Hi folks! Tuesday brings us another Card of the Week, and starting soon you can expect previews of The Movie Collection to show up in this space. In this edition, we’ll be investigating a Heroes & Villains Event that is my personal pick for the best card in the set.
On a broad level, Saiyan Drive By will always create a net gain in the Life Deck race. It’s never difficult to gain anger with Saiyan Empowered Mastery, and often times you’ll be destroying 3-4 cards with this effect.
Next, you can choose any card in your discard pile to be placed on top of your Life Deck. Near the end of an opponent’s combat, you have the option to place a Setup or Ally on top to immediately play on your turn. When combined with cards like Saiyan Grab and Saiyan Enraged, you’ll be able to set up combos and continue an offensive assault.
When under duress, Saiyan Drive By can even shift to defense by setting up one of Saiyan’s many high Endurance cards. Whenever you take that route, you’ll also be able to Rejuvenate any card and potentially gain an anger in the process. Consider this easily attained scenario: Destroy 4 cards from your opponent’s Life Deck. Place Saiyan Pinpoint Blast on top of your Life Deck, Rejuvenate Saiyan Drive By and gain an anger to level up…yikes! The versatility of this card is often overwhelming, and using it to recur itself indefinitely will punish any decks lacking discard pile removal.
A pristine effect, bursting with utility – the gem of Saiyan value!
Panini Games 
Saiyan needs some serious help, but this is definitely a nice little poke that works well to whittle your opponent down and set you up strategically. I like that you get to choose the Rejuvenated card, too – one of the issues with the Saiyan Mastery (especially when compared to Namekian) is how you only get anger gain from Rejuvenating Saiyan Style cards – this can be a little annoying when pretty much any Saiyan deck will need 1x TIAWT, 3x Confrontation or Stare Down, 3-6 of your MP’s Named cards, 3x Devastating Blow, 3 Spheres if you have them, 3x Focused Assault if you’re a Hero, maybe Wall Breaker to fight MPPV decks, and maybe a couple of Allies for assistance. I feel like Namekian not needing to worry about this (as well as being free to gain anger from cards like Crushing Beam and Chaozu) can be an underrated advantage when building a deck. Drive By, and Saiyan Rescue, are pretty great for offsetting this.
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Saiyan doesn’t need any help. I top 2 or win my tournament every week with Saiyan Vegeta. The style works exceptionally well. People have just been looking at it wrong. The only place the style lacks is in setup hate, and you can still run 7 cards that kill setups in that deck. After set 1, I knew exactly what Saiyan needed to become a great style. Set 2 rolled around and over delivered on that. This time around I have no idea what Panini is going to deliver for Saiyan Style and its exciting.
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Saiyan does need help. If you really want to be a Saiyan deck, it’s easy to build around it. We won’t get it in set 3, but Saiyan really needs a new Mastery. I like Drive By in that it’s something different for a style that just throws simple physicals all day. I’d like to see more finesse and more interesting secondary effects in the style.
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if you are in the final quote”every week” with a saiyan vegeta then your competition just isn’t playing correctly. (i am saying this with the current card pool). no offense. its just fact.
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Anecdotes aren’t data. You could be an exceptional player, you could be surrounded by mediocre players, you could be lucky, or you could be all 3 – I don’t know. What I do know is that at my tournaments and (more importantly) at seemingly every tournament across the globe that anybody who discusses this game ever mentions, Saiyan does not do well, with the game being dominated by Piccolo, Krillin and Ginyu, usually running Orange or Black. What this means is that your experience is an outlier, and outliers are not something you base game balance on.
Out of curiosity, how do you generally build Saiyan decks? What do you play against? How do your games go? My problem with Saiyan, based on experience, isn’t just that it lacks stuff like Setup hate, it’s that there doesn’t seem to be anything it’s best at. It can’t win by MPPV, it has no DB control, it has little tech or card control, its energies are mediocre, its Drills suck, its hand advantage is mediocre (it has a few cards that say ‘draw a card’, most of them conditional, compared to Namekian and Orange decks that have multiple ways of pulling out new attacks), it has only OK regeneration, and there is basically no other deck in the game that can be so utterly shut down by a single card like Saiyan Vegeta can be with Wall Breaker. Looking at the style it seems that its strengths are supposed to be physicals and anger, but other styles have physicals just as good (hell, from what I can remember Namekian has the only physical that can be used 3 times), and its anger is maybe about as good as Namekian. And the Mastery is just objectively low-tier – it locks you out of a victory condition, it penalises you more than any other for running lots of Freestyle cards, and in exchange for that it gives you effects that are really only decent, and in my experience are largely matched by NKM’s third effect. How do you get around that stuff? What do you focus on with your decks?
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@epicstarwars
Yeah, I agree that a new Saiyan Mastery is needed. Honestly, what I’d like to see is another no-MPPV mastery that puts the ‘Gain 1 anger. HIT – Gain 3 stages.’ effect on ALL your attacks, has your Styled attacks get an additional ‘Gain 1 anger’ on top of that, and also has a third effect saying ‘When your MP’s power level is not 0, it gains +X00,000. X = The number of times you have gained anger this turn.’
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@epicstarwars Saiyan’s Mastery is one of, if the THE, best masteries in the game. If you can’t see that, then you really need to reapproach how you are looking at the style.
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I’m sorry, but that’s just not the case. I will say that it can be a very fun Mastery with all the leveling up, but it’s not a completive mastery. If Saiyan had any of the Score Z Masteries that drew cards then Saiyan would have one of the best, if not THE best, Mastery in the game.
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Tournament results have shown that Saiyan isn’t as competitive as Namekian, Black, and Blue. Those styles (plus Orange Ginyu) seem like they’re full of all the tier 1 decks. Saiyan Vegeta is a solid deck though and I have won my local with it before. The problem is that Saiyan Vegeta is inconsistent and the design for Saiyan feels like it is built to be a glass cannon.
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And this is precisely what is wrong with it. You are looking at it wrong. You see a glass cannon, I see a passive-aggressive control deck with more utility than almost any other deck in the game. But I must not know what I am talking about, I am just the other guy on the other end of the internet.
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The how come its not part of the big 3?
saiyan is a fun deck. you wont top 8 with it. it lacks everything at the moment.
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@breakatmo
Players approach Saiyan the wrong way. They see the mastery and think that its a physical suicide or bust. But lets take a moment and examine it.
Saiyan Empowered Mastery:
You cannot win by MPPV. Your Saiyan Style attacks gain “Raise your anger 1 level. HIT: Gain 3 power stages.” Whenever you rejuvenate a Saiyan Style card, raise your anger 1 level.
The way this Mastery reads is tricky. Not because it is hard to understand, but because it tricks the players into wanting to play an MPPV deck, yet it cannot win by MPPV. So the immediate reaction then, is that all you want to do is spam out attacks, rush to your highest level and hope you can beat your opponent down before they can DB or MPPV out. It tricks the player into a pedal to the metal playstyle that is frankly underwhelming when confronted with the other styles in the game. Its an anger based deck that cannot win by anger conditions, and a beatdown deck with less damage output than Blue or Namekian. Seems pretty subpar when first approached. And it was, until set 2 launched.
Heroes and Villains printed 2 cards that redefined what it meant to play a Saiyan deck. Saiyan Strength Test and Saiyan Rescue. These two are without a doubt, the single strongest cards in this style. They changed the whole game. Saiyan no longer had to be a breakneck physical romp. It has now become a passive aggressive control build. Lets take a look.
Saiyan Strength Test: (You many only have one “Saiyan Strength Test” attached.) POWER: Attach to your MP. Draw a card. Constant: Whenever you raise your anger, banish the bottom card of your opponent’s discard pile.
First things first, this card replaces itself upon use, so it is never a dead draw. This card creates a monstrous loop with the Mastery, turning all of those nearly wasted anger into control power against your opponent. Now whenever I perform an action that gains my anger, I can banish cards from your discard pile equal to the number of instances of anger gained. This means for almost every action I make, 1-2 of your cards are removed from your card pool. In some cases, 3-4 cards. This means every attack I have is now a Devastating Blow, in addition to its own ability. This limits Namekian’s rejuvenation potential, the accessibility of Ginyu’s allies, even the reutilization of Krillin’s Destructo Discs. Saiyan Strength Test creates a scenario in which almost every card your opponent has cannot be reclaimed in any way.
Saiyan Rescue: (You may only have one “Saiyan Rescue” attached.) POWER: Attach to your MP. Rejuvenate 1. Constant: Once per turn as an action, choose a card in your discard pile and Rejuvenate it.
This card does 2 things. First it provides you with an extra 1-2 actions and 1-2 anger every turn. Upon playing it, you Rejuvenate 1. If this card is Styled, it loops with your mastery, which loops with your Strength Test. Now your gain 1 anger, banish a card from your opponent’s discard pile, nulling it out of their arsenal. Now as an additional action every combat, you can choose any card in your discard pile and Rejuvenate it. If it is styled, trigger your loop, gain anger, and remove another card. If it isn’t, guess what, now you have Time is a Warrior’s Tool, Stare Down, or your Sphere back in your arsenal. (That opens up deck space, because now rather than needing 3 Spheres and 3 Stare Downs, you have 1 or 2 recurring).
The more you trigger these loops the less options your opponent has against you and the stronger you become. Now you have created a powerful gap power between you and your opponent, and that is without even looking at any other card in your deck. But for now, lets take another look at the Mastery. Every time a Saiyan Style card is Rejuvenated, you gain 1 anger. This means you can trigger your loop, and even level up passively. Without ever having to enter combat. What does that mean? It means that those setups that you were so afraid to look at in your Saiyan Suicide are now suddenly much easier on the eyes. Cards like Saiyan Enraged can single handedly win you the game by netting you 2-4 anger, on up to 3 instances, and drawing you a card. Which of course activates your loop x3 and makes the card even more devastating. Now you can play Saiyan Intimidation and remove the high priority field presence cards you opponent still has. Heck, if you want you can even run two Visiting the Pasts and a Villainous Visage.
Then you can start looking at the other cards at your disposal.
Saiyan Spin Kick: Triggers Loop twice, nets 2 anger, lowers your opponent’s anger, Destroys an Ally
Saiyan Energy Toss: Triggers Loop twice, nets 2 anger, makes all of your attacks stronger
Saiyan Driving Punch: Deals stages AND Life Cards, rejuvenates self, nets 2 anger, triggers loop twice
Saiyan Drive By: (Since its the card of the week) Mils up to 5 cards, returns 2 cards to the deck, triggers loop, nets 1 anger.
Saiyan has a massive amount of control of both the field and discard pile, a pretty scary amount of damage output, and the ability to rebuild its own deck. On top of the fact that it has enough endurance to tank almost any attack thrown at you without breaking a sweat, or the ability to 1-4 in a single turn if need be.
If you’ve made it this far, I applaud you. I hope it helps you in future endeavors. If you just scrolled to the bottom to type the word wallbreaker in the reply section, remember. This deck has access to Galick Guns, Cheap Shots, Energy Tosses, Physical attacks that deal Life Cards, passive damage buffs from various sources. That Wallbreaker is not going to last more than an action or 2. And then you’ll be feeling pretty dumb about running a freestyle physical attack that deals no damage and doesn’t further your deck strategy.
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Your essay, while nicely articulated, does not provide any new ideas to the Saiyan community. Many, if not most, of the Saiyan players already reviewed and tested these strategies. The problem Saiyan has, is speed and strong synergy with its mastery. Ginyu is good because he can set up fast, something developers will not errata, and once he is set up, you have to deal with 3+ attacks every turn. Ginyu will out maneuver any Saiyan deck with high probability of success because the G.Force attacks more than any MP set up in the game. Saiyan damage output is too small, and effects too plain, for Namekian’s massive rejuvenation. Namekian is great because every card works well with it’s Mastery; the only style with the best odds of having triple victory. Krillin is good because he can critical every combat (slowing ginyu and anger), never voluntarily level up so he can keep his drills for support, and deal massive unstoppable and unpreventable damage, by passing Saiyan’s one good quality, high endurance. These are facts that have been proven event after event. Yes, a Saiyan may top cut, once in a while, but there isn’t enough consistency in tournament report and within the style itself to claim Saiyan is the best.
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Not to mention as well that Wall Breaker effectively shuts off Strength Test, and Vegeta’s more potent powers. Which then renders Rescue almost moot. Unfortunately too many things can limit his effectiveness. If the players in your meta are missing that and you’re winning, think yourself lucky
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@ Trent Betts Wallbreaker does nothing, you are running a Saiyan deck. If you can’t crit with Saiyan’s crazy damage output then you seriously need to rethink how you play this game. Wallbreaker is a 1 out of 60 card (3 if your opponent is dumb enough to waste that many slots on it). Then that card falls off if you do what Saiyan does best. How is this in any way a limitation? But hey, if you want to waste valuable slots in your deck on a weak as heck freestyle attack that does nothing, that’s on you.
But let’s talk Wallbreaker for a moment.
Physical attack DAMAGE: AT +1 stage. Attach to your opponent’s MP. While attached your opponent cannot gain anger. Banish this card when your opponent deals critical damage.
This attack is weak as heck freestyle attack. It will never deal any damage. It does nothing to further any style’s deck strategy.
It limits anger decks. Let’s look at that for a moment.
– Red Autocrits
– Krillin Autocrits
-Saiyan stacks damage like a pro and double crits
-Godku will thank you
-Ginyu doesn’t care
-Namekian doesn’t care
-Black doesn’t care
-Orange will level even under its effect
Who are you running this card to stop? Blue Frieza? Wallbreaker is 1-3 slots in your deck that could be better utilized for absolutely any other card in the game.
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Wall Breaker is a powerful card because it shuts down Red and Saiyan decks. One card should not have such influence on an entire style.
Saiyan personalities do have a chance(at high levels) of breaking through Wall Breaker, pun intended, but only Vegeta and maybe Gohan have the greatest opportunity. Assuming that Vegeta can reach level 3 and Gohan can reach level 2 in time, Wall Breaker is just a card that isn’t so easily dealt with.
As for Red, the only cards that banish Wall Breaker is Red Shoulder Grab + successful attack, or a successful Red Static Shot, both of which can be dealt with with little difficulty.
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Namekian REALLY DOES care about Wallbreaker… In my loacal meta, if you wallbreaker an Namekian player or a Saiyan player they pretty much quit. Namekian only has a few ways to get rid of Wallbreaker and most players in our meta only play Crushing Beams, Focused Assaults and Namekian Maximum Wills to do so. Crushing Beam has the added shuffle to gain anger with the mastery, and Maximum Will has good endurance and a way to slow the huge number of Namekian players in our meta (7/15, 15 on a day when all players would be at a tournament (this hasn’t happened yet, the most players ever at one event has been 8)).
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