one allies. That way, whichever level one you chose is the faction your character belongs to and would dictate what allies he could run as well as support cards. You could also make new level one characters to put them in different factions, for instance you could have Goku as a Z Fighter and another one as part of the Turtle Hermit School and even one for the Saiyans. Likewise you could have Frieza on his own team or commander of the Ginyu Force. This option would’ve put tighter control on the game, prevented uncontrolled growth on certain characters and open up more options for decks.
This is actually Goku, not Turles, and it would've been enough to have made a Saiyan affiliated Goku personality.
7. Reform power levels.
I’ll be up front: I know why power levels were included since they are a big part of the early sagas of the show, but they never should’ve been a thing in the game. That became immediately apparent in Frieza Saga when personalities like Guldo and Nail were breaking chart. A new chart had to be made every few sets, rendering more and more characters obsolete in terms of physical attacking, and requiring you to carry a Physical Attack Table with you for every game. How I would fix this is simple, I would make three colors for power stages: green, yellow and red. The damage would be simple as 5-3-1, 5 stages for being two colors higher than the defender, 3 stages for being one color higher and 1 stage for being in the same color. You can use allies as long as you are in the red. Using this, characters would never be made obsolete by the chart and you can better suit certain personalities to certain archetypes. Got an ally MP? Give him more red stages. A brute like Nappa? Give him more green stages. Best of all, no PAT or updates needed.
6. No constant combat powers on level one.
This is a big one for allies. There are characters like Android 16 that would work great in ally decks by virtue of being an Android, but he has nothing but level ones with Constant Combat Powers. Majin, who have a much more limited pool of allies, also lose characters like Dabura because he has nothing to do as an ally with any of his three level ones. I would like to have more options for allies, especially for gimmick ally decks who receive duds like Dabura and 16. This may also actually start to encourage leveling up, but more on that later.
5. Make all characters 1-4 to be playable.
I think that a level 1-4 should be the standard for a playable character. Some characters are short changed with a max level of three, while other characters can hold a monopoly on the MPPV by going up to level five. In the game, there are only 11 different characters that can even go to a level five for a guaranteed shot to win by MPPV. My argument towards a standardized 1-4 is to give the game a little more consistency and allow everyone to start on somewhat even ground.
4. Bigger emphasis/ease on leveling.
In this game right now, you pretty much have two choices: 1) Build your deck around a solid level one personality where you can come out the gate swinging right off the bat in whatever style of play your MP is suited for. Or 2) Build your deck with the intention of leveling, either to win via MPPV or by using some gimmick/shortcut to your later levels. I don’t like that. In the show, the characters were always powering up, getting stronger and transforming. I want to see that encouraged more in the game than it is now. If I redid the game, I would increase the amount of anger you would need to gain a level, but I would also make it so that just about every card gained you anger in some way. Still worried about consistency? Well I would make it so that you could use your lower level powers from higher levels as well. Sound crazy? Sound like characters getting super powered as the game goes on? Well good, that’s how the game should’ve worked in my opinion.
3. Give the game a real side deck.
There have been two very good articles for revised sensei decks and against them. My opinion is that the current sensei rules are crap, but with the way the cards are currently made with some being “Sensei Deck Only”, there is no way we can allow sensei decks in Z work the same as side decks in Magic the Gathering (aka any card can be in your side and you choose which cards go in and out of your deck between rounds). Like most other entries on the list, this would have to be a “from the ground up” change.
Too cool to be main decked.
2. Eliminate the double power rule.
Anyone who watches our Twitch TV matches knows that we ignore some of the rules when we play. This is one of the ones that we ignore on purpose. This again goes back to my argument about the disparity of the power levels. While in some circumstances it might make sense when some personalities start out in bracket E and others never go higher than bracket B (even at their highest level). But too often, you have characters in the very same bracket where one will get to go first at full power and the other will go second at two above. This needs to go. Both players start at five above and who goes first is determined by the players (regardless of hero/villain alignment).
1. Ban SWK
SWK just undermines the game. You aren’t even playing DBZ if you’re using her, she just makes up her own rules. There’s no reason why this had to be in the game, and we would be better off without it. Whether you think it’s a crutch for weaker players or it takes some amount of skill to use her effectively, the bottom line is that she fundamentally changes the game to a point where she is not just altering the rules, but the very mechanics of the game.
Hey hey! Ho ho! SWK has got to go!
Let me start off by saying this is a great article. I am going to response to each number with how I feel about it:
10. I would LOVE if the deck-size minimum was increased to 60. That said, I like the ability to go up to 85. I don’t think any deck benefits by being that large anyway, but I do like the versatility. Plus, it prevents cookie-cutter variants of (these are the best 60 black cards, etc.)
9. Interesting but it would also need to start from the ground up, so it can’t really be implemented.
8. I REALLY like this idea. but once again, ground up ;[ At least they somewhat attempted it with Majins, I suppose… but I feel androids/Bojack guys should be the same way. at the very least.
7. this idea is absolutely incredible.
6. eh… i feel like you’re putting too much emphasis on allies, to be honest.
5. while i do agree, as it can make some characters/decks great against some (dr willow solely to beat roshi/swk) i also feel some decks might need to be put in check, namely broly red with paragus.
4. the power of drills is mainly what is preventing this, i feel. basically, just make all the level 1 powers kind of suck, and get significantly better as you go up. and yeah, weaken drills.
3. i actually really like the way the sensei deck was implemented… because as you said, every style has an answer to everything, so i like keeping it in check.
2. not necessarily, i like the double power rule. i just hate when characters like yajirobe have an incredible power AND almost always go first. if they’re going to go first, don’t give them a really good power as well.
1. i could not agree more with this. no other card/s implemented such an unhealthy change to the game. beatdown decks became obsolete simply because you could lose to swk guessing correctly. i’ve wanted it banned since its release.
also, even if SWK had that rule as a constant combat power, that would be enough (perhaps still too much) but giving SWK those incredible powers ON TOP OF IT was such a terrible mistake. honestly, how did SWK get through playtesting???
not meaning that swk needs to be banned, she just needs to lose her own rule. honestly, when a character gets its own rule you know it’s bad. also, i apologize for flooding this with 3 responses in a row.
Hey, no problem. Yeah I do put a bit too much emphasis on allies. I think it’s not because I like to play ally (I’ve only ever had a handful of ally decks), but I like the characters and I like when the correct ones have the same synergy as they did in the show.
I like a lot of these points, I’ll respond in a similar fashion as Tommy, as I have comments for a good amount of this article.
Deck Size – For the most part, I disagree. I like the versatility in the environment by seeing decks of different sizes. If there were an update to the range (60-80 instead of 50-85) or something like that, I could live with it – but I think tommy is on the right track saying that many ‘cookie-cutter’ variants will see play if the deck size is standardized.
Unique Style Functions – We sort of had this back in Trunks/Androids. Once World Games came out, the styles saw a massive shift and every style supported everything. Like you say, it’s easy to sit back 10 years later and look at what might have been different to make the game slightly better – but at the time, I think Score made the best move they could. If it could all be done again, I’m totally in favor of weakening the Freestyle cards and giving each Style specific strengths. (“Anti-Anger” is not a strength)
Team Stamps – Hmm… I’m not sure how much I’m a fan of restricting allies like that. If this were implemented, I’d want to see it incorporate something like Tokui-Waza: If all the personalities in your deck are of the same team, you get a special bonus. If you mix-and-match, you don’t get the bonus but can run any allies you want.
Power Levels – This. Exactly.
4-6: I like these ideas, and they would completely change how the game was played. All MP powers can have their strengths tuned way down, but each MP level has access to all his lower powers. This thought is scary the way the cards are currently written, but every MP power would be drastically different. I like the larger emphasis on leveling, and with weaker drills, we’d see a lot more use of level 2 & 3 MPs.
Sensei Deck – This is tricky, because I never really liked the concept of the Sensei Deck. Your deck is your deck – it has strengths and weaknesses. Special tech cards to counter potential matchups just changes how the main deck is built. If I redid this, all SD cards would be powerful SDO cards, and none would have any ‘if your opponent declared such-and-such’ nonsense.
Double-Power Rule Elimination – I’m a fan of this as well, especially when you consider the power stage update.
SWK – Well, well, well… SWK is certainly powerful, though not unbeatable. The challenge is that a deck needs to run so much removal to counter SWK’s ‘shuffle 5’ ability that the deck that beats SWK loses to virtually every other deck. Banning is certainly the easy way out, but this change might keep her power in check:
All of her powers gain ‘When Entering Combat, remove 4 cards in your discard pile from the game’ (this happens before any shuffling, but after any drawing).
I agree that any card that needs its own special rules to function is generally a bad idea.
Really well-written article! There are definitely a lot of good ideas here, and I agree with you that it’s simple to make these evaluations with the power of hindsight. With the tools available at the time, I think the game designers did the best job they possibly could – and DBZ is still a fantastic game as is.
“The challenge is that a deck needs to run so much removal to counter SWK’s ‘shuffle 5′ ability that the deck that beats SWK loses to virtually every other deck.”
This is the same issue I have with “win button” cards like Cosmic Backlash and Dragon’s Victory. The deck that beats CB/DV needs to run so many things to counter the unique win conditions, that the deck that beats CB/DV loses to virtually every other deck out there.
The same thing applied to non-PTT decks in a Roshi/PTT environment.
I can see that argument about CB, but Dragon Victory decks take some setting up to do. And there are plenty of decks that consistently beat DV and CB while also beating other decks.
Now if you were arguing about Stasis Decks back in their heyday (Saiyan – Cell Saga), then I would have to agree. =)
I never really seen a problem with SWK, becuase if you look at most builds over 60% IMO are odd numbered cards. Hell most of the odd numbered cards were staples.
i would like a focus on the namek saga. the jump in power levels from sayian saga to frieza was just plain wrong. you had mps like goku maxing out at i think 3800 but freaking guldo, guldo starts at lvl 1 with a max of 50,000. come on. lets make a mp set of the original gang with the power lvls to match the namek saga. plus i would love to see cui and the rest of the ginyu force as mps
While there is much talk and rightly so about how terrible SWK is, there ought to be the same anger about the MRP of Black Scout Maneuver. Why should that card be made available to everyone? It’s not like Black was the tier 1 unbeatable deck in the game at the time and had to be neutralized. Scout Maneuver made Black a very viable deck choice but no way should it have been made available to everyone. You can not play a game without everyone immediately senseing in 2 BSMs. In Black its a unique card that the opponent has to prepare for. When everyone has access it becomes an overpowered staple.
Good article.
I feel 60 cards is light, 70 would be ideal or even 75 how it once was. I think the extra 10-15 cards means more of the card pool gets played and is the right balance. I agree with he general point that 85-90 is too much.
Every style needs tech of some kind. I agree that they made it too good in each style. I liked Black that it had tech but it was all if successful. Then they made Pivot Kick.
I agree about the level 1 CCP’s except for someone like Android 14 or Bardock or someone with some kind of utiity as an ally. At least give each personality a power level 1 first and then later on when you’ve made 3 or 4 Vegeta’s can give him a CCP.
Agree with 1-4, don’t agree about power levels. The power chart added a unique element to the game. It just needed to be thought about better. If you’re at 0 your base should be 0, if your at least at 1 above it should be 1 IMO. Agree with DPR and the hero/villain rule because it’s not balanced.
SWK should have been banned because she will win the game 9 times out of 10 against ANY matchup which is OP. She never should have been made. Nothing’s ever unbeatable, she’s as close as you can get in a card game to it. She’s fine in GT where attacks do 15 life cards and if she misses a few blocks her deck goes bang, but in Z she’s far too good.
Lastly, agree leveling should be easier, I always thought high MP powers should be more powerful. If you get to level 5 you deserve a broke ass power. The ‘use the powers below you’ is cool, but it’d be harder to balance MPs.
10. I like this idea. It would make survival victory more viable, and it would also make games go by faster.
9. This could make the game better, or ruin it. If, for example, ally is the dominant deck, and the only color that easily deals with allies is Namekian then you would wind up with a meta that was simply ally/Namekian. This would be the same thing as the PTT/Andriod 18/Roshi stuff that went on years ago.
Also, you could wind up with winning games, being more about what matchups you get and less about how good you are at the game. For example, in MTG if you are a mono-green deck and you go up agianst a white deck you are going to get trashed. This is because Mirran Crusader and other anti-green cards that white has give an unfair advantage to the white player.
I think the styles should do different things, but not inregards to answering allies, drills, dragonballs, non-combats, etc. Instead I think styles should do something different like how black hunts down key cards and removes them, or how orange gets out tons of drills.
8. This is a great idea. I think it would balance the game a lot more, by nerfing the Z Warrior’s gather combo. It would also bring variety to ally decks.
7. I’ve also thought about reforming power levels. My way would be to have power levels range from “Down” to “Super 3”. “Down” would be zero. “Warming Up”, “Battle Ready”, “Enraged” and “Planet Killer” would represent power levels from the Saiyan and Frieza sagas. Power levels would be a combination of a character’s PUR and how many bars he has of different power types. For example, level one Vegeta from the Saiyan Saga might barely tap into “Planet Killer” at his highest power level bar, with a PUR of 2, while level one Frieza might have five bars of “Planet Killer”, but with a very low PUR of zero. My way would result in nine different zones on the PAT, but even the weakest characters from the Saiyan Saga would be in the C zone at full power.
6. Yes please. No constant combat powers at level one. This would be a great nerf to Hercules Carpet attack decks, and it would stop PTT from dominating decks based around their MP’s personality power.
5. I don’t think giving characters like Roshi, or Bulma four levels would reflect the anime very well. I would rather see the removal of MPPV from the game. Exactly when in the show did the heroes decide to give up because the villain had suddenly reached his max potential? “Oh Cell has reached his perfect form. I guess we better give up Goku. It’s hopeless.”
4. I agree with this. I used to run a Red Buu deck with Kid Buu and Evil Buu levels mixed together. I had so much anger in the deck I could easily reach level five, even though I used the Cell Saga Red mastery. Changing levels without using the Trunks mastery made the deck very powerful, and the games very fun.
3. I agree, but what cards you can run in a side deck should be limited. If someone runs a side deck full of ally hate, then tournaments become more about whether that ally deck will get matched with that kid who’s running an anti-ally side deck, and less about individual player skill.
2. Yes kill it.
1. I agree. Ban her. Also ban “win button” cards, DB victory, MPPV, Z Warrior’s Gather, and Krillin level 3.
CB, Dragon’s Victory, Spirit Bomb, Carpet Attack Tech, and Dragonball victory allow people to put their offense into four to seven cards. As a result they can focus the rest of their deck on defense. This results in a very powerful deck that traditional survival victory just can’t compete with.
Krillin level 3, and Z Warrior’s gather automatically do their combos from almost the start of the game. This makes them auto-decks that take no skill to use, other than following a few simple instructions.
This article is nothing more than ten points of “well if I had designed the game”. A dead game, even.
Deck sizes aren’t very problematic. The only decks in my time with the game that really only ever met the deck minimum were Dragon Ball decks and Cosmic Backlash. It was convenient for combo decks that relied on a very specific set of cards to be collected quickly. Combo decks that were beatdown were never 50 decks and were maxed out or somewhere in between. And the logistics of carrying around an 85-card deck with its sideboard is a non-issue. The most popular casual format in Magic, Commander, uses 100-card singelton decks.
The colors of the game really took on particular themes in Trunks Saga when Mastery cards were created and were refined as the game went along. The Mastery cards in Cell Saga did not break a lot of new ground. Red gained a Mastery that supported its physical attacks because the style had less than ten energy attacks in its arsenal until World Games Saga came out. Blue was still all about being defensive and maintaining control over its opponent’s anger level. Black was the only color to get a Mastery that enabled it to do something entirely different than be mixed beatdown. Orange was still the energy attack style. Saiyan was still focused on card advantage and overpowering the its opponent. And lastly, Namekian finally had a large enough card pool by then to really work out a theme of discard pile manipulation. World Games Saga was what really shook things up, and Buu Saga didn’t make any effort to return things to “how they were”. But Mastery cards play a huge role in what your styled cards are going to be. Any Red deck can use its Trunks Saga Mastery just to gain anger, but you’re only going to maximize that kind of growth if you use Red cards that support gaining anger very quickly.
I will sympathize that it’s unfortunate that some personalities don’t fit the role of being an ally when you are trying to use a personality that relies on certain characters as allies. But, there are really only two characters that can be main personalities that revolve around a specific group of allies: Android 20 and Majin Babidi. But the problem is that the personalities that you want to use as allies for Android 20 and Majin Babidi as that those personalities were designed to be main personalities, not allies.
And lastly, Supreme West Kai does not need to be banned. If there’s any kind of house rule I would make on her, it’s that her special ability needs to be removed. She will still be a very solid hero to play as, but she will lose that edge she had where she could go all in as an attacker. When she has to defend in combat the same way that everyone else does, she’s not so special anymore.
The only thing out of all of this that I can find any agreement on is that any fan events could stand to use a Sensei deck rule change to allow the player to choose which cards they sideboard out. I gather that the rule was instated in the first place to keep players from sticking in cards in their life deck that would only ever serve as placeholders for cards they needed to switch out for their “sensei deck only” cards, but with a rule change, better decks would have several different cards to side out depending on the match up instead of a bunch of random garbage.
Who is you?
A nobody with a keyboard and opinion :/
I agree w/ some of the stuff but I gotta disagree w/ a lot too. This is outa order so I apologize in advance. 1st off I do agree w/ baning swk, there was no reason to make her & it’s not fun playing w/ her or against her especially when u can lose the game just by guessing wrong. I’d like to add ban Broly while we’re at it. He was over powered in both z & gt and the was obvious to everyone. Again he’s one of those characters just givin way to much that you almost had to play him towards the end of the game.
A few things I will disagree w/ is the power stages idea bc they got stronger in the show so it made sense that their power levels increased too. You used nappa as an argument but let’s be realistic, no body will ever use nappa, unless you guys make a ghost nappa…
I also don’t like the only 1-4 idea bc it takes away a good portion of the game & not many level 5s are worth getting to, they’re more there just to have an option. For example Broly, goku (babidi or buu saga only), piccolo, trunks, & gohan were the only level 5s seeing real play time & not even all those played gokus farewell which was really the only time most of those were going to get up that high. Even still I really like being able to take advantage of better stages & better powers, I know I wouldn’t be happy about not being able to play ss3 goku.
I also agree w/ the sensei deck too, something needed to be done about that for along time & it was one of the only gt rules I really liked.
Heisel?
Yes, turner? lol
I would also like to address each one of the things mentioned.
ten-the deck size is not something i fully agree with. in a game where the main way is to yes, deck the opponent, i think the option of less cards in a deck is a great idea. i dont always use the smallest amount since i know that when it comes to certain games smaller decks are better, but this one to me, has been the contrary. I beat my friends using a card deck that’s ninety cards. ive also used a fifty card deck with my red deck. i feel its about the style the deck plays.
nine- i feel that its a fifty fifty on this comment. as much as i agree, i also feel that the game has the style function. yes. world games made each style do the same stuff. but each does is differently. as much as i hate the babidi and world games sagas because of the lack of good stuff. and as much as some of the later sets sucked, i feel the only way to make the game have more of a focusing on it is to actually let fans like yourself and anyone else who has a large love for the game continue it like you have with the small amount of cards you have made as well as the online card game. when gt came out they tried keeping to the styles even with the loss of namekian and the change of red. but its the ability to run the style you like while having a change in what it does. i personally run an offensive healing deck with namekian using the world game mastery. i find it easier to heal large amounts of damage if i have a larger hand size. even though the buu saga mastery allows me to heal more efficiently. that is all absed on hand size either way. it mostly comes down to the players. as now, to my knowledge, theres no real super amounts of prize support. just a large love for the game. if the players dont like things like the world games saga masteries, then they dont have to run the mastery. it is nice to have the option to run those things because it does add diversity.
eight-allies have never been my favorite thing. i dont really use them much either. nor do i actually fully understand them. but i think that what they have with allies is enough to actually make a difference. as i agree with certain things on how android 6 and dabura are wasted having constant combat powers. theyre not really allies in the show when it comes to team work. theyre just big powerful people. theyre more of people who fight alone but for a reason. dabura and android 6 never fought with anyone in the show, they were on the side of someone.
seven-this is one of the things i disagree with the most. power levels show how stron someone is compared to another person. recoome shouldnt ever be able to do as much damage as buu. ever. but since both are the same style of fighting, then both would deal the same amount of damage. i feel that if this was how theyd have done it, theyd have had to make large amounts of damage and the power level effect would ahve stayed the same. just not with the power levels itself. having numbers is a good way to distinguish who is at what level. a person once said in a message board, that its just easier to use pats from what sagas people are at for the newest released set for whoesvers playing. so if people are using goku from the saiyan saga, and roshi, they use the saiyan saga pat. but if krillin from trunks fights buu, then its from the buu saga. even though you have to carry around the pats, its what i feel is better for the two options. especially since i keep mine inside a box with my decks anyway.
six-constant combat powers on level one characters are something i think are a good thing to have. certain characters run in certain deck types from what ive seen. dabura is a highely red based character with his ability to use focused attacks. and since hes not much of an ally, he doesnt really need a power. i feel that having level one characters with constant powers is fine.
five-i agree with letting all characters have a level one through five. mostly because it allows a person to customize their decks even more. however i feel certain characters it would be wasted on. for those who are mainly a high level of fighter. any fighter. they should have levels one through four at least. however people who arent high in the power list. such as bulma and chi chi should stay levels one through three. each character should even have levels one through three.
four-as much as i like the getting to use more powers as you reach higher levels i feel it over breaks the game way more than one would think. for instance, ive seen it done three times. gt, z, and the ocg. each time, me and my friends have reacted, that character is way too good. when they did it with supreme west kai, everyone thought she was broken, hence her being your number one thing to change. she not only was amazing in what she did, she did everything she normally did at level three. even without the extra power, she makes even people who havent played long a hard to beat person. when they did it with super seventeen in gt. he became more broken than most characters id seen. except goku level six who has draw four cards. and when nappa did it in the ocg. well, he did way too much stuff as well and it made nappa a force to be reckoned with. now imagine we did things like that for people like majin buu. hed be even more powerful than he was before. and every villain would have to be nerfed beyond recognition. i think that would make tapkar less lonely. and a more unliked game.
three-side decks should be changed. but it should be more or less a new gameplay mechanic. piccolo was the only sensei i myself would have used to get cards or id have used cards to allow me to get cards specifically from my sensei into my hand instead of trading them. a side deck would add so much more depth to the game. so i agree one hundred percent.
two-even though i use the double power rule i wouldnt mind it being gone. its just a way for weaker character to have a leveling ground towards people who run buu. i dont think buu in real life would care about who hes fighting. hed just be at full power. so its one of those things that i dont think really changes a game as much as people think it does. so i also agree with getting rid of it.
one-even though i do like west kai. i dont use her. she is in fact one of the most broken characters i have played against. i feel broken characters are majin buu based, west kai, and a few others. this is mostly because most powerful characters are made to be powerful. west kai lost to buu, who in turn lost to goku. so i dont think that she should have been this good either.
This article has created the best discussion on the site so far. Even if its just people’s opinions butting heads against each other. Good jorb Josh!
I think more people would be curious to see your list on the subject.
i second this notion.
Another great article Josh. And props to community for such well thought out responses.
Wow, this thread needs a tl;dr. I think most of the points listed were really solid, and great arguments all around.
The only thing I will add right now is that hindsight is 20/20 🙂
Yup, in no way did I even come up with most of these ideas when the game was still active and, as has been pointed out, many would have to have been implemented on Day 1 of the game.
The first change I would make would be to Remove MPPV from the game. As it is, I think this rule is absolutely ridiculous and has no place in the game. This very rule pretty much makes Personalities with only 3 levels unplayable if they don’t have the ability to ramp up to level 3 quickly. At the very least, I would require a player to reach the equivilent of reaching 5 anger at level 5 to win by MPPV. So a level 3 personality would have to reach level 3, then reach 5 anger 3 more times to win by MPPV or a Personality with 5 levels would have to reach their top level and gain another 5 anger to win. Hard? Yeah, but like I said, I don’t think this form of victory even belongs in the game. As a matter of fact, I don’t even like the whole concept of gaining “Anger”. If anything, I’d have it where you begin play with 1 level, and to gain a level, you would have to draw the level from your deck and play it over your Personality (similiar to leveling an ally from level 1 to level 2).
Speaking about leveling…why the hell are you penalized for gaining a level by discarding all your drills? When you gain a level, you don’t discard all your noncombats…cause that would be pretty dumb. Well, I consider the whole discarding of drills on par with that. I mean, there’s enough ways for your opponent to get rid of drills and noncombats already, its not like they need any help with that. Players should be encouraged to level. As it is, you pretty much need to focus your entire deck around gaining anger to level consistently. Maybe it could be a compromise between all the ideas. Like, MPPV would still be in the game under the condition you have to reach 5 anger 5 times to win by it. Your drills aren’t discarded when you level, but because you have to gain so much anger, the amount of cards that lower anger or personality levels would be limited. That way you could build a deck where you can naturally level without having to focus most of your resources towards it.
But like I said. If I had it my way, MPPV would be removed, you wouldn’t discard your drills upon leveling. There would be more cards that raise your anger by 1 and far less that lowered it which would encourage natural leveling, which I think is the idea Jim Ward had when he first created this game.
Another problem I had were how personalities don’t have synergy with one another. You would have a level 1 that did one thing and a level 2 that did something entirely different, which once again would discourage players from leveling which I don’t believe was the original idea. You should be able to build a deck based off a level 1 with the idea that when you level you don’t take away from the power you had, but added to it. An example would be Goku Level 1 being a Physical Attack doing 4 stages of damage. The Level 2 could be a Physical Attack doing 6 stages of damage, or maybe it would still be a physical attack doing 4 stages of damage but you can use it twice per combat.
I also would have liked to seen more Personality only cards. Which would give you more incentive to use some of the lesser used personalities. I hinted at this idea when I created an alternate art Chiaotzu’s Psychic Halt that added the “Chiaotzu Only” text. This will also allow you to place less emphasis on personality powers and more on deckbuilding (which I think is a major part of the fun when playing a CCG). Since there would be more personality only cards, I would like to see FAR LESS freestyle cards. I think a deck should be built with mostly Styled and Personality Only cards. I would stay away from any universal staples like “Time is a Warriors Tool” and the like. In theory, this would better define how different styles and personalities play with having enough flexibility that decks aren’t “spoonfed” to players.
F*ck… I got to cut it short…but those are just a few of the ideas I had… Great Article Josh.
You got some great ideas, even fleshing out some of my points much more eloquently than I was able to. You should turn that into a full fledged article.
Glad to see I’m not the only one who hates MPPV. I used to run a blue Uub deck with x3 Aura Clash, and x3 R U Tuff enuff. Once I got to that level three I had Blue double blast as a focused attack doing 12 life, a blue physical doing 12 life, and another blue physical doing 24 life. Keep in mind that because of Uub’s level three all the damage was removed from the game, instead of discarded. Only problem with that deck was accidentally giving my opponent MPPV.
I forgot to mention this in my original reply, but I like your idea of having more personality only cards. One thing I really liked about DBZ was how changing the Mastery or the Main Personality would radically change how your deck played. I think it would be pretty fun if tons of powerful cards were personality only, and if there was a limit on how many personality only cards a single deck could have. For example, do I use my personality only slots to put in Piccolo’s Multiform, and other physical beat cards, or do I use it to put in that Piccolo double energy attack, and other energy attacks?
F*ck an article…I say we create a full fledged game based off all that we learned these last 10+ years. I already have hours and hours of work done on a preliminary game based on the original DBZ with many of the changes I mentioned above. The problem I ran into is the game I’m making is technically already licensed and I’m finding it extremely difficult to find screencaps of actions shots that aren’t blurry as its from live action footage. My original timeline to have a prototype made was by this years Gencon, but I have since then gave myself another year so the prototype shown isn’t rushed and I can apply another intellectual property to the game mechanics.
I’ve been toying with an alternative delivery method for a new game. I’m pretty confident that traditional pack-chasing is a very tough model to utilize these days. We’ll talk on FB.
I’m really into this cup and ball now. Man, you never know which way this crazy ball is going to go!
It’s funny because it’s true!
It wouldn’t be too hard to create a flash version of this game. I’ve been planing on making it a project for school for a long time.
Well, the core game engine isn’t difficult. Getting all of the card effects and images, on the other hand… =p
Have you seen what has been done with the dbz ocg? It’s fairly similar to what you want changed in the game. Not many changes to the rules / mechanics as we wanted it to stay as similar as possible to Score’s games, but in terms of the personalities and personality only cards there’s a lot. Almost every MP in the game is playable, even from Saiyan Saga, and many of them advance levels to a better version of their lower level powers.
There’s still a lot of problems with the game. Trying to create it too similar to Score’s game brought back a lot of the same strategies and cards. Players with a bias towards certain decks also started causing problems when they got involved with the creation of the game and kept trying to make them stronger. But overall I’ve found the game a step up from Score’s games due to what we learnt over their game.
A reboot is currently in planning as we’ve reached a point in the game where there’s too many cards to expect new players to join. Some of these ideas look really good and I’d be interested to try to include some of them in our new game.
who is cupping balls?
Ah SWK, I think the only real cards I still have are multiple foiled decks of my SWK 1-3 Red Rush. Before I go any further I have to give my old school props to Joshman, Cloak, Fashbinder, Morabito, Dez,and Mlow for the help they lended throughout my DBZ career.
SWK was the worst idea ever brought into the DBZ CCG realm. For decent players it offered a confusing personality that had too many interlocking mechanics but provided them a luck based deck.
For good players, it offered an abusive new deck archtype, you no longer have to counter attacks, all you had to focus on was running enough counter tech to get to Level 3 then if you didn’t win by MPPV (which happened A TON) you had the ability to manipulate every engage to ensure it was in your favor. Even if you got forced into combat, the likelihood that you went into it with; a TES, Gohan’s Kick, and the ability to punish them for any action was pretty high. Your only penalty for this amazing personalty and synergy was you risked not being able to win by dragonball victory.
“To me, it never really made sense for Android 14 to be Piccolo’s #1 ally after fusing with Kami, or Jewel being an ally to Supreme West Kai.”
Supreme West Kai cant have allies….lol only thing i could think of while i read it.
But with all that, why dont you come over to OCG and apply for a designer job? Its still up in the air about a reboot and everything. I bet if you talk to Kami he would be glad to help you with your dreams.
SWK can have allies. Remember Matt Low’s SWK NTW ally / ESB deck? The rule was that she couldn’t be used as an ally. But I don’t remember Jewel ever being an ally for her…
And yes we’re looking for more people to help with the reboot for OCG =D. I’m especially interested in getting some of the old veterans from Score’s game who may create some new attention from other former players who haven’t bothered to check out OCG yet.
Thanks, and yes SWK can have allies.
Garrett and I have fun trying to breathe a bit of life into the game with Virtual Cards and some rules changes, but don’t really have any interest in rebooting or redesigning the game. We’ve kicked around ideas for other games, but only time will tell for those.
Oh, i dont know how i took you cant play her as an ally as you cant have allies, my mistake. lol. Hmmmm now to abuse her more…lol
Awesome article Josh =). Like most people seem to be doing I’ll go over each change you suggested and give my opinion.
1) Sixty Card Deck Size.
I hate this idea. I understand your reasons behind it, but I found the 60 card deck size in the TCG very boring for deck building. This was also partly due to the small deck size, but seeing every deck built exactly the same wasn’t fun. One of the awesome things about DBZ is the variety you can have in deck building with your strategies, and deck size is a big part of this. Smaller decks can be faster and win quicker, but they can also lose faster. Larger decks are slower and might not get the cards they need to win in time, but they can survive longer against beatdown, and can have more cards to deal with a larger variety of strategies. I think removing the MP/Mastery/Sensei from the deck limit is a good idea, especially for the small decks which can bring their life deck down to around 40 cards at the start of a game, and barely have any deck to play the game with.
2) Give the styles something unique to do.
I like every style having a solution to every deck. Maybe give certain styles a better advantage than others, but everything needs tech. Games are boring when the winner is decided before it even begins based only on what decks each player has. Giving the styles their own strategy to make them unique is good, but very hard to do. Score tried it at first, and so did OCG. Eventually you create so many cards for the same strategy that there’s no point in making any more as the deck already has what it needs, and you need to give the style another strategy to keep it interesting. In the end OCG has just stopped making new styled masteries because there’s no point in doing it anymore. One thing I think Score could have done which I liked in OCG was creating more mastery specific cards to encourage the use of less popular masteries and strategies. We went a little too far with this and stamped too many cards with “_____ mastery only”, but the idea was good.
3) Team stamp characters/cards.
Awesome idea and similar to what we have done with OCG. Our tournament participation is getting smaller now, but it’s always been nice to see the variety of decks played in OCG with almost every player using a different personality. Give all the personalities a unique strategy / power and people will never stop playing with those decks.
7) Reform power levels.
Best idea I’ve seen for a long time. I’m definitely going to bring this up as a suggestion for the OCG reboot. The great part about it is you can also add power levels, which means they can be used with old cards. I like the potential for customizing the range of colors on personalities.
6. No constant combat powers on level one.
This would definitely help to make more playable allies. Not sure if we need that many allies, but it would help for ally MPs who need specific groups to be used as their allies like you mentioned above. However maybe those specific personalities just needed better designing to not have constant powers, rather than make it a rule necessary for all level 1 personalities.
5. Make all characters 1-4 to be playable.
I agree with Valdez on this, it would be better to just remove MPPV.
4. Bigger emphasis/ease on leveling.
Another thing I really like about OCG. We have too much auto leveling rather than anger, but it’s great to have a lot of personalities with fun powers at high levels, and have the ability to reach those levels in every game. If MPPV was removed then this would make things much easier to allow decks to level quickly without designers worrying about MPPV decks.
3. Give the game a real side deck.
I like having the ability to put any card in your sensei deck. It allows much more freedom for deckbuilding so you can focus more on your strategy while still having tech available if needed. I don’t like the ability to search through your deck and choose what cards you’re taking out. The randomness of it was great for strategy. The more cards you sensei in, the more helpful cards you will have to defeat your opponent, and the higher the chance that you will lose something crucial to your regular strategy. Giving a negative side effect makes people think, and adds strategy to the game. If they can choose what cards to take out then that removes strategy and makes the game more simple.
2. Eliminate the double power rule.
This never made sense to me. Whoever is stronger should be able to power up faster and get in the first hit. Maybe the weaker person needs to handicap, but it doesn’t fit in with the show at all which the majority of the other mechanics seem to aim for. Regardless of how much sense it makes now, I think everyone can agree it’s not the power level but the personality power which makes a character good, and this rule is no longer necessary to give them a handicap so they can stand a chance of winning the game.
1. Ban SWK
She’s annoying in expanded, and broken in Z. Beatable sure, but not by a lot. Using her gives anyone a big advantage. Best thing to do is ban her, even if I do like playing with her =P. Removing her power is the worst idea possible. That shuffling power with blocks in her deck would make her practically invincible and you will be begging for that 50% chance of a successful attack when 100% of your attacks are being stopped. Anyone who has been shut down for an entire game when playing against her with a physical beatdown deck and being caught in a loop of SSE + VQD every combat should be able to see what would happen if you added in a handful of other stop alls and strong blocks. It may not be as bad in Z as it would in expanded because there’s more luck involved with Z, and less chance of her doing this. But with weaker attacks in Z her shuffling power becomes even better. That alone would make her broke IMO, but add in the ability to start using combat enders and DB decks are going to go crazy with her.
=( need an edit feature so I can fix all the mistakes, or maybe I should just double check posts when I’m tired…
For anyone confused about the numbering, they have titles too so get over it.
In regards to the deck size, I was referring to the small card pool in the TCG when for some reason I said small deck size…
It’s really cool to see so much feedback for this article. I’m going to point the people designing the reboot for OCG over here so they can get some ideas. I’d be interested to see some bigger changes to the game to test some of these things rather than just copy the same game as we’ve played for the past 3-4 dbz card games.
Suppose I’ll respond since I got some time at work:
#10) I don’t really care about deck size either way. However, with a smaller specific deck size, you’d have to re-evaluate how damage in general is valued, what gets endurance, how much, and how often, and how much healing/removal comes into play. On the one hand, this would allow some styles, such as Blue or Namekian, to focus on healing and endurance, with others such as Red and Saiyan, focusing more on removal and anti-prevention. This would definitely add another facet to the game that was relatively overlooked in the original. You’d also likely have to re-evaluate Anger, since the new levels for damage and life decks would likely change how much Combat time there is.
#09) Uniqueness to a certain extent, yes. I feel things like this should have a “major” and a “minor”, with the minors likely splashing a bit into what another style does. Score definitely jumped the shark in WGS, and then tried to pretend said jump never occurred in Buu Saga, which ended up making any Mastery that was vaguely different and didn’t get some ridiculously niche combo obsolete. In other words, every Mastery except Orange and Namekian, with Freestyle not counting since it was only the second such Mastery. And even then, because of Namekian’s horrid cardpool, the WGS Mastery was basically eclipsed by the TS one for the entirety of the game. I think I went on a tangent there, but yes I agree that there needed to be more uniqueness, just not a “You want to do X? Only Y does that.” Perhaps more of a “You want to do X? Y does that best, but Z does it in different way that might be more appealing to you.”
#08) As Kami said above, we did this in the OCG and it worked well. It sounds like you’d want to take it one step further and make them traits ala Inuyasha or as a team like in Versus System, either of which would probably work better in the long-run.
#07) You mentioned this to me before, and I like it, but I don’t think the power ratings should be removed entirely. Definitely fix them so they’re official (sorry Chippy, but those power levels are wrong beyond belief, even the ones from before they stopped saying what the power levels of characters were), but keep them as another sub-facet of the game. It gives the game a true Dragon Ball flavor rather than making it feel like any IP could be plugged and played. Just don’t use it for the PAT. Use it for card effects, like the Broly Subset Saiyan cards.
#06) We did this for a lot of the OCG, for the most part. The “main character” of the saga generally got a CCP, and the “allies” got powers, regardless of the number of levels they had. I agree that it adds a certian flavor.
#05) Makes sense, though weren’t level 5’s added because 1-4 was too fast? In which case, you’d need to either downplay the anger and risk killing a victory style, or standardize 1-5.
#04) I think everything that needed to be said was said here. Though I don’t like the idea of auto-using your lower levels. Seems like it’d be a bitch to balance while constantly making new levels, and why willingly create such a burden?
#03) Agreed.
#02) Double agreed.
#01) Supremely agreed.
“#03) Agreed.
#02) Double agreed.
#01) Supremely agreed.”
Ha – nice pun.
Agree with the randomness of sideboarding. It’s a lot faster to do it randomly and is more of a trade off for playing the extra tech.
To go back to the 1-4 thing. Removing MPPV is a great idea. Keep level 5’s, but instead of just winning, give them broke ass powers that will give you a huge game advantage. Huge unstoppable attacks, card draw, multi attacks, stuff like trunks level 4 CS to destroy opponent’s deck, etc
if i may address this with another long post i would change the game in a few ways myself.
1-id make a mastery every set. this would add more to the card game. it would add more deck types, more styles within the styles and add a lot of more everything in general.
2-id have more sets. more sets = more cards. things such as the movies are a good place to have a set itself. even if its small, the characters are vastly different in style at points in time and even have more enemies. this makes for more variety as well.
3-change the rules to only allow the survival victory. no dragonballs, no mppv, nothing but sweet sweet decking. id change the dragonballs to allow certain things to happen. such as more cards when entering combat, or lass damage taken, or dealing more damage, or more cards when putting cards back into the deck for any reason even the rejuvenation step. or even some other perks. mppv should also have people having broken powers since theyre at their max.
3-each character should do one thing. like they do in bleach. each guardian has a deck type. you can use any character but certain ones would accel in certain areas. like gohan would be more red for his anger and etc.
4- make every character and give each a level 5 as well as multiples of a character for allies. people want allies to have good powers. id make characters so that each character can be an ally as well as a main character. some people such as vegeta dont work well with others but will do so when they need to. so its only logical that he and every other one should have an ally card type. and id make a character for each character. no leaving out characters that people like. cause i myself want a farmer card.
5-allow anger to go over 5 when gaining past 5.-i want are you tuff enuff and other cards that give more than 5 anger, to give more than 5 anger. 100 anger seems like it should give 100 anger.
thats all i have for now but if i think of anymore. ill just post it here.