From the ashes rises.... A new take on an old game.

After releasing 14 years ago, the very first ccg that I ever took an active role in trying to get out to the community, and running a lot of tournaments for, is back. Dragon Ball Z not only is back, but it's back with a vengance. The rules are streamlined from the old days, a lot of the broken combos have been flushed out and the company actually seems to care about the game!

The main difference between the old game and the new one is that you HAVE to dedicate your deck to a certain fighting style (blue, saiyan, namekian etc) and, that every deck has to be the same size ie 60 cards. Under the old game you could not dedicate yourself and throw every nasty combo despite color and that each deck could have anywhere from 50-70 cards, so you had decks designed to draw their entire deck out on the first combat and win that way no longer legal in this edition of the game. You can also use the new cards with all your old ones in what people are starting to refer to as the Retro format.

It's a whole new game

Personalities in this new rendition of the game are amazing as well as the masteries.

Since each deck has to be dedicated, I just want to go over briefly what I think about each of them

Red- 

This has always been the "Gain Anger" mastery. It has gotten a bit of a redo from the old edition. Now you only gain the anger from the mastery when you use a critical effect (although red is not lacking on anger gaining on the cards themselves), but when you advance a level you draw and discard a card, and when you lower a level you draw a card. This style would probably work around Frieza or the better choice, VEGETA who just screams, I'm going to punch you in the face.

Blue

This has been the calming, anti anger mastery. The same is true in this edition, although now it has the added benefit of once a combat you can ditch an attack to counter the opposite type of attack, IE Energy for physical etc. This mastery also has a lot of ally support in it and set up support (things that you put out in play to use at a later time) so having a lot of allies in your deck can be a good thing, as allies are amazing now and limited to once per deck. The king personalities of this deck are either Captain Ginyu, or goku/gohan with lots of ally support.

Orange

The typical We have drills and we love them style, oh and energy attacks do more damage. This is great if you want to have a lot of drill support for all your attacks, which orange is king of, and want to get to a critical damage effect faster, oh and if you do that, you can get one of those drills your opponent discarded back. This works great with any personality but Goku seems to be designed for it

Black

 The manipulation deck. Discard cards to cause your opponent to hate you by forcing a discard on all their good cards and have no discard pile to go through. plus you get a bonus of +1 stage and life card on all your attacks.. This works great with the use of Trunks (who's powers at any stage are basically to set your life deck up or your opponents depending) but can be used with just about any personality without feeling gimped.

Saiyan

The beatdown mastery. you can't win by one of the alternate win conditions, but who cares, you're higher than your opponent and just smacking him down. It's limited to the saiyans, ie Goku, Gohan, Vegeta, Trunks, but works with any of them, Goku and Trunks especially.

Namekian

Regeneration specialists, and able to win with any of the 3 victory conditions really well. Piccilo is the main one you see but also see a few Gohan(who can use it because he was trained by the namek) to pop up as well.

Overall impressions:

The game seems fun again. you don't need a lot of rares to make the decks work, although they do help, and that it's easy to pick up for a new player or an experienced player. the cards seem balanced, although time will tell on that. I hope that once some tournaments start to take place around the world that we'll start seeing the distribution of mastery/personality to winning ratio.