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).
