Having a Good Knight

Art by Jason Chan

Over on Goblin Artisans, this weekend's art challenge is on knights. Five pieces of art were provided for use, though, other knight-related creative commons art can be used.

Here's the challenge prompt:

Hello to you all! This week we re-examine knights!
White Knight and Black Knight have been re-imagined many times over in mtg. Nowadays we do not have protections to mirror those knights!
Choose one of the illustrations and re-imagine what a knight does when it is tied to a specific color.

Knight Life

The very first Knights in Magic have the abilities of first strike and protection. With protection not being an ability that is only supported rarely lately, this begs the question: what makes a Knight a Knight in Magic?

I reviewed many Knight-related Magic cards and have concluded that one or more of the following may be true for any one particular Knight-related Magic card:

• If the knight or knights depicted within the art each riding a steed, it sometimes means the card's design has bigger power and toughness stats than if the art depicted a singular creature without a mount. For example, Goblin Roughrider is a Goblin creature, but the 3/2 body for a vanilla Goblin only makes sense because it is riding that crazy mount.

• Knights have vigilance for one or more of a few reasons: 1) they're riding steeds, so they can gallop forward to do an attack and then gallop back to your side to defend you; 2) Knights swore to protect you and are vigilant to not fail in that regard; 3) Knights are great at combat. Truefire Paladin is an example of a steed-less Knight that still has vigilance - so numbers 2 and 3 may apply toward this guy.

• Knights are great at combat. This overlaps with the last bullet point. One of the expressions of this may be vigilance, as seen above, but it could be one of many combat-related abilities. The "first" expression of this fact was on White Knight and Black Knight having first strike. Later Knights have had vigilance, double strike, and flanking. Sometimes, a block-related keyword is used instead, like battle cry. For these abilities, they can be expressed for different reasons, whether the Knight just has more training in combat, because they're wielding a lance, or they're riding a horse. For example, a Knight depicted riding a horse is reason enough for flanking. In addition to Truefire Paladin above showing off its ability to have both vigilance and first strike (and without a horse - what a badass!), Femeref Knight is an example of Knight showing off its multiple awesome-at-warfare abilities but not necessarily a larger body for horse reasons.

• Sometimes, a Knight is a Knight only because it rides a steed. But this is useful because some mounts have flying which in turn enables creature types that wouldn't normally be able to fly to be able to fly. How else are you going to get flying cat people like Leonin Skyhunter, especially when white is the piece of the color pie that is supposed to be great at both creatures and flying? Well, besides making comical, makeshift hang-gliders like Goblin Sky Raider does.

•  Knights are sworn to protect us from and destroy evil. Now, remember that "evil" does not mean the color black. Evil is whatever attacks your values. So each color's Knight is going to consider different things as evil. White Knight had protection from black. Silver Knight has protection from red. These are pure expressions of how white considers what red and black do as evil and are devoted to that cause. Granted, white is really good at going after evil. See Pentarch Paladin, Tivador of Thorn, Fiendslayer Paladin, and Lightwielder Paladin. Lastly, renown and exalted are other examples of how Knights may care to head into combat to destroy the evil that is your opponent. Phyrexian Crusader is a good example of this devotion to destroy evil. It eschews the fact that black usually hates on green and white in favor of the fact that the mirrans are aligned mostly in white and red, so this Phyrexian has no problem hating on black's ally color, red.

•  Knights are great at rallying the troops. Literally rallying in the case of Hero of Goma Fada but this is expressed in other ways as well, such as with Kabira Vindicator boosting your armies and doing nothing else. Hero of Bladehold gets bystanders who might not otherwise have decided to fight to jump into the fray as 1/1 Soldiers. Wilt-Leaf Liege and the rest of the Liege cycle are excellent examples of how a Knight can purely be about rousing your armies and not expressing its Knight-ness via other ways such as first strike or vigilance.

 Bonus: some red-aligned troop rallying:

•  Knights have status. Well, it's probably how they got their horse or their excellent armor or was able to be afforded good training in combat. Or, in Attended Knight's case, you have a Squire.

 Knight in Gale

 

With the above established, I sought to design a Knight but which color do I choose? I chose to go with the color that hasn't been as fleshed out with Knight execution: green. Green has a whopping 1 creature that is monocolored, Gladehart Cavalary.

Moreover, this card was just released today to the public, in Oath of the Gatewatch! Welcome to the Knight Club, mono-green. Notice that this Knight is expressing its Knight traits by having a large body and by supporting its troops.

Besides, green's knight art for this Weekend Art Challenge has a moose and that's adorable. Check out the art I'm working with:

Art by blayrd

If you've followed my Daily Card Redesign series in the past, you'll know that I often like to match my card designs with what's going on in the art, so I'm going to let that influence me in addition to coming up with a design that also fits what I envision a green knight should currently be or do design/gameplay-wise. A confluence of both those things.

To Knight

 

Now, expressing all of a Knight's aspects as pointed out above would be nearly impossible, I'd imagine. It's all right to just focus on one or two. This happens with any sort of concept, like the idea of Goblins.

Goblins are portrayed in Magic as being dumb, like with the flavor texts of Goblin Piker and Skirk Fire Marshal. Goblins are expendable, as seen in Goblin Sledder and Goblin Grenade. They also like to tease or play pranks, shown in the cards Jeering Instigator and Goblin Battle Jester. Lastly, they tinker (read: poke, prod, and eventually blow up) with artifacts, like with Goblin Welder and "Goblin Archaeologist."

I'm not sure there's ever been a Goblin depicted as dumb, expendable, pranking, and tinkering all at once. But that sounds like a fun challenge for another time. Anyway, back to Knights - we only need to show Knight-ness in at least one way for this green Knight.

The most important thing to do for this assignment, though, is to create a Knight that might be lumped in with category of Knights that White Knight and Black Knight are - what Knights used to be. Blood Knight was a later addition to this "grouping" of classic Knights. Re-imagine and design like that for nowadays. So, we'll examine what aspects of Knights above that would remind us of the classic Knight design of White Knight and Black Knight.

Knight Vision

 

White Knight and Black Knight exemplified qualities of "swearing to destroy evil" (protection) as well as its ability to be adept in combat via first strike. This "destroy evil" thing intrigues me, so we'll go with that.

I did some brainstorming off-screen here, and it's a messy (but awesome) process sometimes, and I landed with caring about abilities that represent the enemy colors but are shared with green as well. The same applies for every other color in this cycle. I'm only mocking up green, but here's the text form of what each color would care about:

• White: lifelink, first strike
• Blue: hexproof, prowess
• Black: deathtouch, lifelink
• Red: first strike, prowess
• Green: deathtouch, hexproof

So, for each color, the Knight would have those abilities (not bad, for each creature) and then would not able to be blocked by any creatures that have either of those abilities. We're not doing protection anymore, and I wanted to find a simple perhaps-combat-oriented way to show the hate so that it could still prevail against this "evil." I chose "can't be blocked" as the way the Knight prevails and the "evil" to be represented by the abilities its enemies also share.

You might say it's ironic that this creature can't block an opponent's copy of this Knight. Perhaps, as a show of respect to each other's devotion, they don't hurt each other. And what about fellow green creatures that have hexproof and deathtouch - perhaps this Knight's mastery means it knows how to evade such creatures that shares its traits.

Lastly, coming back to the art, you might be wondering why a moose-riding, unassuming Knight can do hexproof and deathtouch. If you look more closely at the art, there's magical, glowing green vines surrounding the Knight. These vines can restrain and choke creatures to death as well as wrap around the Knight and protect him or her from spells. =)

Knight Cap

So, here's my design:

I decided to have "card name during development" fun and did a double pun for its title. "Jaded", like with the color green; and "Vineguard", as in "vanguard", because he or she is a Knight. But has vines surrounding him or her.

Anyway, so, a black Knight in this cycle would have deathtouch and lifelink and it would also say "CARDNAME can't be blocked by creatures with deathtouch or lifelink."

I also made this a Human instead of Elf (seems dressed like a Human, anyway) since Humans can be any of the five colors, and that'd be fitting to mirror the creature types for the cycle as "Human Knight."

O.K., that's it! What do you think?

Concerns I have: I know, it costs 4 mana and that sucks, but I think I had to cost it that high based on how much it should cost to get hexproof, let alone deathtouch, onto the table. Also, I wonder if this Knight would end up being un-fun to play with if you just left this forever on your side as a good threatening blocker (like you do with your Deathtouch Snakes and Rats). Then again, protecting you IS Knight-like. In the end, it should feel fun, but I haven't playtested this card.

Also, not sure if I got the order of abilities of "deathtouch" and "hexproof" correct along with the rest of the templating. I THINK so, but not sure.

Cheers,
Bradley

Gohan in Set 3 of Panini's DBZ TCG

Disclaimer: This is a speculation article and is not based on any official Panini announcement of Gohan returning as a main personality in Set 3.

Panini's rebooted Dragon Ball Z Trading Card Game currently has its second card set released, named Heroes & Villains. Within this set, there are new characters to play with, including main personalities and allies. Of these new main personalities, all of them are of characters that have never been main personalities before.

There will come a time, however, when a new card set release will contain main personalities of characters we've already seen before as main personalities. This will definitely happen by the time the card sets are focusing on characters and events from the Android and Cell sagas of the DBZ story.

The next set, Set 3, is not going to focus on any androids. However, we will see at least one character return as a main personality: Gohan.

Here are topics we'll cover along the way to see where we make deductions and assumptions leading to this conclusion:

• Elements of a Dragon Ball Z set
• Saiyan-style and Namekian-style cards
• Card art theory
• The Gohan plan

On Your Mark, Get Set, Gohan

Even though we're only on Set 2 of the Panini reboot of the game, there are already some apparent requirements that make up a DBZ TCG set. Not every set is going to have starters released to coincide with a booster pack product like Set 1 did. Nor is every set going to have a new collection of Dragon Ball cards to choose from, just like what happened with Set 2.

However, there are a few elements that every Dragon Ball Z card set should have:

• Main personality cards
• Ally personality cards
• New cards for each style in the game (Red, Blue, Orange, Black, Saiyan, Namekian)

Why should every set in the game contain main personality cards? One of the reasons is because they're one of the key sellers of the set! Each of the booster pack displays for each of the released sets mention the main personality characters you can find in the packs.

The second reason is because of what Panini is trying to do for someone who decides to buy a booster box of a set - at least, when they were doing masteries in booster packs. Here's what Panini said about including masteries in a Z Warrior Mailbag on their blog:

The initial idea was to give players access to each Style without requiring additional starter deck purchases. At the same time, the inclusion of Mastery cards in the boosters allows players to create a Trunks or Captain Ginyu deck from packs alone.

Source: https://paniniamericadbz.wordpress.com/2015/01/09/z-warrior-mailbag-182015/

While they're not going to do masteries any more in booster sets, let's assume someone already has masteries - they could just buy a booster box of the latest set and get a deck going with the main personalities they find within their new cards.

Ally cards exist because of the third reason why main personality cards exist - the characters. A card game based on a story-based IP has to focus on its characters, and not every character can be a main personality - thus ally cards. This is why each set will have ally personalities.

Lastly, there are six styles in the game that bring checks and balances against each other and make up half of a player's deck's identity (the other half being their main personality). When a new set comes out, there must always be new cards for each of the six styles, so that every DBZ TCG player has something to look forward to.

And, of course, among the six styles are Saiyan and Namekian.

Oppa Gohan Style

If there are going to be new main personalities in every set, partly so that players can build decks from the booster boxes they buy, and there are new Saiyan and Namekian cards within the set, then every set MUST have, among its main personalities, characters that can allow you to play Saiyan and Namekian cards.

Let's back up a moment. For the purposes of considering what's part of a set, we're going to consider the starters that coincide with a large set part of the set. This is because large sets may not be constrained to having both a saiyan and a namekian among the few-number of characters within the booster portion of the set. Look at set 1 not containing a Namekian to build a deck around. 

This is amusing to consider when part of the reason for masteries in Set 1 was so that they can allow a player to build a deck, but a Namekian style mastery along with the Namekian style cards would be useless without a Gohan or Piccolo purchased from the starter.

So, for including saiyan characters in sets, luckily, there are a ton of saiyans to focus on from the Dragon Ball Z universe, so each set that releases is definitely not going to find itself in a shortage of saiyans to choose from to fill in the saiyan slot.

Namekians are the weak point of the goal of including at least one Namekian character every set. The bread and butter are Gohan and Piccolo. The first set already used up both Gohan and Piccolo, so featuring either one of them in Set 2 would be too soon for repeat main personality cards of them. Nail saved the day for Set 2. 

But now, what about Set 3? That depends on what story, or saga, we're in when we get to Set 3 - and this is something we know for sure: Garlic Jr. Saga

We know this "for sure," because of a theory I have: the card art theory.

Gohan, Don't Believe Me

The theory I have about the third set being based on Garlic Jr. saga and what characters will be featured as main personalities or allies is based upon the card art of the previous set. So, for Set 2, the card art in Set 1 contains clues as to who was going to be in Set 2. For Set 3, we look at Set 2. The theory also relies upon HOW OFTEN a character appears within the art of the cards for a particular set. So, what I did was gather some data.

The data I gathered is this: how many times does a particular character show up within the art among every single card within a card set EXCEPT for the following cards: main personality cards, ally personality cards, named cards, and promotional cards. 

This is so that the numbers are not thrown off by the obvious: of course Goku is going to appear within the art of the Goku personality cards, Goku ally cards, and Goku named cards. And most promos are just doubling up on whatever was depicted in the card art before (Trunks' Sword Slash shows the "before and after" of the same scene involving Trunks and Frieza, for example).

Here's what I found:

	Set 1	Set 2
Goku	56	15
Gohan	38	26
Vegeta	40	6
Trunks	8
Krillin	25	19
Tien	2
Chaozu	4
Yamcha	4	4
Puar	1	1
Chichi	3	7
Bulma	8	3
Master Roshi	7	5
Yajirobe	5
Ox King	1
Baba	1
Launch	3
Maron		4
Korin		1
Piccolo	33	27
Nail	4
Dende	4
Guru	4
Kami		6
Mr. Popo		3
King Kai	3	1
Bubbles	3	1
Nappa	12
Raditz	9
Frieza	53	5
Zarbon	4
Dodoria	5	1
Captain Ginyu	6
Guldo	5
Recoome	3
Burter	4
Jeice	2	1
Garlic Jr.		16
Spice		4
Vinegar		1
Mustard		3
Salt		3

Keep in mind that these numbers are not perfect due to instances where I couldn't tell which character was featured in the art, like obscure images that could be Goku/Yamcha/Raditz/Vegeta (and I haven't memorized every single scene in the Dragon Ball Z anime). I also may have miscounted slightly when counting characters in card 

Now, take a look at Nail, Raditz, Tien, and Nappa. Each of those characters were main personalities in Set 2. They were found in the art of cards in Set 1, yet, they were not present in Set 1. These four guys then went on to get their own main personality cards and named cards in Set 2. Yet, conveniently, for every single one of them, there is no other card art within the set that feature any of these characters. Pretty odd, considering they're the stars.

That is, unless there's another phenomenon going on: previewing what's going to appear in the next set. In this case, there is now card art of Garlic Jr., Spice, Vinegar, Mustard, and Salt. NONE of these characters are main personalities or allies in the Panini reboot of the game. ...that's because they're coming in Set 3.

Gohan Solo

So, assuming you also believe this card art theory to be true, too; let's run with it and analyze who might be coming in Set 3:

There were a TON of Goku cards in Set 1. Makes sense, since he's the hot stuff to focus on for the premiere set. However, in Set 2, there's SIGNIFICANTLY less Goku. Not zero Goku art, since that's hard to do when there's so much good Goku source material for certain card concepts. But enough less Goku to inform us that there will NOT be Goku in Set 3.

Running with the same reasons, Vegeta and Trunks won't be in Set 3 either. Curiously, though, Gohan has a STRONG number of times he's in the card art of Set 2. Oh, yes - because he's the hero of the story of Garlic Jr. That's great, because Gohan can fill in for either Saiyan or Namekian as a main personality in Set 3.

But let's not forget our friends who, like Garlic Jr. and the Spice Boys did, have suddenly appeared in curious fashion in numerous pieces of art in Heroes & Villains - Kami and Mr. Popo. Some of you may think, "Wait, does that mean Kami is going to be the Namekian main personality for Set 3?" Not necessarily. There's a LOT of Piccolo art in Set 2.

This also makes sense since Piccolo and Gohan were one of the main fighters during Garlic Jr. Krillin also had a hand in aiding the Z Warriors, and he's in a lot of card art.

So, it could make sense that these would be the following main personalities of Set 3:

Garlic Jr.

Gohan

Krillin

Piccolo

(For the record, I'm assuming the third set is an expansion set with four main personalities since I don't think Panini is going to have changed their usual pattern for Set 3, including, sadly, too many MP and Ally cards in an expansion set.)

But I can't say for sure whether Krillin and Piccolo are going to be main personalities. I am dead sure of Gohan because Gohan is a saiyan, and if we follow the card art theory: he is the only saiyan who has any decent number of depictions within card art. And if we must have at least one saiyan personality per set, Gohan is our saiyan MP representative.

Now, based on the card art numbers above, I can also believe if this were among the choices:

Garlic Jr.

Gohan

Piccolo/Kami (Namekian)

Krillin/Chichi/Mr. Popo (Other)

Personally, I'm betting on this: Garlic Jr., Gohan, Krillin, Piccolo

On a side note, a reasonably awesome path (that I don't believe will happen) for Set 3 personalities would be:

Garlic Jr.

Vegeta (Hero)

Kami

Mr. Popo

This way, there are no "repeat characters" as Vegeta would be a hero for the first time in this set, which is backed up by the Focused Assault "Heroes only" card. I don't think he'll appear based on the card art theory in terms of numbers, but it's certainly a good direction - just not one Panini decided upon. At best, a hero Vegeta ally will appear in Set 3. Otherwise, no appearance at all. Besides, it's really confusing to also have Saiyan Grab, too; which is "villains only."

Part of my betting on Krillin being in Set 3 is because of my guesses for future sets and how there's only so much room to fit characters - including Krillin. And Krillin is so much more important in Garlic Jr. Saga than he is at other times during the series. And he appears in so much card art in Set 2. And there's Maron - that girlfriend he had.

Maron curiously shows up in a decent number of cards in Set 2. I personally think she'll be an ally personality who gives extra benefit to Krillin like the Piccolo ally did in Heroes & Villains for Gohan.

Gohan, Be My Guest

Let's talk a little bit about allies. First, here's another table:

Allies	Set 1	Set 2	Set 3
	Tien	Goku	Kami
	Chaozu	Gohan	Mr. Popo
	Yamcha	Vegeta	Maron
	Bulma	Trunks	Master Roshi
	Chichi	Krillin
	Nappa	Piccolo
	Burter	Frieza	Spice
	Jeice	Dodoria	Vinegar
	Guldo	Zarbon	Mustard
	Recoome	Captain Ginyu	Salt

There's going to be 10 allies in Set 3, mirroring Set 2 and Set 1. Garlic Jr.'s Spice Boys will definitely be allies.

Based on the card art theory, there's definitely going to be at least these: Kami, Mr. Popo, Maron, and Master Roshi. Bulma, Chichi, and Yamcha have all been allies before - but not villain allies. They get affected by the black water mist. So I wonder if we'll see villain ally versions of these characters. Perhaps not, and we'll see new characters instead like Yajirobe and Hero Vegeta.

Keep Calm and Gohan

Let's get back to Gohan. Gohan is a fantastic tool to use in terms of main personalities included in future sets.

He can be Saiyan or Namekian. And there's a rule I believe in when it comes to filling in the Saiyan and Namekian slots for main personalities for each set - Gohan can't be the only one filling in for both. The set Gohan appears in as a main personality, he must have at least one other Saiyan or Namekian accompanying him, whether it's Piccolo or someone like Trunks.

Gohan also grows up throughout the series and has many memorable moments or attributes to him, whether he's a kid, a Super Saiyan 2 defeating Cell, or The Great Saiyaman. Gohan has many reasons story-wise to come back many times in the game - and he's also go great gameplay set needs reasons for him to return.

I think what this comes down to is that Gohan will be in roughly 1 out of every 2 sets that is released. One possible path is that Gohan will appear in sets 1, 3, 5, 7, etc. For example, I say "roughly," because he might be in Sets 1, 3, 4, then 6, then 8.

Gohan will appear many times and fill in for Namekian as a main personality where Mr. Piccolo cannot in certain sets. And as a saiyan in the rare circumstance that all the other saiyans are not available - like Garlic Jr. Saga.

Time to Gohan

Here are a last few things:

• This article is purely speculation
• Only Gohan and Garlic Jr. I'm confident are going to be Main Personalities
• "Garlic Jr. looks kinda Namekian! Maybe he is the Namekian slot?" The old DBZ TCG didn't treat him as a Namekian, and I don't think Panini will change that.
• The card art theory is something I made up and may become unreliable as more card sets are released and Panini evolves its process
• Here are a few references that relate this article:

While we are still a while away from revisiting the existing MPs, you’re likely to see something along the lines of a Hero Vegeta down the road. I wonder which MPs are good candidates for alternate alignments – Vegeta, Piccolo, Android 18, Buu, hmm…

Source: https://paniniamericadbz.wordpress.com/2015/01/20/z-warrior-mailbag-1202015/ 

The only current MPs that use Namekian Knowledge Mastery are Piccolo, Gohan, and Nail. There are other eligible candidates that might be released in future sets, and they will be more clearly defined in the rulebook.

Movie characters will indeed show up in future sets, perhaps even sooner than you think…

Source: https://paniniamericadbz.wordpress.com/2015/04/10/z-warrior-mailbag-a-bright-future-and-box-winners/ 

The potential inclusion of a subset is requested frequently, so it’s definitely something we have to consider. As far as Garlic Jr. specifically…you’ll have to wait and see!

Source: https://paniniamericadbz.wordpress.com/2015/02/24/z-warrior-mailbag-calm-before-the-storm-2/ 

'til next time!

The Common Problem of Panini's Dragon Ball Z TCG

UPDATE 08/25/2015: Read Part 2 of this post: The Uncommon Solution of Panini's DBZ TCG

Baseball-card maker Panini rebooted the Dragon Ball Z TCG, a trading card game that I played during high school lunches a decade or so ago. This is an awesome thing made even more awesome that group of friends of mine, which includes the same high school friends, started playing this reboot. However, there's one thing that really bends creases into my metaphorical cardboard. Panini is screwing up with card rarities.

Those of you who are playing this DBZ reboot already know about the "ultra rare" card rarity. Cards of this scarcity only show up once in every 48 12-card booster packs. However, my beef is not with these crazily-rare cards. It's with Level 1 Trunks, a common card.

Level with Me

In the DBZ TCG, every deck needs a set of four cards that represents Levels 1, 2, 3, and 4 of a character, called a "main personality." This could be Goku, Frieza, Piccolo, etc. You only need one copy of each of these cards, but you always need one of each of, say, Level 1 Gohan, Level 2 Gohan, Level 3 Gohan, and Level 4 Gohan. You cannot insert these personality cards into your deck - they sit outside of your deck. You build a deck around this character.

So, most people are going to have their one Vegeta deck, or their one Krillin deck. This means each average DBZ TCG player only needs 1 of each of the level cards for each main personality. With that, also, most folks only have a single deck to a handful of decks. With the eight different main personalities to choose from with the first card set release of this reboot, and with a growing number of main personalities to add to the mix with the additional sets that are releasing, almost no one is going to require more than a handful of four-card sets of main pesronality cards.

Booster Gold

DBZ TCG cards are found in two different types of products: starter decks and booster packs. Each starter deck does come with a perfect set of Levels 1 through 4 of a random character. This is a good thing. But starter decks are still aggravating, and I'll get to why this is later. For now, let's talk booster packs. More specifically, the main personality cards you can find in booster packs of Set 1: Trunks and Captain Ginyu.

It's cool that you can open up main personality cards in the DBZ booster packs you purchase. It's not cool that some of these cards are common, despite the fact that this means most DBZ players will have the chance to own these main personality cards. The problem is that many players will own TOO MANY Level 1 Trunks.

Most Dragon Ball Z players are not going to buy just one booster pack. In fact, unless a player purchased six starter decks and luckily-and-perfectly got the correct random card pools from those starters, that player is going to be buying booster packs.

Let's assume that you just got started playing this game. Due to the deck-building restriction of only being able to play up to three copies of any one particular card, for most cards; you will smartly purchase just three starter decks. Let's say you are playing Orange Goku. Next, you will buy booster packs. There's a deck-size restriction of 60-card decks. Let's be generous and say there's four useful cards per booster pack. Three starters gets you 30 cards, so you'll need to buy eight booster packs to cover the rest.

So, you open up your eight booster packs, and you get around 56 commons. There are 60 commons in Set 1, so it's unlikely you'll get a perfect single copy of every single card in the set. Some cards you'll have doubles of. ...And would you know it, you have two copies of Level 1 Trunks. Cool, so you're 25% of the way through to getting a set of Trunks, so you can build a Trunks deck, but you have two of these Level 1 Trunks. Well, you could trade it to others, but since it's common, you're going to pretty much not be able to trade with anyone else who plays this game who needs it. Your buddy bought a booster box hoping to get an ultra rare and has THREE Level 1 Trunks as a result. Well, shucks. Who's going to build three Trunks decks?

This is indicative that most players are going to have a bunch of Level 1 Trunks (and Level 2 Trunks, Level 1 Captain Ginyu, and Level 2 Captain Ginyu; for that matter). Furthermore, the Level 3 and Level 4 versions of these main personalities are uncommon, and a good chunk of players are going to have more than one copy of each of these cards. What's even more crazy is that even if you find a home for every extra set of Trunks and Captain Ginyu play sets for players to play with, because Level 1 and 2 cards are common and Level 3 and 4 cards are uncommon, you're going to have literally unusable Level 1 and Level 2 main personality cards. That is just a waste of printed cardboard.

For a real example of this, I personally have purchased multiple boxes of booster packs. Out of three boxes, I got 8 Level 1 Trunks cards and 5 Level 4 Trunks cards. Even if I built five Trunks decks, those three Level 1 Trunks cards are never going to see the light of day. Realistically, I'm only keeping 1 of each of these Trunks cards, so I'm wasting about 20 pieces of printed cardboard. Useless, useless paper product.

Person Ally Tea

I get the advantage of wanting a common main personality card, as a publisher of this card game. If someone opens one booster pack, making that Level 1 Trunks a common increases the chance that this person will want to seek out the rest of the set to build off of. But this wasteful strategy would at least be mitigated if these Level 1 personalities could be used as Ally cards in decks. That way your Goku deck could use a Level 1 Trunks in it. This is how it was in the original version of the DBZ TCG game, and it was a neat option that solved this problem. However, in this reboot, there are now strictly Ally cards, of which main personality cards can never be, and vice versa.

Which leads me to the next issue - cards that are limited to 1 copy of per deck. Ally cards, as a rule, can only have 1 copy of each within your deck, for each your decks. This is slightly better than the Level 1 Trunks problem, where you could use each of your copies of Chaozu in your Orange Goku deck and your, say, Red Gohan deck. Even more slightly better are the common Dragon Ball cards, which are also limited to one copy per deck, but at least each of those don't have a "Heroes Only" or "Villains Only" restriction like Allies do. But with all of this said, I still have way too many of each of these cards.

Lastly, there are some cards that arbitrarily are limited to just one or two copies of within a deck. Thankfully, besides the Ally, Main Personality, and Dragon Ball cards, there are no "limit 1" or "limit 2" cards. Those are at uncommon or higher.

Push It to the Limit

So what is a Panini to do? How do we fix this?

Now, one suggestion could be to increase the maximum number of copies of a card to four, so that there would be less uselessness with having so many copies of the same non-Main Personality/Ally/Dragon Ball card. But then this change might throw off the printed "Limit 1" or "Limit 2" cards that already exist. What a poopy corner we're backed into.

So, here's a different proposition:

Common cards: Only cards that you can have three copies of are allowed to be common rarity. This includes not allowing Dragon Balls, Allies, or Main Personalities at common.

Dragon Balls: Dragon Balls can exist at uncommon with some Dragon Balls existing at higher rarities. Since every deck can play with Dragon Balls and don't require a full set to be included within the deck, unlike Main Personalities, this is fine.

"Limit 2" cards: The lowest rarity these should be at are uncommon. You can quite easily end up with three copies of a card if it's at common. At least with uncommon, for the player who doesn't buy multiple boxes, you might just very well only get 2 copies of a card.

"Limit 1" cards: Keep these at rare. Even Freestyle cards would end up with an overflow at uncommon.

Ally cards: Uncommon or rare cards. Since multiple decks can each use the same allies from your collection of cards, uncommon can be an O.K. rarity for these types of cards.

Main Personality cards: Always, ALWAYS have these cards be at the same rarity. That way, there won't be any waste of cardboard, as mentioned above of what would occur. You will never need more copies of any one particular Level of MP than the other Levels.

Common is too common for Main Personalities and rare is too rare. Therefore, uncommon is a good rarity for every single one of those Levels of every single booster-pack Main Personality. Yes, this means even Level 4 Trunks who is depicted as a Super Saiyan would be uncommon. Feels weird, but if it's for the (un)common good.

Alternative Lifestyle

There is an additional idea, however, regarding Main Personality cards. Inspired by the previous iteration of Dragon Ball Z TCG, rare and ultra rare Main Personality cards would be O.K. as well, as long as those are simply alternative Level cards that supplement the ones at uncommon. For example, a set that gets released in the future could have Gohan Level 1, 2, 3, and 4 at uncommon, and then a Level 1 Gohan at rare that is different from the uncommon Level 1 Gohan. Perhaps this one is wearing his school clothes, if it's during Buu Saga. Etc.

Check out what the previous iteration of the DBZ TCG did with Majin Vegeta. First there was this set of Vegetas that were uncommon and rare (as opposed to Panini's common and uncommon pattern):

And then there are these more rare alternative cards for Level 1 (besides the unnecessary ultra rare Level 5 you were able to use seen above):

There are OPTIONS for your Majin Vegeta. Not simply dead cards. Like common Level 1 Trunks.

For Starters...

Next, I want to bring the topic to the starter decks. There is so much wrong going on with these starters. I won't speak too much on this tangent to the "common problem" that is the common Main Personality cards such as Level 1 Trunks, but here's a list of everything that's wrong:

• Starter-only cards, each of which can be played up to three of within a deck, resulting in multiple starter purchases
• Starter-only personality cards
• Random personality cards, of which you don't want to get a second copy of a particular main personality if you get a second starter, which conflicts with the behavior for the above bullet point
• Random pool of starter-only cards, which potentially wastes a lot of cardboard if the player purchases a fourth starter
• The starter does not contain a legal playable deck and the player who buys a starter just has an illegal rainbow style deck they are told to play with for learning until he or she bites the bullet and buys more product so that they don't have an illegal deck.

That's enough of that. Let's talk about a radical solution proposition for the issue of obtaining too many wasted copies of Level 1 Trunks

Mixing the Solution

Each booster pack contains twelve cards comprised of the following rarities

• 7 commons
• 4 uncommons
• 1 rare

How about changing this to:

• 7 commons
• 3 uncommons
• 1 rare
• 1 Inherently-Limit-1-Per-Deck-Card (Main Personality, Ally, Dragon Ball, Mastery)

In addition to this, all the Starter-Only cards personalities would be thrown into the mix. This change would mean the following, for Set 1, for opening a single booster pack:

• Ensures the same rarity for every Main Personality Level
• Ensures the same rarity for every Dragon Ball
• 1 out of 55 chance versus 1 out of 12 chance of getting Level 1 Trunks (or any one particular Main Personality card)
• 1 out of 9 chance versus 1 out of 7 chance of getting a Mastery
• 18% chance versus 75% chance of getting an Ally

With only 1 out of 55 chance of getting a repeat of a Main Personality card, then one can pretty much safely purchase two booster boxes of cards (24 packs each box) and not waste as many cards on average. Moreover, this change would mean the player who decides to buy two booster boxes in hopes of finding an ultra rare card would not be punished with many useless copies of Level 1 Trunks.

Walking the Bases

With all this said, as a friend has reminded me, Panini DOES make baseball cards, the world of collecting such items being one I'm unfamiliar with, which could just be the norm for those who buy many packs of baseballs cards, perhaps in hopes of finding those rare cards, which results in many common pieces of printed cardboard to be tossed into the garbage.

Thanks for hearing me out on this. That's all I have for today, Z Warriors / card slingers.