Soopha Dewper Super Sayians - Part 7

In attempting to get more of my friends to play the Dragon Ball Z Collectable Card Game (FuZion Format), I've had to start approaching it from a more Magic the Gathering-based perspective. You see, most of the people I play cards with only play Commander, a MtG multiplayer variant, so framing FuZion through that lens could well help me bring some of them across. Something card players like pretty much more than anything else is shiny cards with nice art, especially foiled versions if they can get them. So if I were to make a deck that was full of foiled cards that had a play-style analogous to a popular Magic deck, well maybe that'd give me a way in, right? So anyway, that's why I built Blue Ginyu.

For those that never played the Dragon Ball Z games, especially the Panini version, and are only familiar with the anime, building Captain Ginyu may seem like an odd choice, however, Ginyu was once the best decks going around. Each turn in FuZion, you start by powering up and then drawing three cards, with some clever deck building, you can probably get more cards in your hand, but having more than three attacks and/or blocks is pretty rare. What makes Ginyu different is that he can pull out his Allies (the rest of the Ginyu force) and they can do the fighting for him. When the format had a limited card pool, Allies could be very deadly, and there's still room there for good decks. In fact, I had a Ginyu Force Orange Allies deck before FuZion came along and have considered bringing it back as Freestlye Beats.

I also decided to jump in on the My Hero Academia CCG, because a few people at work were giving it a go and it looked cool. I've only played with the intro decks so far, but the mechanics are fun and there are almost no dead cards in the entire game. I'm going to start building an All Might deck, mostly because I pulled good cards for him and he looks easy to play, but also because my other option is the short guy who throws his balls at people. Not going to cover everything about the game and my deck building here like FuZion unless I start playing it a lot, but it's another Superhero card game, so of course I had to take a look, even if I'm not a huge fan of the programme. Interestingly, this game is based on the UniVerses system by Jasco, so, in theory, I could play my My Hero Academia characters against the old Megaman card game characters? I'll look more into that, even if I'm also not a big Megaman fan.

That Time I Made my own Pokemon TCG format

Back when I started working at an FLGS, one of my responsibilities was the Pokémon TCG League. Whilst I've never been too big on Collectable Card Games, I used to have a bit of fun with Pokémon, mostly because the community was a lot of fun and the game had enough depth to be engaging. Like most card games, Pokémon has a rotation, meaning cards are only usable in tournaments and events like League for a couple of years before being replaced by the new ones. In a lot of ways, this approach is advantageous to players, because new cards are easy to find and you avoid the Yu-Gi-Oh issue of cards becoming impossible to get a hold of. The flipside is, of course, players end up with a lot of useless cards on their hands. Back when I was doing this (2010 to 2013ish), aside from the Standard game, there wasn't another way to play Pokémon and use the older cards in the League. Expanded Format was around, but no one really bothered and Unlimited was yet to be birthed officially, but there were some older cards I wanted to get on the table, so I had to have a bit of a think. 

Magic The Gathering already had some other formats going at the time, some of which had started with groups of players putting them together independently, like "Commander", originally called EDH (Elder Dragon Highlander), which put interesting restrictions on deckbuilding, but allowed for a greater depth of cards from older sets. To this end, I set about making a variant of the Pokémon TCG with my friends, both so we could keep using some of the cards we have, but we also wanted to capture more of the "feel" of the video games. We called the resulting format "Pokémon Trainer Battles", and it had a number of issues, but I think it wasn't too bad overall. I think if the idea of something other than Standard had been on the tables, we could have developed it more, but lack of interest made us drop the idea before it went too far. Knowing what I know now, I suspect that we would have had to start banning some cards, but any extended-format card game has that issue. 

First off, Trainer Battles was different in that a "deck" only contained 6 Pokémon and they all started on the field, face down, to better simulate the six Pokeballs carried by trainers in the video games. One was still in the "Active" space, and was revealed after turn order had been decided, but the remaining five on the bench would be hidden at the start. Unlike the normal game, these Pokémon could be at any Stage, not just basics, again in an attempt to simulate the video games. As the Pokémon on the bench were KOed or Switched, they would be flipped up, so your opponent would slowly learn what you had and vice-versa. Pokémon on the Bench could only be damaged by attacks when face up and could only use Abilities when face up, for an added element of risk. So if I was running something like the Serperior with the "Royal Heal" ability, I would have to expose it to risk to gain the benefit it provides. 

The rest of the "deck" that players had also featured a few restrictions; 40 cards rather than 60, and, excepting Basic Energy, in "singleton" format, i.e., one of each card. Unlike in regular games, "decking out" didn't trigger a game loss, as the intention was to emulate "PP" from the video games, but this may have been a mistake, as one player just built an engine to draw his entire deck as fast as possible, due to the lack of a "max hand size" rule in the Pokémon TCG. Me, I focused on recurring my Boost Energy card to drop huge attacks each turn. Energy and Items could still be attached to face-down Pokémon, but players had to declare it, as in "I am attaching a Water Energy to this Pokémon", but we did experiment with options for "hidden" attachment. Of course, some cards, like Rare Candy and Devolution Spray were essentially unplayable in Trainer Battles, but this was to be expected, and cards like Computer Search and Red Card became a lot more interesting. 

So was Trainer Battles a "failure"? Yes and no. We abandoned it because it didn't catch on, but we also really didn't put enough effort into it either. Thinking about this all these years later, I can see some fun that could be had with the format and, if I still had any physical cards, might put together a couple of decks to test out. Some cards would certainly need to be banned (anything that returned Active Pokémon to hand for example), but the opportunities to try out new combinations and give old cards new life would be good to see in the Pokémon TCG, which doesn't have all that much variation currently. The only format of Magic The Gathering I play is Commander, precisely because I don't need more than one or two new cards with each new set and even an entire new deck can be pretty affordable, so something more like that for Pokémon would be very much of interest to me. Feedback welcome on this one, folks. 

Zooper Dooper Zooper Sayians - Part 6

The 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic hit game stores pretty hard, including the one I work for, and we were forced to close one of our stores to preserve the business. This meant that more than a decade's worth of backstock and unwanted product needed to be sorted through and, often, disposed of. Ever heard of Huntik, Arcane Legions or Conjure? Well, we found all of them in the dark corners of the store room and most went into bins. What didn't get tossed, however, was the huge box of Score and Pannini Dragon Ball Z cards, I got to take them home and spent several days sorting them out. Then another one of our stores decided to liquidate the remaining sealed Pannini stock and I was flooded with cards that I'd only ever really managed to buy piecemeal before. Even back in my Pokemon League days, I'd never really been one to purchase entire booster boxes of cards, I preferred to buy singles (which I still do for some games), so as to not end up with an overflow of unusable Commons. Now, of course, I have more copies of "Straining Outburst Move" then I will ever conceivably use. 

There is a flip-side, in that some of the harder to get cards have landed in my hands, as well as quite a few I was unaware existed previously, such as "Piccolo's Multiform" and "Unlocked Potential", both of which will receive plenty of play. Then again, I was hoping to open two copies of "Garlic Jr's Dead Zone" and only got one; another reason I tend away from blind-packaged collectable games, or at least tend to print the cards I need and buy them later if I can. For my Magic the Gathering "Commander" decks, printing expensive cards and trying them out is a great way to save money in the hobby and I highly recommend it for casual players, like myself, but with FuZion, there's often little choice than to run off what you need on the work printer; the cards just aren't out there. For example, "___'s Guard Crush" is a highly useful card in just about any deck, but I only own one copy, and it only came in special "Power Packs" so is a pretty rare find on the secondary market, even when buying collections. 

So where does that leave me, trying to build decks? Frustrated, is the short answer. I always seem to be one card short of what I want to run in a deck, or have every MP level in foil but one. I currently have three decks (Trunks Freestyle Sword, Majin Dabura Red Beats and Piccolo Namekian Balls) waiting for proxies that don't corrupt and fail to print, but I haven't played a game in months, so I'm not all that bothered about how many decks I can get running. Also still experiencing trouble with finding new players, though some have tried a few games, the reality of the card game versus the expectations granted by the television programme, films and manga tends to discourage. Sure, you can build a Vegeta or Brolly deck that beats face with maximum efficiency, but I'll still be able to avoid combat with my Dr Wheelo deck and make you discard cards until you loose, and that really bothers some fans. I mean, grow up, it's a game? But sure, I can understand that it may be shocking to discover that Krillin is one of the best characters to build a deck around, but Cell isn't.

Zuupah Dupah Supa Sayians - Part 5

Well, I'm back playing FuZion format and, for some reason, I've been building decks like a man possessed by an evil alien intelligence named Baby. After pulling a few more cheap packs from work, I had quite a few good cards in styles other than Sayian and Black, not to mention my boxes of older cards. First up, I disassembled all of my Retro decks, throwing out the proxies that were now illegal and getting a better idea of what Score cards I had. Incidentally, I now have quite a few card slips spare, which is nice, as the good ones are expensive. I had a good idea for a Namekian Piccolo deck and maybe something funny with Doctor Wheelo, so I stared with Gohan's Dad, which focused on regenerating damage as fast as possible and also pulling out Namek Dragon Balls for the win. Thanks to having three sets of Namek Dragon Balls to choose from (Score, Score Alt Balls and Pannini), there is some brutal synergy to be had with the right mix, including being able to shut down your opponent's Mastery and Sensei. I was pretty confident with the build going into my first game with the deck I was calling "Gohan's Dad's Green Balls". 

There's a fun naming convention to be had in card games that doesn't seem to get into other tabletop hobbies much. For example, there is a type of Magic the Gathering deck where one powerful creature is repeatedly upgraded with equipment, which is referred to as a "Voltron" deck, which is fun. I may have mentioned last time that I call my Garlic Jr deck a "Triple Threat", as it can with through all three victory conditions in the game. One of my regular opponent's decks is known as either "Broku" or "Squadku", where Goku is the Main Personality [MP], but has a team of allies to defend from attacks and deal extra damage. Naturally, I come up with silly names for all my decks, like my latest effort "Doctor Wheelo's Infinite Bullshit", which is a Black deck which makes my opponent discard all of their cards, but doesn't throw an attack ever. It's a lot of fun, and even though I thought it probably wouldn't work, it seems to run well, actually performing better than my Piccolo deck, which I thought was more likely to do well. Having the huge depth of cards from several versions of the game to choose from means that just about any deck can work now, even more obscure characters like Doctor Wheelo. 

Hell, my regular opponent, Ryan, is looking at several of the Celestial Games characters, like Tapkar and Caterpy, who I bet even hardcore DBZ fans don't remember the names of. Despite taking a big look at my old decks, I still haven't had a chance to fix up my Trunks deck, but did cut my Vegito deck down to run in FuZion format, despite the flack such decks are copping for being "too good" in the online groups, but Ryan is building a Krillin deck and, unlike the internet memes, Krillin is pretty gangbuster and I need something to compete. Starting tomorrow (as in 15/03/2020, backlog and all that) Ryan and I are going to running more of our friends through FuZion using our decks, hoping to temp a couple away from Magic Commander for a game or two. I think the insular nature of FuZion prevents a player base from growing, so I'm going to try and spread it around a little, maybe grow the local base, wish me luck.

Supa Dupa Supa Sayains - 4

Last time I gave a brief run-through of the FuZion format of the Dragon Ball Z Card Game, how decks go together and that kind of thing. This time, I'm going to steer away from the technical aspects of the game and talk more about what it's like to play. I play several card games here and there, probably the one I play the most is Magic the Gathering, in the multiplayer "Commander" format, which I do with a select group of friends who are fun to play with. If I had my choice of what to play, however, it would certainly be FuZion, as I prefer the mechanics and am more interested in Dragon Ball than what passes for the metaplot of Magic. I mean, sure it's kind of funny when I beat down a giant dragon wizard with a Mob of Squirrels, but playing a FuZion game where Future Gohan fights Janemba tickles my nerdy fancy a little more. 

Currently, I have two "complete" decks for FuZion, Garlic Jr and Gohan, and they're complete in that they don't require too much more modification right now. Garlic Jr is Black Styled, able to access the Most Powerful Personality, Dragon Ball and Beats win conditions, hence my referring to it as a "Triple Threat" deck, or, when I'm feeling cheeky; 'Garlic Jr Beats Salty Balls'. My Gohan deck works pretty differently, in that it can only win through Beats, as several cards, namely Goku Sensei, my Sayian Mastery and Transformation advance Gohan's level quickly, but prevent a MPPV. This is done so that I can get to my Level 5 card, Gohan Earth's Protector, as quickly as possible and do more damage to my opponent. Although my Gohan deck is more straightforward, it is actually less consistent, because it really only has one trick and is therefore easy to circumvent. 

When I play card games, I tend to enjoy playing "toolbox" decks; decks that enable me to find the cards I need when I need them. One of my DBZ decks from the previous format, Trunks Freestyle Sword, was a good example of this, and I loved playing it, so much so that I still haven't started dismantling it and rebuilding it for FuZion. Same goes for my Goku Freestyle Dragon Balls deck (Goku Freeballin'), but for both I'm just having trouble making them work with the limits on deck building imposed by the FuZion rules. That's part of the challenge of a new game or updated rules set that I'm pretty familiar with as a wargamer and recovering 40k player, however. What I'm really struggling for right now is a reason to build more decks, as I only have the one regular opponent. There's something about wargamers that many seem put off by the idea of card games, so growing the community is tricky. 

As many of the Dragon Ball cards are out of print, and some only exist digitally, the appeal is limited to card gamers, who typically like to own the cards, especially the foiled versions, which is all but impossible for many FuZion deck builds. As mentioned above, tabletop wargamers aren't as into cards, typically, I think it's because of the cost; not that it's any more expensive than miniatures, but the value "feels" lower because the money is going on a slip of cardboard rather than something more tangible. I know people tend to be more impressed when I show them a $50 miniature rather than a $50 card, not that I have many cards worth that much. Years ago, I wrote my first article on this blog about playing card games, and I mentioned that the depth of strategy is a good learning experience for other games, and that is still something I believe, and why I'm willing to keep playing new a different card games, even if they're not what I really want to be doing. 

Hopefully, the wargamers reading these articles will take some inspiration and maybe give something different a go, even if it's not miniatures based. The Chrono Clash Godzilla Card Game looks pretty interesting, and it's not collectable, so there's that?

Sooper-Dooper Super Sayians - Part III

So, am I deliberately spelling the title of this series wrong every entry, or doing it because they're so far apart I forget how it's done? Your guess is probably as good as mine! So what happened to my Dragon Ball Super TCG gaming anyway? Well, my local group fell apart and I didn't feel like spending money on it anymore; especially seeing as I dropped nearly $100AUD on my Zamasu deck and only ever got to play it twice. Thankfully, the RetroDBZ online fandom came to my rescue with the new "FuZion" format, a blending or the Score, Retro and Panini versions of the game. Naturally, I'm annoyed that I have to disassemble my Retro decks and, in fact, my Freestyle Goku Dragon Balls and Freestyle Trunks Sword Beats are still together because I just can't bring myself to take them apart, but the advantages of smaller decks and leaving some of the idiotic Virtual cards behind are too good to ignore. I paired down my Sayian Gohan Beats deck easily, but the one I like best is Black Garlic Jr MPPV Balls. 

Man, that's a lot of jargon, let's explain a few things first. To play FuZion (or any format based on the Score build of the game), you'll need a few things; first up is a Main Personality, or MP, this is three to five cards depicting a character from the franchise, as pictured above. MPs aren't 'technically' part of the 60 card deck, and neither are a couple of other things you'll need, a Mastery and a Sensei. A Mastery dictates the "colour" of your deck, unlike Magic the Gathering or Pokemon, you have to stick to one "Martial Arts Style", my Garlic Jr deck is Black, which is pretty aggressive and focuses on discarding your opponent's cards. There's also Blue, Red, Orange, Sayian, Namekian and Freestyle. Blue and Orange are more defensive, Red is aggresive, with a few varying tricks here and there. Freestyle means that the deck can only be built with "non-styled" cards, so tend to be stronger for more popular characters like Goku and Cell. Only Sayian characters (for the most part) can use Sayain cards and the same for Nameks and Namekian, though Gohan can also use Namekian style because he was trained by Piccolo, which I always thought was neat. 

Sensei cards give your deck a little more punch and also act as a "Sideboard", giving you between 5 and 21 extra cards you can "opt-in" before a game. Because the cards taken out of your deck to make space for the Sensei cards are random, a lot of "top level" (for a game with maybe a few thousand players across the world) dislike using them unless they absolutely have to. I tend to be more flexible on it, as I'll most often use Sensei cards for Gohan, because there's no one card in that deck I "need" to win, less so for Garlic Jr, as accidentally removing one of the seven Dragon Balls can be a major issue. Then again, my player pool for this game is maybe three other people, so I never have to worry about tournament play or how "killer" my deck needs be. 

The meat of the deck is made up of 60 cards that match your Mastery and/or MP, there are Attacks, Blocks, Non-Combats, Drills, Allies, Dragon Balls, Setups, Locations and probably more things I've forgotten. Like any card game, the idea is to create synergy and win games. What I like best about FuZion is that the game has multiple win-conditions built in. The deck of 60 cards is technically called a "Life Deck", when the last card is drawn or discarded from the deck, that player is out of the game. Also, a player can win by controlling all seven Dragon Balls of the same set, or by reaching their highest level MP card and powering up to full. Deckbuilding is essentially a process of deciding which win conditions work best with your chosen MP and heading towards that. There's a few more elements to the game, like Anger Levels and the difference between Physical and Energy Attacks and Blocks and how Allies work, but I've gone on long enough this time. All that and more, next time on Dragon Ball Z!

Super-Dooper Super-Sayians: Part II

Got a few more games of Dragon Ball Super Card game in, made a few more purchases and think I'm finally getting the rules at least 90% right. A couple of new mistakes were using characters in the "Battle Zone" to combo and a couple of interpretations of rules based on playing previous games. As luck would have it, my opponent didn't bring his decks, so he used my Android 13 deck; Ryan is actually a much better card player than me, so him using the "worse" deck made for pretty even matches. In both games, my Red GT Goku came out on top, but it was close each time. 

The combo in the Red GT Goku is working fairly well, essentially enabling me to draw more cards when I need to to boost the critical attacks. In contrast, Android 13 discards any characters in his opponent's Battle Zone, so that deck can win with weight of numbers. Because I've never really been much of a card gamer, I prefer it when my decks have a straightforward strategy, rather than needing a undergraduate course to play properly. 

What's keeping me interested at this stage is that there really seems to be no such thing as a "dead" card in this game; meaning that, no matter what's in my hand, I have a way to use it, even if it's just to play it as a resource or combo with it. In most other card games that I've played, cards can accumulate in a player's hand that really have no use, because the opportunity to use them has past, usually. I know some card-gamers will dispute that, but I've run events, I've seen top-tier players not get the cards they need, no matter how good their deck is; two of my Pokemon League regulars, back in the day, were national champions at one time. Android 13 is struggling with that a little at the moment, but I've ordered some cards and that deck will transition to Goku Black at some stage soon. 

Many miniature wargamers that I know resist playing collectable, blind-packaged games like DBSCG, because the cost can blow out quickly, leading to the player willing to spend the most winning more games. Thankfully, I'm winning more games at the moment and, since being reduced back to casual work, I'm buying maybe 2-4 packs after playing a few games with each deck, which I get to do perhaps once a fortnight. Of course, I'm not playing in tournaments or other events, though I've had a look at a couple, and whilst the community seems pretty neat, there is a constant complaint that all of the newer cards supersede the old ones and I'm not keen to go down that rabbit hole. 

This is something you may not know if you've never played too many card games or worked in a FLGS, but most "booster packs" come with roughly the same amount of cards (between 8-20), for more or less the same price ($4-$9AUD). There are outliers, but that's the price point designers tend to aim for, as it gives value to the casual buyer. Games like Magic the Gathering and Pokemon have a big enough secondary market that buying booster cases is more efficient, because a canny consumer can make their money back. Another reason I'm liking DSBCG is that most of the "rare" cards that I want to build my decks are under $2USD on the secondary market. There are more expensive cards, but, again, as I'm not playing in events, I don't need to go to that expense to have fun and win games.

 

Super-Duper Super-Sayians - Part I

Please note, this article was written the better part of two years ago and, as such, much of the information contained is out of date. However, this series of articles is going somewhere, so stay tuned. 

When I was working full-time, I picked up a couple of the Dragon Ball Super Trading Card Game starter decks and a few boosters, mainly to check it out rather than to start playing seriously, but I didn't get a chance to play it for a few months and the cards just collected dust. When I finally got to give the game a go, it was pretty interesting, being something like an update on Cardfight! Vanguard with a DBS coat of paint; which isn't bad, just not something that really grabbed me in as much as RetroDBZ or the Panini version. 

Recently, I've been playing card games with some friends, mostly the Magic the Gathering "Commander" variant, for which I have a deck that sees rare use. Naturally, I've floated the idea of my beloved RetroDBZ, but it's always easier to get people into a non-defunct game, in my experience. Thankfully the DBSTCG cards are rather beautifully wrought, so tempting in new players isn't too hard. 

Decks in DBSTCG are fifty cards plus a double-sided "Leader Card" featuring a character from the long history of the Dragon Ball franchise. My first two decks were built around Son Goku (from Dragon Ball GT) and The Masked Saiyan (from Xenoverse). I picked these decks because the idea appealed to me of running characters from the franchise that the majority of the fanbase disliked, such as Pan, Bardock and Chilled. Naturally, my friend Ryan and I played with the basic decks a few times first to get the hang of things, making plenty of mistakes, as beginners tend to and finding the patterns and synergies that make the game work. 

After a few games, I certainly preferred playing with the "Red" Goku deck, which focused on drawing cards for faster combos, rather than the "Black" Masked Saiyan deck which discarded cards to form combos. When playing a card or deck based game, I like to go for a "toolbox" approach, wherein I'm able to get the card I need into my hand, rather than relying upon brute force or all-out defense. With the few new packets I was able to get, I could expand my Goku deck, and found enough cards to make me believe that Goku Black would be fun to play, as well as more than a few Android and Cell cards. So the Masked Sayian deck became a "Green" Android/Sayian deck and some other cards got bundled for future ideas, though I'm sticking to the two decks for the moment. 

Why two decks? It helps to teach people the game to have at least two, it's why I used to carry around two unaltered Starter Decks when I ran Pokemon League at Good Games Blackburn, even though neither was a particularly "good" deck. Once I have a solid player base to draw opponents from, I'll probably focus on the one deck, maybe with another that's more "fun" to break things up a bit. I know a few of my readers aren't really into card games, but I thought I'd mark my progress on this one to try and share my enthusiasm for this kind of gaming as much as the game itself. So sorry, but this will likely be the first of a few articles.

Superhero Media: Dragonball Z - Season 8

And here the downward slide begins. I know that most DBZ fans really like the Buu Saga, but for me it really starts to drag in places. That said, the battles in Babidi's ship, Goku versus Majin Vegeta and the scenes between Buu and Mr Satan are all worth at least one watch through. That may actually be a tad unfair, as many of my favourite RetroDBZ cards come from the Buu and Fusion sets, not least of which the MP stack for my Red Majin Dabura beats deck. Thankfully the really draggy parts of DBZ don't start up until season nine, but season eight marks the beginning of an annoying trend, that of the characters being idiots. Ok, so Goku has never been clever, but many of the other characters keep making stupid mistakes that get them killed by Buu, like Gohan forgetting that he's a fucking genius (he gets a PHD before he's 21!) and suddenly letting Buu live even though he learned that lesson fighting Cell years ago. 

Goku hints that he could have defeated Buu, but lets him go so that he has an excuse to train up Goten and Trunks, two children who get murdered because of this lack of foresight. Goku also keeps fighting Majin Vegeta even though he knows doing so is giving power to Buu, yes, Vegeta isn't going to take no for an answer, but Goku has Super Saiyan 3 and Instant Transmission up his sleeve to end the battle almost instantly. Speaking of Super Saiyan 3, I really fucking hate it. It looks dumb, it is functionally useless and where do his eyebrows go? Is his forehead so buff that it folds over and the eyebrows are under the muscle somewhere? This constant stupidity is made slightly better by the Goku/Majin Vegeta being, hands-down, one of the best fights in DBZ and the presence of Dabura, a brilliant villain who gets far too little screen time. Even though he is basically Satan, Dabura has a strong code of honour and turns on his master when he learns that Buu is an unstoppable force of destruction. 

Were I not doing these articles, I'd probably skip the last two seasons, as they really drag and there's not much interesting going on. I can get my Dabura fix from my cards and YouTube has plenty of cuts of the showpiece fight. Buu is more interesting before he splits into multiple characters later on and many of the threads are picked up better in Dragonball Super, there are even some nice retcons that explain the massive plotholes. At least I have Vegito and Ultimate Gohan to look forward to in the last season when I work up the courage to watch it again. 

How Cards Made Me a Better Wargamer

Bit of a departure from strictly Superhero-related subject matter here, but it's been on my mind a bit lately. Plus, I will talk mainly about Supers card games, so I guess there's a bit of a link there. Last year (2015), I decided to play the Retro Dragonball Z Collectible Card Game a little more often than I had been. I'd picked up the game again a few years previous when I came across some cards and a coworker revealed that there was a thriving online community and plenty of the game I'd missed out on. Within about eight months, I went from "I wanna build a Gohan deck" to "Freestyle Trunks Sword Beats with Roshi Sensei" (yeah, jargon for outsiders, but you get my point). It wasn't a replacement for games like Secrets of the Third Reich, SuperSystem and Empire of the Dead, but it was another outlet to get my "gaming" fix through and something I was ok with spending money on. 

My RetroDBZ Trunks Sword deck in all it's glory.

Another, more personal, development I undertook last year was to attempt to do things better than I had been. Stuff like work, relationships and study were obvious, but I also chose not to ignore my hobbies. I've never been much of a tournament player, but I figured I could put more than the minimal effort into my gaming than I had been. Consequently, I've only dropped one or two SOTR games in the past year. The point wasn't to become more cutthroat, but to put a little more thought into every game. One of the most interesting factors of a card game is the deck, drawing cards, deciding how many of each card to run and working with what you draw, not what you wanted to draw. A term in the Magic the Gathering community that can be a bit loaded is "Mana-screwed", it basically means that you "would have won" if you'd drawn the right cards. Well duh. I totally would have won that game of Trivial Pursuit if I had known the answers. Good deckbuilding means being able to get the cards you need into you hand when you need them, or, if you can't do that, making the most of what you do have. 

 Sentinels of the Multiverse Card Game, cooperative and a good way to learn to work with a deck. Also Superheroes, so you can't go wrong.

To paraphrase Walter Kovacs, "No compromise, no surrender", even if defeat looks inevitable, I make my opponent pay for every bloody inch of ground. You'd be surprised how often an opponent that thinks they've won already makes a big enough mistake that you can get back in the game. I learned that from card playing because, when I was losing badly, I figured "hey, the game will only be another ten minutes of my life, why not play it out?", occasionally I won and most of the time, I had fun. If getting into a CCG hardcore is not your thing, try the Pokemon TCG Online, it's free and a bit of fun, or maybe try something the the DCU Deckbuilding Game or Sentinels of the Multiverse Card Game; each is different, but uses some of the same skills I've discussed here. Who knows, you may have some fun and sharpen your skills at the same time? 

Thinking out loud: The Future of Heroclix

Way back in the early 2000s, I got into Heroclix pretty hard when it first hit the shelves. It was my first flirtation with supers gaming and probably the biggest jump I'd made away from Warhammer 40,000 at the time (purchase-wise, I had played a bit of DBA and NATO Spearhead). Much like what would happen five or so years later with Warmachine, tournament play finally killed my enthusiasm for Heroclix, as well as the artificial rarity, and I pooh-poohed the game for a fair while after that. Despite this, I did keep buying the odd loose clix, if it was of a character I really liked or could find use in another miniatures game; I had, at one stage, grand plans for an Ultimates-themed 40K Daemonhunters army, with Nick Fury as an Inquistor and Captain America as a Grey Knight, but I could never get the figures to put it all together. It was then that I first rebased and repainted clix and I found that I got a lot of satisfaction out of it, so, even though I didn't have a project in mind, I just kept going with it. A few years after that, I discovered SuperSystem and the rest, as they say, is history. 

These days, I'm spoiled for choice when it comes to miniatures for generic superheroes, I've lost track of the number of makes and manufacturers that have gone into my "Equalisers" setting stuff and I'm still yet to get any of my Crossover stuff on the table. However, when it comes to the big name heroes for my Ultimate Alliance games, I still find myself turning to Heroclix more often than not. Despite the quality of sculpts varying from reasonable to abysmal, the pre-painted atrocities and the above mentioned problems with rarity, the fact is, if you want a Marvel or DC hero, you'll find it in clix, probably for next to nothing. Knight Models has hit in a big way with their Batman/DC and Marvel ranges, but anyone who has bought one of their products will tell you about the fiddly assembly and poor cast quality. When I'm asked what the best way to get into supers gaming is, I say download the SS4 quick-play rules and grab a Heroclix booster; in for under $20. 

Marvel and DC are still the biggies when it comes to Heroclix, but I have plenty of the Indy clix and whilst I never bought any Halo, Assassin's Creed or Bioshock clix, I did see them around. Also, TMNT is coming out, which is pretty damn cool and should fill out a fair few slots on my wish list. What surprises me most about TMNT clix is just how long they've taken to arrive. As a writer and someone who has worked in the gaming industry, I get that miniature wargames is hardly an obvious choice for merchandising and that licensing is a legal minefield, but Heroclix is one of those weird entities that seems to have defied all expectation. Think about how much tooling molds for plastic miniatures must cost, even with a large scale production, and now consider that WizKids make hundreds of new molds every year; they must be doing ok to still be operating more than ten years later. 

Personally, I'm hoping that TMNT will be a huge success for WizKids, not because I play Heroclix (I don't anymore), but because it would be a great "bargaining chip" for them to expand their range. I don't know about you, but I was glad to get my hands on the BPRD set back in the day and got a bit giddy when I opened a Howard the Duck and I'm set to relive that with TMNT; fingers crossed that Metalhead isn't a Chase Rare. Should WizKids get the chance, I'd like to see them start to move in on some other comic, television, film and video game brands: 

Image Comics

Until recently, I had only been exposed to Image's early 1980s and 1990s work, which is, frankly, pretty woeful as Rob Liefeld is the driving force, both artistically and in terms of writing and he is pretty damn crap at both. Ok, so Deadpool came good in the hands of other writers, but that was clearly the exception rather than the rule. Then I started reading Invincible. Holy crap that comic is amazing. Like Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle and Ultimate Spider-Man amazing. Here was a fully fleshed-out world, populated with a variety of heroes that "felt" like Marvel or DC but was still unique and fresh. Forget Spawn and all that Youngblood crap; Invincible, Guardians of the Globe and Savage Dragon alone would provide a great basis for a series of Clix sets. Plus Spawn and all the other teenage power fantasy BS would draw in a few people as well. 

King Features Sydnicate

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think King still owns the rights to Phantom, Mandrake and Flash Gordon, plus the associated characters and even other "heroic" characters like Prince Valliant and Jungle Jim. Ok, so there's not a great deal of opportunity for growth, but at least there are more characters than the Watchmen set. Thanks to the 1980s DOE cartoon, there's a substantial cult following for these characters, and with superheroes being the big thing in pop culture at the moment, may as well strike while the iron's hot, right? Seriously, Octobrain clix, I want one. 

Dragonball Z 

Much like TMNT, why is this not a thing already? There's a new DBZ film and series on the way, the relaunched CCG is going gangbusters and DBZ video games continue to sell like crazy in Japan and the USA. Akira Toriyama is famously difficult, but has shown that he'll do pretty much anything for truckfulls of cash. When asked, as I have been more than once, how I would do DBZ as a minis game, I say that Heroclix is about the only existing system I can see pulling it off. Plus, there's hundreds of characters, many with multiple forms or costumes, so sets could go for years. It would be like printing money; watch Super Saiyan God Goku go for four figures on eBay, especially if he's a convention exclusive. 

Nintendo 

And why not? Nintendo will slap Mario and Co on pretty much anything these days the the punters lap it up. Have you seen Amiibos? I know people who don't even own a WiiU or DS that collect the damn things and keep them in the blister packs. Can you imagine how fast Nintendo Clix would sell? The best thing is, all Nintendo would have to do is sell the license and approve designs, then sit back and rake in a percentage. Nowhere near the top of my list, but still, the possibilities are pretty huge. 

So that's my (amateur) take on the future of Clix sets; probably more an exercise in fantasy than prescience, but that was what I was going for anyway. How about you, what boxes would you like to be cracking? CW DC sets? Mortal Kombat? Vallient Comics? 

Panini Z: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Play Cards

So the Dragonball Z collectible card game is back, and despite my best intentions, I got sucked back in. For those who are aware that I enjoy the Retro format of the DBZ game, that may be a little confusing; after all, if I already like the game, why not play the new one? I have a checkered past with "Collectible" Games, having flirted with Pokemon CCG, Magic: The Gathering, Heroclix and others. Unlike my beloved miniatures and role-playing games, the blind packaging and secondary market always seems, to me, to lead to the person who has spend the most money on the game being the winner. That's why I like Retro DBZ, the cards are cheap, proxies are legal and there's little-to-no metagaming. 

So what's my beef then? Not much really, just the usual lack of disposable income. That said, Panini have cleverly stacked the booster boxes so that a deck can be built from just boosters; so one box later and here I am. So I pull out and sort all my cards and it looks like I can build either a Trunks or Captain Ginyu deck. Damn. I already have both a Trunks and Ginyu Force deck in Retro. Ginyu is the deck of choice at the moment, so being a rebel, I have to play Trunks. 

Perhaps some small explanation is in order. Back in the days when I played Pokemon, I was aware of the accepted "Meta", the handful of deck builds that one "had" to play in order to win. My attitude to the concept has always been "fuck that"; why go with the illusion of choice when I could have actual choice? When Reshiram and Zekrom were all the rage in Pokemon, I was running Victini and completely blindsiding my opponents. Ok, so I only won around 50% of the time, but I'm also that sucker that plays for fun more than the joy that comes with winning a game for children. For those in the know, I'm running Trunks Orange. Yeah, that's right, Trunks Orange. And I'm winning games too, how'd ya like them zenzus? 

At the end of the day, I'd still rather play Retro. The game is just more fun and less swingy. Plus I can run things like Ginyu Force with Saibermen and Spirit Bomb. On the plus side, with more people playing the game, I can sucker a few into Retro, maybe I should make that Mr Popo deck...