5 Orange Drills That Could Be Frozen

Orange Style has become something of a meme in Fan Z. Every time a new Orange card is previewed, regardless of its actual quality, the community churns into an uproar. "Did Orange need this effect?!? Why is this card in the game?!" Even as a diehard Orange fan, I have to roll my eyes at how dedicated the Fan Z team is to making sure Orange has an answer to everything, all of the time. One only has to look at the support given to Namekian Enlightened Mastery and Orange Energetic Mastery to see who the favorite child is.

    While Orange has its fair share of top-tier attacks and blocks, its power is mainly concentrated in its Drills. As it should be, seeing as Orange is the Drill Style, but at a certain point we need to say "Enough is enough!" and demand a stop to the ridiculously powerful drills the style keeps getting. I don't think it's outrageous that Orange has a drill for every matchup, but we have reached a point where Orange has multiple drills for every matchup and several drills that are just outrageously powerful in any situation. All of this came to a head in Premiere: Super, where Orange Aura Goku was a Tier 0 deck and still remains arguably the best deck in the game even after multiple serious nerfs.

    So what are the worst offenders of Orange's Drill suite? What Drills are the least fun and could serve the game best by being removed? Fear not, for I have the answers.

5. Orange Intensity Drill

    Let me begin by saying this list is not in order of most-to-least or least-to-most broken. It is simply a list. That said, I hate this card and you should too. A +1 life card mod on Styled attacks is not anything special, and in theory one unpreventable attack per turn wouldn't be too wild either, but where Intensity Drill breaks the game has to be experienced to be understood. I was infamously not impressed with this drill upon release but after a few games I changed my tune.

    The timing window of Intensity Drill means that there is no management or counterplay to its effect. You simply wait for an attack to hit and trigger it. If it was used when you performed an attack it would be so much more manageable, as your opponent could block your unpreventable attack, but as-is any attack becomes an insane bomb. In Combative control decks not running many attacks, this meant random Orange Meditations could become 6+ life card bombs. If you were stage-locked (And Orange Bicycle Kick did 10 stages exactly with the normal Combative setup) Orange Sword Chop would do 8 or 9 life unpreventable. This meant that a deck who often punished you for holding blocks due to its defensive nature could also punish you for not holding blocks. Energetic decks can use this drill to make the Mastery discard attack deal guaranteed critical damage to remove Wall Breaker or just make you feel bad. And when executing the classic 1-2 punch of Orange Sweeping Blast and Orange Fierce Attack, Intensity Drill means that even your lead attack is coming in unpreventable. Any floating prevention effect, like Blue Resolute Mastery, is completely obsoleted by this drill. Orange is already the patron style of mods and has no need for such a free damage boost. And why does this Drill have Endurance?

4. Orange Attraction Drill

    Remember during preview season when Combative had this AND Orange Focusing Drill? And then the devs repeated the mistake by allowing Icarus and Yamu to be played with Super Shenron? Apparently we never learn. While obviously a big nerf from Focusing Drill, Attraction Drill has the extremely broken effect of allowing Earthlings to selectively rejuvenate any Styled card in their discard pile. Not only does it allow Orange Earthling decks to passively obtain a life card lead, but with all of the shuffling Orange has inherent access to via search effects your deck can quickly become stacked with the best cards possible for your matchup. I've used this to great effect with Adaptive Hero 18, but as a rule of thumb I despise passive strategies. I would genuinely rather face Orange Focusing Drill than face Attraction, just on principle.

    A possible fix that would appease me is restricting Attraction to "Orange Adaptive Mastery only" and having the targeted rejuve replace the Rejuvenation Step instead of adding to it. I don't blame you for calling me biased - and you're right - but allow me to explain. Attraction is especially degenerate in Aura Goku and Combative control specifically, so removing it from those strategies is my priority. It's also a bit too slow for most Energetic and Adept decks, so that leaves Adaptive as an appropriate home for it. Changing the rejuvenation effect removes its ability to passively win a game, my biggest beef, and I think would leave it a much more reasonable card.

3. Orange Entanglement Drill

    I will never forget the elation I felt at hearing that Orange Checkup Drill would be frozen, and the disbelief I felt seeing that Entanglement Drill was immediately printed to replace it. No other design choice in the history of Fan Z has more clearly demonstrated the bias the dev team has for Orange style than this soft errata for one of the most-hated cards in the game. Entanglement is also outright BETTER than Checkup Drill in many situations! It's fetchable by Orange Defense, which means a single Defense can turn into three blocks by searching Entanglement for Defense for Orange Burning Aura Drill. Absurd. The flexible rejuvenation effect also allows Orange to recycle key cards at will, Time is a Warrior's Tool being the most notable. And while I've never actually seen it done, Orange Left Burst can rejuvenate this card from the Banished Zone. The only real nerf is that Entanglement is no longer tutorable by Orange Adept Mastery, forcing most Adept decks to abandon the suicidal rushdown strategy the mastery was known for in favor of actually using a responsible number of blocks. But Adept was certainly compensated for this with...

2. Orange Provoking Drill

    I would like to know who thought Orange needed a card like this. Orange Mocking Drill already answered when-entering Setups like Vegeta's Prideful Challenge, which Orange should not have had an answer to anyway, and Provoking Drill provided an additional answer that made it all but impossible to interfere with Orange's board using your own. With Provoking and Mocking Drill, you would need all three of your Prideful Challenges in order to do anything when Orange entered on you. The "limitation" of having less than five drills was especially insulting. Four drills is often enough to win a match, and Provoking saw a great deal of splashing in board-heavy Orange decks because the "restriction" was effectively worthless. An early game Provoking could easily generate enough advantage that by the time your board grew enough to actually turn its effect off you were already winning. I had many matches with and against Energetic decks where the first-turn combat would end with the Energetic deck on level 2 with Provoking, and their opponent tying a noose above the table. But no deck broke Provoking like Aura Goku, who could tutor Provoking turn 1 every single game to win board-based matches with almost no effort.

    With the limiting of this card to Adept, it's hard to argue that Provoking is game-breakingly strong. Adept is by far the weakest Orange archetype at the moment and having such an insanely good card that compliments its aggressive playstyle is doing a lot to keep it relevant. But consider this counterpoint: I don't care. Provoking Drill is immensely unfun, should never have been printed, and irrevocably convinced me that the dev team does not do much playtesting, if at all. I doubt that whoever designed this card (and by "designed" I mean "watered-down from Orange Destruction Drill in Score Z") even plays Fan Z.

1. Orange Redacted Drill

    Unlike these other drills, I actually understand why Redacted Drill was printed. Aura was a new and burgeoning archetype that needed appropriate support, and the dev team wanted to be sure that Aura Goku was a force to be contended with. But in practice, this card is absurd and perhaps single-handedly responsible for the considerable gap in power between Aura Goku and the next-most-powerful Orange deck. Redacted Drill allows Aura Goku to start any game with Gravity Training Drill and Orange Possession Drill, an enormous amount of advantage that makes it extremely difficult for even the most aggressive deck to enter turn one on a deck with double-digit planning cards. I've entered on Aura Goku many times and come out behind. Searching two drills at once is pretty good, I hear! Redacted Drill also allows Goku to reach level 2 in two combats almost every single game, or even just one if you draw drills on your own turn. And for some reason, the original printing of Redacted recycled itself for "cost," ensuring Goku could use its non-styled tutor every turn by simply running a single copy.

    After a year of playing with this card, even after it was nerfed, I am just sick of it. Aura Goku already has everything a deck could ever need or want, with multiple powerful answers to every conceivable strategy an opponent could attempt to concoct, and has no need for such an incredible advantage-generating engine. It's unbelievable how far the dev team went to ensure Orange reigned supreme in Premiere: Super, just as it did in Fusion with Energetic Vegito. Meanwhile, Saiyan received two Desperation cards to compliment their Desperation mastery.

    There are even more Orange drills I wouldn't mind seeing go. Orange Absorption Drill is completely redundant with Orange already having Burning Aura Drill and an extremely powerful suite of physical blocks. Orange Conference Drill, even restricted in who can use it, should have never been printed. To reiterate, this is my favorite style and I am a known defender of Orange against a lot of its criticisms. And I do believe people love to throw tantrums over any Orange card regardless what it does. But the style has gone too far at this point. I don't understand what's going on in the design room to continuously generate such unfun effects. Only one question remains: What absurd Orange card will we get this set?

-Seth