Alright, I’ve put off this article long enough I believe. Welcome all to a bit of a change of pace. Today, we’re going to talk about the three core gameplay philosophies, along with Combo, and how they apply to multiple games but to DBS as a whole. It’ll also hopefully let us see where the game has been, currently is and where it’s heading in the future. If nothing else I hope that it serves as an informative piece that helps players really find their footing when it comes to playing their favorite TCG, whatever it may be.

What Are These Core Principles and Why Are We Talking About Them?

Generally, the three core principles of TCG decks (Aggro, Midrange and Control) are the basis on almost all deck building for any game you play, even if you may not realize it at first glance. Now, they aren’t absolute principles where decks can only go into one without slipping into the others, quite often you’ll see decks that use cards from multiple points to fill out their overall strategy. But the knowledge of what type of deck you’re using and what the opponent is using, will help inform you at least in a general capacity of how to go about each game and what you may be favored and unfavored against. It will also help inform the general trend of a TCG and what kinds of cards it prefers printing. We’ll go over them individually and how they work in each game. I’m going to use Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic the Gathering, and of course DBS for some compare and contrast.

Aggro

Goal: Win the game as quickly as humanly possible

Strong Against: Control

Weakness: Midrange

A general rule of thumb in life is that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line (it’s not always the case, but then we’re getting into math and while I enjoy it, most people won’t). Aggro is the personi…well, I guess deckification of that philosophy. This style seeks to interact with the opponent as little as humanly possible. Burn is generally under this philosophy, but not always (see Trickstars in Yu-Gi-Oh). You want the game to be over before the opponent is able to blink. It’s generally the easiest philosophy to learn for newer players to any game as anyone’s first thought is to just kill the opponent as quickly as possible. It’s also probably the easiest one to take to a tournament as it requires less mental strain on average AND matches end fast enough(win or lose) to allow very helpful breaks between rounds that you may not get with other principles. Now let’s see how this plays out in other games.

Magic the Gathering:

Well if there’s any three letters that are sure to trigger a MtG player, ESPECIALLY right now, it’s RDW. Otherwise known as Red Deck Wins. It’s pretty simple, you turn cards sideways and try to get to 20 damage REALLY fast. RDW in MtG don’t often seek to interact with the opponent’s board (though they will if absolutely necessary). Instead they seek to subvert it, by not allowing much in the way of blocking which allows your creatures to have a direct line to their face. Or just simple burn at the face to take out the middle man. It’s been a dominant force in MtG Standard for pretty much a year (though it’s taken a new form now, which honestly skates a bit closer to Midrange).

The weakness though is that if the opponent is able to establish a board and stabilize it becomes IMMENSELY tough to win from there as MtG Aggro tends to lack in card advantage (Bomat Courier only does so much).

Yu-Gi-Oh:

Now I know a lot of people believe that there are a ton of OTK archetypes out there in Yu-Gi-Oh, and they aren’t wrong, there are quite a few. However most Fusion Archetypes really, at least to me, embody the spirit of Aggro more than anything else. Cyber Dragons, Ancient Gears, Fluffals, Lunalights and so on. They seek to go second almost 100% of the time, and want to kill the opponent that turn through any and all interaction that they have. In most cases a game going past the first turn or two ends up in a loss. They live and die on OTK potential and unlike most combo decks, they have multiple routes to the OTK.

The weakness, besides the ones mentioned, is that the deck hates going first and it often lacks any sort of defense whatsoever. Now Fluffals do have a slight bit of resiliency, and CyDras are soon getting support to help with that as well, but generally they want to be going second. They also don’t want to run into a ton of interaction.

How does this apply to DBS?

For DBS the philosophy is much closer to MtG than anything else. Hell they both essentially have variants of Red Deck Wins. You seek to end the game extremely fast before the opponent can set up any type of board. The previous weakness of DBS Aggro was that to punch the opponent really fast also meant giving them a ton of cards really fast. Aggro pretty much had to be limited to Vegeta at first because he could deny the opponent card advantage so your plan could go off a lot more effectively, but at the same time Vegeta could also afford to play the long game if necessary.

This has all changed the last few sets however. Chain Attack Trunks into Zen-Oh alleviates the opponent card advantage problem quite easily. Now, we have more early game beaters that live on denying the opponent card advantage as well, plus the Legendary Flute to provide more cards in hand and more attacks. Now the weakness of the deck is getting the early game taken off the board before Flute gets to do its thing.

Midrange:

Goal: Seek to win the game through value, using efficiently costed creatures/monsters/minions with strong stats and abilities.

Strong Against: Aggro

Weakness: Control

If Aggro is the deck most new players flock to early due to its relative ease of use and similar strategy throughout most TCGs, then Midrange is usually the next step. It’s where players are more knowledgeable about what’s actually good in specific TCGs and use that knowledge to make a very streamlined, efficient deck using general good cards or archetypes to manage the board state and win in a reasonable pace. It’s the deck where you have to know “Who is the Beatdown?”. Against Aggro the deck has to take a more defensive approach, holding off the onslaught while gradually getting a bigger and stronger board presence before leaning down on the Aggro deck. Against Control, you have to be quicker and win before the opponent can establish absolute dominance over the proceedings. It can often be seen as a “boring” deck. Aggro while, at times, is somewhat mindless is still somewhat exciting for how fast the deck HAS to win before things go south and requires careful planning over multiple turns to yield the maximum amount of damage without issue. Control, while certainly having its own “boring” stigma, requires absolute knowledge of the game and great intuition of what the opponent is playing and has available at all times. Midrange often can get boiled down into just playing the best creature you have in hand every turn on curve. Like the other two though, it’s never that simple.

Magic the Gathering:

Midrange is generally a Green Color identity thing in MtG due to ramp and big bodies, but it can blend into other colors. For Green though, Ghalta in Standard is probably a great epitome of what Midrange is about. It’s huge, efficiently costed (usually), can slow Aggro Decks to a crawl while also outpacing Control decks if they don’t have an immediate response. Goblin Chainwhirler right now though is probably the Patron Saint of Midrange. While he’s often put in “Red-Black Aggro” or “Mono-Red Aggro”, that’s mostly due to him blending in all archetypes (not so much Control but that’s more due to his strict Mana Cost, if it were more lenient he’d absolute find room in Control as well). Fantastic 3/3 First Strike Body that beats down almost anything on its curve or below, annihilates all weenies and still has use later on with direct damage. I don’t think it’s facetious to say that the current MtG Standard format is defined by whether you play Chainwhirler, or how well you deal with Chainwhirler. Lastly, I threw in a bit of a flash back in Siege Rhino. The card was played a ton in the Standard it presided in, just insane value and games could easily devolve into Siege Rhino wars.

The weakness in MtG is usually very strong Control decks that can easily answer all of the threats you put on board at any time. Usually the way to subvert that, and the way it’s being done currently, is to diversify your threats to force the Control player to have a bunch of different answers at once. The more types of cards a single card can answer in Control, the higher the mana cost it’s more than likely to have which make the trades far better in your favor. It also struggles against Combo decks as it lacks the speed of Aggro to steal games from Combos, or the interaction to stop Combos from going off at all.

Yu-Gi-Oh:

Now when I think Midrange in Yu-Gi-Oh, one card always comes to mind. The Legendary Blue-Eyes White Dragon. It’s probably the most famous TCG Card that there is. At the very least it’s on the pantheon with Lightning Bolt, and Pokemon’s Base Set Charizard. Konami does its best to keep the card at least somewhat playable over the years. For Midrange it ticks all the boxes. Is it huge? Well 3K is just as strong an Attack power now as it was almost 2 Decades ago, getting over it is a pain in the ass without removal. Can it slow the game down, it certainly can thanks to support that makes him and his brethren more resilient. Efficiently costed…well normally no, but he’s a Dragon so he has about 5 zillion ways to get himself and his brothers on board for little to no cost. Certainly can sometimes slow down Aggro plans if they can’t out him, and he CERTAINLY can end games in a hurry against slower decks.

To throw out another example, we’ll see the True Draco archetype and the very recently banned Master Peace, the True Dracoslaying King to see where things can go wrong. Is it huge, 2950 going on 3250, yeah definitely. Efficiently Costed, sure is in its archetype and even out of it sometimes. Slows the game down to a crawl because he can also easily interact with the board on top of being nigh untouchable outside of certain outs. He doesn’t usually end the game fast, but he doesn’t need to as again, very little removal can out him. It was too much of a sludge to get through even with outs like Kaiju, and was just blatantly not fun to deal with.

The weakness is just blatant removal. There is a lot of it in Yu-Gi-Oh these days and a Midrange deck is often judged on either how well it can survive against removal, or at the very least get back its board presence. True Draco dealt with it TOO well, hence the multitude of hits. Blue-Eyes, a lot more fair about it. It’s resilient, it can recover but nothing in a blatantly unfair way, they still do struggle against it. Though their main weakness is just bricking half the time (I don’t really count it for this article though, because bricking is EVERY deck’s main adversary).

How does this apply to DBS?

I’ll be honest, it’s a bit of a struggle for the philosophy of Midrange in DBS. See the reason Midrange can function in most games, is because the bodies it puts on board actively inhibit the opponent from attacking well. In Yu-Gi-Oh, you cannot attack directly (at least without card effects) without getting rid of the opponent’s board first. In Magic the Gathering and many card games like it, the opponent has the option of blocking with any of their creatures so obviously bigger creatures carry more value the second they’re placed. In DBS though, only designated Blockers can…well Block, which makes the value of sticking a big Battle Card on board far less than it would be in other games though the upside is the lack of Summoning Sickness. Thus we must re-evaluate what it means to be Midrange in DBS.

I believe, DBS Midrange to be like this. Like usual, great stats and efficient cost is still of prime importance. At the very least, great stats compared to its cost (leading into the reason I put Cabba above in a second). But the cards MUST make an immediate impact as well, outside of just attacking. Gotenks for example, even without his effect has somewhat of an efficient cost, at least for Set 1. 25K on a 5 Drop was pretty rare. He refunded himself and gave back two Energy as well. So no matter what, short of Cold Bloodlust you were getting fantastic value on Gotenks. Cell, I don’t think I have to say much. Huge, comes out on Turn 3, makes an absurd impact when played. BuuHan, comes out far more cheaply now (used to be much more of a pain before) and you can actually choose whether he’s more of the resilient type, or the impact type based on the cards you put under him.

Now Cabba is obviously the outlier. See under normal circumstances the Veggie Package wouldn’t really fit under here that easily. Caulifla maybe, but both Cabba and Kale are pretty average for their cost (stat wise). However, Cabba makes Caulifla free more often than not, and Kale extremely cheap. For 4 Energy, Kale isn’t spectacular (again, Stat Wise, obviously a good card regardless). For 3 Energy, she’s extremely above average. For 2 she’s absolutely absurd. If you Shugesh her out…do I even need to say more? Veggies are a very sneaky Midrange deck, choosing to forego big stats to focus more on efficient cost. Because again, big stats aren’t as valuable in DBS, focusing on cheaper costs is a wise way to do Midrange in this game.

For a while, DBS Midrange failed to have much of a weakness. Aggro would only feed into the gameplan outside of something like Vegeta or Masked Saiyan. Control like cards were too slow or too large in Energy Cost to make enough of a dent. But as we come to get more efficient removal and more interactive removal, this will start to become something Midrange must be wary of.

Control

Goal: Maintain dominance over the entirety of the game. Anything the opponent does is because you allow it to happen.

Strong Against: Midrange

Weakness: Aggro

Now we’re at what tends to be my favorite philosophy in TCGs, Control. I’ll admit, I can be a bit of a control freak when I’m in my own space. I like things to be done in a certain way, at a certain time. Any changes, because I’m the one who made them and not because someone made them for me. I don’t really like enforcing that on other people though, so being able to do it in TCGs is almost like a way of venting for me. This is a deck that one cannot play until they obtain extreme knowledge over everything in a particular TCGs. Many top level players will say to “Never play a Control Deck for about a month after a Booster Set releases”. The reason being that even if you think you know what people might be playing, you don’t actually know because they aren’t sure for a while. Control lives off of what other people are playing. If you put in a bunch of cards to deal with board state but the format turns out to be Burn related, then you’re screwed. Knowledge is Power Absolute with Control. With it, you can feel unstoppable. Without it you’ll feel like a 5 year old scrambling in the dark. It’s also generally not the funnest thing to bring to a large tournament setting since it’ll often go to time even when you have a supreme deathlock on a match, and can be very taxing both mentally and even physically since you’ll lack much in the way of breaks. Still, almost nothing is as rewarding as being able to swat away anything the opponent does.

Now before I get into more, even Control has two different subsets. That being Proactive Control and Reactive Control. I’m discussing it here because players often either don’t understand the difference, or only perceive Reactive. It’s understandable why, counter spells, Trap Cards. Reactive Control is far more represented in our TCG culture whether through legitimate discussion, deck usage, or even just memes. I’m not exactly Monsoon from Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, but I can say that the memes do show how much certain things have seeped into our culture. The difference between the two though is this.

Proactive Control: Stops the opponent from doing anything before they even do it. It’s like locking a door and only you have the key. The opponent knows they can’t go through the door, so they’ll have to try a different option or find a way to break the door down. Often seen in Floodgate type of effects, hand control effects or Tax Effects. Or even established negation already on the board.

Reactive Control: Stopping an opponent’s action as they happen, whether through removal, counters or other means. Seen through the ways I mentioned, Counters and Trap Cards.

Some games don’t even have access to both types of control. Pokemon for example has very little to no Reactive Control. The one time they tried, it got banned and for very good reason. The game wasn’t built for opposing interaction on your turn. That being said, Pokemon has VERY potent Proactive Control. Look up Seismatoad EX and its Quaking Punch, or Garbodor’s Garbotoxin to see some examples of what I mean.

For the reverse, you could look up early Panini DBZ. While there was a little Proactive Control early on (Nappa), it was not that hard to get rid of under normal circumstances. A great amount of Control in the early stages of Panini DBZ were Reactive, whether to counter attacks or remove annoying threats off of the board.

Magic the Gathering:

MtG is quite littered with both types of Control. It’s to be expected, it was the Granddaddy of all TCGs. Instead of listing current Standard staples, I decided to go for some iconic hallmarks instead. Counterspell…speaks for itself. The progenitor of all counters. It answers literally anything and everything (…that isn’t a land of course). If you have a Counterspell, chances are the opponent isn’t doing anything you don’t like that turn. Doom Blade, how often did we hear arguments that “X” card didn’t matter because it “dies to Doom Blade”. Now I could spend an entire article of the facetious nature of that comment, but it’s more to show how omnipresent the card was at the time. A quick, efficient answer to almost anything you didn’t like.

As for some Proactive Control, Blood Moon is the ultimate FU to players who spent quite a bit of green making exotic mana base only for all of those pricey lands like Fetch Lands to turn into Basic Mountains before their very eyes. Hope you brought some basics of your own. Thoughtseize lets you see into the opponent’s hand to know exactly what you’re dealing with AND take away the best card in it ahead of time.

The weakness is again, you have to have the right control for the right opponent. If you have Doom Blade against a Mono-Black deck…obviously doesn’t get you very far. Blood Moon against a deck either already heavy in Red, or just runs many Basics doesn’t do anything. Not to mention Control only does so much if you get punched in the face REALLY fast before you can set up your defense.

Yu-Gi-Oh:

Ah yes Yu-Gi-Oh. Somewhat surprisingly enough, Yu-Gi-Oh also shares a pretty solid balance between Proactive Control and Reactive Control. A great deck for a while has been Paleozoics. It’s strictly a Control Deck, and it actively uses both types of Control. The Paleozoic cards themselves generally fall under Reactive Control and answering a lot of different threats, but they also run one of the most premier Proactive Control cards right now in Toadally Awesome. One of the top decks in the current format is Sky Strikers and the pure variant is as Control oriented as it gets. It’s not heavy on Proactive Control, at least Game 1 but Reactive it’s got plenty to make sure the opponent just sits there with very little to do.

However the issue with YGO as a game is often the fact that the best Control cards find its way into being used, arguably better, by non-Control decks. Now Ash Blossom I don’t really count for that, it’s just a staple that’s easily used by everyone. But the main offender was Vanity’s Emptiness. It was supposed to be the lowkey savior against Special Summon spam where Royal Oppression failed us by being busted IN said decks, rather than against them. Sadly, Vanity’s Emptiness went down the same exact road as nothing stopped heavy spam decks by making their board and flipping Emptiness up after the fact. Even worse, its self-destruct clause made it easy to do it BEFOREHAND as well, since you could blow it up on your own turn and go from there. It’s the main weakness of Control. Most non-Control decks just do it better while also threatening death much faster so you don’t have to rely on a tenuous grip on the game.

How does this apply to DBS?

Now I’m going to be very frank. Control did not exist in DBS until Colossal Warfare. It simply did not. Why is that? Well it’s like this. For a long while, there was very little you could do to the opponent’s board on their turn. In most cases it was just a matter of negating an attack. Normally this wouldn’t be TOO bad, but in a game with a lack of Summoning Sickness, this was a big problem. Even if you could remove the opponent’s threats, they likely already did their work the previous turn. There was no way to actively stop the opponent from doing anything. The closest things we had were Crusher Ball and Cold Bloodlust but even then only did so much. Even in decks like Tri-Color Ginyu or those initial Mecha-Frieza decks built on getting into Whis, the Sacred Guard, their control on the game was often more tenuous than anything. Reactive Control was very limited. Sure you had cards like Mafuba, or Enraged Gohan’s Awakening but it relied on the opponent making very specific moves. If the opponent has more Control over the proceedings than you do, then the Control isn’t doing its job.

Thankfully though, Bandai started to make some strides in helping Control out. Clan of Terror Mecha Frieza was a decent start for Proactive Control. It wasn’t the best, but Hand Knowledge in DBS is extremely potent to have. Then more aspirations were taken to give decks Removal on 3 Energy rather than just 4, Explosive Spirit Son Goku being the highlight. Shugesh/ES Goku was a combo Bandai seemed particularly proud of, finally allowing great Reactive Control into a game that lacked it dearly. Unfortunately Shugesh proved to be too powerful for his own good, but I still think their heart was in the right place when it came to making that combo.

But now I think we’re in a spot where Control can finally start getting there. Foreseeing Hit is extremely powerful as a Hand Control card. Very few TCGs offer that type of power in Hand Control. But Machine Mutants are the mating call for some good old school Control for players like me. Now it’s not like it’s gonna be Esper Control level, where the opponent can’t even sneeze without your permission but it offers a lot. Extremely efficient removal for everything (I still believe Vow Revenge is probably TOO efficient but meh), and Great Ape Baby as the definitive Proactive Control card of DBS. We even have more Reactive Control in the game, mainly through Revenge Death Ball.

The weakness though is obvious. Getting aggro’d out. But now we at least have more options to not just make it an auto-loss.

Now we’re not done, we still have one more philosophy to talk about.

Combo

Goal: …to combo. In all seriousness, to position themselves to create a huge combo, generally to either win the game on the spot or guarantee it in the immediate future.

Strong Against: Midrange

Weakness: Either Aggro or Control, though it depends on the actual combo in question. But mainly bricking.

Combo decks are something that require a section all on its own. It in theory can fit into all possible categories depending on the type of combo. It’s the type of deck you build either for great fun, or because you really don’t feel like interacting with the opponent in any way and just want to do your own thing. The deck is simple, at least in concept. Find a combo you REALLY want to build around that is likely to end the game, and then put everything possible in your deck to either make that combo a reality or protect it from disruption. The weaknesses can be either dying before it goes off or having it interrupted but often the biggest weakness is itself. Can your deck get the combo off consistently in a reasonable amount of time. The thing is though is that the combo decks that can do it consistently with little effort, usually end up in the crosshairs of the developer REALLY fast. So it’s the reverse Dark Knight. You either Live as an Inconsistent Hero, or Die as a Consistent Villain.

Magic the Gathering:

Now I could sit here all day and still not come even CLOSE to the amount of combo decks that MtG has spawned in its history. So I’m just gonna name two that I’m at least somewhat familiar with to save time. I’ll start with Felidar Guardian. Itself, along with Saheeli Rai, formed a two card combination that spawned infinite Felidar Guardian’s on board, with Haste so the opponent couldn’t answer it with a Board Wipe. It also dropped on curve, Saheeli on 3 and Felidar on 4. The rest of the deck was either draw/search to get to the two, or some control to make sure that you didn’t die before it got off. Felidar got swiftly banned in Standard.

The other, is a combo that’s currently taking Modern by storm (no pun intended) and that’s the KCI combo. It’s deathly consistent, though not on the same turn marker. It’s just really easy to get to all of its combo pieces at a reasonable rate. What then happens is that everyone sits there for 20 minutes while the KCI player plays Solitaire with himself until he’s able to show that he can do lethal damage. Even some interaction doesn’t get the job done against stopping the deck. Why isn’t it a Tier 0 deck then? Well, it has a grand total of 0 defense of any type (at least to my knowledge). Considering Modern houses some of the fastest decks there are, it’s pretty much a race against the clock and KCI doesn’t always have the benefit of getting its pieces fast enough before it dies a gruesome death. Still these two decks show what Combo is going for.

Yu-Gi-Oh:

Now in YGO, basically everything under the sun can be a considered a combo deck of some sort, so we need to look at combos with the least amount of interaction possible. Thus, FTKs. The first we’ll talk about is one of the other Legendary cards of YGO lore that everyone knows about thanks to memes. Exodia (OBLITERATE), the Forbidden One. Simply put, get all 5 pieces into your hand, win the game no matter what. So decks built around him do their best to draw through their deck obscenely fast to get to him. It periodically tops every few years but mostly it’s just a fun deck that players like to build for meme value, though Konami does periodically give it support as well.

Now if we’re talking actual value with tops, we can talk about the recent success of Gem-Knights. Once they got the right amount of support, the topping of Regional and higher events took off. Simply put, if you didn’t have the right hand traps and used them as the EXACT right time (and unless you were inherently familiar with Gem-Knights, it wasn’t all that intuitive to know), then you had to pray the Gem-Knight player bricked which became much less likely with the support it got. It could even win going second against established boards since…well Gem-Knights is yet another Fusion Archetype known for quick OTKs with big punching power. That’s what it was doing before it could FTK consistently. So Gem-Knights were in this weird area where it was both a Combo FTK deck AND an aggro OTK deck depending on the die roll and the matchup. Unsurprisingly, it got hit though still maintains a lot of its good support.

How does this apply to DBS?

Now in DBS there are far less “I Win” Combo Buttons, but there are still a few decks I’d consider the sort. Apes are probably the most borderline, since it doesn’t aim to win the turn you play March. I still consider it as such though since the goal is just to get to Apes and March, and then play it early due to Ramp to board a bunch of them. Feel free to consider it otherwise though, like I said it’s pretty borderline. The other two matchup far more.

The first, was the initial terrifying voodoo that everyone proclaimed the death of the game on, Mecha GT. The goal, draw an absurd amount of cards while also Awakening, get to your GT cards, play them on the cheap thanks to Shugesh and then hopefully have SS4 Goku to immediately win the game though it was somewhat possible without him. When it went off it made you wonder why this game still exists. But despite Mecha Frieza being Mecha Frieza, it ultimately wasn’t all that consistent and lost out to quite a few cards and combos.

The second is a bit more whimsical in nature, but does have some tournament merit to back it up. That being ZamaFu. Simply put, Awaken your Zamasu Leader. Play 1+ Joyful Strike Goku Black Rose to mill your deck, then drop Fu and watch the opponent’s health melt to 0 while they can do basically nothing. Extremely fun combo, especially for myself who likes both Zamasu Leader and Fu.

The biggest weakness of DBS Combo decks though, besides the usual “don’t die too fast” and “bricking” is the Life Card mechanic. Simply put, some of your combo pieces could end up in Life and you may never see them.

Okay, this was a long read, what’s the point of all of this?

Well, if one noticed or if you came into this already knowing, the usual flow of philosophy advantage is this. (The Arrow is pointing to the winner of the matchup).

Aggro –> Midrange –> Control –> Aggro

With Combo doing its own thing in there somewhere depending on its potency. For most games, keeping that in balance can lead to a healthy metagame. The current Modern Format in MtG is a great example, where Top 8s are frequented by all 3 plus Combo as well. The issue generally comes when a deck gets support that allows it to beat a philosophy it shouldn’t. Like for example with RDW in MtG Standard for a long while, it had so many subversive cards that Midrange bodies didn’t matter all too much, not unlike DBS for that matter. Or in Grimm Cluster in Force of Will where Aggro got basically nothing so Control all but dominated. However, with the blending of philosophies and the human element, that just tends to happen.

However with DBS…the flow isn’t that simple. Remember, while Aggro is still generally Aggro (pretty hard to mess with that), Midrange and Control are different than they are in other games. In fact I’d argue that DBS Midrange loses to Aggro more often than not, due to not being able to stem the bleeding from Aggro all that effectively (outside of Apes, who struggle a lot more thanks to the MF Errata). However it manages a far better time against Control because most of its cards get their payoff before Control can deal with them (or just has strict protection). Control for its credit, at least now, can handle Aggro far better thanks to new Reactive Control cards. Thus the flowchart for DBS can look a lot more like this.

Aggro <– Midrange <– Control <– Aggro

It’s completely in reverse! However…this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, in fact it’s actually quite refreshing to have to look at things in a completely different perspective. Now again, this is not absolute nor is the above flow absolute. But it shows how Bandai may be viewing the game and what we could expect from future sets. More Midrange cards that either protect themselves from Control. More Control cards that stop early aggression its tracks. And Aggro…well Aggro will never change, turn things sideways forever!

I hope that this…obscenely long article was informative and helpful to all of you. If any readers have any comments on it, and maybe see things differently I’m more than open to them. Discussion is progress and how we all get better.

Next Time…I’m actually not sure what yet, you’ll just have to be on the lookout.