Since Baba has been quite the topic of discussion lately, I thought I would post my Baba decklist that we used during playtesting.
Sensei Deck
Black Scout Maneuver x3
Grand Kai’s Palace x3
Allies (6)
Spike the Devil Man
Grandpa Gohan, Masked Fighter
Fangs the Vampire
Bandages the Mummy
See-Through the Invisible Man
Ghost Usher, Attendant
Non-combat (20)
Black Thought Focus x3
Black Searching Technique x3
Welcome Home Drill x2
Provoke Drill x2
Krillin’s Concentration x3
Fatherly Advice
Where There’s Life There’s Hope
Hercule’s Dream Sequence x2
Heroes Lucky Break
Piccolo and Heroes Gather x2
Combat (16)
Oh Hoi Hoi Hoi Poi x3
Trunks Energy Sphere x3
Super Saiyan Effect
Pure Defense
Gohan’s Nimbus Cloud
Dazed
Confrontation x3
Vegeta’s Lunge x2
Land in Pain
Defense (18)
Goku’s Running Defense
Black Recovery x3
Vegeta’s Physical Stance
Nappa’s Physical Resistence
Nappa’s Energy Aura
Black Body Destruction x3
Black Buffer Block x3
Goku’s Energy Absorption
Ally Sacrifice x3
Time is a Warrior’s Tool
The deck follows basic Baba strategy of leveling through Oh Hoi Hoi Hoi Poi and milling the opponent out with her celestial allies. Get out those Piccolo and Heroes Gather and Krillin’s Concentration to level up quick before you build too big of a drill presence. I ran it Black Style since they have some of the best non-damage/non-attack cards in the game. I use Piccolo Sensei so I can essentially run Black Scout Maneuver in my main deck, and always get my allies into my Sensei at the beginning of the game (the other three cards that start in the Sensei are irrelevant).
Grand Kai’s Palace is great with cards like Black Body Destruction (which is exclusively defensive in this deck), Black Buffer Block and the amazing Goku’s Energy Absorption. I run cards like Vegeta’s Lunge just to make sure that Black Buffer Block usually has a target. Land in Pain has been a real game saver (and one of my Top 10 Underrated Cards), and I would consider running more (even though once one is used, that’s usually enough).
Just level as quick as you can, defend and discard your opponent’s hand to survive combat and mill out with Spike the Devil Man leading the charge. Not a difficult deck to pilot, just difficult to get your Celestial Fighters out and deal real damage to your opponent. Greatly slowed down by the card fixes, but at least the allies reduce the amount of “tech” cards you need to run, allowing the deck to be slimmer and more streamlined.
Later, BroZ!
I don’t think this is a very efficient or effective build. The sensei choice IMO is not ideal and misses a lot of opportunities with Baba. Land in Pain and PAHG should be x3 as World Tournament and City In Turmoil hurt this deck very badly.
PAHG/KC will be limit 1 so that doesn’t really matter.
I personally think the “Play Piccolo Sensei for a free 6 sensei deck only cards” in this deck is genius, but that’s just me.
I literally have 0 experience with her so I can’t comment past that.
Ally Wins!
I’ve played 50+ games at least with and against Baba and it is missing alot of her potential using Piccolo Sensei.
And why is KC and PAHG going to be limit? Most people were against it in the other Baba discussion thread. Unless there were a bunch of posts I didn’t read.
We’ll see about PAHG/KC, but if I was a betting man…
And how do you loose potential? South Kai? I mean, you’re getting 3 Scouts and 3 (whatever) in your deck for free this way.
North is meh since she can’t attack. Roshi? Again. So maybe West for a bit more tech or South. South will have you start with two allies out instead of just the one from her power, but you’d be severely limited in Sensei Deck cards.
What were you thinking?
2 Scouts, 1 Huh, 3 Locations/City/Whatevs.
Only reason to run anyone other than Piccolo is if you wanted to run WGS Celestials, and without having MWS on hand to check the only one worth a damn is Froug.
Elder Kai is clearly the best for her. She NEEDS froug. If she doesn’t have him she should lose to quick broly or buu decks.
There is nothing in the actual deck itself that is needed. Welcome home drills just slowed the deck down so they were removed from the deck pretty early. So running piccolo sensei doesn’t really help. The reason you run elder kai is in a mirror match you need the extra spots in the sensei deck. She doesn’t just effect her allies, she also can nab your opponents. so you enter, and use “the plan”. Since you are the active player you use your level 1 power first and you steal all of the other players allies without discarding any of yours. You then use all their powers and there is still room for them in your sensei deck.
So baba can steal baba’s allies by discarding them?
That’s…confusing and just…strange.
“When a celestial fight you control…”
The exact wording in the cards above say “When a Celestial Fighter in play . . .” it doesn’t say “a Celestial fighter you control”.
Whoooooooosh!
Thought we fixed the wording on that? Play it the sensible way where it only affects your Celestials for now, since that is the intent of the card and how we have been playing it. Though I’d imagine Baba vs. Baba will be a somewhat rare matchup.
Yes, she’s not just restricted to running the virtual allies. She can use ALL the Celestials. As Darryl mentioned, Froug is a power house for her, and Caterpy is excellent as well since he can help turn dead hands more useful. And Vegeta, Settled Down is great tech against her, so she needs the sensei deck space for things to keep him from leveling up (Winter Countryside) and to put him back down (Vegeta Scans the City).
And what happens if you get Red Face Slapped or Showdown’d followed by an ally removal like the Plan or Red Lighting Slash? You need a way to get the allies back from your discard pile which is missing from here. That’s another thing I would personally fix with this deck. 1 or 2 Hero’s Way or even Watching From Afar (to put them back in the deck and fish em out but this has MANY uses for this deck).
So either way, Elder Kai is superior as Baba should be used as a control and manipulative deck until she can set up her ally kill. Elder Kai gives you the tool box to achieve this against anyone.
Oh and Elder Kai makes Black Protection Orb awesome in this deck, as you could stop up an infinite amount of energy attacks with it even after getting Gohan’s Kicked as long as you have two Celestials in the sensei (discard two cards from sensei, stop an energy. Baba puts them right back).
The main point for running Elder Kai being the mirror I get, but…it leaves me uneasy…can Josh/Garrett comment whether this use is intended or not? Even if it’s intended, how much mirrors will you be facing? I doubt very many.
Aside from that, Froug is great and extremely useful, but there doesn’t seem to be much after him. And I wouldn’t say you should lose your sensei effect for a single ally. Just put an ally main deck and use Piccolo to choose which (based on opponent’s setup) in the beginning. You’re not going to need Froug every match.
Why do you need all that space in your sensei deck? You’re already not running attacks. Don’t you have enough space from taking those out for tech cards?
I commented above about the wording, technically it is worded to work the way Edison pointed out, however we have stated in other topics that this is not how it works nor how it has ever been playtested or intended to work and a clarification will be issued if needed.
After that, I agree that Elder Kai is a very poor choice for Sensei. You rob yourself of some stability and utility against all decks for tech against some decks. When you tech against everything, you weaken the functionality of the deck (any deck) as a whole.
Froug would be the only ally that I would consider using from the other Celestials, but ultimately the focus is on the other Celestials.
You guys don’t see the point of Elder Kai probably because it looks like your focus is on cute effects like Welcome Home Drill and Grand Kai’s Palace. Our focus was on total control and combo chaining the allies. Froug and Caterpy are useful, and I still run others as well. Why? Because when I sacrifice one for Oh Hoi Hoi Hoi Poi or Ally’s Sacrifice, I don’t want to sac one of my 6 main allies. I want those other jank allies there for meat shields. If I sac one of the mill allies for another effect, that’s less mill that turn. She should be using other allies besides these six.
And what’s so great about Piccolo? You get to main deck Black Scout Maneuver? Honestly not a big deal IMO. I’d rather have the tech and tool box and other useful allies besides the virtual ones.
Booooo for no edit.
I also fail to see how Elder Kai is robbing yourself of a sensei effect? PIccolo is robbing yourself of an effect. You are able to run NO OTHER tech with him. Once the game starts, you have no sensei effect. Elder Kai achieves the same and still leaves you with 10+ other cards to tailor against any opponent.
You don’t see how using a Sensei with no effect is robbing you of a Sensei effect?
Dafuq?
With Piccolo, the effect is the free Sensei deck cards with the ally swap. It’s super swag.
I still don’t get why you’re citing ‘tech’ as the reason to run it. She doesn’t play attacks, a whole card type is removed from your deck. That’s a ton of cards. There is your tech space. I never heard about SWK needing space for tech…
To me, Elder Kai isn’t of much use since I believe the Sensei deck should be used more to patch up holes in your deck against certain match-ups if needed, rather than teching against everything out there.
The best use of Elder Kai that I can think of is using him in a Goku deck and using something like Black Front Punch (I’m sure there’s something better I can’t think of at the moment) to remove a Sensei Deck of all Goku named cards then using a Goku’s Relentless Spirit to add around 18 cards to your deck.
yeah seems like her wording wasnt that well thought out, but thats what happens when you try to get too cute with some powers. Ally powers and anger cards walk a fine line of being mediocre and broken, and as seen from last years tourny ally decks are doing just fine. So I’d like to see some focus on lesser played theme decks. I typically like geoff’s retro cards more since they focus on helping lesser played mps be more competitive.
Its actually kinda funny. We had the same problem in ocg, another player liked to get cute with powers too. Wilding designed a dr willow mp set that was similar in that he couldnt attack but could get allys out fast as well. He ended up a problematic character until we basically had to make him unusable. Was also used with black cs mastery, prolly why nova was able to break baba as fast as he did since he had past experience with this power.
Yea, I built it exactly like willow was played. With the wording change to baba I would probably run it with west kai sensei now. The biggest impact to her is not being able to get froug before the first turn of the game if she goes second. Now she will lose almost every time to anyone using a decent bojack, buu or broly.
We do not want Virtual Card personalities to be top tier decks. Just fun decks.
I completely agree. She is still playable. And will probably win a couple games at gencon but not the whole thing.
I like the changes that have been made to her.
The Baba personality cards on the Virtual Cards page now reflect that she only affects personalities you control. Thank you to all the players who pointed out this oversight.
I have built a Baba deck slightly like this, but the way I built her was much like Roshi ball. In that I try to end combat often when I am at a disadvantage. However, the biggest difference is I have Earth spirit bombs in my sensei too. She seemed all too perfect for it. It is not an attack and she sets it up fairly quickly. Every time I have had trouble getting ESB set up, she still milled them with her natural abilities while taking practically no dmg.
Playing against?
I actually havent been able to play it against many different decks, but I have put it up against several expanded GT high dmg decks. I have yet to test against Dball or anger decks. I want a chance to play it against some other players, but so far none of my old favorite decks have beaten it. As far as my decks go that I have tested it against: Freestyle Bojack(Z level beatdown deck), Orange expanded omega ally(highest dmg), and black energetic Rildo(most regen).
With all due respect, we don’t design the Virtual Cards with Expanded format or GT cards in mind.
Imo thats the only way to play her now. Bandages and grandpa gohan make her a great ball mp. Due to no double power rule though, the best she can hope is tier 2. Against a buu, bojack, or broly; if she doesnt have a combat ender or stop all she will lose first turn.
Oh I realize that. With that being said, that wouldn’t put baba at an advantage. It should put her at a disadvantage and yet it is still winning. Really the point was that she is doing great with stall tactics (end combat often, watching from afar, every stop all you can pack) while she easily grabs out allies that can never be completely eliminated and sets up the non combats needed forESB.
Personally I think Earth Spirit Bomb is a waste of time with Baba. In the time it takes to set it up she could just have milled her opponent to death naturally.