Dragon Ball Super: The State of the Meta and Why We Banned Mecha-Frieza in Store.
Hey people, this week I'd like to take break from reviewing things and write a commentary on the current meta for the Dragon Ball Super TCG and give some insight on why we have decided to ban Mecha-Frieza in-store.
So a few months ago the draft boxes for DBS came out and we got four new leaders, a Goku that was okay, a Vegeta that was not great, a Gotenks that made ghost kamikaze pretty decent and a Mecha-Frieza that was pretty absurd. Now when it was released Mecha wasn't a huge issue, it was an extremely strong leader but lacked a consistent and defensive deck that could back up it's life cost ability 'drawback'. The meta changed and Mecha dropped in popularity because of it's relatively weak matchup with another very popular deck, starterKu with it's ability to play so many threats in one turn and back it up with great card advantage and the ability to preserve it's life total.
Fast forward to Cross Worlds release (or spoilers at least) and we get the great apes shell, an archetype that can get aggressive and defend itself by untapping all of it's battle cards, can play the Shugesh super combo to put Explosive Spirit Goku into play on your opponent's turns, has barrier across most of it's units from King Vegeta and gets to search for almost any card in the deck with planet vegeta. Now this makes for a strong archetype for sure but with Mecha it becomes almost insurmountable being able to play most of it's extra cards for free and play March of The Great Ape for two yellow energy, this allows the deck to play two 4 drop apes and draw three cards for two energy. Mecha Apes aren't the only problem though, there's also Mecha GT, a 'one turn kill' deck that albeit inconsistent can win on turn two with relative ease.
So these are the decks and they are both beatable as people keep arguing but that's not the point in this case, when a card warps the meta as much as Mecha has something needs to be done. A lot of people have argued that all it takes is a bit of deckbuilding and testing to beat Mecha, which may be true but with the advantages Mecha has most decks are still not THAT bad of a matchup for it. So let's discuss those advantages: Mecha has access to free Cold Bloodlusts and even draws cards off them, in a game where a lot of decks have a strategy that uses an enter play auto ability this not just hurts these deck's win conditions but becaue they don't have to use energy for it there is no 'safe time' to play your cards with these abilities, usually you would try to play your opponent into a corner to force them to tap out, wait for them to make a mistake or watch their play patterns to figure out when they have Bloodlust in hand, not so when they are drawing tons of cards and don't use energy for Bloodlust. Mecha also has the ability to awaken faster than most decks by playing cards that help them establish a good hand or board state too, so on top of the above advantage they are also drawing a lot more cards than most decks.
Now, imagine you're a new player, you've picked out your favourite Dragon Ball characters and you're keen to play them in a tournament and have some fun maybe win some promos or packs, nope sorry 70% of the tournament is the same deck that establishes an almost untouchable board state too quickly for you to do much, but wait, the other 30%! Well those are decks specifically designed to beat Mecha and a small amount of people playing their pet decks. This is the meta warping power of Mecha-Frieza and this is the reason we have banned it in our store, so anyone can come along and play whatever they want, have a good time and be able to come up against a wide variety of decks instead of the same boring matchup. So come along one Tuesday and check out a meta without Mecha!
As always, thanks for reading and see you next time.
Sam