TAK Games > FanZ Reveal | Pikkon MP

FanZ Reveal | Pikkon MP

The fine folks working on FanZ have been kind enough to provide us with a preview MP stack of everyone’s favourite non-Namekian, Pikkon. Dragon Ball Z is no stranger to green men who wear weighted clothing that like to rejuvenate (lots), and Pikkon provides us with some interesting new effects.

Looking at Pikkon’s MP stack as a whole, he provides players with access to a new Hero alignment. Similar to Cooler, players can supplement deck construction by aligning Pikkon to styles that normally don’t have access to rejuvenation.

A massive draw card for Pikkon is how he provides a massive deterrent to your opponent playing events. This accelerates card effects to the next level, and provides a contrast to previously forced CRD changes to Namekian Knowledge Mastery (where the updated text did not punish opponents for playing Dragon Balls). It will be very interesting to see what effect Pikkon’s MP stack has on meta calls, and could restrict some deck building choices.

All his levels just ooze virtual card advantage.

As hinted by the FanZ team when previewing Pikkon’s named cards, Pikkon is definitely not a fan of Events, with his Level 1 having a built-in sphere that comes at a very reasonable price. The only drawback is that the event must be played as an action, so there’s no chance of cancelling Time or protecting your own events from an opponent’s sphere. His energy attack is more of a poke than any real danger but does allow targeted rejuvenation from the discard pile, and it is free. Very useful depending on your game state!

His Level 2 constant power actively punishes opponents for playing events, allowing you to rejuvenate while banishing the top card from your opponent’s life deck. Quite nasty! His power also allows more rejuvenation – Pikkon’s a hard guy to kill – while allowing Pikkon to dance out of danger at the price of a discarded card.

Pikkon’s Level 3 sees his free energy attack reach new levels of power. Would an opponent bother to try to play events when Pikkon is on Level 3? They are certainly harshly punished for doing so! These effects may be polarising in the community as it does severely punish players for their usage of an entire type of card. Throwing out a Stare Down or Confrontation to start out your combat is probably not recommended when Pikkon is at his fighting best.

At Level 4, Pikkon is a rejuvenating machine. Until now, your opponent has had to pay a price for playing their events – now they’re actively helping you stage a late game comeback. Another free energy attack sees Pikkon poke for 1 life card… but your opponent is going to want to stop it to prevent banishing the bottom 5 cards of their Life Deck. That’s a fair whack!

Free energy attacks are always great as they can enable players to sequence their combats. With strong rejuvenation abilities across all levels, Pikkon is a fair chance of getting on top in deck count early, or staging a mid to late game come back if he falls behind, no matter what he is up against.

Overall, Pikkon seems to be keeping with the overall large increase in MP powers and effects, and should provide players with some new unique ways to interact.

Game on!

– Trent (@TAKGames_Trent) and Kyp (@JustKyp).

Dragon Ball Z Awakening Preview #6: Black Memories

Today brings our last preview for Awakening, and this is definitely a favourite for the new set. But before we get to the preview, this weekend is the Australian National Qualifier in Melbourne. Two lucky players will earn invites to this years World Championships in a little under a month.

If you want to check out the action, during the US Friday and Saturday evenings, you can check out our stream HERE.

With the Black Devious Mastery getting the Frozen List treatment soon, Black will have to conjure up some ways to help maintain some form of hand manipulation. Black Memories offers up a way to bring back those discarding from hand feels Black Style players will start missing.

Initially, the power of the card gives it enormous value. With the cost of getting rid of one of your setups or drills, you can forgo something that might not be helping in your current matchup, and pillage your opponents deck for something like a Visiting The Past, to hit them back with what they want to dish out to you. The possibilities are huge.

Memories, like the corners of my mind
Memories, like the corners of my mind

Being a Setup, its sometimes hard to make the space, but offering the parenthetical text just doubles the value of this card further. While it doesn’t give you the same return as a Black Declaration by being placed into play on discard, it does give you a pitch to the new Black  Conflict Mastery which emulates the old mastery in a way.

It also doesn’t have a stipulation on what causes the discard to occur, so like with Black Command, you can could gain some benefit from any discard of the card when your opponent has 2 or more cards in hand.

This is definitely going to be fighting for some space in new Black Conflict Mastery decks.

Game on!
– Trent (@TAKGames_Trent) and Kyp (@JustKyp).

Dragon Ball Z Awakening Preview #5: Namekian Surge

We’re surging with excitement for Awakening in a few weeks, and today’s preview should have a few people excited as well. But before Awakening hits, we also have the Australian National Qualifier next weekend. We will be streaming matches over two days, Swiss on Saturday and Top Cut on Sunday with the Top 2 earning invites to Worlds. You can catch the action on our Twitch stream here, so get subscribing.

This card has been described to us as “the best card in the set”, and it’s easy to see why they had that opinion. Namekian Surge offers so much on one card, it is just overflowing with value.

If we look at the basics of the card as an attack, its a 5 life card energy attack, for a cost of 1 stage! So even without modifiers you have a chance to access critical damage for an amazing cost. It also has 2 endurance, so its just one of those cards that you have to take notice of just for the value it provides as an attack and in deck for damage prevention.

Surging with value
Surging with value

But then, you look at the immediate effects of the card and you can realise what was meant when being called the best card in the set. Without diving too much into a combo, you could grab Earth Ball 1 and pump the damage to 6 Life cards for this attack. If you’re using the new Radiant Mastery, and its the 3rd Earth Ball in play you own, that’s another 2 life cards. So you could be hitting for 8 life, costing 1 stage!

Fan’s of Slug and all his potential new combos will also see some benefits with the end of combat effects of shuffling back a Dragon Ball you control. The combos with this card are potentially limitless.

With all the value on this card, it will be hard to top. But our last preview later this week will go very close, and in some eyes may even be better.

Game on!
– Trent (@TAKGames_Trent) and Kyp (@JustKyp).

Dragon Ball Z Awakening Preview #3: Black Confinement

Awakening continues to leave us excited for the direction of the game. With Set 1 Masteries being placed on the Frozen List, its time to see what value you can extract from the Evolution and Awakening Masteries in each style.

Competing with Namekian for most text on a card
Competing with Namekian for most text on a card

Our preview today helps provide that extra value in both the Perceptive and Conflict Masteries.

At first glance, you can see that this card could start competing with some Namekian cards for the amount of text and effects in one textbox. But there is also some great potential there.

There are three separate effects that can trigger a card being milled from your opponents deck, and the MPs that will look to use this feature in Black Style decks will be able to achieve most, if not all these in a combat to create a maximum effectiveness. The favourites in this class would be Wheelo, Raditz, and Nail.

Ideally, you want to be using the Black Conflict Mastery to gain two of the three effects. But you could also gain value with Perceptive and Cooler as well, to leverage his discard abilities.

Team this with Black Chomp, and you could be milling your opponent for 6 cards. Include Black Remembrance Drill and you can turn those destroyed cards into banished cards.

While you would have to be careful on the number of these that you run in your deck, it could help pay dividends to swing a game in your favour.

Check back for more previews later this week.

Game on!
– Trent (@TAKGames_Trent) and Kyp (@JustKyp).

Dragon Ball Z Awakening Preview #1: Red Tilt

Preview season is here again and the excitement is reaching fever pitch. Over the last few days, the new Goku and Vegeta MP stacks, plus the Blue and Orange Masteries for Awakening have been analysed in great depth. Could Vegeta be the saviour we have been waiting for?

With that question yet to be fully answered, we hit the ground running with a new Red style card, one that may put your opponent “on tilt”.

Going full tilt
Going full tilt

Red Tilt offers up an Energy Block with an effect that further expands on some of the mechanics built into Red since the launch of Evolution. Having multiple actions, and potential card advantage over your opponent is a massive premium to have, so this card’s effect must be weighed up if you are looking to leverage some of the new Red style strategies.

While the card draw is conditional, in that your opponent has had to throw an energy at you so you can block, then have a matching card effect that can trigger the draw, the potential benefits could outweigh the risks.

You could team this card with Red Eye Beams from Evolution, which would net you a +2 action. Or if you want to help put a dent in the new freestyle focused Vegeta, team it with Red Chest Pierce to manipulate your own discard pile, and then banish all the non-styled cards in both discard piles.

We are really excited for all the previews we have to bring you over the coming weeks. All of them have great all round effects, and we can’t wait to see what else comes out.

Game on!
– Trent (@TAKGames_Trent) and Kyp (@JustKyp).