Danny Rider’s Keeping Retro In Fashion!

So the latest topics on virtual cards for Gencon, unreleased sets made playable and expanded tournament game play have really got me thinking…Retro-thinking. Thinking about what it means to be playing a game that has ceased printing expansions, but the player base is still committed to the game. With such dedication I think comes the rightful entitlement to something new now and then to break the concrete decks the game ended with, or at least shake some of the boredom out of deck creation. It’s the fans keeping the game alive now, so what does that mean? How do we change what we play and build on what we already have?

I’m not going to delve deeply into the virtual card / player expansions topic or the problems of such material as it isn’t what this article is about, but I won’t deny that it is an option commonly used amongst die-hard fans of “dead” games. Instead, what I am going to focus on with this little piece is practices in how to keep tournament play fresh, challenging and occasionally just plain fun. All of which is done with the sole intent of keeping the die-hards engrossed or at least challenged by the game.

So to do that, allow me to utilize the old Trunks time machine prototype I have sitting in my garage, and go back to my hometown hobby store and the Trunks Saga. Those who remember that first giant step the card game took to revitalize itself into a serious competitive game don’t need refreshing of what Trunks Saga did for the game. New Physical Attack table, rules, personalities, card types, fighting style and changes to the old non-combat/combat set-up were huge. I bought up a box of starters and several boxes of boosters just based on the fact that I believed in all of the changes that the game was undergoing.

I've got to warn everyone about Dragon Ball GT!

The problem was, so did any of the other serious tournament players. Within months we had traded Nail/Guildo and Raditz/Piccolo anger for Goku/King Kold Red, Vegeta/SS Gohan (Irwin promo) Saiyan and ultimately Vinegar Unstoppable. The game upped the ante, and we moved with the game but what I noticed after a month or so of this game play was a sharp drop in tournament attendance. It boiled down to a few key factors that as tournament coordinator (a hard fought for position at the time given the limited player base and support our area had at that time), I had to examine, address and hopefully overcome.

First off my biggest problem was financial. More than half of the local player base consisted of kids who were in middle school and didn’t have a lot of money to spend on cards. That meant some of them still played with Nappa because their parents wouldn’t buy a new starter, or they were new to the game and got stuck with Spice when they bought a TS starter. This also meant that more than half of my players couldn’t afford access to UR’s like King Kold lvl 4 or Where There’s Life There’s Hope, or key Dragon Ball deck cards. Heck if their decks had half a dozen rares in them, it was usually fresh after a birthday or Christmas.

Secondly, the top three or four players (myself included), used the same decks time after time. We did so chiefly to win tournaments and those fancy new scouters and anger swords, but also because as experienced players we recognized the tricks that worked best, and saw no reason to deviate from what won. Both of these led to the inevitable third factor: boredom. Those who couldn’t afford to compete got tired of losing consistently, and those who were competitive got tired of playing each other. At the height of our tournament play we had 26-30 players show for a tournament, but when players began to lose interest I was lucky to get eight players. Resolving to correct this problem, I started with the most obvious: I changed the way we played tournaments.

Sealed decks were great for new players or kids with limited personalities, and this format most addressed the rare/deck balance issue. Throw in a couple of booster drafts and the playfield became a bit more even. Decks designed out of necessity put a couple of veteran players normally dependant on blocks and battle enders beneath kids lucky enough to pull the right cards. The only downside to sealed tournaments was price, so to offset these tournaments I devised a different format.

I called it “saga” rules. You could call it story play or mega-house rules. Essentially, I held tournaments every other week which limited personalities and most importantly named cards or specific cards in order to bring a feel of the show (at the time running on the Cell Saga) to specific eras. Meaning a Saiyan saga tournament only allowed characters who were present in the Saiyan saga (any personality version) as MP’s. Named cards were limited to characters who appeared in the SS, only Earth Dragon Ball’s were useable etc. Masteries were allowed and the TS attack table was used. This meant no TES, Frieza is Ready, Expectant Trunks, Vinegar etc. Instead players could go back and revisit a new way to build Nappa Saiyan, Raditz Red and Krillin Unstoppable.

Just the same, later sagas tournaments saw the end of Nappa named cards and Raditz Flying Kicks and the changing of Earth Dragon Balls for Namek. Shocking you say? I say desperate times called for desperate measures.

It meant new game play and kept players interested and avoiding potential burnout. We ran formats like this up to Garlic Jr. Saga before the Androids expansion was released. It was fun, and highlights like a Tien beatdown on Frieza showed the diversity of the environment.—Tien did appear in the Frieza saga, trouncing the Ginyu force, so it was an allowed MP.
I even ran a couple of multi-player brawls. 3v3 or All vs. All sometimes just to mix up the game and give the weaker players a chance to tag team against us veteran players. Not like that never happened in the show right, Cell Jrs?

RIGHT!

Android Saga introduced the “Rainbow Toki-Wazu” rule for its debut tournament, and while this had limited and sometimes confusing effects, it offered me another tool to keep future tournaments fresh, just as Tuff Enough did in Cell Games.

So my point is sometimes tournament structure plays just as big a part in the play experience as the deck types and competition. Just as there is Type I / Type II structures, “blocks”, drafts, sealed, open, DBZ and GT expanded formats, so too should there always be thought about how to rearrange what we already have to work with into something new. One of the fun things about holding a “Retro” tournament is to go back to what I remember, play what I am familiar with against classic match-ups, but I’m not opposed to alternate formats where new house-rules are imposed just to spice things up. Even Score threw the occasional curve ball (remember Named Tournaments?)

What if certain cards were excluded from play? What if others were required to be in your deck? What if Physical Attack Table B was used? Or there was a universal sensei? What if fusion personalities were made more playable somehow? The possibilities are filled with “what ifs” but because the game is now in the hands of the players, it is really up to us on how to answer those what ifs. Do we make rules to make it fair? Do we make rules to make it challenging? Do we make rules to make it fun? I won’t answer “no” to any of those questions, but I will suggest that they be answered with much thought and responsibility.

The goal of playing any game, is to have fun playing it (otherwise it wouldn’t be called a game). But you can’t play the game by yourself. It would only be prudent to ensure that any such rules or cards are embraced by the Retro player community. The worst thing a player can do at this point is stop playing the game because they are turned off by “fan-errata,“ house-rules, or new inventions that anyone without the internet won’t have access to. Therein lies the goal that should be kept in mind: reinvention without revulsion.

Maybe my story is uncommon. Maybe nobody else had to change their tournament environment out of necessity. Maybe this is more of a rant than it was meant to be, and maybe you don’t agree with any of it. Or maybe, just maybe there’s an idea in there that sparked your mind and sounds like something you’d want to try. Just like the “what ifs” so too are there “maybes.”

I look forward to seeing how we all decide to answer these questions, and how we decide to keep “Retro” in fashion.