Now that we’ve had a bit of time and quite a few events, it’s a good point to look back. Mostly to see the mistakes I made previously on card evaluation. I believe we grow the most as players not when we validate and confirm our correct choices, but when we learn from the incorrect ones we make. Especially myself, not only as a player but as a current writer. I had been making countless mistakes on articles recently so I’m hoping to improve further on the misses and flubs I’ve been putting into said articles. So today, I’ll look back at a couple of big misses in my evaluation of World Tournament. This should be a short article but I hope you enjoy it all the same.

No Overrated Cards:

I will say compared to previous sets, I didn’t seem to make any misses on cards I hyped up big time. The Goku and Uub Link has proved to be as powerful as I expected it to be, I seemed to be ahead of a lot when it came to the power of Trunks/Ototosuki and Announcer I think everyone had to be absurdly good. But I think most of this could be credit to being a bit conservative with my expectations within the set. Now onto what we actually came for.

Underrated Cards:

Toughened Up Chiaotzu/Toughened Up Krillin

Where I Was Wrong:

I was pretty harsh on these two for sure. I figured that the cantrip took too long to realistically pay off and while Krillin was a 20K Crit Attacker it would be pretty easy to deal with. I was incorrect. 20K Crit on 2 realistically is still very powerful and makes defense difficult, and if Chiaotzu is granting you multiple cards you’re coming out extremely far ahead while also doubling as an emergency blocker in a pinch. The duo reads pretty simple but plays surprisingly well. Most people who have played WT decks in the past few weeks who have played this duo have noted how powerful they are. Some even proclaimed them to be the best cards in their decks. I certainly can’t argue with their experience with these cards.

Feet Kamehameha

Where I Was Wrong:

I wasn’t really terribly wrong on this card, just underestimated how good it would be based on said evaluation. Turns out if +10K and Double Strike is good, +15K and Crit is also damn good even if far more limited. Great on offense, a solid stone wall on defense (as these Move Cycles are turning out to be), it turns out this card isn’t a gimmick but a true cog for many a Green Goku Leader..

Hercule/Bundle of Curiosity Hercule

Where I Was Wrong:

I’ll be honest, this is the main reason I’m making this article today. Because I was WAY off when it came to evaluating Hercule and it’s not even that I said he was a bad Leader. The issue was that I thought he’d be poor at dealing with aggro.

Oops.

Not only is he NOT poor at dealing with Aggro, he has an absolutely sensational matchup against Aggro. Some have even stated that Hercule vs U/Y Swap is a 7-3 or better matchup (for those who don’t know, quick rundown, those numbers are a representation of how many games each deck would win against each other in a 10 game series. Thus Hercule would win 7 games to U/Y Swap’s 3. This is just theoretical.). Paired with Senzu Bean, Hercule becomes the absolute worst thing a go wide Aggro deck can deal with. See normally the game plan is to either win by a thousand cuts with a bunch of small attacks that either get home or slowly drain the opponent’s hand size. The problem is, due to Hercule’s ability, his hand size doesn’t go down one bit when paired with Senzu Bean. He also just strictly gets advantage from Unbreakable Goku and Bodyguard effects. Which means U/Y Swap can huff and puff and get nothing accomplished in a turn.

Hercule is a near perfect meta call right now and some calling it the best deck in the format. I…don’t particularly agree, just because while it has an absurd matchup against the other “best deck” in the format, he does struggle against much slower strategies since they often attack only once or twice a turn so he doesn’t get as much mileage from his ability. Cell Chain is particularly annoying for him, assuming they play the matchup correctly (aka don’t be dumb and give him back all his card advantage), and we’ve also seen U7 Decks take actual Regional Wins because they rarely attack themselves until the End Game. I would imagine for Set 5, Yamcha will be a struggle as well (Hercule only goes off when he’s in battle, unless Hercule wants to put absolutely nothing out Yamcha will just attack everything else).

Still he should be an absolute fixture with how well he completely hoses an archetype. An archetype I thought he’d be terrible at dealing with. Probably one of my biggest whiffs to date.

Final Thoughts:

I figured it’d be nice to get a nice, quick article out. Nothing too heavy and it was rattling in my brain for a while. Next time, we’ll get into the Top Cards in each rarity for Miraculous Revival.