Table of Contents (Use Ctrl + F to go through the guide in parts) (1) Introduction

• Basic Information, Win Conditions (2) Card Explanations
• Breakdown of each type of card
• (2a) Personalities
• (2b) Masteries
• (2c) Physical Attacks & Power Stages
• (2d) Energy Attacks
• (2e) Combat, Discard Pile, "Remove from the game"
• (2f) Non-Combat
• (2g) Dragonballs
• (2h) Drills
• (2i) Allies (3) Duel Breakdown
• Phases of the game
• (3a) Anger
• (3b) Final Physical Attack (4) Speedrun Strats
• (4a) List of Masteries and who plays them
• (4b) Card List

Note: Posting 2 guides here, this one will be a long, in-depth explanation of how to play the game, and to give my ideas on speedrunning it. The other will be much shorter, as a list of personal strats that I follow. Last update: 1-27-17 (Fixed broken pics and text errors)

My pastebin link, which has literally everything: http://pastebin.com/u/Wado_3000

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Part (1): Introduction & Ways to Win

The goal of speedrunning Dragonball Z: Collectible Card Game for the Game Boy Advance is to defeat all duelists in each level, beating them one by one until finally beating Cell. Now, this doesn't trigger the credits; I assume once you unlock all personalities, and beat Cell with each one, the credits would play. But since I wanted to make this run convenient, simply reaching the screen that says "You have defeated Cell" is enough IMO. This is made from the old version of the card game, made by Score Entertainment.

The following is gonna be a guide for anyone who's never played the game before, split into 4 main parts. This video game was made in 2002, so if you played the real life game around that time, things might be a little different. I've only played the video game, so I can only talk about how the game has applied the rules. Here's a link to the rule book: http://lackeyccg.com/dbzccg/dbzcrd.pdf. You can of course read the official rule book, but if you want a first hand take on the game, then read on. It's made for the last format the real life card game was made, so a large amount of the cards in there aren't in-game, and some of the rulings don't apply.

The Dragonball Z: Collectible Card Game (which I'll shorten to DBZ CCG from now on) is a turn based strategy game, where you and your opponent use your personal decks to play. There are 3 ways to win:

1. Dragonball Victory: That's right, you can collect all 7 Dragonballs in the DBZ card game, woohoo! :). To explain it in a more technical sense, if you have all 7 Dragonball cards played on your side of the field, you receive an automatic victory. It's a little more particular than that honestly, but I'll save a more in-depth explanation for later on in the guide. This is a condition that won't ever really happen; you aren't given any of the Dragonball cards at the start of the game.

2. Most Powerful Personality Victory: If you reach your highest personality level (which will be explained in more depth in a bit), and if your opponent's highest personality level is equal to or lower than your highest level, then you automatically win. This is the fastest way to win a duel in the game.

3. Survival Victory: When your opponent runs out of cards in their Life Deck, you win the game. Your playing deck is called "Life Deck" for this purpose, I guess since you basically live and die by it. This will be explained in more detail later, but attacks can do what's called "life cards of damage". With enough attacks, if you would inflict more life cards of damage than your opponent has currently in their deck, you win the game. Also, if your opponent cannot draw cards from the deck, you win as well. This can happen during the very start of a turn, when each player draws 3 cards.

So now that we have the win conditions out of the way, let's get a little deeper in how you start to play. The first step is to choose a DBZ character, or what's known as your Personality. So in this game, you can choose to be Goku, Gohan, Garlic Jr., or Frieza.

Each personality has at least 3 levels: you start a duel at Level 1, and via the anger mechanic, you can reach your higher levels. You can gain anger via a variety of card effects; in a bit, I'll try to explain the construction of the cards in this game, and how to use them. There are some personalities you duel against that have 4 or more levels; unfortunately, all the characters you have at the start of the game only have 3, so you can't win by Most Powerful Personality every time.

In this game, your deck can be between 50-75 cards, with your 3 Personality cards included. It's your choice completely as to what other kinds of cards you want to use. In the next part, I'll try to flesh out all the different types of cards in the game. Then, I'll explain the format of how a duel goes.

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Part (2): Card Explanations

Here's a quick list of the different kinds: Personality, Mastery, Physical Attacks, Energy Attacks, Combat, Non-Combat, Dragonballs, Drills, and Allies.

I know that seems like a lot, and it kind of is lol. If you've played other CCG's or TCG's before this should be easier for me. Personally I play Yugioh, so certain aspects of the game were easier to pick up. Anyways, I'll give an example of each kind of card, and hopefully explain them in a way that's easy to understand.

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(2a) Personality:

Personality cards commonly start with the characters name, followed by some arbitrary title. The number at the top left is your current level of personality. So this is Frieza's first personality.

The numbers on the right are called Power Stages. There are 10 total power stages, 11 if you include 0. Generally, the higher power stage you are, the stronger you are, and the better off you are during a duel. And yes, stronger characters have bigger numbers, and therefore can do more damage with certain kinds of attacks.

Look a little below the middle of the card: I believe the big number you see yet again relates to the personality level, but it's not super relevant. Pay attention to the text: every personality card has a specific Personality Power. Power stages are not the sole thing you want to pay attention to. Whatever that special power is can determine what kind of strategy you want to use for your deck, and how well you can do in a duel.

So for Frieza specifically, his first personality allows him to do a little more damage with all energy attacks. It's not exactly wrong to think that higher levels of personalities have better effects, but you'll see that certain kinds of effects are much better than others. For example, Guldo's personality power is a physical attack, that if successful, can add physical attacks he's already used back to his hand! (I'll explain this in a more technical way later.)

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(2b) Mastery:

In the DBZ CCG, many of the cards are associated with a certain color class, or species. There are 6 different styles to choose from: Red, Blue, Orange, Black, Saiyan, and Namekian. A card with any of these styles as the first word of its name is a part of that style.

Similar to your personality cards, any Mastery cards you have are put into play at the very start of a duel. They aren't required to play the game really, but all Masteries give you a specific strategy to aim for. You can play only 1 type of Mastery in any given deck.

To have a Mastery, you must declare what's called a Tokui Waza. It's actually not important to remember that name really, but you must follow this rule: you can only have 1 style of card in a deck to play a mastery. So if you wanted to play Red Style Mastery, you cannot play any cards that start with the name of any of the other 5 styles. Also, you must play at least 1 card of that style: for example, in your 50 card deck, you can play 49 cards that belong to no style at all, but at least 1 out of the 50 must be a Red card.

Again, Mastery cards aren't required, but they certainly give you an advantage. For the example above, you can gain at least 1 anger each turn! I guess the only drawback is, to maximize the strength of your Mastery card, you need to play many copies of cards of your style. So if I wanted to ensure that I get the most anger every turn, I would run plenty of Red style cards in my Red Mastery deck.

Some masteries have effects that just apply to any cards of their style, but for our example, it must be played during Combat. Well then, let's tackle this mystery, and get into the Combat cards!

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(2c) Physical Attacks:

Notice the name at the top: it's just a random attack name... and not even from the show! Just random words honestly lol. Also, the picture is of Raditz's face; the aesthetic of the cards rarely serve much of a purpose. But look in the very middle of the card: that tells you exactly what type of card it is. Additionally, the lower half of the card is what's really, really important. Reading cards carefully is the only way to play this game properly.

All physical attacks do what's called "power stages of damage". In the real life game, you're given what's known as the Physical Attack Table, which when followed properly, should determine the way to inflict power stages of damage to your opponent. I believe it's programmed automatically in the video game; I have no idea how accurate it is.

When you or your opponent reach a power stage of 0, any additional inflicted power stages of damages will turn into life cards of damage. So if your card would do 5 power stages of damage, and your opponent only has 4, then they'll lose all 4 power stages, and additionally lose 1 life card.

It's important to maintain your power stages as much as possible, because it both determines the damage of your physical attacks, as well as how well you can take your opponent's physical attacks. As stated when I described Personality cards, the higher power stages you have, the stronger and better off you are in a duel. In this game, it comes to a point where if the difference between your power stages and the opponent's is large enough, one of you won't inflict any regular damage with physical attacks at all.

It can feel a bit unfair at times honestly, but makes sense. If you're at 2 power stages, and your opponent has 10, you probably aren't strong enough to damage them very much, if at all. To bring this concept further, weaker characters can't do much regular damage against stronger ones; take for example, Guldo vs. Goku:

Guldo's max power stage is 50,000, while Goku's max is 1,000,000! So since Goku has high power stages, someone like Guldo can't really hurt Goku with any regular physical attack, just because Goku is so much stronger.

So how would Guldo damage Goku at all? In terms of inflicted damage, it's important to note the effect of whatever card you're using. In addition to what the Physical Attack Table would determine, a card will commonly state how many power stages of damage it can do. With the above example, the text says: "Physical Attack doing +3 power stages of damage if successful."

The only way a Guldo could really do damage to a Goku, is if he lowers Goku's power stages to about 0. So for a Guldo, or any weaker characters, it's important to read the effect of a physical attack, and see how many additional power stages it can inflict on an opponent. Having 0 power stages is pretty bad actually, as you can inflict no regular damage on an opponent! So if your physical attack doesn't state that it does any set power stages of damage, your attack will basically have "no effect". If both you and the opponent have 0 power stages, then you'll each do 1 life card of damage with any physical attack, on top of whatever set amount of damage that specific card has.

Going back to our example, the "+3 power stages" part means that you do 3 additional stages of damage, along with the natural damage determined by the Physical Attack Table. I'm sure the "if successful" part might be puzzling, but basically, if your opponent doesn't play any effect in response to your attack, you then can inflict damage. Hopefully this doesn't sound too strange if you've played another CCG or TCG before.

To finally wrap up this explanation of just one card lol, the last part of the text says "Raise card user's anger by 1 level." Regardless if the attack is successful, or does any damage, you gain 1 anger level from this card; I'll explain the anger mechanic when we get to the breakdown of a duel. But again, carefully read your card's effect to determine how it works.

This has been a super long explanation of physical attacks, but it's important to understand them, as they should be the majority of the type of cards you should run in your deck. They are certainly the easiest cards to play, and lead to winning a duel in the easiest fashion. Whew... let's finally move on to a different card.

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(2d) Energy Combat:

Unlike physical attacks, energy attacks will always do 4 life cards of damage, unless stated otherwise. Many energy attacks will state a specific number of life cards: for example, they may say "Energy attack doing 'X' life cards of damage"; the attack won't do any additional damage than the stated amount.

As well as doing only life cards of damage, energy attacks also cost 2 power stages to perform. This means that, every time you use an energy attack, you lessen your power stages. If you have 1 or 0 power stages, you cannot activate an energy attack. This rule is a big reason why you should have far more physical attacks than energy, as the latter are generally harder to play.

Going back to our example, this card's first sentence simply says "Energy attack.". So this card will only do 4 life cards of damage, if not blocked by some effect. What makes this card interesting is the rest of its text. On activation, before the attack would do any damage, you would remove an ally card, or drill card from the game. These types of cards will be explained in a bit. Also with this card, you get to raise your anger by 1. Fun card right? Let's move on to Combat cards:

(2e) I'll show 2 different Combat cards, as there are various kinds. They aren't as straightforward as Physical or Energy attacks, so it's important to read their effects.

1st:

Combat cards are, by definition, played during the Combat phase. For some, you would use them similarly to how you would use a physical or energy attack, except that they don't do any damage. Generally though, you simply apply their effects, based on the text of the card.

For the first example, it says that you can stop a physical or energy attack. You wouldn't use this card like an attack, but rather, choose to use this when your opponent would use an attack to inflict damage. This is one of the cards that I said can "block" attacks earlier. So if an attack has some effect that says "if successful", then cards like these can stop that effect from happening.

The last sentence says "discard from the game after use". I'll cover it more later, but I'm sure you're wondering, "Where do these 'life cards' go when you inflict damage?", or "Where do my cards go after I've used them?". The answer is the Discard Pile. So as you use your attacks, when all their effects have applied, and you've inflicted damage, you put them in the discard pile. And yes, all life cards of damage would go to the discard pile too. So if you win by survival victory, you've probably sent the majority of your opponent's cards to the discard pile.

Now then, the "discard from the game" means that this specific card does not go to the discard pile. Sounds confusing I know, I'll explain! It basically gets removed from the game. As you play, you'll see that various effects apply to the discard pile. Remember when I mentioned Guldo, in that he can get back cards he's already used? To be more specific, if his attack isn't blocked somehow, he'll be able to add 2 cards from his discard pile to his hand... scary! You might want to hold on to something like Mother's Touch if you go against him. To add on to the "removed from the game" mechanic, it's basically a clause that prevents cards from being abused in such a manner. So something like Mother's Touch won't hit the discard pile if played in Combat (it will go to the discard pile if sent straight from the life deck via damage some attack).

2nd:

This card should be simple to understand, and is also much more powerful. You play this card during combat, like a regular attack. But instead of damage, you basically end combat immediately, or basically end the current turn and move on to the next one, where both players draw 3 cards and start all over again. I'll go into more detail on the "hold extra cards" part of the effect later on.

Next are Non-Combats, fun! :(

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(2f) Non-Combat:

For these types of cards, and every other type I'll cover from here on, you want to put them play them during the Non-Combat Phase. You see, after you draw your 3 cards for the turn, if you are the turn player, you have a phase where you can put any Non-Combat cards in the Non-Combat zone. It's a straightforward prompt you'll see in game. If it's not your turn, or if these types of cards are not already played into a Non-Combat zone from previous turns, then you cannot activate their effects. This goes the same for Dragonballs, Drills, and Ally cards, which all have their own specified zones. Basically, if you draw these cards on the opponent's turn, they serve no real use to you :( Just to note, the turn player gets to play the first card during combat.

In place for being a bit more difficult to play than all other types of cards introduced before, Non-Combats have a variety of powerful effects. If played in a Non-Combat zone in the appropriate phase, you can activate their effects just like you would an attack or regular combat card. So for the above example, if played in a zone, you can activate it during Combat to raise your anger by 2, move cards from your discard pile to your life deck, and then finally remove it from the game.

It's best to not run a ton of Non-Combats, or many of the following types cards I'll mention. Although their effects may be helpful, the fact that drawing too many at once can be detrimental on the opponent's turn make them risky. Let's move on:

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(2g) Dragonballs: (This card is gonna look a little different in the video game, but its name and effect are the exact same.)

Yep, the individual Dragonball cards all have their own effects you can use. Most of them are actually quite powerful; a game rule is that you can have up to 1 copy of each Dragonball card in your deck. Yet another reason why the Dragonball victory is so unlikely lol. Also, only 1 copy of each Dragonball card can be played between both players. So let's say both you and your opponent play the same Dragonball cards, and they play a specific one first. If you later draw that same one, it can't be played at all :(

Unlike regular Non-Combats, a lot of the Dragonball cards have certain effects that activate immediately when played during the Non-Combat phase. So for the above example, once put into play, you will immediately gain 2 anger levels. Regardless, you can only activate any of the various effects of a Dragonball card one time. Dragonball cards always stay in play as well; most other cards go to the Discard pile at some point, but the Dragonballs are the exception (as well as your personality and Mastery cards).

An interesting rule with Dragonball cards is that, if you inflict 5 or more life cards of damage, you can take a Dragonball card from your opponent's side, and place it on your own side. I guess this was made to make the Dragonball victory more likely, but it's only relevant for a few of them. For the above example specifically, if it's played on your side, it can skip your opponent's Combat phase! So it would be nice to have this on your side before your opponent can use its effect lmao. (Quick note: if its effect is used, and you later steal it, you won't be able to use its effect, since it's already been used before during the game.)

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(2h) Drills:

Drill cards usually serve as boosters of some kind; their effects are more to give you some type of advantage. Most often, rather than being cards you play in Combat like an attack, Drill cards' effects just kind of apply when needed. So whenever the condition is met to use their effects, you're able to use them at the appropriate time of play. So for this example, every single physical attack you use will do 4 more power stages of damage. Drills can be very strong!

What's important to note for Drills is that they are sent to the discard pile when you gain a personality level. So if you have an anger based strategy, you want to be careful in how you play these types of cards.

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(2i) Allies:

Yep, you can have other DBZ characters in your deck as well! Ally cards are simply personality cards that aren't your own. Heroes can only play with other heroes, and villains with other villains. So you can't have Goku in your deck if your main personality is Frieza; they wouldn't get along too well (yeah I'm that corny :)) What's interesting is that both Piccolo & Vegeta can count as either side, so anyone can have those 2 as an ally. Quick note: While playing the game, when you duel against these 2, they'll be the opposite side of your personality. So if you're playing as Frieza, both Piccolo and Vegeta will be heroes.

You can only play personalities up to 2 levels lower than your highest personality level: so since your highest level is 3 among any of the characters you start with in game, your allies can only be level 1 personalities. You can play any number of ally cards you like.

Two interesting mechanics with allies are:

1. You can have your Ally's personality take power stages of damage instead of your own.
2. You can "tag out" to your ally card(s) during combat if your power stages are 2 above zero or below.

The first one is pretty nice, in that if you want to preserve your main personality's power stages, you can simply choose to inflict damage on your allies. However, if you allies power stages go to 0, you would still take life cards of damage from attacks. Or, if you would prefer to have your allies' power stages be higher, you can simply take damage yourself, then choose to tag out during your move to use their power stages.

Also with tagging out, you would be allowed to use any personality power your allies have. So if your ally's power is an attack, once you tag out to them, you would be able to use that attack as your own. Honestly... I think this is one of the cooler ideas of the card game. I dunno, playing as Goku, and having your allies in Gohan and Krillin, taking on your opponent playing as Frieza, with maybe Captain Ginyu and Zarbon as allies sounds pretty sweet in theory lol. But I'll say this now: it's not planned to ever run an ally in your deck. They just aren't all that helpful; it's nice to know how they work though if you see them used by your opponents in-game.

And with that, that's about all I have to say about the different cards in the game! Took a long damn time, I know. In the next part, I'll try to breakdown how a duel goes in the DBZ CCG.

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Part (3): Duel Breakdown

In this part, I'll try to highlight the exact phases of the game, and the order in which you and the opponent play.

The first thing to do is compare the opponent's power stages with your own. In general, both you and your opponent start at 5 stages above 0. But if there's a huge difference between your highest power stages... well, I'll actually just copy straight from the rulebook: "If player A’s power rating at 5 stages above 0 is double or more than player B’s power rating at 5 above 0, then player A's rating is set to 2 above 0. Player B sets their power rating to full and player B goes first."

So this rule is a good way to balance things out: it makes no sense why a Goku should start off with equal power stages to Guldo when he's significantly stronger.

When the duel starts, both you and the opponent first draw 3 cards.

Directly afterwards, the turn player has a Non-Combat phase, where they can put any Non-Combat, Dragonball, Drill, or Ally cards into play.

Next, the turn player gets a free Power-up; their power stages are increased by a given "power-up rating", shortened to PUR. At level 1, your PUR is 2, so you would increase your power stages by 2 before Combat starts. At level 2, your PUR I believe is 3, and at level 3 your PUR equals 4. Also, if you have a Mastery, at the start of the game you have a +1 added to your PUR. After this, you move on to Combat.

Combat is the real core of the game: this is where you inflict stages, or life cards of damage, and apply most of the effects of your cards. It goes very back & forth: if one player plays a card, the other has a chance to respond. If they don't, whatever damage or effects of the card is applied. You can also choose to simply pass your play, and let the opponent play their cards.

(3a) Anger: So anger has come up multiple times so far, but it's a pretty simple concept. Along with your personality, you have a Z-Sword right under it during duels. When you have an affect that says "+ anger", this is simply increased by that amount. When you reach 5 anger, you go to your next personality level. If you would reach MPP, you simply win when you'd gain your 5th anger at your 2nd personality. If you can't win by MPP, then nothing happens when you get to 5 anger at Level 3.

I'm sure you're wondering: is there really nothing I could do if I have a card I can't play in my hand? It's very easy for a card to be dead, since if it's the opponent's turn, you never even had a Non-Combat phase!

(3b) In Combat, there's a mechanic called the Final Physical Attack. For this, you can choose any card in your hand to be a basic physical attack; so yea, you can turn that dead Dragonball card into an attack! It's calculated like a regular physical attack, so the Physical Attack Table would come into play. Once you have used your Final Physical Attack, you cannot activate new effects or attack with any other cards until the turn is over.

Combat officially ends when both players pass. At the end, if a player has cards in their hand, they must discard until they have 1 left. So you don't have to play all your cards in Combat; so you can hold onto that Non-Combat card until your turn, or if you feel that some card could serve a better purpose later in the game. Note: remember when I mentioned the Saiyan Truce Card? It has an effect that allows you to hold on to extra cards when Combat ends. SO powerful, as you can potentially start with 5 or 6 cards in your hand next turn! All the saiyan characters have it in game, which can feel beyond unfair.

When the next turn starts, both players draw 3 cards, and now the other player has a Non-Combat phase. And other then that, the exact same sequence applies. You simply go back and forth, trading turns until someone wins the game. However, like I said in the Card Explanation section, it's important to read and understand card effects completely. As I mentioned, there're various cards that can make Combat go a bit differently (even cards that can end Combat immediately... I'm looking at you Saiyan Truce!).

All I can say is to play the game carefully, keeping the basic concepts in mind. After some time, you'll start to notice how certain cards work, and understand the general flow of the game. Also, for this video game, when you win a duel, the game gives you 10 new cards. Now by new, I don't mean it's a guarantee that they aren't already in your card pool. But the quality of your drops can make or break how fast the game goes.

Now, on to the main part of this little guide: Speedrun Strats! :)

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Part (4): Speedrun Ideas/Explanations

So now that I've broken down the game as best I could, I'll now get into what I believe to be the best strategy to play the game. At the time of writing this, I'm always really just testing things out.

The general idea is to beat all opponents once, mainly defeating Cell, and having the game say "You have defeated Cell!".

So as a run, I think the cleanest way to start off the game is by choosing "Erase Data", it's the closest thing I've seen to starting a new game. I've considered the option of making the deck beforehand, but in other card game based speedruns, they make the deck from scratch, so I figured I should follow suit.

Ideally, the fastest way to win a duel in this game is by Most Powerful Personality (MPP) victory. So you would want to win by using the anger mechanic, and reaching your highest level as fast as you can to win. However, since all your options for characters start with just 3 personality levels, there's a number of people you can't defeat in such a manner. Here's a quick list of those you can beat by MPP, and those you can't: Can: Krillin, Nail, Guldo, Goku, Frieza, King Cold. Can't: Gohan. Piccolo, Garlic Jr., Vegeta, Trunks, Cell.

So that means that there are at least 6 duels you have to win by Survival victory. So playing this game comes down to who you think can get to their highest personality the fastest, and/or inflict the most damage as fast as possible.

Your initial choices aren't that amazing. Your Main Personality choices are Goku, Gohan, Garlic Jr., and Frieza. You can view their respective power stages and personality powers on your own lol.

On the last part of the guide, I kinda mentioned the 10 card drops you get after duels almost offhandedly. But they're actually extremely vital; if you can get some of the rarest drops, you can go through the game significantly easier. I haven't really decided which drops are the absolute best, but the entire basis of the run depends on one of them: Red Style Mastery.

I acknowledged before that Masteries give you a certain strategy to go for, but didn't go into what exactly those strategies were. So I'll do it here:

(4a) Red: Anger

• Red is about boosting your anger, and reaching your highest personality. It's pretty streamlined, and abusable, so it makes the most sense conceptually at least to use it for a speedrun. Goku uses this in the game, and since his deck is better than yours, he'll prolly beat you a few times :(

Blue: Anti-Anger

• Blue was made I guess specifically to counter Red. It's main effect is that it forces your opponent to need +6 anger instead of 5. King Cold plays this mastery in game, and is quite difficult to beat via MPP. He's easily the slowest duel in the game... playing carefully is vital against him.

Orange: Energy Attacks

• Orange is about using energy attacks. The mastery itself makes it where they take less power stages to perform. Krillin uses it in game, but he's still the weakest character overall.

Black: Extra Damage

• Black is all out force: every attack does +1 power stage, and +1 life card of damage. Also, Black-style cards get +2 stages and +2 life cards of damage. I prefer this style the most to be honest: on top of the extra damage with every attack, the individual Black-style cards are all really good actually. If you played against Frieza, this would be the mastery he uses against you.

Saiyan

• This mastery gives you a draw right before Combat starts, and if you draw a Saiyan-style card, lower your opponent's power stages by 4, or to 0 if they have less than 4. Rather than giving you some boost, the Saiyan mastery is more of its own draw engine, which is quite good actually. I would say though, that in game there are only so many decent-to-good Saiyan cards... but the good ones, are really good (looking at you yet again Saiyan Truce!). Vegeta plays this mastery.

Namekian

• Very similar to Saiyan, this mastery lets you draw a card, and if it's Namekian-style, you raise your power stages to full. Since power stages are so key, this is pretty nice actually. But in general, the Namekian style has too many mediocre cards. Piccolo plays this mastery. (I should save this for when I break down individual characters you have to face. But Piccolo's personality power is an Energy attack that does 6 damage; so if he gets a full power stage boost before every combat, he'll basically get his personality attack off every turn.)

I described the Masteries in depth, and who plays them, but really the only one you can play realistically is the Red Style Mastery. You see, the game goes by levels: Level 1: Krillin, Nail, Guldo. Level 2: Gohan, Piccolo, Garlic Jr. Level 3: Vegeta, Trunks. Level 4: Goku, King Cold. (Frieza is in level 4 if you're not his personality). Level 5: Cell.

And for each level, your card drops are the same no matter who you duel. And in the first level, the only Mastery that drops (I've ever seen at least) is Red Style Mastery.

So then, knowing what kind of deck you want to use, which personality would be the best to use it with? I think Frieza is the best choice; if you look at all the personalities, the other 3 are more defensive in nature, while Frieza's 3rd personality has the power of basically the Black Style Mastery. Plus, Frieza's power stages are the 2nd highest, behind Goku.

• Goku himself is interesting; his 2nd personality has an effect that makes it very easy to get to his 3rd. But although his 3rd has insane power stages (1.5 million, dayum) his power is just defensive, which is kinda lackluster.
• I'll acknowledge Garlic Jr. here too: none of his personalities are that great, but one of the set card drops you can get in Level 1 is a 4th personality. So that would make it possible to get a MPP much more often. The reason you don't go for this, is because to get both Red Style Mastery and his 4th personality all at once would be rare and extremely difficult. Plus, since his personality powers and overall power stages are lackluster, it's not really worth it IMO.

(4b) So now that we've established a general idea for what we want our strategy to be, I'll post all cards available to you at the start of the game. Credit to this guy for giving a list of all cards in the game, as well as posting their effects: http://www.gamefaqs.com/gba/553543-dragon-ball-z-collectible-card-game/faqs/17261 And credit to me for listing out all the starting cards as follows (the number in parentheses is the number of copies you have for that card:

1. Just Kidding (1)
2. Orange Planet Destruction (3)
3. Vegeta's Jolting Slash (2)
4. A Hospital Stay (1)
5. Frieza Smiles (2)
6. Yamcha's Skillful Defense (3)
7. Black Energy Stamina Drill (3)
8. Black Driving Leg Thrust (2)
9. Hero Enraged! (1)
10. Blue Energy Outburst (3)
11. Gohan's Energy Defense (4)
12. Nappa's Physical Resistance (1)
13. Hidden Power Level (3)
14. Saiyan Battle Terms (1)
15. Saiyan Pressure Punch (3)
16. Saiyan Truce Card (1)
17. Battle Pausing (3)
18. Baba's Energy Blast (2)
19. Burning Rage! (3)
20. Gohan's Physical Attack! (4)
21. Red Knee Strike (3)
22. Black Knife Hand Strike (2)
23. Black Side Kick (3)
24. Red Reverse Punch (3)
25. Black Turning Kick (3)
26. Red Knife Hand (3)
27. Red Palm Heel Strike (3)
28. Mother's Touch (3)
29. Saiyan Energy Defense (3)
30. Power Up the Most! (3)
31. An Amusing Trick (1)
32. Gohan Spots the Imposter Drill (1)
33. Black Smoothness Drill (2)
34. Black Defensive Aura (1)
35. Black Flying Kick (3)
36. Black Defensive Burst (3)
37. Red Gravity Drill (1)
38. Red Energy Shield (2)
39. Blue Driving Face Off (3)
40. Black Head Strike (3)
41. Black Hug Maneuver (3)
42. Black Driving Palm (2)
43. Dodoria's Waiting (1)
44. Krillin's Kamehameha (3)
45. Captain Ginyu's Energy Attack (3)
46. Frieza's Tail Hold (1)
47. Red Face Upheaval (3)
48. Red Power Rush (3)
49. Red Lightning Slash (3)
50. Red Energy Blast (3)
51. Red Eye Laser Assault (3)
52. Trunks Slash (1)
53. Trunks High Strike (3)
54. Trunks Energy Sphere (3)
55. Trunks Sword Position 2 (3)
56. Orange Two Knuckle Punch (1)
57. Captain Ginyu Level 1
58. Frieza 1
59. Frieza 2
60. Frieza 3
61. Goku 1
62. Goku 2
63. Goku 3
64. Gohan 1
65. Gohan 2
66. Gohan 3
67. Garlic Jr. 1
68. Garlic Jr. 2
69. Garlic Jr. 3
70. Blue Foot Smash (3)
71. Gohan's Ready (2)

• In terms of building a deck, you can only have 3 copies of the same card. However, in this game there is the Named Rule: if a card starts with the name of your Personality, then you can have up to 4 copies of that card. So Gohan could use 4 copies of Gohan's Physical Attack, but everyone else can only use 3.

So to sum up our strategy, the goal is to duel a Level 1 character, and beat them as quickly as possible to get Red Style Mastery as a drop after the duel. Out of all the cards available to use, I think the best choice is to initially build an anger-based deck using Gohan. His power stages are a bit low, but he has the best general personality powers out of our 4 choices.

The fastest DBZ character to beat is Krillin in level 1. He runs an Energy Attack based strategy, so he's very dependent on having enough power stages to get them off. Since Gohan's first personality power is a physical attack that does +4 power stages of damage, you can ensure that if it's successful, Krillin can use no energy attacks at all.

Once you get Red Style Mastery, you build a deck for Frieza. And from there, you just march through everyone! I suggest you duel them in the following order:

Krillin Nail Guldo Piccolo Garlic Jr. Gohan Vegeta Trunks King Cold Goku Cell

This is my personal preference, as I choose to edit the deck often to suit whoever I plan to play. I'll wrap up this first guide here, as I just wanted to keep this as general as possible, so that anyone interested can read it, and at least have a chance to follow along lol. Thanks for reading!