TAK Games is delighted to announce we have entered into an exclusive distribution agreement for Australia with Panini America, Inc., covering all new card and strategy games to be created under the Panini Games brand.

Our partnership starts with the highly anticipated launch of Meta X TCG (pronounced Meta Cross) featuring DC’s Justice League in August 2017. Solicitations for pre-orders will be forwarded to stores this week.

Meta X TCG’s gameplay is simple enough to teach players the basics within a few minutes, but the depth of play will excite even the most veteran players out there! The ability to add more universes to the initial release of Justice League will help broaden appeal and guarantee game longevity.

TAK Games’ mission has centred around driving deep and meaningful interactions between players and stores, built around a robust organised play system. Our core focus is to provide people who want to play our supported game bases with what they expect for tournament play, and retailers with quality games that will have people returning to their stores time and again.

With Meta X, everyone can look forward to even more opportunities to engage in organised play. Store based tournaments will be supported on launch with large scale regional events to be held prior to the end of 2017. Meta X and other Panini Games titles will be promoted via conventions, social media and other mediums to build the player base. Expect a massive presence at PAX Australia this year, with demos, giveaways and tournaments to be supported throughout the 3-day event.

TAK Games are thrilled to have this opportunity to work closely with the talented team at Panini Games, and we look forward to seeing more people enjoy the games and events to follow.

Game on!

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).

The Dragon Ball Z TCG announcement from Panini today has hit the playing and collecting community hard. While we are devastated at the shocking news as many fellow players are, we are also immensely proud of the Australian community that you all have contributed to building over the last two years. We have been privileged to be part of amazing community experiences: from watching our inaugural National Champion Fahad Rahman take out 4^th place at the 2015 World Championships, to our pride as Tobye broke the Saiyan hoodoo worldwide in 2015, to hosting a Nationals event in 2016 that smashed all previous attendance records, to being observers of some amazing acts of generosity in the community, whether it be helping a new player get started with gifts of cards or helping replace a misplaced deck in thirty minutes at Nationals. This community is special – to us, and to those who have played a pivotal part in it. It is our fervent hope that you have enjoyed TAK’s organised play programs as much as we have enjoyed building them for the community.

TAK Games has always had a focus on running organised play events, and that is what we plan to continue to build in 2017 and beyond. Tournament event notices for Dragon Ball Z and Final Fantasy happening in Melbourne in late January have been posted today, which mark the first of our cash prize tournaments and underline our commitment to arranging the best organised play tournament experiences we can for the community. Events will be held regularly in Melbourne and Brisbane, and in other states as demand dictates. We will also be looking to expand to other games in the future, depending on the desire from the community.

We will continue supporting Dragon Ball Z tournaments for as long as the community wants to play them, and look forward to seeing virtual card sets from former developers, updated CRDs and more. Prizes will continue to be distributed to retailers as well as at our own hosted events. The size of these events entirely depends on you, the player, and the rest of the community. As long as there are players willing to keep our beloved game alive, we will do our best to support you all with tournament events, whether you attend our events or events at your friendly local game store.

The Final Fantasy TCG represents a new frontier for us and we plan to fully support growing large-scale events for this new TCG. We hope some of you will join us!

This is only a small taste of what we have planned for 2017. Watch this space for new games, and an expanded TAK Games organised play circuit. We are excited for the year ahead, and we hope to continue to provide you with awesome events for you all to participate in.

Thank you all, and it’s definitely still… Game on!

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

The last regional of the season is upon us and 30 Z Warriors have descended on the regional town of Newcastle to do battle. A number of players are fighting it out to win the Worlds invite on offer for the regional season.

An interesting array of decks are on display today with the following in the field:

Black Devious Mastery – 5: Android 13 x 2; Master Roshi x 2; Turles
Blue Tag Team Mastery – 4: Android 13, Captain Ginyu x 2; Master Roshi
Namekian Knowledge Mastery – 3: Piccolo x 3
Namekian Restored Mastery – 2: Cell x 2
Orange Adaptive Mastery – 2: Tenshinhan, Yamcha
Orange Adept Mastery – 1: Yamcha
Red Enraged Mastery – 7: Android 13 x 2; Cooler x 2; Master Roshi x 2; Yamcha
Red Ruthless Mastery – 3: Broly x 3
Saiyan Empowered Mastery – 3: Broly x 2; Goku

Round 4 Update

There are four players undefeated heading into Round 4, with Red style the real MVP today.

David Spencer – Red Enraged Roshi
Zac Gray – Red Ruthless Broly
Reece Burns – Red Enraged 13
Jono Chabowski – Red Enraged Roshi

Our stream is up and running at https://www.twitch.tv/takgamesau.

Top Cut Update

Listed are the top 8 players in no particular order:

Joshua Craig – Red Enraged 13
Jono Chabowski – Red Enraged Roshi
Chris Hellmann – Black Devious 13
Dylan Mancinelli – Saiyan Empowered Goku
David Spencer – Red Enraged Roshi
Neville Pearson – Red Ruthless Broly
Daniel Scanes – Namekian Knowledge Piccolo
Reece Burns – Red Enraged 13

Top 8 Matches

Reece Burns vs Dylan Mancinelli
Jono Chabowski vs Neville Pearson
Joshua Craig vs Daniel Scanes
David Spencer vs Chris Hellmann

Top 4 Update

Dylan Mancinelli vs David Spencer
Jono Chabowski vs Daniel Scanes (stream feature match)

Top 2

Congratulations to David Spencer who has been the most consistent performer this season and has secured an invite to the 2016 World Championships!

He now plays Daniel Scanes on the stream for the Newcastle title.

Champion

Daniel Scanes wins the Newcastle Regional, keeping the title in the state again this year.

Congratulations again to both Daniel and David. We’ll see you all in Melbourne next week for Nationals!

Game on!

 41 eager Z warriors have travelled from all over Australia to make it to the Brisbane regionals seeking fame, glory and that ever elusive Worlds invitation.

A breakdown of styles and MPs follows:

Blue Tag Team is the most prevalent mastery on the field today with 8 people looking to call on allies for help. Black Devious and Red Enraged are represented by 7 players each, followed by Red Ruthless (5), Namekian Restored (4), Orange Adaptive (3), 2 players each representing Namekian Knowledge and Saiyan Empowered and a single Z warrior representing Blue Protective and Orange Adept.

For MPs, the new Vengeance MPs are well represented with 9 players representing Broly, 6 Cooler and 4 Android 13. Rounding out the rest are Gohan, Yamcha and Captain Ginyu (4 each), 2 players each for Master Roshi and Piccolo and single representation for Frieza, Goku, Android 16, Trunks, Cell and Android 18.

Round 2 Update

Round 2 is now underway with Damien (Blue Tag Gohan) and Rob (Namekian Restored Gohan) battling it out on our stream, which you can view on Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/takgamesau

Round 4 Update

Nick (Blue Tag Roshi) is taking on Simon (Namekian Knowledge Piccolo) on stream while the following players are undefeated:

Jono C. (Namekian Knowledge Piccolo)
Dylan M. (Blue Protective Cooler)
Jacob M. (Blue Tag Ginyu)
Riley H. (Saiyan Empowered Broly)
Nick O. (Blue Tag Roshi)
Simon N. (Namekian Knowledge Piccolo)

Round 6 Update

Final round before Top Cut and tensions are high. Jacob M. with Blue Tag Ginyu has defeated all contenders so far and takes on 2015 World Championships Top 4 player Fahad with Black Devious Android 13.  On stream, Gold Coast Z Warrior Dylan M. is piloting Blue Protective Cooler against Jono’s Namekian Knowledge Piccolo.

Top Cut Update

The following players have endured to make Top Cut, listed in no particular order. Congratulations and good luck to them!

Dylan M. (Blue Protective Cooler)
Jono C. (Namekian Knowledge Piccolo)
David B. (Red Ruthless Broly)
Fahad R. (Black Devious Android 13)
Jacob M. (Blue Tag Captain Ginyu)
Nick O. (Blue Tag Master Roshi)
Lin H. (Red Enraged Android 13)
Chris K. (Black Devious Master Roshi)

Top 4

It’s Fahad vs Lin while Jono takes on Chris K. on stream.

Top 2

Jono takes on Lin for the Queensland title honours and is up 1 game to 0 in a best of 3 battle.

Who will prevail?

In the end, the title fell to Jono with a 2-0 win over Lin. We look forward to seeing everyone at Nationals!

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