With the announcement of Nail the Namekian in the next set of Panini America’s Dragon Ball Z, we take a look back at his storied history in the Dragon Ball Z CCG (or lack thereof).
Well there he is. Even though both the character and the personalities are unremarkable, Nail the Namekian has somehow made it as a playable character in every iteration of Dragon Ball Z card games, going as far back as 1996’s Ani-Mayhem and up to more recent games like Score Entertainment’s Re-Z and Bandai’s Dragon Ball game. That’s more than beloved favorites like Trunks and Broly can say. So how has Nail the Namekian fared in Retro DBZ CCG? A resounding meh…
Poor Nail the Namekian has received almost no love. His powers are fairly vanilla and bland, plus he suffers from that terrible trend of Retro DBZ CCG personalities where his powers actually get worse as he levels up. He has all of two named cards, with Nail Combat Drill having the most promise (and errata’d to “Namekian Heritage Only”) as an anti-physical beats Drill (imagine if Trunks Lv. 1 HT could use that drill… well still kinda mediocre I guess). His other named card, Nail Takes Extra Effort, is a crap rare.
Throughout the rest of the game, Nail the Namekian got practically no support, new personality levels or named cards to work with him in any way. The closest he got was Namekian Dash Attack and being able to give Piccolo – Enraged Lv. 4 a boost for whatever good that will do you. Lacking a level four himself, even the meager anger bonus from Empowerment (which after errata only gives Piccolo and Nail two anger, rather than three) does nothing for Nail the Namekian since his best level is Level 1. Technically Nail the Namekian becomes a permanent part of Piccolo (and Nail even asserts himself at some points in the series after syncing with Piccolo), so I always saw it as a missed opportunity not to do more with the two.
Really, Nail the Namekian has only ever been good for two things:
1) He’s a fairly decent ally with a solid energy attack.
2) His power levels broke chart until the release of the Trunks Saga.
Along with Guldo, Nail the Namekian was one of two playable Main Personalities released in the Frieza Saga who’s power levels stayed in and never left the highest power bracket of the Saiyan Saga Physical Attack Table. It was quite the advantage until the Trunks Saga Physical Attack Table stabilized the discrepancies somewhat (though those of us who have been around long enough are all guilty of using some of those Frieza Saga cards for that purpose).
After Frieza Saga, Nail the Namekian lost most of his relevance. An aspect of the anime unfortunately captured by the card game.
Later, BroZ!
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I didn’t start playing old Z until Buu saga. I done heard tails about this guy. I can see why he won so much. An energy for 5 or 3 and a discard is really impressive also considering that endurance wasn’t in the game yet.
I think you missed the point of the article. He’s bad and he’s pretty much always been bad.