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Just picked up Guardians of Namekians and played a quick match with the shop hand. Seems like a pretty fun game. I always hated MtG and similar games because of the way cards could pile up in your hand and be useless without mana, or you'd just get all mana, and eventually I fell behind the arms race and just gave up. So aside from Netrunner (RIP) I never got into card games. But this one is fun and I like the cards. I used to collect pokemon so the cards are kind of the big thing.

Anyways, anyone know anything about DBSCG? How does this deck play, is it any good and where do I go from here?

Wow, guys really? No one has played this game yet?

It's freaking amazing if you hated being stuck with useless cards in your hand or mana burn/starve.

Let me explain the game a little bit and why I like it.

First off, you play with a Leader card and a 50 card deck. You have only two types of cards aside from the Leader, Battle and Extra. Battle cards can be played sort of like creatures in MtG, you pay an energy cost and put the card in play in your Battle Zone. You can attack and use them right away, no summoning sickness. Typically these cards will be a character from the show, and will have a Power Rating, a Combo Rating and usually a card text ability. Your PR is your attack power basically and this is the number the defender has to beat when you attack them. Ties go to the attacker.

Now when you attack with a Battle card, or your Leader, your opponent first has a chance to counter or negate your attack with either a card ability or an Extra card, if there is no negate the attacker has a chance to Combo by playing cards with a Combo Rating, which is added to Power Level. After that the defender can Combo. You can Combo with cards in your hand or with untapped Battle cards in your Battle Zone. If you attack a Battle Card and beat the defenders Power Rating that Battle Card gets KO'd and sent to the Drop Zone which is like your graveyard. If you attack the opponents Leader card and win, the defender must lose 1 life by picking up a card from a stack set aside at the beginning of the game. You have only 8 life, so games can be over very quickly. But when you lose a life you get a card, so it can be advantageous to get hit sometimes.

Now here is the best part. When you lose half your life (4 cards or less left) you can Awaken your Leader by flipping it over to the more powerful Awakened side, typically this will let you do something useful when you flip as well as bringing new card abilities into play. There are plenty of ways for you to pick up your own life cards during your turn and a few during the defense step so Awakening your Leader early is a viable if risky tactic.

Another key element to the game is Energy, which is produced in different colours by different coloured cards played in your Energy Zone at the beginning of your turn. Each card only produces 1 energy and 'taps' just like a mana. Any card can be played as Energy so you never run out of energy in your hand. Typically the balance between players energy pool is quite even as each player can only play 1 energy per turn but some Battle cards can be used as energy as well, giving an advantage. Most Leader cards will also allow you to untap energy cards when they Awaken too, which can be really big.

So here is the setup and turn structure!

Put your Leader down with the Front side up. Start by determining who goes first randomly. The first turn you cannot attack, so it's usually best to go second. Then draw 6 cards to form your hand. If you don't like any you can shuffle them back in and draw that many cards again, you can only do this once. Then once you have your hand, you draw 8 cards and without looking at them, set them aside to form your Life pool. Now you're ready to start.


1: Charge Phase. This starts with you switching your cards in Rest Mode to Active Mode, so untapping pretty much. Then you draw 1 card from your deck and play 1 card as an Energy card.

2: Main Phase. This is where you can play Battle and Event Cards and activate any Main phase abilities on cards already in play.

3: The Attack Phase. The good part. Here you attack with your Leader and or Battle cards one at a time. Declare an attack and switch the attacking card to rest mode, then the defender can try to negate the attack through a card or ability, if they don't you can now combo by playing cards with a Combo Rating from your hand or Battle Zone. If the defender cannot beat your total Attack Power then they must either draw a card from their life total or KO the battle card depending who was attacked. During the attack step there are two phases, attackers phase and defenders, in which you may Combo, or activate abilities specified as Combat abilities.

Once you've completed attacking your turn is over and the opponent begins their turn.

Pretty damn simple! In fact, DBSCG even has an App to help you learn the rules, which if you want to play it's very handy.


So, why do I like this game? Because all the cards are useful at all times. In fact, the real problem isn't that you are stuck with bad cards in your hand, it's that all your cards are so useful it's difficult to decide how to use them! Do you play a high cost card as an energy in the early game or do you try to hang onto it? Maybe the game state changes and now you're forced to choose between holding a card and using it to Combo. And it's Dragon Ball! Literally every character from every show or movie is fair game, a lot of people think it's just Dragon Ball Super, but that's just the name. So if you were avoiding this one based on that, don't worry, your favourite Dragon Ball characters are or will soon be here!

Anyways that's enough for tonight and tomorrow I'll write up a review and tactics overview for the Guardian of Namekians deck, which is lead by Piccolo Jr!