The 10 Radical Changes I Would Make To The DBZ CCG!

I love this game, but let’s face it… there are a few places where it could’ve been better. There are just some rules that made sense at the time but then grew quickly outdated. Other rules never made any sense at all. This article isn’t meant to criticize the original designers and contributors to the way the game turned out or to insinuate that I could’ve done it better (I couldn’t have). I’ve also had the benefit of 10 years of watching what worked, what didn’t work and where the game finally ended up, so this is really a Monday morning quarterback/armchair general article of my opinion. It would be impossible to implement many of these changes, while others are already house rules that we abide by (and may incorporate into future events). So without further ado, here are some big changes I would make if there was ever a DBZ CCG re-re-do (ugh, Re-Z…).

 

10. Sixty-card deck size.

Right off the bat, I’d standardize a deck size to try and bring in some consistency in the way decks were built. I would say that your MP stack, mastery and Sensei would not count towards the deck size. No more 50-card speed decks or 90-card monsters. Since the most basic win condition is dependent on the amount of cards in your deck, this is pretty much a great equalizer. Also, from a player’s standpoint, it would make decks easier to carry since 60 cards (plus a side deck) seem to be the standard deck size for most games and what most deck cases are suited for. We’ve all been there when our fully sleeved decks and sensei decks get stuck in the deck box. Heck, even the deck boxes that Score made for the game were often too small to fit everything.

 

9. Give the styles something unique to do.

Need to discard/remove allies? Non-Combats? Drills? Well you’re in luck because every style has a way to do those things, and even if they don’t then there are plenty of Freestyle cards to pick up the slack. To me, that is a problem. Every style has an answer for everything. You can effectively run multiple pieces of tech seamlessly in your deck with any color. There is no balance to keep the styles in check or encourage a variety of decks. For example, let’s say that Ally decks start getting really popular. What you might see is people adding more ally tech to their decks, but it’s unlikely that someone will build a new Garlic Jr. the Void Master deck to counter the upswing of allies. But let’s say there was one style that worked very well with allies and only one style that could effectively remove allies. You would see an increase in the deck style that was anti-ally, which in turn would spawn other decks and create a semblance of a color wheel like you see in Magic. As it is, all decks are simply a card swap away from being meta to the point that there are counters to the counters of counters.

Immortality is anti-ally tech.

8. Team stamp characters/cards.

As it stands now, the game attempts to do this without actually doing it. There are Majin, Androids, Celestials, Saiyans, Nameks, etc… But beyond that, there is just a simple division of Hero and Villain, and pretty much those two broad categories are it as far as factions go. To me, it never really made sense for Android 14 to be Piccolo’s #1 ally after fusing with Kami, or Jewel being an ally to Supreme West Kai. And when it comes to support cards, there is no overall theme to the broad Hero/Villain categories, which essentially means all you can do is make power cards to benefit one or the other.

If I was making the game new, I’d create factions or teams to stamp characters and certain cards. The team breakdowns would be easy and you could come up with numerous: Z Fighters, Turtle School, Saiyans, Frieza Soldiers, Androids, Ginyu Force, Majin, Crane School, etc… Here’s the thing: I would only team stamp the level one of each character and make it so you could only have level one allies. That way, whichever level one you chose is the faction your character belongs to and would dictate what allies he could run as well as support cards. You could also make new level one characters to put them in different factions, for instance you could have Goku as a Z Fighter and another one as part of the Turtle Hermit School and even one for the Saiyans. Likewise you could have Frieza on his own team or commander of the Ginyu Force. This option would’ve put tighter control on the game, prevented uncontrolled growth on certain characters and open up more options for decks.

This is actually Goku, not Turles, and it would've been enough to have made a Saiyan affiliated Goku personality.

7. Reform power levels.

I’ll be up front: I know why power levels were included since they are a big part of the early sagas of the show, but they never should’ve been a thing in the game. That became immediately apparent in Frieza Saga when personalities like Guldo and Nail were breaking chart. A new chart had to be made every few sets, rendering more and more characters obsolete in terms of physical attacking, and requiring you to carry a Physical Attack Table with you for every game. How I would fix this is simple, I would make three colors for power stages: green, yellow and red. The damage would be simple as 5-3-1, 5 stages for being two colors higher than the defender, 3 stages for being one color higher and 1 stage for being in the same color. You can use allies as long as you are in the red. Using this, characters would never be made obsolete by the chart and you can better suit certain personalities to certain archetypes. Got an ally MP? Give him more red stages. A brute like Nappa? Give him more green stages. Best of all, no PAT or updates needed.

 

6. No constant combat powers on level one.

This is a big one for allies. There are characters like Android 16 that would work great in ally decks by virtue of being an Android, but he has nothing but level ones with Constant Combat Powers. Majin, who have a much more limited pool of allies, also lose characters like Dabura because he has nothing to do as an ally with any of his three level ones. I would like to have more options for allies, especially for gimmick ally decks who receive duds like Dabura and 16. This may also actually start to encourage leveling up, but more on that later.

 

5. Make all characters 1-4 to be playable.

I think that a level 1-4 should be the standard for a playable character. Some characters are short changed with a max level of three, while other characters can hold a monopoly on the MPPV by going up to level five. In the game, there are only 11 different characters that can even go to a level five for a guaranteed shot to win by MPPV. My argument towards a standardized 1-4 is to give the game a little more consistency and allow everyone to start on somewhat even ground.

 

4. Bigger emphasis/ease on leveling.

In this game right now, you pretty much have two choices: 1) Build your deck around a solid level one personality where you can come out the gate swinging right off the bat in whatever style of play your MP is suited for. Or 2) Build your deck with the intention of leveling, either to win via MPPV or by using some gimmick/shortcut to your later levels. I don’t like that. In the show, the characters were always powering up, getting stronger and transforming. I want to see that encouraged more in the game than it is now. If I redid the game, I would increase the amount of anger you would need to gain a level, but I would also make it so that just about every card gained you anger in some way. Still worried about consistency? Well I would make it so that you could use your lower level powers from higher levels as well. Sound crazy? Sound like characters getting super powered as the game goes on? Well good, that’s how the game should’ve worked in my opinion.

 

3. Give the game a real side deck.

There have been two very good articles for revised sensei decks and against them. My opinion is that the current sensei rules are crap, but with the way the cards are currently made with some being “Sensei Deck Only”, there is no way we can allow sensei decks in Z work the same as side decks in Magic the Gathering (aka any card can be in your side and you choose which cards go in and out of your deck between rounds). Like most other entries on the list, this would have to be a “from the ground up” change.

Too cool to be main decked.

2. Eliminate the double power rule.

Anyone who watches our Twitch TV matches knows that we ignore some of the rules when we play. This is one of the ones that we ignore on purpose. This again goes back to my argument about the disparity of the power levels. While in some circumstances it might make sense when some personalities start out in bracket E and others never go higher than bracket B (even at their highest level). But too often, you have characters in the very same bracket where one will get to go first at full power and the other will go second at two above. This needs to go. Both players start at five above and who goes first is determined by the players (regardless of hero/villain alignment).

 

1. Ban SWK

SWK just undermines the game. You aren’t even playing DBZ if you’re using her, she just makes up her own rules. There’s no reason why this had to be in the game, and we would be better off without it. Whether you think it’s a crutch for weaker players or it takes some amount of skill to use her effectively, the bottom line is that she fundamentally changes the game to a point where she is not just altering the rules, but the very mechanics of the game.

Hey hey! Ho ho! SWK has got to go!

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