DBZ CCG Guide Part 4

Part 4: Speedrun Ideas/Explanations

So now that I've broken down the game as best I could, I'll now get into what I believe to be the best strategy to play the game. At the time of writing this, I'm always really just testing things out.

The general idea is to beat all opponents once, mainly defeating Cell, and having the game say "You have defeated Cell!".

So as a run, I think the cleanest way to start off the game is by choosing "Erase Data", it's the closest thing I've seen to starting a new game. I've considered the option of making the deck beforehand, but in other card game based speedruns, they make the deck from scratch, so I figured I should follow suit.

Ideally, the fastest way to win a duel in this game is by Most Powerful Personality (MPP) victory. So you would want to win by using the anger mechanic, and reaching your highest level as fast as you can to win. However, since all your options for characters start with just 3 personality levels, there's a number of people you can't defeat in such a manner. Here's a quick list of those you can beat by MPP, and those you can't:
Can: Krillin, Nail, Guldo, Goku, Frieza, King Cold.
Can't: Gohan. Piccolo, Garlic Jr., Vegeta, Trunks, Cell.

So that means that there are at least 6 duels you have to win by Survival victory. So playing this game comes down to who you think can get to their highest personality the fastest, and/or inflict the most damage as fast as possible.

Your initial choices aren't that amazing. Your Main Personality choices are Goku, Gohan, Garlic Jr., and Frieza. You can view their respective power stages and personality powers on your own lol.

On the last part of the guide, I kinda mentioned the 10 card drops you get after duels almost offhandedly. But they're actually extremely vital; if you can get some of the rarest drops, you can go through the game significantly easier. I haven't really decided which drops are the absolute best, but the entire basis of the run depends on one of them: Red Style Mastery.

I acknowledged before that Masteries give you a certain strategy to go for, but didn't go into what exactly those strategies were. So I'll do it here:

Red: Anger
- Red is about boosting your anger, and reaching your highest personality. It's pretty streamlined, and abusable, so it makes the most sense conceptually at least to use it for a speedrun. Goku uses this in the game, and since his deck is better than yours, he'll prolly beat you a few times :(

Blue: Anti-Anger
- Blue was made I guess specifically to counter Red. It's main effect is that it forces your opponent to need +6 anger instead of 5. King Cold plays this mastery in game, and is quite difficult to beat via MPP. He's easily the slowest duel in the game... playing carefully is vital against him.

Orange: Energy Attacks
- Orange is about using energy attacks. The mastery itself makes it where they take less power stages to perform. Krillin uses it in game, but he's still the weakest character overall.

Black: Extra Damage
- Black is all out force: every attack does +1 power stage, and +1 life card of damage. Also, Black-style cards get +2 stages and +2 life cards of damage. I prefer this style the most to be honest: on top of the extra damage with every attack, the individual Black-style cards are all really good actually. If you played against Frieza, this would be the mastery he uses against you.

Saiyan
- This mastery gives you a draw right before Combat starts, and if you draw a Saiyan-style card, lower your opponent's power stages by 4, or to 0 if they have less than 4. Rather than giving you some boost, the Saiyan mastery is more of its own draw engine, which is quite good actually. I would say though, that in game there are only so many decent-to-good Saiyan cards... but the good ones, are really good (looking at you yet again Saiyan Truce!). Vegeta plays this mastery.

Namekian
- Very similar to Saiyan, this mastery lets you draw a card, and if it's Namekian-style, you raise your power stages to full. Since power stages are so key, this is pretty nice actually. But in general, the Namekian style has too many mediocre cards. Piccolo plays this mastery. (I should save this for when I break down individual characters you have to face. But Piccolo's personality power is an Energy attack that does 6 damage; so if he gets a full power stage boost before every combat, he'll basically get his personality attack off every turn.)

I described the Masteries in depth, and who plays them, but really the only one you can play realistically is the Red Style Mastery. You see, the game goes by levels:
Level 1: Krillin, Nail, Guldo.
Level 2: Gohan, Piccolo, Garlic Jr.
Level 3: Vegeta, Trunks.
Level 4: Goku, King Cold. (Frieza is in level 4 if you're not his personality).
Level 5: Cell.

And for each level, your card drops are the same no matter who you duel. And in the first level, the only Mastery that drops (I've ever seen at least) is Red Style Mastery.

So then, knowing what kind of deck you want to use, which personality would be the best to use it with? I think Frieza is the best choice; if you look at all the personalities, the other 3 are more defensive in nature, while Frieza's 3rd personality has the power of basically the Black Style Mastery. Plus, Frieza's power stages are the 2nd highest, behind Goku.
- Goku himself is interesting; his 2nd personality has an effect that makes it very easy to get to his 3rd. But although his 3rd has insane power stages (1.5 million, dayum) his power is just defensive, which is kinda lackluster.
- I'll acknowledge Garlic Jr. here too: none of his personalities are that great, but one of the set card drops you can get in Level 1 is a 4th personality. So that would make it possible to get a MPP much more often. The reason you don't go for this, is because to get both Red Style Mastery and his 4th personality all at once would be rare and extremely difficult. Plus, since his personality powers and overall power stages are lackluster, it's not really worth it IMO.

So now that we've established a general idea for what we want our strategy to be, now it's time to make our first deck! I'll first post all cards available to you at the start of the game.

Credit to this guy for giving a list of all cards in the game, as well as posting their effects: http://www.gamefaqs.com/gba/553543-dragon-ball-z-collectible-card-game/faqs/17261
And credit to me for listing out all the starting cards as follows (the number in parentheses is the number of copies you have for that card:

001. Just Kidding (1)
006. Orange Planet Destruction (3)
019. Vegeta's Jolting Slash (2)
024. A Hospital Stay (1)
028. Frieza Smiles (2)
030. Yamcha's Skillful Defense (3)
035. Black Energy Stamina Drill (3)
039. Black Driving Leg Thrust (2)
042. Hero Enraged! (1)
044. Blue Energy Outburst (3)
048. Gohan's Energy Defense (4)
050. Nappa's Physical Resistance (1)
063. Hidden Power Level (3)
068. Saiyan Battle Terms (1)
070. Saiyan Pressure Punch (3)
072. Saiyan Truce Card (1)
073. Battle Pausing (3)
080. Baba's Energy Blast (2)
083. Burning Rage! (3)
092. Gohan's Physical Attack! (4)
103. Red Knee Strike (3)
113. Black Knife Hand Strike (2)
115. Black Side Kick (3)
116. Red Reverse Punch (3)
117. Black Turning Kick (3)
123. Red Knife Hand (3)
124. Red Palm Heel Strike (3)
125. Mother's Touch (3)
127. Saiyan Energy Defense (3)
131. Power Up the Most! (3)
143. An Amusing Trick (1)
149. Gohan Spots the Imposter Drill (1)
163. Black Smoothness Drill (2)
168. Black Defensive Aura (1)
169. Black Flying Kick (3)
172. Black Defensive Burst (3)
174. Red Gravity Drill (1)
175. Red Energy Shield (2)
188. Blue Driving Face Off (3)
190. Black Head Strike (3)
191. Black Hug Maneuver (3)
192. Black Driving Palm (2)
193. Dodoria's Waiting (1)
195. Krillin's Kamehameha (3)
200. Captain Ginyu's Energy Attack (3)
202. Frieza's Tail Hold (1)
215. Red Face Upheaval (3)
223. Red Power Rush  (3)
224. Red Lightning Slash (3)
225. Red Energy Blast (3)
226. Red Eye Laser Assault (3)
230. Trunks Slash (1)
231. Trunks High Strike (3)
233. Trunks Energy Sphere (3)
237. Trunks Sword Position 2 (3)
249. Orange Two Knuckle Punch (1)
261. Captain Ginyu Level 1
278. Frieza 1
279. Frieza 2
280. Frieza 3
281. Goku 1
282. Goku 2
283. Goku 3
287. Gohan 1
288. Gohan 2
289. Gohan 3
293. Garlic Jr. 1
294. Garlic Jr. 2
295. Garlic Jr. 3
331. Blue Foot Smash (3)
332. Gohan's Ready (2)

- In terms of building a deck, you can only have 3 copies of the same card. However, in this game there is the Named Rule: if a card starts with the name of your Personality, then you can have up to 4 copies of that card. So Gohan could use 4 copies of Gohan's Physical Attack, but everyone else can only use 3.

So to sum up our strategy, the goal is to duel a Level 1 character, and beat them as quickly as possible to get Red Style Mastery as a drop after the duel. Out of all the cards available to use, I think the best choice is to initially build an anger-based deck using Gohan. His power stages are a bit low, but he has the best general personality powers out of our 4 choices.

The fastest DBZ character to beat is Krillin in level 1. He runs an Energy Attack based strategy, so he's very dependent on having enough power stages to get them off. Since Gohan's first personality power is a physical attack that does +4 power stages of damage, you can ensure that if it's successful, Krillin can use no energy attacks at all.

Once you get Red Style Mastery, it's time to build a deck for Frieza! Here's the best I've come up with:

[FROM THIS POINT, MORE OR LESS COPY AND PASTE FROM INDIVIDUAL NOTES. IF YOU WANT THIS TO LOOK GOOD PUT TIME INTO IT SOMETIME.]