You’re on your way to a tournament, but it’s not just any tournament. It’s Regionals time! With that comes extra anticipation and nerves. You’ve spent hours play testing your deck, making it just right. Round One is about to begin, you’re shuffling up and looking over at your opponent. What does the tournament bring?

We’ve all been there. Preparing ourselves for that big tournament moment. One thing goes largely unspoken about when it comes to tournament play. How do I ensure I give myself the best chance to meet my potential? A good decklist plays a large role in how anyone will fare over the course of a tournament. But what about a player’s style, attitude and mental toughness. Where does that come from, and how can we improve it?

Weigh up your opponent

You can tell a lot about an opponent from when they sit down with you and start their pre-game routine. Take the time to analyse your opponent on face value. Look at the combination of personality and mastery and start to piece together a picture of the potential match up ahead. But then look at your opponent themselves. Are they showing any signs of nerves, or are they talking up a big game? The way they compose themselves before the game will tell you a lot about how they are likely to play during the game.

But the most important part of any pre-game routine is three questions:

• What is my opponent’s objective?
• How are they going to achieve it?
• How do I stop it?

Your deck determines how you’re going to win the game, so it is up to you and how you play that determines whether or not your opponent gets to their objective first.

Tempo

Speed of the game is how many players like to control the way in which a game pans out. Is your opponent rushing, and making you feel rushed at the same time? Are they stalling when they clearly only have one or two options to consider? While stalling out a game is always considered an infraction on the game, slightly altering the tempo of a game is a legitimate strategy used to help put yourself back into the driver’s seat.

To protect yourself against this, and to ensure that you play at a tempo that you are comfortable with, you need to make sure that you have thought out your own moves and anticipated your opponent’s moves. Pay close attention to your opponent’s hand and where they position their cards, both when in attack phase, and both in their defensive phase. This will help give you an idea after watching their play a few times, to make an educated guess as to how many attacks, blocks or dead cards they are holding.

Be prepared to change

As a game ebbs and flows, it’s important to realise the tactics that you successfully used early game might not match the state of play end game. Sometimes if you have been sitting back and building board control, your opponent might end up in a situation they don’t like. Maybe they just finished a combat and have no cards in hand, and you still have one and you move onto your own turn. Sometimes it’s important to press an advantage. The idea behind this is to keep your opponent guessing. The more you create doubt in their mind, the more likely they are to make a play error. By making your opponent make the decisions, it can help force their hand and change their own plans.

Finally…

Last but not least, always keep an eye on the game state. Sometimes you can get so focused on your own plays and cards that you lose sight of your opponent’s plans. It’s important to read the future potential of your opponent’s plans at all times so that you can make a sound judgement. When a whole game can rest on the outcome of 1-2 plays at the right times, the extra few seconds it takes to size up your opponent’s options can make all the difference.

Game on!

-Trent (@TAKGames_Trent).

Dragon Ball Z Warriors, the TAK Games exclusive previews continue today with Red Restraint. A common from Heroes and Villains, this provides Red with some nice kickback effects to Black style’s continual threat of hand disruption. It also ties in nicely with the Red Enraged Mastery. Will Red Restraint find a slot in your Red deck?

Our next preview from Heroes and Villains will be unveiled Monday the 16th February – to stay up to date with the latest TAK Games reveals and analysis, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @TAKGames_au.

Game on!
– Kyp (@justkyp).

Resident Sydney writer Kenny Phuong Nguyen continues with the Heroes and Villains review tonight, choosing four cards from the new reveals today for an in-depth analysis. Phoenix Lee from For the Players also features with another video on Heroes and Villains. Over to Kenny and Phoenix Lee…

Kenny:

Hello again fellow DBZ fans!

Are we all looking forward to Heroes and Villains? I know I certainly am! After the excitement caused by all the sudden spoilers yesterday, you can’t imagine my glee at seeing even more previews hitting today. I’ll be doing an in-depth review of a few of the cards featured in today’s reveals of Heroes and Villains.

First, let’s look at my favourite card from among the spoiled cards, Red Destiny, posted on Panini’s blog today. Red Destiny is very comparable to Red Blazing Aura from the Core Set, but there are a few key differences.

• Red Destiny is a setup, whereas Red Blazing Aura is an event. One issue I have with Red Blazing Aura is that as an event, it likely takes up a slot in your combat hand. If you draw it on your turn, it makes entering combat safer but less explosive. This isn’t really aligned with what Red tends to aim for: super awesome, combo-tastic combats where you chuck a million attacks and use a tonne of critical effects (at least, that’s what I try to do when I play red :D). Red Destiny, in my mind, therefore compares favourably here – drawing it on your turn means that you’re probably passing, but you don’t lose the effect. Instead, you get to save it for a future turn as opposed to just tossing it in the bin, or holding it in the hopes of using it on your opponent’s turn.

• Red Destiny grants you less protection from attacks than Red Blazing Aura, however, the amount of attacks where the damage reduction difference will be relevant are few and far between. When playing against black, -2 Stages / -2 Life Cards is enough to prevent all of one of the damage types, meaning that the -3 Stages / -3 Life Cards is a bit of an overkill. I’d rather have more than not enough, but I don’t think Red Destiny is “not enough” in this case.

• Red Destiny grants you 2 anger instead of 1. This is incredibly significant, especially if you’re gearing up for a big combat. Any single card that grants you 2 anger automatically warrants some exploration in my opinion, and is part of the reason why Red Double Strike and Red Right Cross are important presently. If Red is going to succeed, it needs anger, and the more anger you can gain off each individual card, the better.

But why compare the two? Why not have both? (Queue fiesta music, and Old El Taco commercial). These cards both shield red from its glaring weakness – poor block choices from the base set and fairly ordinary endurance. Being able to avoid Critical Damage for a turn will certainly help the angry Red player to power up through their MP levels and get to stomping sooner rather than later. I am super excited for this card!

Next up, let’s look at Namekian Confident Burst, also posted on Panini’s blog today.

Clearly this card has been made for Gohan Namekian. In fact, Gohan Namekian appears to be shaping up to be the Heroic Ally deck! The hit effect of this card when playing Gohan is ludicrous! Land one of these babies early, fetch Chi-Chi and Piccolo, and sit behind a wall of blocks. Or fetch out some other allies, like Yamcha, Tenshinhan, or Chaozu, and get your boys to beat up the opponent. If Ginyu has taught anyone anything so far, it’s that allies are awesome. It’s a shame that allies will receive a bit of a smackdown with the upcoming Orange Driving Drill, but that’s not gonna stop me from playing them!

When I first started the game, I played a lot of OCTGN games (I do recommend trying it!). “blinkkite” was my name, Gohan Namekian was my game. After much getting my butt kicked, I gave up on him in favour of Piccolo, but now that all this support is coming out for the young Saiyan, maybe I can look past both my record and his inability to dodge, seeing as though he now has friends who can do it for him!

For my third and final card, let’s have a look at another huge game changer previewed by Panini directly today, Blue Overpowering Drill.

“Overpowering” is a fairly apt name for this beast of a card. Frieza grinned ear to ear (or ear like thing to ear like thing in his case) when this card was spoiled – it was practically made for him. Combined with Blue Protective Mastery and Frieza’s level 1, you can gain 3 anger off of a single block! Imagine stopping a big attack with Frieza, jumping up to level 2, then using Level 2 Frieza’s power to copy that attack, only your opponent won’t be stopping your attack. Overpowering, overwhelming, whatever you want to call it, the next time you see Frieza Blue drop onto the opposite side of the table, you’d best be hoping they don’t draw this bad boy, or you have some way to deal with it, or a very angry Frieza may be ripping you to bits with your own attacks!

Thanks for tuning in! I’ll see you next time, whether it be with more Heroes and Villains previews, or just something else I want to talk about regarding my new, favourite game 😀

Until next time, stomp some faces, Saiyan style!

Kenny Phuong Nguyen

Check out Phoenix Lee’s assessment on For the Players for his new video on today’s Heroes and Villains spoilers.

Look out for the next spoiler reveal from TAK Games tomorrow – to make sure you’re up to date with the latest reveals, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @TAKGames_au.

Game on!
– Kyp (@justkyp).