I decided to run a slightly more serious deck for The Mr. Popo Invitational than I had for other events in the history of Retro DBZ events. I went for a more straightforward and simple deck, yet with a personality and strategy only possible in the Retro format, yet again one that has yet to make a significant splash. I went with the fan favorite, Krillin.
Sensei Deck
Physical Attacks: (34)
Energy Attacks: (20)
3x Captain Ginyu’s Energy Attack
3x Red Commander Red’s Command
Blocks: (14)
Combat Cards: (7)
Battlegrounds: (3)
The strategy isn’t hard to guess: win by anger. It’s a full 85 card deck, so we can play a little loose on the defense, otherwise most of the cards in the deck will gain you two anger or provide a decent secondary effect and give you one anger. As with any deck that I play where I consistently gain anger, I do like to include Dragon’s Victory for a slight backup win condition. Since this deck has only three cards in it that lower anger, it’s easy to catch another anger deck or something with slime anger at three or four anger (you can even help this a little with Goku’s Flight).
As for Krillin the personality himself, he does little for your anger victory. While the terrible looking TS Krillin Lv. 1 has the only Krillin power to raise anger, and a high PUR for a level one, the extra card you get with the Saiyan Saga Krillin HT Lv. 1 is the way to go. The level two is kind of a tossup. I went with the Majin Buu Saga Krillin Z-Warrior for my level two only because his power could lower that opponent’s anger if I faced another MPPV deck (as mentioned before, the deck is really low on ways to lower anger). I almost went with the Trunks Saga Krillin Enraged for his impressive four PUR, and feel he would be just as good in the deck (assuming anger wasn’t prevalent). In either case, unless you need to lower the opponent’s anger or think you can steal a Dragon Ball, I wouldn’t recommend wasting stages on using Krillin’s Lv. 2 power.
I use the Trunks Saga Krillin the Warrior as the Lv. 3 only for his high PUR, as the build of this deck needs all the power stages it can get. Probably the second most useful Krillin Lv. 3 would be the Saiyan Saga Lv. 3 that can selectively heal a whopping one card (but loses two PUR). A case could be made for Krillin the Great’s power being used to clean up the discard pile for a quick Red Style Mastery activation, but don’t be swayed by the allure of the extra damage as this deck won’t make good use of it. The promo Saiyan Saga Krillin Lv. 4 is amazing, and in most cases activating his power should get you enough gas to reach level 5 that turn or put you only a Red Style Mastery activation away from it for the next combat.
Krillin’s only real advantage as an anger personality are his named cards, in particular Krillin’s Quick Kicks and to a lesser extent Krillin’s Destructo Disk. The three anger gain from Krillin’s Quick Kicks is arguably the best anger raising non-mastery card in the game, and Krillin’s Destructo Disk not only gifts you with an anger but also provides some measure of protection against beatdown decks and control.
I chose the recently unerrata’d West Kai Sensei, since many of the biggest dangers to Red Anger come in non-combat form. While you can always keep it in reserve for other dangers, many beats decks run minimal non-combats, most notably just a You’re Invited and a Victorious Drill. Because of that, if I don’t draw any other drill kill, I can usually feel safe taking away the Vic Drill with the Sensei first turn and clear the path for future combats. I really don’t think any other Sensei will be as consistently beneficial to you as West Kai Sensei.
Unless I need some anti-Dragon Ball cards, I really have no intention of bringing in any cards from the Sensei Deck. The only choice in the Sensei Deck that I feel I need to explain is Breakfall. I keep a copy of it in there only because I want to remove it from the game with Energy Ricochet. What do I accomplish by doing this? Well I make myself immune to being Dazed, as the card has no effect on a player who has Breakfall in their discard or removed from game pile (it’s written right in Dazed’s text). Yes, I have caught people completely off guard with that, it’s a nice surprise from Krillin.
Running the deck itself is kind of straightforward. The deck does have many cards that need power stages, and since nearly all Krillin personality cards fall in the “B” bracket on the power chart, you’ll need to manage your power stages wisely. This is why I chose mostly the Krillin’s with the highest PURs for my personality stack, and don’t be tempted to waste power stages on using energy attacks built in to any Krillin personality card you may decide to use. While possible, winning by beatdown is an uphill battle, use your resources to stay the course and take the win through anger.
Later BroZ!
Have you thought about running the CS lv 3? I feel like neither have a useful power most of the time (The one you have will never really do anything with a B base attack), but the CS one is an actual threat against ball decks, as you can grab a Fades or Huh??? at the end of combat. Even with a CiT in play, having a Fades/Huh??? means they have to be able to deal with it before getting rid of CiT. It can also open you up to running a Fatherly Advice in the main deck. You can get a Fatherly in play for card advantage at the end of turn, which in many cases will often win the game outright in the next combat if left uninpeded (Needing 6-9 anger to go from Lv 3 to 5, grabbing a Quick Kick means you only need 3-6 anger, and you still have your entire hand). It’s top power stage is also in C instead of B, so as long as you are only at level 3 for one power up step, you really only lose out of 1 pur as you’ll take 1 less damage from the first physical attack. And being anger, I figure you’ll level from it fairly fast anyways.
Im also surprised with not running balls. Earth 3,4,5 are usually in most anger decks as you get out of combat anger gain, and card advantage to win earlier. And I know the most people tend to shy away from control or ball in Retro, but having Earth balls can make it harder for your opponent if they’re running a Ball deck with earth (I know there have a been a few per year at GenCon).
I agree with with Fresko on lv. 3 CS. There are a few neat things it would offer you in this deck.
Have you considered Bojack’s Extreme Assailment over Red Energy Surprise? It’s guaranteed 2 anger over a conditional 2 anger, and raises the opponent’s so might also help pull off a “random” Dragon’s Victory easier.
I did not think about Extreme Assailment. I’d probably flip Red Static Shot for it, as it’s the same as Energy Surprise, just not focused.
To chime in on using the CS Level 3 (Krillin, the Champion, I think?) while watching you play this on stream, I remembered that the Non-Combat anger cards were unbanned, so you could run The Champion to get situationally valuable cards depending on the match-up, or just get Enraged! or whatever to advance your win-con.
While it’s easy to name many non-combats that would be “nice to fetch” with CS Lv. 3, I think just adding in non-combats muddies the deck a little. Do I sacrifice “clean” draws for a possible one off combo with the Lv. 3, that may or may not even be possible due to Majin Buu Fury or City in Turmoil? I think the optimal choice for the deck is to sacrifice my level 3 power in order to make sure that I never have a non-combat draw in combat. I can definitely see strategies with the Level 3, but I’ll take performance over luxury.
Love the idea of this deck. A fresh take on the classic red anger deck