Dr. Willow

In life, I have always had a taste for oddities.  Those who have seen me know this, as I like to wear a hat that is not currently, nor has it ever been in style.  So it should come as no surprise that I like to play exotic decks.  I tend to avoid Goku because he is too mainstream as the central character of the show.  I avoid Vegeta because he is popular among fanboys, and I avoid SWK because she is too obviously good, and as such is at the helm of many competitive decks.  If I could have made a deck out of PBR cans and thick-rimmed glasses I would probably have done so long before it was cool.

But the life of a main personality hipster can be a difficult one.  The most obvious reason being that many unpopular personalities are unpopular because they just aren’t good.  Hip as it might be, you’ll never catch me playing a Cooler deck because he’s just a lame duck.  There are no shortage of personalities that collect dust because they deserve it. But….

What about the ones who actually do interesting stuff?  There are no shortage of untapped personalities which never saw extensive play, but have great effects.  Those are the ones I can sink my teeth into.  So without further self-indulgent blathering, I present to you the first installment of The Orange Hat Guy’s Side Show, featuring exotic decks from binders you never open!

Here is my Dr. Willow Deck.  It is 1-3 by necessity since there are no other options for him.  This is no issue since he can easily pull off a 2nd turn anger vic against any 1-3 deck (Until they remember that rule is missing from the current CRD, so please don’t tell Garrett!)

Lvl 1: Getting to go first via Double Power Rule against any personality in the game (besides Z stages) is already alluring, but it isn’t the only thing this personality set has to offer.  The bad news is that I can’t rely on dragon balls as a win condition because I can very easily shoot myself in the foot with this power if I do.  The good news is that I have (more than) twice the chance to shoot other dragon ball decks in the foot, and if they don’t have an alternate win condition I could essentially win a game before combat begins on the first turn with a bit of luck.  Also the  anger makes it easy to hop up to my lvl 2, which is awesome because…

Lvl 2: It’s frakkin’ incredible!  Ok, so I have to ditch most of my hand.  All that means is that I should make a deck that doesn’t rely too heavily on cards in my hand, and when I get to the body of the deck you’ll see how I dealt with that.  Once paid for, the effect is best used on things like Allies, battlegrounds, non-combats, or control cards, but if you have a floating effect or a combat ender in play it can also be safely used to get rid of dangerous attacks.  If you do this right, you can cripple your opponent with minimal risk.  All that and you get a free ride to…

Lvl 3:  Being sent here for using your lvl 2 power is kind of like being sent to your room as a punishment, only to realize your room is awesome.  Heck, you’ve already won against SWK and Master Roshi (Take THAT, unimaginative net-deckers!). Card advantage, as I mentioned earlier, isn’t central to the deck but it doesn’t mean I don’t like it, especially late in the game.  The only caveat is being sent back down to lvl 1 if you take too much damage.  But that can be a blessing due to 5 extra stages to eat damage vs physical beats, and more chances to remove essential cards from your opponent’s deck with your lvl 1 and 2 powers.  Not to mention that if your deck (like mine) doesn’t perform many attacks, you have a certain amount of control over the situation.

Mastery: Cell Saga Blue

I went blue for Blue Leaving.  The same deck could easily be fit to another color if you can think of a different styled card you like better.  The only other blue cards are Blue Terror and Blue Betrayal, neither of which are strictly necessary.  This is objectively the best Blue mastery, and it also helps to control if and when I go back to lvl 1 via my lvl 3 power.

Sensei: North Kai

I’ll probably change this to West Kai since I almost never enter combat, but it’s nice against CS blue or any card advantage mastery when I want to go for the kill via Carpet Attack.

Sensei deck:

You’re Invited x3 – Mostly fodder for Carpet Attack, but often situationally useful

The rest is filler because I do try to win by Dragon Ball despite my lvl 1.  I would go with Piccolo Sensei but that would hurt the subterfuge and increase the amount of HUH??? being senseid in against me.

Location:

Majin Buu’s New House x3

Non-Combat:

Frieza is Ready

Releasing the Sword

Expectant Trunks

Hercule’s Close Save

Yamcha’s Good Wishes

King Cold’s End

Teaching the Unteachable Forces Observation

Where There’s Life There’s Hope

Pose With Style

Eyes of the Dragon

Let the Games Begin

Initiative

Hercule’s Dream Sequence x2

Watching From Afar x3

Tien’s Mental Conditioning x3

Bulma’s Looking Good x3

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Fatherly Advice

Goku’s Lucky Break

Don’t You Just Hate That

Namek Dragon Ball Wish

Krillin’s Trick x2

Powerful Followers x3

Dragonballs:

Earth 1-7

Blocks:

Time is a Warrior’s Tool

Super Saiyan Effect

Frieza Smiles

Frieza’s Force Bubble

Ultimate Defense x3

Attacks:

Blue Terror

Carpet Attack Technique x2

Blue Betrayal x3

Events:

Pure Defense

Dazed

Trunks Energy Sphere x3

Blue Leaving x3

Strategy:

This is a triple victory deck.  The 1-3 MPPV is self-explanatory.  Dragon Ball is my primary win condition because of (not despite) my lvl 1.  Most people won’t sensei HUH???? in against Dr. Willow because a Willow Dball deck is silly.  I prey on that counter-intuition and turn it to my advantage (Then why the heck am I writing this article?!?!!) Of course this can blow up in my face, so I have to have a backup plan and Carpet Attack is that plan.

You may have noticed somethign odd for a non-combat deck; I play no drills.  That is because my deck hops levels so quickly it would be a waste to try to keep them in play.  As a result Drill destruction is wasted in my opponent’s deck, and setup control is actually kind of rare to see (besides City in Turmoil).  You may also have noticed a weird line break in my list of Non-combat cards.  The bottom half lists the only 9 setups in the deck that require an attacker attacks phase to be used.  The rest are all triggered by various game states, which leaves me very free to use my attacker attacks phases deliberately, which is clutch in any close game and also pairs very nicely with my lvl 2 power.

This deck does play slowly, but it usually requires little setup to handle itself in combat and can get out of combat a lot of different ways.  The list of blocks is few, but all of them can be easily recovered for multiple uses. Frieza Smiles is a surprise powerhouse since I so rarely play cards from my hand anyways. Let the Games Begin and Tien’s Mental Conditioning help me hurry up in getting to lvl 2 if I need to get around a Vic Drill.  Bulma’s Looking Good + Majin Buus House makes for an extremely easy Carpet Attack kill (make sure to allow for your opponet’s extra endurance from your location).

Is the deck top tier?  Definitely not.  But it can compete with top tier decks and has the added bonus of being different and fun.  So if you like seeing new stuff, stay tuned and let me know which undervalued personality you’d like to see me make playable next!