Trent continues his regional deck analysis series with Dave’s winning Namekian Piccolo deck from the Victorian regionals.

Dave T’s Namekian Piccolo

All day I was glued to Twitch watching the Victorian Dragon Ball Z Regionals unfold. I was impressed at the meta choice of Namekian Piccolo considering the field. Namekian had strong match ups against a good majority of what was on offer to play so it wasn’t surprising to see three make it to the Top 8.

After watching South Australian players David T. and Matt B. pilot this particular deck, I was interested to see the final list. There are a number of strong choices made in both the cards utilised and the numbers in the deck. Given Matt B’s record in the Score Dragon Ball Z game, it was no surprise to see a multi-victory deck sported by Team South Australia. Having a backup victory condition helps to keep your opponent guessing with the cards they need to keep and how to best utilise them throughout the game.

The thing most people would find surprising is the amount of “1 of” cards in the deck. But such is the nature of Namekian. It can get away with this easily, giving the pilot the choice of cards they need to retrieve with searchers like Namekian Overtime, and selective rejuvenation late game to increase the chances of use. But, the flip side of this also means that should your opponent lock you down on both MPPV and DBV, you’re going to have to grind out the long game if these cards are removed either through Endurance or by other means.

The rest of the deck is fairly standard Namekian Piccolo that we have seen through Set 1 and 2. The block package is fairly standard, except for the choice of Namekian Stance as the second pure energy block. This does help in the match ups like Ginyu and other more aggressive decks, obviously to help protect your anger and Dragon Balls.

One setup present in the deck that I haven’t seen a lot of players use is Namekian Concentration. Teamed up with Namekian Growth, there is some serious rejuvenation that a lot of beatdown victory decks would find hard to overcome. Since the deck may be a little vulnerable to removal of other win conditions, this helps with the long game. Since Namekian would hardly be an aggressor, passing combat just helps feed Namekian Concentration and adds to the annoyance the deck creates for aggressive builds.

The list is very solid, without being too focused in any one direction. It will be interesting to see if a further tweaked version of this deck is played at Nationals to continue with the Namekian renaissance.

Game on!

– Trent (@TAKGames_Trent).

We are now at the halfway mark through the Australian regionals season, and with Nationals on the horizon, Trent analyses the decks that have won so far in Queensland and Victoria. Both decks showcased the strength of Ginyu and Piccolo against the vast majority of decks making up the metagame down under.

Daine B.’s Black Ginyu

This deck moved through Swiss by the barest of margins, scraping in to 8th spot. From there, Ginyu showed the way he is able to dominate other decks through sheer weight of numbers in actions per combat.

Daine played a very aggressive game in the majority of match-ups. When he was fishing out allies with his level 1 power he would continually go for allies like Jiece to keep the pressure on his opponents. In most matches, this did him little disservice overall, but against Namekian and Blue nabbing Frieza or Nappa might be better tech.

The choices in energy combat cards are very strong. You would have to go a long way to argue about dropping any of these cards. Black Swirl is a card I see too few of in many Black decks and it gives you so much for so little. Being able to deny a potential block, or prevent a crucial card being played against you can be a huge plus. Withering Fire bridges a small gap in Black’s arsenal by providing a way to deal with drills from Orange and Blue.

All in all, the deck is extremely solid. If I could pick one thing I would change about the deck is that it doesn’t have a solid way of levelling on a consistent basis. There are cards like I’ll Dig Your Grave! but sometimes it is not optimal to use the hit effect when the Black style doesn’t deal well with MPPV. With lots of decks being able to generate critical effects, being able to get to Ginyu level 2 is crucial to retaining your board control. I would really like to see the inclusion of Black Overhead Burst for extra anger. How I would fit this in, and my second improvement I would suggest, is reducing circumstantial cards like Black Scout Maneuver and Wall Breaker. Both offer some solid tech, but running three of means that you will be running into these cards more often, and sometimes they can clog up your hand when you’d rather be laying down another heavy attack.

Daine had a great deck choice and piloted it well to the end of a long day.

At the time of recording TAK Talk #5, Victorian players Lee, David, Tobye and Barry had just received word of what had made top cut in Queensland regionals following a small 17-man pre-regionals tune up event in Mount Waverley. Listen in on their thoughts regarding the best card in the game (hint: it’s blue); the Queensland top 8 results and what they predict will win the Victorian regionals event.

As it turns out, none of us are particularly good at predicting the future – but perhaps players this weekend at Newcastle will have better luck!

TAK Talk

TAK Talk #5 - The Regionals Round-Up

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The Victorian Dragon Ball Z regionals are underway with 51 Z Warriors travelling from far and wide to battle it out for ultimate victory!

Today’s event ended up with the following counts on Mastery types:

Black Mastery – 11
Blue Mastery – 12
Namekian Mastery – 10
Red Mastery – 10
Orange Mastery – 4
Saiyan Mastery – 4

Today’s regional event is hosted by Guf Ballarat and is streaming live on twitch.tv.

Feature matches today include:

Round 1: Tobye R. vs Jye W.
Round 2: Aaron B. vs Ryan H.
Round 3: Tobye R. vs Shirlene L.
Round 4: Kuan-Ju L. vs Daniel S.
Round 5: Kuan-Ju L. vs Shaun D.
Round 6: Kuan-Ju L. vs Matt B.

ROUND 3 UPDATE

The players have broken for lunch after round 3. We currently have 7 players undefeated.

Shaun D.
David T.
Tobye R.
Kuan-Ju L.
Daniel S.
Tyson M.
Matt B.

ROUND 5 UPDATE

We currently have 2 players undefeated moving into Round 6.

Kuan-Ju L.
Matt B.

TOP CUT UPDATE

After 6 rounds of swiss the field has been cut down to 8 players moving into the knockout rounds. Piccolo Namekian has made a strong showing after seeing very little action in other regionals around the world. In no particular order, we have the following players and decks:

Nathan F. – Blue Wheelo
Kuan-Ju L. – Black Ginyu
Nathan A. – Red Piccolo
Daniel S. – Black Krillin
David T. – Namekian Piccolo
Shaun D. – Namekian Piccolo
Fahad R. – Black Krillin
Matthew B. – Namekian Piccolo

FINAL UPDATE

Congratulations to David T. who piloted Namekian Piccolo to a 2-0 victory over Kuan-Ju’s Black Ginyu deck in the final. A big thank you to all who participated and we look forward to seeing some of you in Newcastle at Good Games next week!

Sunday saw 35 Z Warriors descend on Guf Brisbane to battle it out to claim top spot in the first Australian Regional event for 2015. The field was made up of a diverse range of deck combinations, but Blue (31%), Black (22%) and Namekian (20%) were the flavour of the day.

Some of the match ups throughout the day were exciting to watch, with a Saiyan Vegeta piloted by Brenden P. going undefeated for the first 4 rounds. It seems some of the control type decks were caught a little short with some of the aggressive decks that turned up in enough numbers to add some spice during the 6 rounds of Swiss.

In a departure from the expected norm, only one Captain Ginyu deck showed up to wield its power, and new fan favourite Blue Piccolo was under represented as well given some of the results coming from the USA. New MP Dr. Wheelo made a great showing with its representation in top cut, and Ralph B. proved that despite some perceived short-comings, Gohan can be piloted with great results.

In the end it was Ally Deck vs Ally Deck in the final match up, with Ralph B.’s more measured and defensive Gohan Namekian competing against the might of Daine B.’s aggressive Black Captain Ginyu. Gohan put up a good fight, but Captain Ginyu was able to take the final 2-0 in a best of three.

Both finalists have earned an spot at our PAX Australia Invitational event on Sunday the 1st of November in Melbourne.

Queensland Top 4:

Daine B. – Black Captain Ginyu

Ralph B. – Namekian Gohan*

Jesse M. – Black Krillin

Andrew A. – Blue Dr. Wheelo

We can’t wait to see how other states show off their skill, and next up the focus will be on Victoria on Saturday at Guf Ballarat. Make sure you check out the information on the Facebook Event and don’t forget to print off a decklist in advance.

Game On!

– Trent (@TAKGames_Trent) and Kyp (@justkyp)

* Decklist not currently available