TAK Games > Regionals Deck Analysis #1 | Daine B’s Black Ginyu | QLD Regional Champion

Regionals Deck Analysis #1 | Daine B’s Black Ginyu | QLD Regional Champion

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.

Black Swirl provides so much return for so little cost.

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.

Dragon Ball Z Strategy Tip: Keep tabs on life

Tobye writes in with the following strategic tip for this week:

Vic Regionals - Tobye R.One of the mysteries I come across in competitive play is a lack of life counts going on. This could be due to the fact that I like to play opportunistic-explosive style decks that need to know exactly when to all-in, but it really is a vital piece of information for any player.

If your deck is capable of doing 15+ life cards of damage in a combat, which almost every deck is, you should keep close tabs on your opponent’s life total. This is not just important for knowing when to go all-in, but also, just as importantly, when to stop attacking. If your opponent plays Dragon Balls, the last thing you want is for them to string together a combo of them and steal the game at the vital last moment. Similarly, against a Tenshinhan deck, your opponent will often have a slew of preps at the bottom of his deck. You need to know how to manage these situations well, and knowing when to stop attacking to force them to draw badly for the following 2 turns can be crucial for closing out a game.

And this does not just go for your opponent’s decks. You should always keep very good tabs on your own life deck total as well. There are times when it is really beneficial for you to take the larger life card damage attack and block the smaller one as it may put you within touching distance of playing out all your Dragon Balls.  Or alternatively, early in a game, to see if it’s worth taking a big hit to put key cards in your discard pile to be retrieved (with Visiting the Past, Namekian Flinch, etc.), without it putting you at risk of game-ending damage reach in the following turn.

Finally, it can give you a little room to mind game.  When you ask for a life count and they reply “heaps”, then “42” after you are a little more persistent, that can be all it takes for them to reconsider a combat against you in future. This is harder to imagine when playing something in the meta as they should be able to gauge your damage well. But when you are behind something off meta like blue Raditz or black Nail, that can turn around and end a game in a single turn from nowhere and your opponent has no solid match-up experience, it can be seriously intimidating.

So today’s tip: treat your life in Dragon Ball Z as your parents treat your life, with extreme scrutiny and micromanagement.

– Tobye.

Victorian Dragon Ball Z Regionals Report

Vic Regionals - Khalil K.With a very even showing from Black, Blue, Namekian and Red styles, the Victorian regionals bought together play groups from two different states for a tournament meta mash-up. What would prevail?

The following counts on styles was seen:

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

After six brutal rounds of play, the following players emerged for our Top 8 cut. Deck lists are linked below:

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

Following the first round of finals, the top 4 showdown featured a battle to represent home states in the final as South Australians Matt B. and David T. faced off in a 100% mirror match while Victorians Nathan A. and Kuan L. battled for dominance.

Ultimately Kuan and David prevailed to make it into the Top 2, where David won with a convincing 2-0 victory, winning first by anger, then by Dragon Ball victory to prove the Namekian triple threat remains a strong contender post set-3.

VIC Regionals - Matt B. Vic Regionals - Kuan L. Vic Regionals - David T. Vic Regionals - Alex Vic Regionals Vic Regionals - Tobye R.  Vic Regionals - Nathan F. Vic Regionals - Shaun D.