Desperately Seeking Support

As any card game ages, it develops a need for innovation. If the mechanics are left unchanged and new releases begin to retread explored ground, the game will grow stale and players will lose interest. Fan Z is no exception. Traits were the first new mechanic to be explored, and were exceptionally well-received by the playerbase. "Focused" was resurrected from Score Z. And in Premiere: Super, the Fan Z team introduced a wholly new mechanic not seen before in any iteration of DBZ: Desperation.

    Desperation (henceforth abbreviated as "!!!") doesn't really alter the way the game is played on a mechanical level. If you aren't aware, !!! effects only trigger when you have 0 cards in your hand. It provides a reward for sequencing, an incentive to play out your entire hand. But this in itself is sort of revolutionary. Dropping your entire hand is usually a faux pas in Fan Z, an overextension for which you can easily be punished when you are down a card in the future. !!! effects seek to reward you for extending, to let you go even further beyond. How did the community respond to this new concept?

    "Meh."

    The initial reaction to !!! effects has been lukewarm at best. Why? The value of !!! varies wildly from card-to-card. Some cards, like the above Blue Drastic Blast, are completely worthless without getting their !!! effect off. Others, like Orange Charged Blitz, are great attacks by themselves and pushed over the top if used for their !!! effect. But !!! cards were not launched alone. They received some key pieces of support designed to tie the entire mechanic together.

    Firstly, we have the new Gohan stack. His levels either reward you for playing !!! cards or make using their effects easier. He also received a new named !!! card in Gohan's Safeguard. Gohan was already arguably the most powerful personality in the game, and his new stack gives him even more options. But is it enough to build a deck around? Sort of. Gohan's new stack has general synergy with energy attacks and it has seen success in Namekian, the style with the most !!! cards. But Gohan largely isn't used for his !!! synergy. He is a fantastic energy beats MP, and the !!! stuff is just icing on the cake. For a more dedicated !!! archetype, we need to look at Saiyan Defiant Mastery.

    At a glance, this mastery offers some insane value. Similar to Blue Mimicry Mastery, Saiyan Defiant Mastery offers a raw +2 in action economy with a defensive power and an action. You do lose an extra card to get the !!! tutor, but it helps you trigger those amazing !!! effects. Surely the devs would give us a powerful and diverse arsenal of targets for such a heavy cost. Right?

    And there's the punchline this whole article has been building up to. The mastery explicitly designed around !!! effects isn't even the mastery that received the most !!! cards. And one of these cards is even trait-restricted! Out of the fourteen MPs that can use Saiyan Defiant Mastery, only five of them can use Saiyan Assault's !!! effect. And Vegeta has several levels that can't! This means that for the majority of MPs, there is only one target for the mastery's tutor effect. And while Flurry is a great card, it's not enough to build a deck around. Furthermore, both cards are BAU to ensure you run out of resources faster, and Flurry can't even recycle itself or the one other !!! card Saiyan has! Gohan does alleviate this somewhat with Safeguard, but at that point you're playing bad cards to justify a bad strategy.

    How could a mastery debut with such little support? Orange Energetic Mastery was released with Orange Stretch, Orange Sidestep, Orange 5-Finger Blast and Vegito's entire stack while also plugging right in to existing Orange archetypes. Orange Aura Mastery dropped with Orange Redacted Drill, Orange Blazing Aura, Orange Back Smash, Orange Obstruction, Gravity Training Drill, and a new Goku stack while also working with existing cards. Wait, is there another pattern I'm seeing here? No, I must be imagining things.

(Picture unrelated.)

    Saiyan Defiant Mastery is essentially treading new ground, and to have such a limp launch is a disappointment of unusual size. It's understandable that perhaps the devs wanted to give Saiyan a break from being a top-tier contender. Saiyan Enhanced Mastery was the subject of much community ire and no doubt restricted just how good the new Saiyan cards could be without pushing that archetype further. We must look to the future, to !!! cards yet coming, to define how Defiant Mastery will develop.

    What can we expect? Looking at most of our existing !!! cards, they are average on their own and are pushed to the next level with their !!! effects. If !!! cards continue down this road, Defiant decks can expect to draw mediocre hands of multiple !!! cards that they will struggle to get full value from. For the mastery to succeed, cards must be worth playing on their own even without the !!! effect. Android Battle Rush is a fantastic example, being essentially a full-value card that kicks into overdrive when used as the final card in your hand.

    An alternative design option is to make powerful cards that gain full value immediately, and have a mild !!! effect simply to work with the mastery. This isn't a bad road to go down, and Defiant will likely receive a mix of design choices over the course of its lifespan. But what makes a !!! effect worth using? It's easy to slap powerful effects at the end of a card. Gohan - Cheerful draws a card, perhaps the most powerful effect you could have for an empty hand. But flat value is less interesting than answering the question "What effect is specifically good at the end of combat?" !!! effects will almost always be resolved in this timing window, and can be designed for maximum value with that in mind.

    Finally, we could see more cards like the new Gohan stack that reward you for using !!! cards. Perhaps effects that buff !!! attacks, that recycle !!! cards, or that perform actions based on !!! cards in the discard pile. The sky is truly the limit! Defiant has the potential to be a powerful mastery. It just needs more options to work with.

    What !!! effects are you hoping to see? Do you think Defiant can make a meta impact, or is discarding two cards simply too heavy a cost? Let us know! Later dayZ!

-Seth