Strap in folks, because this is a big one!

Today, Bandai released the trailer for set 8 - Malicious Machinations. I'll be breaking down some of the most interesting parts!

Set 8, as we went over in our

coverage of the leak that came out of Italy

, brings some new characters from wider DB lore, including the movies and video games!

Dr. Wheelo is one such character. Although Bandai seem to have decided to just keep his name from the Japanese version: Dr. Uiro. We can see that there will be a Dr. Wheelo leader.

Dr. Uiro, The Evil Scientist. On his awakened side he has the standard draw one on attack.

The Androids are back! I for one can't wait to see more Android 16 cards. This set, the androids are Blue/Green, further pushing the combination. That leads us to the Blue/Green art reveals

Some awesome art, I can't wait to see the rest! We did see the skills and details revealed for one of these cards. Son Goku, Spirit of the Planet.

This card is pretty darn good. On top of boasting the new Revive skill which allows you to play the card again if it's KO'd, it can also gain 10k power and Triple Strike during battle! Being only a 2 cost means it's susceptible to a lot of removal though. A fun interaction would be to attack with this card, it gets KO'd by Shocking Death Ball or an arrival card, then you play it with Revive and attack again.

This card's Permanent is a smart way to get around skills like chain attack trunks, world peace and similar. I hope we see similar permanents on other cards going forward, to avoid broken combos like we are seeing in the various wish ramp decks.

Bulma is getting a leader in this set as we can see above. It's great to see the SSG transformation represented in these cards.

One of these was also revealed. Super Baby 2, Malicious Majesty

This is another really strong card. Offering is a crazy skill that gives your opponent a choice of either taking a life, or allowing you to draw 2 cards. That is amazing end game value, either way it helps you finish them off. The Activate: Battle acts as a board wipe as well as a neg to your opponents leader, almost always bringing it's power down to zero, making the final push that much harder for them to stop. It also negates all non keyword skills on the leader and non barrier battle cards, which means things like Relentless Speed Janemba's auto negate can be taken out.

We only have a small black reveal, but there are a couple of things we can ascertain from them. These cards are almost certainly not Over Realm support, unless Bandai decide to move away from Xeno stuff for that skill, which is unlikely. We can also see that after a long wait for some of us, Turles is finally arriving in the game!

The starter and expert deck exclusive cards have been revealed. Let's start with the starter deck, Parasitic Overlord.

I feel like this is unnecessary - we have many other characters that could get leaders before this, but we have a third baby leader.

The leader does have very unique skills though. On the unawakened side, you can take a life once per turn to restand the leader after you've already attacked, which isn't something we've seen before on a leader.

Once you hit 2 life (given the support cards for this deck, that wouldn't be too hard) you can draw 2 cards, AND untap 2 energy to awaken. So Strong!!!

Super Baby 2, Out for Revenge has Dual Attack, but it only draws for the first attack. Not the most amazing back side, but attacking twice a turn with your leader for the whole game is pretty good.

SS3 Son Goku, the Last Straw is Saiyan Cabba for yellow! It's great to see another version of this card. Great early pressure and can also win games in a pinch.

Super Baby 1, the Conqueror is another unique card. It can be free played from hand if you have dealt 2 or more damage to your opponent during the current turn. You pretty much just want to play this then evolve into the following straight away, because it's essentially a 15k vanilla.

Super Baby 2, Vengeful Rampage evolves onto the above yellow Baby for one red and one yellow energy. It has the new offering skill, so it can burn or earn. It completely shuts out all of your opponents battle cards for your turn, meaning blockers, deadly defenders and other disruptive battle card effects are useless on the turn this card is put into play. It also gains Dual Attack for the turn, which is obviously a theme with these new Baby cards.

Battle to the Death is the final Starter Rare from the new set. It's one of the cards I mentioned earlier that can awaken you super quickly. For two energy (one red one yellow) you can take 3 life and neg an opponents battle card ignoring barrier by 25k. Strong, but very risky.

Now we'll look at the expert deck: Android Duality

A lot of Dragon Ball FighterZ fans have been waiting for this one. Android 21, while being a video game exclusive character, was designed by the king Akira Toriyama.

Standard draw 1 on attack, but the Awaken skill is a little different. Once you have 6 energy and also a Blue/Green multicolour card in your energy, you can untap one and draw one then awaken. That restricts the leader a bit by forcing you to play Blue/Green.

Self-Control Andoid 21 has a Permanent that prevents you from playing Battle Cards with an original energy cost of 6 or more. It's important to note that this isn't a deck building restriction like Dende or Janemba's permanent, it just means you can't play them once you've awakened.

The auto is very wordy, but it essentially allows you to swap out energy for multicolour energy in conjunction with your other cards skills, then untap it at the start of your opponents turn for defense.

Android 17 is the Android searcher we needed! It can grab the 3 drop cell...

Android 18 is free one drop removal which can be used during battle.

My boy Android 16 is back!! Android 16, Mechanical Prowess is a free blocker if you place an energy in the drop area, which you can do with this next card.

Android 16, A New Start places a blue/green energy in the drop to free play the card. That then triggers the former battle cards skill to free play the blocker, and also the leaders skill to place an energy back from the drop. Essentially 2 battle cards for free.

Where to start. Android 21, the Beautiful Scientist is a 4 drop blocker. Sounds bad, but then you read the auto. When played from hand (finally they word these ramp skills correctly) it allows you to search the top 7 cards of your deck and add one of them to energy in rest. Then you can KO one of your opponents battle cards. It also has the caveat that once it's played, you can't play any battle cards between 30k and 35k for the rest of the game. Very interesting. There's obviously something they're trying to stop us from doing here. I'm all for restrictions like this if it prevents broken decks from running rampant.

This card doesn't have Energy Exhaust, making it even more valuable!

Android 21, A Bad Omen is a card that can be played from your energy by tapping 2 blue and 2 green energy. It then allows you to place one card from your energy in your drop to send an opponents battle card, and one card from their life to the bottom of their deck. It also procs the previous skills we spoke about. This could be great sitting in energy for a finisher to burn that last life.

Might of the Red Ribbon Army is like no other extra card we currently have in the game (except maybe the new drop negates) in that it has a purpose in hand and in the drop. It's a cantrip for one energy, then it allows you to filter your energy by removing it from the drop area.

Now look at that artwork. I reckon someone at Bandai had this image and built the card around that rather than the other way around. This is a board wipe for 4 energy. It also replaces itself. The skill is very fitting of Photon Wave, given that the technique destroys everything in it's path.

The final Expert Rare is Predation. 2 energy to draw 2 and KO a 1 drop. Not revolutionary, but could see play.

Now, another tidbit of info we were treated to is that there will be 3 SCRs in set 8, the most ever in a single set. Keen eyed fans would have noticed this hint in the video:

SCR SS4 VEGETA! Fans have been waiting for a SS4 Vegeta card ever since SS4 Goku was added to the game. It's been a long wait, but it's safe to say that wait is nearly over given these hints!

That's all I can manage, it was a long one! There are still more grains to sift in the video, so if you haven't seen it, take a look at the

Bandai YouTube video here

.

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~Sam Russell