Hello all and welcome to the final Color Preview of World Tournament. After this we get into the cool shiny stuff (in two weeks…) so today we have two colors instead of one. Or really, one color and an extra four cards. Uub has often lived in his predecessor’s shadows but is this the time he finally shows greatness? Can the Announcer prove that Commentator’s Curse can be used offensively? Let’s find out.

Blue Cards

Uub/Uub, Unknowing Power

The first time Goku ever takes on an apprentice, Uub takes the stage. His front side is the same as most these days, so let’s just move onto his Awakened Side. To be frank…it’s not good. I won’t go as FAR as saying it sucks, because for a final push the ability use the Life Drain as much as you want (until you hit 1 of course) means you have a fairly consistent way of getting as many cards into your hand from life as possible before trying to finish the game, while also pumping himself. Bouncing Blockers is also a nice touch.

That being said…that’s pretty much the only highlight of the card. He’ll often sit as a Vanilla Awakened Card otherwise and there are just a plethora of better Leaders when it comes to making a final push. He really would’ve benefitted from having an extra ability to lean on while this one was the gravy. As the focus, it’s not good and Uub will most likely see no play unless he gets some powerful cards that require him as Leader.

Test of Strength Son Goku : Test of Strength Uub

More Partner cards, and again this one really makes me curious on what went into the design of the first two colors seen (Yellow and Green). It almost feels like they worked on Yellow and Green first, and then refined their process for Red and Blue…and they didn’t bother to go back to help the other two. These two skate around another issue of the Partner mechanic, which is needing to take up two turns or a fair bit of Energy to get the ball rolling. It’s not as much of a problem if the cards are independently good (as in Red) but if they aren’t, we need a faster way to board them. This solves the latter. Simply put, you got both in hand, Goku boards Uub and the party train starts. You get two 20Ks, Goku with Double Strike, Uub with Crit, AND you get to bottom two Battle Cards with 20K or less power. That’s an immense swing in card advantage and power. On top of that, Uub can keep triggering when played if Goku is on board, so it forces the opponent to deal with him immediately

I’ll be honest, if not for requiring a WT Leader, this pairing could’ve legitimately seen splash play in other decks. There’s a ton of swing in these two and they’ll be a hallmark for any WT deck to be made.

Top of His Game, Son Gohan

He’s in Super Saiyan mode post-Buu Saga so no, he’s clearly not on the “top of his game”, bad Bandai for lying! Otherwise, WT Super Combo, nothing to see here.

Scuffle Time Son Goten : Scuffle Time Mr. Buu

Damn it, Goten keeps making me think he’s Yamcha. Anyway, this pairing is…not particularly great. Buu goes to bottom to only bounce something, and Goten gets to untap 1 Energy and himself to be a 20K attack. They’re okay, but nothing special. Bounce effects are generally not good in this game unless extremely efficient due to the amount of “play” triggers and there being no Summoning Sickness. Needing to spin itself AND needing Goten on board makes Buu particularly poor. Goten, we have better ways of untapping Energy.

Awakening Talent Pan

A new entry into the 1 Drop Life Attackers, but this one is a tad bit different than the others. Instead of getting offensive Keywords, Pan bounces herself back to hand at End of Turn. I’m…conflicted as to how I feel about this. On one hand, the opponent is a LOT more likely to take the attack since there’s no Crit and would require commitment from Champa or Supreme Kai to manage Double Strike. On the other hand, one can feel a lot more secure swinging with Pan knowing the opponent won’t get a free value swing on the crackback. This card is definitely more about value rather than strict offensive pressure. …also probably a good thing we’re getting this when Flute is hit to 1, just saying.

Begrudging Respect Vegeta : Begrudging Respect Piccolo

Oh hey look, it’s the Chris Saban brothers! We’re going to take a quick look at Vegeta first because he’s the least interesting of the two. 20K Barrier and nothing else isn’t great, forcing the opponent to top 2 cards of their choice when conditions are met on play…isn’t that fantastic either. Feels particularly win more.

Now let’s get to Piccolo. Barrier/Blocker 10K if Vegeta is out is particularly boring. However…he’s literally Forced Ejection Masked Saiyan otherwise. Now for the Vegeta Lock build, this may be a god send. While he needs to be done on play compared to Masked Saiyan who can do it every turn as long as he’s on board, the fact is having copies 5-8 of Masked Saiyan (well, more likely copies 5-6, 8 is probably way too much redundancy) will be fantastic since the deck was weak against cheap removal that could just out Masked Saiyan with little effort. Good thing he does not require WT Leaders. Piccolo should see tech play in the Lock deck as extra Masked Saiyan copies.

Awkward Situation Trunks : Awkward Situation Otokosuki

I wonder how often we’ll get Trunks: Adolescence considering this is basically the only time we see him at this age outside of Xenoverse and GT. Anyway, another Partner pair that seeks to deal with the task of getting both on board at the same time. In this case, making Otokosuki outright free if Trunks is on board. This seems meh…at first glance, and that was my first thought. Then I thought about it for a bit and…this is actually insane. Let’s look at Trunks first, he’s essentially someone that can nuke things by bottoming Otokosuki. Honestly, not bad. It’s fine to have some hoops to jump through for an unconditional kill on a 2 Drop Body. But Otokosuki is again, free of charge as long as Trunks is on board. Now good news for us mortals…he can’t be Fluted (yes Flute will be at 1 on release, but it’s still something to note). But that’s still a lot of attacks that can come downwind. It’s a lesser version of the Lineage package though since you aren’t gaining any card advantage from it but with the upside of doing other things when attacking isn’t getting there.

I wouldn’t sleep on this pair at all. At all.

Wild Tiger, the Imposing

I was gonna say skip, but we should talk about him for a little. This is our first, no restriction 2 Drop 15K Blocker. It’s always good to see new benchmarks being reached. However, Pivotal Defense Cyclopian Guard was a 20K Blocker that really only saw a modicum of play for a brief period of time before being sent to the side. Yes, Wild Tiger can attack where Cyclopian Guard usually cannot (unless playing a Meta-Cooler deck) but…are you really going to attack with him?

Won’t see play, but keep an eye out for benchmarks slowly being raised.

Shocking Latent Ability

The final Blue card to be shown today and…well, it’s literally Unbreakable Son Goku but it requires Blue and only Uub can use it. Does Uub really seem like the type of Leader that wanted extra copies…or really ANY copies of Unbreakable? It being on color is nice I guess but realistically if you weren’t considering using Unbreakable with Uub before seeing this, you shouldn’t be using this.

Black Cards

Announcer/Announcer, Referee Veteran

Okay first off, who else is laughing that the Announcer gets LEGITIMATE Leader stats where THE CHAMP does not? That’s just fantastic. Also, the freaking Announcer gets a Leader! One step closer to Farmer with Shotgun dominating the game!

Anyway, Announcer is the next in the legacy of “Archetype Locked Leaders” along with the initial U7 Goku and Zen-Oh. Thankfully he’ll have a few more options to work with since the WT cards are a lot more open ended as long as you have a WT Leader, and he’ll have two negates, woo. Though unlike the others, he can actually play any Extra Cards he likes which also desperately help his defense.

His front side, instead of the usual attack to draw that comes with the Untap Awaken, he draws when he plays a WT card. Note, this is not just during your turn. Not only for Pan, this WILL be relevant later on and makes him potentially very strong on his front side. Pan Leader was solid for a while, especially due to being able to play Double Shot Vegeta on the opponent’s turn and drawing off of him making him a supercharged Unbreakable Goku. Now we get that in Negate form.

On his Awakened Side, sadly he goes back to a more standard drawing ability which is fine. His pump should be great…if it weren’t for the fact that you can only use it once for the entire game. I mean what? That is not an ability that requires such a heavy restriction. Even without the restriction it’d only be a solid ability. With it, very underwhelming and only for final pushes really.

Anyway, I really like Announcer. I think he’s by far the best designed Archetype Lock Leader yet. He doesn’t restrict you out of Extra Cards and he has a lot of play and synergy with said Archetype cards. He should get a fair amount of testing and is probably the best Leader of the set.

Announcer, Ever-Curious

I would say “typical archetype searcher” but unlike the fair majority of them, he looks at Top 7 rather than Top 3. That makes him far more likely to hit in a more tightly constructed build looking for very specific WT pieces, rather than needing to go heavy on the archetype to guarantee it. Not much to say, great card.

Announcer, Play-by-Play Pro

Now this card…THIS CARD. This card is absolutely absurd. It’s another Negate Battle Card, this time only for WT. As mentioned, in Announcer Leader this will also draw a card on the negate. There’s maybe only a handful of decks that wouldn’t play a Negate that says “Negate the Attack, Draw 1 Card”. Especially being a Black card and thus being able to be paid with anything (though he only gets the Draw in Announcer Leader). If it stopped there, it would still be a great card for Announcer Leader and possibly every other WT Leader.

But then they go further beyond. When you don’t want or need him to negate, if you have two other WT in your Battle Area, you can play him on your turn instead to get a Draw 2 (or a Draw 3 on the Announcer Leader front side). Most 1 Drop Cantrips in this game are playable. This is a staple in WT. There’s never a time this card is bad, most times this card is just the best gasoline you can get on the market but at regular gas prices. If WT decks are able to do something, I will argue this will be a big reason why.

World Tournament Arena

The final preview for today, and…it’s a Free Card…hurray… No in all seriousness, this isn’t a sinister card waiting to break the format in half. This essentially is just another activation of Announcer Leader’s ability though you can use it on his front side as well and thankfully more than once per game. As mentioned, WT has a lot of multi-attacker Battle Cards so Turn Pumps are very welcome. Being free is also very welcome, and not really busted here. Also note, you can chain these together. Tap one down, then play another over this and tap that. So playing 3 of this probably won’t be too bad. Good card.

Final Thoughts:

Well, I was very disappointed in Uub Leader but otherwise I generally enjoyed today’s suite of previews. Nothing completely over the kale like some of what we saw in Red but otherwise pretty good stuff. I adore Announcer and really want to build with him.

Next time, the Shiny Stuff…though I’ll need to do some sort of article for next week since Preview Season is taking one week off!