As I’ve mentioned before, I didn’t get into this game until pretty late. Once the GT cards started rolling out, I had gotten the gist of deck building and obtained a few money cards, fueling myself to top cut at some Expanded tournaments. The early months of Baby and Super 17 Saga continued my love for Goku Freestyle. Dimension Breaker for massive rejuvenation was a personal favorite. Sound familiar? Greetings Dragon Ballers, Didier here with the DBZ/GT CCG deck that took me over at the end of this game’s life: Black Supreme West Kai.
All of my decks usually have some element of control or combo. Vegeta freestyle having hand manipulation nuances kept it close to home during my recent reintroduction to the game. Back during Expanded’s ‘glory’ days, Shadow Dragon Saga brought new and fun mechanics to life. Training abilities distracted me for a bit (Mainly because Dragon Booster sounded so snazzy when rolling off the tongue), but there was a card that stopped me in my tracks when opening packs one fateful afternoon:
You don’t need to rack your brain to see the potential of this. Tickle Drill (adding +1 to all milling) along with Leadership Drill (milling one when you played a noncombat) and the above mentioned were a 1-2-3 combo that could flip any match. Long Journey was no longer a passive drill searcher, but instead a devastating card causing cascading damage. This limit one card, after all, was good enough to play a sole Dende Dragon Ball 3 for the possibility doing it twice. It did always need ‘remove from the game after use’ didn’t it? Releasing the Sword was a terror as the card caused an upwards of 12 damage…and who knows what was going to pop out from it…
I knew I would be playing this deck the moment I saw that Sticky Drill. I was first drawn to Yajirobe. He was weak for DPR, hero for COGD, and his power to get a setup is so powerful in black. Black Morbid Cuisine Drill (both players mill their PURs) was especially effective with his low PUR. The problem being playing all these drills, setups, black control cards, and blocks it just ended up all being too much and slowed the deck down compared to the Queen of the DBZ/GT: Supreme West Kai.
For you see, with this evil bloodsucking woman, I could control the entire field, both discard piles, and both player’s hands with relative ease. Her powers are what break, broke, and have her be broken. Ultimate discard manipulation/rejuvenation with draw along with black’s field and hand disruption? It was a match made in Other World. And blocks? Who needs blocks? I could stuff my deck with control gems like Black Flinch and get really aggressive with disruption attacks like Black Forceful Impact, Black Focal Point, Black Drop Kick, and Majin Buu’s Heal Kick.
My deck was primed and I was ready to roll. I know many other played Science Mastery, but I was fortunate enough to get my hands on Gripping Drills early so I felt the extra control inside Cell Saga would help more. At the time I thought they were valuable, I did ask around quite frequently and no one seemed to have them around SDS’s release. A simple search tells me now not so much… but I’ll be keeping mine for nostalgia none the less.
This Control deck literally would kill you outside of combat. As such, strong aggro decks like Saiyan Everything were scary. It just so happens all the other top tiered decks at the time were Saiyan style. Saiyan Power Punch was huge, for as long as you played it first, it killed all allies, freestyle drills, setups, events, attacks. Black Flich was a godsend. Majin Buu’s Fury also was a #1 killer so I usually targeted these and City in Turmoil with my Caught Off Guard Drills. Aura Clash/AUTE hurt, but trust me, removing 10 cards is all too easy to be able to completely control the field. Chaining Confrontations was a personal favorite. VQD could mean two per combat 😛
I don’t think very many people knew about the power of this deck. I know it was used in Score playtesting groups, but there was no wide spread information online. Did this deck win some Australian regional? Regardless of its history, it stands as one of the top tiered decks at the end of the game. During one of the last sanctioned Score events, I think it was Die Con where they were pushing out the release of Re-Z, I brought this deck aimed to win the Expanded tournament. This is where I met many members of this community for the first time.
Don’t let this witch fool you. Despite being control I pushed out serious damage. After all, not playing blocks means I can do everything. I distinctly remember one of my Swiss matches, I think I was 3-1 or something, I sat down to a Blue 85 card slow ball deck. Not a bad meta choice against that insane beatdown environment. “You were the one person I didn’t want to play here,” he sighed, and I couldn’t blame him. I wouldn’t have wanted to play me either. I snagged top cut and won my first round, but met my demise to one Josh Merckle in Top 4.
I don’t think he crushed me, though this was a long time ago, but I vividly seem him doing his Saiyan Gohan’s super combo with personality powers, jumping levels with his HT level 1 and Gohan’s Immense Power along with Supreme Kai’s Ki Push. He must’ve witnessed my dreams being shattered on my face for he started apologizing: “This deck is overpowered and shouldn’t exist.” Realistically, that’s true for both of us, but I took my loss in stride for I had the captivating Re-Z to look forward to.
It’s not really about what deck is ‘the’ deck. Regardless of the top 5 order, SWK Black is in there, for it had the ultimate mix of control, mill, and attacks to not even give lesser tiered decks a chance. After I got what I would consider my best version of the deck, it just sat in my box. It had no use. I couldn’t play test with it, it was unfair and boring just to sit there while their Life Deck withered away while they could do nothing against me. So coming from the guy who played SWK to death, first loving her as I love Vegeta, I’m now glad to see her banned in this format and wish her to forever burn in HIFL. This is the best and the worst deck of all time. One of the best in the format at the end of the game and the absolute worst for the meta game.
This is my favourite deck in the game, and one of the main reasons for Expanded being my favourite format. I know it wasn’t common in America but it dominated tournaments all over Australia and New Zealand since Baby Saga. SDS definitely brought huge improvements to the deck. Although I think my version is quite different to yours based on some of the cards you mentioned. After we started expanded online tournaments on TopTier it dominated those too against American players.
There’s a few good decks to compete against it. Saiyan CS is especially good. I think Kurt finally played against me enough to eventually build a version that won the majority of games with an 85 card Goku deck. I could usually crush the smaller decks as they would run out of ammo too fast, but the 85 card deck Kurt made worked just as fast when he had a 10+ card hand first combat, and he could keep doing that a lot more combats after I survived the first one. There were a few other decks that appeared during the online events that could compete against it too.
I think overall there was some balance to it in the environment. There’s probably a handful of overpowered decks like Black CS SWK, Saiyan CS Goku or Gohan, etc that will destroy everything else in the environment, but when you get to topcut and those are the only decks left, then any of them could win. It’s not the best environment, but I didn’t feel unfair playing it as long as I knew there were other strong decks to go up against. And it was really fun seeing player’s come up with some of the most unusual decks that could beat it. One of which was a Mai NTW aggro control DB deck. That’s one of the other reasons why I love Expanded so much. There’s so many options for what you can build, and even now there’s new decks that can appear and beat what we thought were the best decks in the game.
Make no mistake, I truly loved this deck and kept it together long after the game died. I still have a shrine to her in my binders, she was all I played for the better part of 6 months during what I would consider the time I was borderline obsessed with this game lmao.
I wouldn’t think so lightly of Americans, some of us over here are quite good 😉 Ryan was the one who mentioned to me it was dominating online, said it was a few cards different from my version. I wish I still had the list, I didn’t keep lists at the time, but from what I remember it was about 50/50 Non-combats/Combats with a 55/45 Odd/Even split. It could go beats with Heal Kick, Crescent Punch, Pan’s Stalwart, and Forceful Detonations along with Groveling Drill and Underdog Drills for ramp or completely control with milling drills, stasis cards like Mischievous Drill, confrontation, super saiyan effect, etc. Sometimes, it did both.
I guess I always had a soft spot for the way Old Z played even for the short time I played it. Only some personalities translated well into Expanded. At the end, the way the meta game looked and what the top ten decks were was just unappealing to me.
No disrespect meant to the American players. It dominated in Aus / NZ too. I don’t think lightly of anyone. Some of the decks that were on top in America however I do… They were good but I knew while they were being seen as the top control decks that black SWK could easily beat them and was wondering why no one played it. I’m glad to see someone did.
I was very sad to let go of my deck. I spent so much time foiling it, and then getting everything foil + limited. I had hoped to keep the deck forever. Then I had to pay for college, and I knew the Ki Intensity, Farewell Drill, and other ultra rares in the deck could do that. Maybe someday when I’m older and have money to spare I can start my hobby again and rebuild it. Here’s the decklist I posted on OCG – http://dragonballzocg.com/forums/index.php?/topic/6430-izanami/
Our attacks were very different, and I didn’t play dragon balls and had Piccolo Sensei instead, but otherwise very similar. I really like the Black Webbed Restraint in there.
i am going to play devil’s advocate here. please understand that i acknowledge you, kamiccolo, and didier (as well as mcq and many others) are great players. so what i’m about to write isn’t a bash on any of you. it’s just my general opinion on the format.
expanded format was broken and (now that i think about it) a horrible format. this is especially true for SWK, which IMO (and this will never change) is a brainless deck regardless of what style or build. the format was cute for a few months… until stuff like Broly’s Legendary Ki Explosion came out… then people started running Your Wish Has Been Granted… then Ki Explosion and Ki Intensity, Farewell Drill (f’n really??), etc, etc… the players that spent the money and went to the events (and especially the players that “knew” the SCORE employees) were continually winning because of their power cards that put them high above the rest. this is just one reason the game eventually died.
however, this is why people love retro Z. best format (Focused Z), balance on stuff, proxies allowed (so deck building and play skill is what decides games, not if you can afford a $1000 card), SWK banned, great community, etc. this article did bring back memories, but i have more bad memories about expanded than good LOL. it was just so broken. i did like reading this article though.
I think you kinda hit the nail on the head of the problem with expanded. it wasn’t fun to play against. As soon as you or one of your friends found an “Unbeatable”(really good) combo, that was it. That deck just got played until someone found a new/better combo or you spent all your time building a deck to counter it (3x Recoome’s Vogue Drill) which wasn’t fun to play either.
Yea that’s basically it. I tried to make things work in Expanded as I’m doing in Retro now. Realistically my Tapion and Meta Cooler decks have a 30-40% win rate over the past months. My Meta Cooler has caught some people off guard though with the damage it outputs as the world shall soon see, but in Expanded these lower tiered decks were far far far gone. There were the super charged few like SWK Black and then the lumped mediocre or worse.Pan Orange/Red was probably the closest “low” tiered deck that was really really good.
That is my favorite part of retro, breathing new life into other options. I’d love to see a Fusion, a Chiaotzu or even an Arquar deck make it to the top. It would be a game changer to hear a.. Orange Froug deck was in top cuts as opposed to ANOTHER Goku, Gohan, Trunks, Buu and Vegeta.
Someday I should write and article for the strategies of SWK. I agree a lot of player’s used her without thinking, but with all the years I spent working on my deck there was a lot of thought put into how to use her best. Opponent’s who played me regularly would start thinking of strategies of how to play against her too. There’s definitely some good strategic decisions you can make with her that I think a lot of people don’t think about, or don’t want to think about. Her power changes the rules of the game so much that she shouldn’t really be part of the game, which is why I think so many people refuse to play her or form strategies to beat her.
As for Expanded vs Focused Z, I think it’s unfair to call expanded broken but ignore the history of the game throughout DBZ. Focused Z had it’s moments of brokeness with Tapkar, PTT, Roshi / 18, etc too. Most of the time through the tournament circuits there was a deck that dominated the top cut of events. I think the game is more fun now because people are playing for fun rather than just to win. Also Retro is changing the game to make it more fun for everyone.
I know good player’s had a huge advantage throughout the game both in Focused Z and in Expanded by having hard to find promos (Pikkon’s Leg Catch, Majin Buu’s Fury, etc weren’t as rare as Ki Intensity, but were hard to find for some back in 2003). But the main reason why they had those cards was because they won tournaments first without them. It definitely increased the gap between the top players and everyone else, but I honestly think they would have won the tournaments even without those cards.
Expanded format would definitely need a Retro rules adjustment to it to balance things out a little if we did start playing that format again. I think now player’s would find a lot of new decks that have fun and interesting strategies rather than only going for what they know are the top decks and hopefully it would be more fun for everyone. Personally I love competing against the top decks and trying to figure out ways to beat them.