What’s up Ballerz?! Today’ I’m talking about my experience going X-1 at PPG’s July 31 Webcam Regionals! It was BO1 format and I took Gogeta Xeno. I wasn’t expecting to do as well as I did, and was very happy with the result. If you’ve been following my blog, you’lll know I ran really hot this year so I am glad to have taken home another finals invite. Gogeta and Janemba are my favourite characters in Dragon Ball so it was really hype for me to be able to top an event with (a variant of) one of my favourite characters. Plus the art on all of the deck’s cards is so good! So I’ll talk about my list, potential changes, BO3 changes, and my matchups further on. Enjoy!
Decklist
My list was actually very, very non-typical for Gogeta Xeno. I tried a bunch of variations of the list, focusing on Paikuhan unison, then focusing on 1 drops, and trying with just black good cards. I ultimately decided the build above 2 days before the tournament. I had topped a 3 Mana locals with a very similar build, but prior to that I was fully intending to play Vegeks. Unfortunately, in my testing with Vegeks I could not consistently beat Mecha and the RNG of my mills dictated my unfavourable/50-50 matchups. The list was partially inspired by Vegeks as I maxed out on ‘mill’ effect cards such as Unrelenting Assault Trunks, Kai TP, and Mira Unison.
The Leader itself is very strong, having an ability to draw an additional card with Union-Fusion on both the front and back, Mill 5 cards to warp to pseudo-extend your hand size, and also having the ability to draw on attack and self awaken on both the front and back of the Leader. He is very, very versatile, and on your awaken turn you can draw 6 between your life and deck while untapping an energy, not including any trunks you might draw off your mill.
I play this list similar to how I would play Dark Broly, and that’s why there’s an abundance of 30ks and a large defensive package. Specifically, my choice of Unison being Mira was based on my experience with testing both him and Paikuhan. I found that when I played a 1-drop spam game the 1-cost cards were frequently removed, my hand would stall, and Paikuhan never got to 3 markers to use the -3 skill. With Mira, I was able to get an extra hand filter ability as well as a top-end game-ending swing if left unchecked. The hand filter was key, as the deck runs so many cards that are useful in the warp it is kind of like artificially increasing your hand size. I overrealmed every turn after T1, usually only overrealming Trunks or Goku unless there was a target I needed to clear with Vegeta or my opponent had low hand size I could exploit. I usually used the topdeck-to-warp skill 3 times, 15-20 is a good amount of cards to have in there, this was also dictated by what cards I’d seen, for example if I hadn’t seen a trunks yet and I know I have 20 cards left in deck I would mill to try to see the Trunks.
Changes I’d Make
A card I wanted to get more testing in with and that would like have won me my only loss is Belmod, Double Devastation. Being able to clear your Gogeta, Thwarting the Dark Empire and play another one for even more pressure/board clear would be very strong, and its easy to build a board for little to no energy with this deck given the amount of 1-cost and overrealm cards. Other than that, for BO1 there isn’t much I would change to be honest, maybe slim up my 1-of tech cards and add a second Goku, Catastrophic Premonition, but they were all necessary and space was already tight at 53 cards.
For BO3 I’d say you can pick either Petrification or Supreme Kai negate to maindeck 2 copies of, as they both do similar things. I would also suggest -1 Vegeta True Fighting Spirit (TFS) and +1 Vegeta, Catastrophic Premonition. You can side the 3rd Vegeta TFS. The 1-ofs don’t hurt as much in this deck as you can grab them back with the 30K Goku. I’d lastly suggest maining 4 Thwarting the Dark Empire if you are also adding in Belmod, just to up the consistency.
M.V.P.s
My MVPs were Mira, Dimensional Superpower, who won me 3 of my games (once with a Champa doublestrike ontop!). I would keep 1-2 Mira in my hand late game if the gamestate allowed and stuff one under my existing Mira to swing and -2, and/or play a new Mira with 3 markers and swing with it once my opponent tapped out. People have forgotten how to respect a Mira swing because there’s so much battle card interaction now. Second place MVP goes to Son Goku, Catastrophic Premonition, being able to play him with the SR from drop/warp allowed me to sneak 2 damage in on a leader or unison. Lastly, the MVP and my favourite overrealm to play is the SS4 Goku. Being able to grab back any flavour of Gogeta, a Brainwashed, or a Kai Negate was so much utility, in a pinch, I would just grab back an extra copy of himself!
Matchups/Rounds:
The PPG Tournament was about 250 players, so it went to 8 rounds. I ended X-1 (7-1!) and got 5th. Sucks I bubbled out of top 4 but I live in 5th and was very happy with my performance regardless.
Game 1 – King Cold – W
I had never played this matchup and was a little nervous. I think my opponent was also inexperienced in the matchup because I could tell he was saving his Charismatic Villains for my Gogetas, so I just didn’t play Gogeta unless there was a second copy I could put down or I could clear his Unison. It went to about 5 energy which was very scary. Luckily I was able to use Petrification on his Frieza to stop the dual attack/pop a field, my battle card, and a card from my hand skill.
Game 2 – Tien WMAT – W
I was actually really scared in this matchup. I know many of the cards the deck runs has barrier, but thankfully I opened the blocker Gogeta that can warp a card ignoring Barrier. My opponent actually pressured me pretty hard, but unfortunately I think he overextended on Turn 3 and didn’t have enough defensively to stop my clapbacks. He tapped out, I got him to 1, and then ended the game with Mira.
Game 3 – King Vegeta R/G- W
A matchup I was very scared for. Shout out to my Gogeta Senseis, Nick and Ced, who explained to me that I should focus on board clear and pressure, because if I can awaken KV fast they have trouble stabilizing whereas I can stabilize easy. This was very true, it wasn’t an easy though. My recollection was I ended the game with Mira Champa.
Game 4 – SS3 Goku Reboot w/ Boujack – L
My only loss of the day. I don’t have practice against this deck, you can actually watch gameplay of me getting bodied 2-1 against Rashaad of BadBeats with very similar decks. It basically comes down to if my opponent has Baby Hatch, the issue is with my opponent untapping 3 its hard to ‘read’ if they have overextended and have access to Hatch as opposed to a different blue Leader. My assumption in this case was because the Leader doesn’t draw well, hope they don’t have it and extend myself. Of course my opponent used Baby Hatch when I had spent all my energy but 1. Unfortunately the next turn I lost on his clapback by 5k. I had a great Petrification play where I negated Baby Hatch and then petrified a Boujack dual attacker, but it wasn’t enough and he ended up outcomboing me on his last swing by 5k. Very sad loss for me but outside of getting hit with Baby Hatch and overextending there isn’t something I would have done differently.
Game 5 – King Vegeta – W
#5 and #6 run together for me, but I think this is one where my opponent punted. He had 2 energy open into my turn 2 where I had 5 life. He gives me a young invader to crit me to 4. I Gogeta Thwarting him, swing, he goes to negate with Toppo and I have to say “Sorry you can’t play Toppo. You gave me a young invader and he’s not a red saiyan.” I let my opponent take the obviously super neg play back, and then he countered with Testing the Opposition instead, to which again, he couldn’t play a blocker token. I was able to pressure him and he couldn’t recover.
Game 6 – King Vegeta – W
Close game, I focused on controlling the board and outdrawing my opponent, ultimately he couldn’t get enough board presence. I scummed him a bit at the end, he had a bigger hand and 2 life, he had tapped out on 3 for the Vegeta SSB evolve. I had an unlimited power Mira swing and Heroine’s Lineage in my hand. I stole Vegeta to crit him to 1 then swung in with Mira for 120K. He could only combo to 90K.
Game 7 – Dark Broly (jayson scott/regional winner) – W
A very tough game, I am lucky enough to be super familiar with Dark Broly, and I’ve had some pretty decent experience with the matchup, enough to know its about 50-50 pre-banlist and Gogeta will be favoured post-banlist. I won by a hair, though I didn’t see negates, I sat on two SS3 Gohan blockers to soak up swings in his endgame. Dark Broly started slow and it seemed to me his hand was at least a little brick, so I also played a slower game knowing I could get more value drawing 2 and creating a board presence than he could turn-by-turn.He ultimately couldn’t push enough swings through and I was able to win on the clapback, despite a very capable opponent who even Brainwashed out of my doublestrike Mira attack.
Game 8 – Launch R/G – W
My final match, a very fun game and I thought it would be very difficult. He went wide early and I was able to clear his board then start gaining hand advantage over him. He ended up tapping out for Toppo at 3 life with 3 cards left in his hand after warping for Goku TFS to my 10 cards. I had 2 doublestrikers and some 1 drops on board and it was very, very tough for me to take the Toppo Challenge. I thought about it for a full 30 seconds, because if he had testing the opposition in his hand I could swing in and punt the game. I ended up taking the challenge, comboing up to 30K on my Goku Catastrophic premonition, I then overrealmed and took game with a 30k swing that I combo’d up to 60k. I finished X-1 and was ecstatic!
Conclusion
Overall I was so happy to be able to perform with Gogeta Xeno. The playlines and cards I was using were unique and to my knowledge no similar build has done as well. Special shout out to my team, Team Berserk, to Rashaad, Giancarlo, and special thank you to Ced, You guys all helped me on this build and I was grateful for the advice. I had a ton of fun, and I am so glad Sublett and Eric Selitto stayed playing and topped with me as well!
That’s it for me. Not bad for one of my first ‘real’ events with Blue Baby. I’m going to try to make some changes and stick with it for the next one, at least until I get some Gogeta winners and can go back to Dark Broly! For what its worth, I think Baby is the best relatively cheap deck in the format. It isn’t the most difficult deck to learn and there’s lots of awesome resources. Big thank you to the folks that support me, I keep making articles and playing the game because of you guys. Let me know what you think, what the best decks are, etc., and above all, Keep Ballin’.
Border City BallerZ 