Game Cards Review : Dragon Ball

Ever since I was a kid, I've been equally interested in Collectible Card Games - or specifically Star Wars card games.  But over the years I've played a handful of others, though none have held my attention quite like the Star Wars series from Decipher.  People are crying right now over sports licenses being won or lost.  Trust me, about a decade or so ago, Decipher losing the Star Wars rights to Wizards of the Coast just about wrecked my world. 

In any event, I've been looking for a new game to play with my girls.  And wouldn't you know it, I rented Season 1 of Dragon Ball Z from Netflix and they loved it.  I really rented them for myself, but they caught on right away.  They had character names and techniques down pat.  I remembered from a long time ago that there was a CCG of Dragon Ball Z that my brothers and I tried out.  I figured I could get some pretty cheap on the Bay.  But in my search, I found that Bandai had picked up the Dragon Ball rights and was producing a new game.  So that's a score.  I picked up two starter packs (one heroes and one villain deck).  The decks each cost me around $12 on ebay before shipping (though with combined shipping it wasn't really that bad).

When I open game cards, it's even more rigorous than with sports cards.  First of all, the whole set has to be appealing, just like in sports cards.  Whether you play the game often or not, the set should have a high collectability factor.  And then secondly, the game play has to be engaging with enough strategy that a lower tier deck can best a high dollar deck with astute gameplay.  That was part of what made Star Wars CCG so great.  You could have the entire Imperial Army on the Death Star, but get Force Drained to death across the board with little trouble (for those of you who played Star Wars back in the day - you know what the hell I'm talking about).

So first off, let me say that I haven't played this new Dragon Ball game with my girls yet.  I've read the rule book and have a good idea of the rules, but we haven't really had a chance to sit down and learn it through play.  So I'm just going to focus on the visuals for now.

In each starter, you get seven of these Dragon Ball punch-outs for counters.  I'm sure kids have been wrecking these cards all over the place instead of just using pennies for counters.  Really, you shouldn't ever bust up punch-out cards if you can help it.  And why would you want to with these cards?  The artwork is great on these cards.

These are examles of the Event and Technique cards.  Really, I couldn't tell you how effective they are, but they definetely make a fan of the show want to collect them all.  The card on the left depicting the battle between Vegeta and Krillin and Gohan is a great looking card.

But in the end, the most important part of the CCG is the character cards.  That's what people quickly browse their freshly open packs for - the characters.  In this case, I knew what characters I'd get because I bought starter decks.  But they still didn't dissapoint.

These two cards have a special foil over them to show that they were the main cards from the starter decks.  But they're still great looking cards.  The Goku, just by looking at the numbers, is stronger than the Frieza.  But Frieza came with two evolution cards in his deck.  So there is still some strategy to figure out right off the bat.  But from a character card standpoint, these are great cards.  For main characters from the show, they were portrayed wonderfully as main cards in the game.

I can't comment on the gameplay yet.  But for a visuals grade, I'd give the set an A.