Dustin’s Theory Craftin- Set 1 in Brief

Howdy all,

A new set is coming. It will be full of many goodies and baddies but before we can really understand what is coming we need to look at what we already have. I hope that in this set 1 review I can help identify what each mastery does well, what each mastery does not do well and what each mastery is looking for in the upcoming set. Being an engineer, I will be doing this with a copious amount of maths. For those that like math, enjoy. For those who don’t like math, I will be including some word thingies too.
The main things I will bee (buzz buzz) looking at is relative strength of all the energy attacks/ physical attacks and other effects for each mastery. Through this we can see where the strength lies for each mastery and what each mastery can improve on. When looking at the strength of card effects I was looking for a couple of things: Card advantage effects, destroy on board effects (ally, drills and so on), powerful interactive effect (play from banish) and other such nonsense. 1-2 of these effects is low on my scale, 3-4 is medium and 4 plus is high. This is based on my own call so you can argue if you want, not that it will do you any good. Onward to maths!!

Looking at the relative strength of the energy combats for each mastery we can see a couple of interesting things.

• -Black is arguably the most damaging (counting mastery of course) but does so at a very high energy cost. Black also lacks real game changing effects on its energy attacks making them rather weak overall. Grade C
• -Blue is on the low end of damage and although has a couple of powerful effects, lacks depth in its energy combat. Grade B
• -Namekian is super cheap, low on damage but rich with powerful effects (grabbing dragon balls, drawing and so on). Grade A
• -Orange does a ton of damage and its drill tutoring makes its cards effects rather strong. Grade A
• -Red although lacking in numbers has quite a few powerful energy cards. Grade A
• -Saiyan (who cost is negligible due to stage gain) lacks the depth of powerful effects to stand above the rest. Grade B

Looking at the relative strength of the physical combats for each mastery we can see a couple of interesting things.

• -Physical combats seem to be the main source of effects (such as knocking out allies and such) and as such i would expect decks to be running these just for there effects if for nothing else.
• -Black again lead the charge is raw damage. What it lacks in on board death dealers it makes up in tricky cards that play banished cards or stop attacks. Grade A
• -Blue has a number of hard hitting attacks but also has a number of low damage large effect cards. Grade B
• -Namekian has decent damage and strong effect. not much to say here… Grade A
• -Orange has a limited number of attacks but has very strong effects. You will likely be playing a limited number of these based on your decks needs. Grade B
• -Red damage is deceiving. Although they have a number of hard hitting attacks red also has a number of low damage strong effect cards that it will want to play. This makes red a little unreliable. Grade B
• -Saiyan’s punch things, punch things hard. What Saiyan has in damage it lacks in strong effects for this reason i can’t quite give it an A.
  Grade B+

When it comes to stops blue is king at doing nothing. I give second place to Namekian/orange. Namekian due to its ability to rejuv and gain anger while dropping stops and orange due to the the strength of its stop drills. Its silly that blue gets as many stops as it does considering its rather redundant with its mastery but hey if you want to be “that control player” blue is the deck for you.

This table compares drills, events and all that other stuff. I did consider each mastery when calculating anger and it is rather telling.

• -Red is third place in average anger gain!! This is crazy to me and shows just how powerful Namekian anger gain really is.
• -Orange and red have no anger drop at all. Keep this in mind when building. You may have to face high level MP’s and there is little you can do about it.
• -Although blue is the king of anger drop, it is nowhere near the gain power of the top 3 (red, saiyan, and Namekian). You may slow them down but it may be impossible to stop them.
• -I defined simple card advantage as: cards that read you draw a card (with little or no cost) or cards that had multiple turn effects (powerful drills and/or setups) that are equivalent to plus 1 card. What we see is quite telling. The leaders in card advantage are the leaders in the meta. Red is an exception due to its relatively low strength of its effects.
• -Black seriously lack cards advantage. I know we don’t want to print a straight discard a card effect but these one of mine/ one of yours effects put black way behind compared to every other mastery. Sure banish cards in decks is quite powerful, but without a great source of card advantage black has the potential to just get crushed in combat versus most other decks.

Oh ya grades… Black B, Blue B, Namekian A, Orange A, Red C and Saiyan C. Ok so what does this all mean.

• –Black is overall a B-. Strong effects and strong damage but at high stage cost, black lacks board control and has relatively low anger gain. Focus on MP’s that have high PUR and/or can deal with on board threats at low levels. Nappa might fit here due to his ability to smack allies in the face and Krillian/Piccolo fit well due to there high PUR.
• –Blue gets a solid B. Blue can be a limited beat down deck but quite the beast of a control deck. If you want to play the deck that make your opponent do nothing here is the style for you. Remember your MP will be at level one most of the time and level 2 only in the best case. I think nail may be a natural fit here due to his chipping away ability and strong MP block but Frieza also come to mind considering some of the new cards that are coming.
• –Namekian gets an A+.  What it lacks in limited on-board control, it easily makes up for by having one of the most powerful masteries in the game.   Namekian is limited most by the MP’s that it can use. The Namekain decks can often try to win in all three ways (dragonball, anger, and damage) without having to play bad cads to do it. Very scary, very flexible and thankfully limited to only a handful of MP’s.
• –Orange gets a A-. Not quite as strong as Namekian but given enough time can be nearly unstoppable. Orange is a late game beast. It can setup boards full of drill that can put there opponent in a near unwinnable situation. Lacking a ton of anger gain, you want to focus on MPs that can generate there own anger or are very powerful at low levels (cough Ginyu cough). Orange can be beaten through speedy beats, or anger/dragon ball victory but survival victory can be very difficult to achieve through its wall of on board effects.
• –Red gets a B-. Red lacks the consistency to be a top tier deck. Many of its cards have very powerful effects and/or combo together in awesome ways but over the course of a game red can be out classed due to a lack of consistency. Right now red is slightly undefined. Is it an anger deck or does it use its anger to do other things. Hopefully as more sets are release red can find its nitch.
• –Saiyan gets a C. Although its mastery and attacks are quite powerful it lacks the card effects to deal with every situation. Also its lack of real card advantage puts it behind in combat.
  Well I hope that helped. As the new set is release I am excited to see if each mastery will get what it need to fill its gaps. Who knows where we will be in a few months but I can’t wait to find out.

Dustin