Table of Contents
Dragon Ball Super Card Game Fusion World's economic model is the subject of many controversies since the digital client launched. Across the community, most players feel like there aren't enough gems to be earned in the game, while the completely random matchmaking is also hurting your chances to learn the game in peace.
Then, the global sentiment towards the digital game isn't overly positive so far compared to the physical experience, when store tournaments and Celebration Events received a much warmer welcome. Unfortunately, there were no products to be found in my town, so I only had the digital client available to dive into the game. Plus, looking at all the criticism about the game, I thought it would be a good idea to take on the free-to-play (F2P) challenge my self.
In the article, I'll share my experience about my climb to the God rank (highest in the game), but will mostly focus on what I think is key to understand in the game to find success. Indeed, once I understood the right fundamentals, the road to the God rank became much easier, even with just two copies of the Red Starter Deck, and just twenty Boosters Packs opened along the way.
Ready to become a Dragon Ball Super Card Game God?
How to approach the climb
With 145 wins to get there, my 76% win rate tells me I had to play about 190 games in order to reach the promised land. If we consider a game is about 10 to 15 minutes on average, longer if we decide to pick a Green Leader such as FS03-01 or FB01-071, we are talking about 40 hours of play total.
This is the first important part to understand about grinding the ranked mode in a new game, particularly if the goal is to play for free or minimal spending: "How long is it going to take?"
In my case, I took it moderately slow, as I took about 20 days to complete the climb, meaning I played about two hours a day. I know it can be a lot for some people, but in my case, this is a pretty slow pace. Yet, as I expected to routinely go against players with a better deck than mine, I didn't want to play tired and commit stupid mistakes. Particularly once you reach the Platinum league, a loss negates a win, meaning every defeat represents about thirty minutes of your time to gain the points back.
Then, my goal was to get one rank per day minimum, and go for a second one when I had time. Already, this means I had to go 6-1, 7-2 or 8-3 during a session to maintain my cadence. Even a 5-0 score equal at least an hour of play, while an 8-3 record will often represent close to 3 hours.
Quality over quantity has to be your motto if you decide to take on the free-to-play challenge. With seasons about 10 weeks long, we have plenty of time anyway. So unless your day is cleared, and you can give the game your full attention, think about how time-consuming each defeat can be.
The main reason why playing focused is so important, is because the game isn't as simple as one might think.
Picking the right Starter Deck
Card advantage and color identity are the two concepts you need to know about in order to climb in Fusion World. Indeed, the game's entire core is based on leveraging your cards to pressure your opponent, or running them out of resources to prevent any form of interaction on their part.
When it comes to amassing cards in your hand, you have three possible ways to do so:
- Draw cards at the start of your turn and through your Leader attack.
- Lose health in order to pick up those cards in your hand.
- Draw through card abilities.
If you aren't feeling confident with the game yet, I would highly recommend building your deck around these three areas. This means, pick a Leader which will draw when attacking both before and after being awakened. I know plenty of people recommended Broly as the go-to Starter Deck, but the Green Leader can often run out of cards due to not drawing once Awakened. Similarly, Broly has the other downside of pushing for a rather defensive early game. Then you need to know how to protect your health down the line, or your opponent will quickly force you to use all the cards in your hand to stay alive. A Leader aimed at pressuring the opponent would alleviate some pressure, as you could race them back if they start being aggressive.
If you intend to switch to FB01-071 after a bit, going for the Green Starter Deck is a perfectly fine choice. Yet, I feel like the hype around the color during the first weeks of the game has hurt a lot of beginners, who are being crushed when meeting an aggressive opponent they don't know how to contain. In the end, Green is great because of the cards it finds in the Booster Packs, such as FB01-087, not really the Starter Deck.
If we were to look at the other three colors, Red, Yellow, and Blue. Because their goal is to beat down their opponent, rather than survive and stabilize the situation to win the long game, their mechanics are much easier to understand for a card game beginners.
If I had to rank them, I would say FS04-01 is the stronger starter, mainly because it has access to FS04-12. Plus, the color identity is to turn opposing cards to rest mode, a key to dominate the card advantage battle.
I would rank Red second, as it is the most flexible color from a gameplay standpoint, and you can switch to either FB01-001 or FB01-002 if you open them in a booster. However, compared to yellow, red lacks this great card to anchor its early game, so it might a bit more difficult to get started.
As for Blue, it really has a unique way to be played, as it leans on using more cards than the other colors, but also picking up a lot from its drop thanks to FS02-03 or similar abilities. Then, while I believe Vegeta is a solid starter, you need to be willing to commit to learning that play style to pick blue, especially as switching to FB01-035 or FB01-036 require a lot of booster pack cards.
Green if you know how to defend and understand resource management from other card games. Blue if you enjoy a more synergistic play style and are willing to lose early on to master it. Otherwise, Yellow or Red should be the best picks.
Critical fundamentals to understand
Cards represent the way you attack, defend, and protect your battle cards. They are everything you want in the game, and the single most important resources.
Even if we will be playing a weaker deck than most of our opponents, getting ourselves in the right situation is the key to winning most matches. That situation is just dominating the early portion of the match battle cards wise, while awakening without actually being at risk of losing health afterward.
Too often, I see players use their 15,000 power battle card early on to land a hit on their opposing Leader, not realizing they just set themselves for failure. Indeed, when doing so, you gave your opponent two cards:
- One because their Leader can attack without targeting your Leader, meaning they get to draw, without you having the possibility to take the hit and draw as well.
- A second because you will either lose your battle card, or use a combo from your hand to protect it.
There aren't many early zone abilities in the game yet, so unless you are against a Yellow opponent, which can turn your battle cards to rest, it is typically correct to just hold on the attacks early in the match. If it looks like you are dealing damage to the opposing Leader, you are failing to realize what is about to happen once they Awaken:
- Unless you are playing a critical Leader, you hit for 15,000, and they have a base 20,000 power, so no more pressure with your leader.
- They get access to a powerful ability to use every turn. Frieza will make it a nightmare to contest its battle cards, Son Goku gets a free 5,000 per turn, and Vegeta now hits you like a 5-cost card.
- Their Leader has the ability to remove more battle cards without using a combo, as they now attack for 20,000.
If you cannot keep the pressure up until you are in range of closing the match. Damage to your opponent is just giving them cards.
Grinding is a lot about being able to repeat certain patterns over and over, and building comfort navigating those. Then, here is the situation you want to find yourself into for each Leader:
- Awaken whenever possible, the 5,000 power per turn is big to both pressure or defend your battle cards.
- Focus on the battle cards first and foremost, at least until awakened. You can attack the opposing leader if your leader has no other target, but your battle cards under 20,000 power need a precise reason to do so. The others, be ready to protect or lose them the following turn.
- Once awakened, focus on controlling the pace of the match, at the cost of using more combo card. If ahead on board, you can start to pressure the opposing leader, particularly Broly or Frieza, who tend to scale better into the later part of the match. If the board is contested, or you can't tell who's ahead, let your hand decide for you, depending on whether you have Super Combo cards or heavy hitters with low combo power.
- You won't win any games without awakening with Vegeta, but could very well finish off an opponent just repeatedly hitting them for 35,000. Then, Vegeta is a leader in dire need of awakening, but with the board under control, as defense isn't the color's strong side.
- For Vegeta, our goal is to seize initiative onto the board early on, build as big of a lead as possible until we decide we don't care about battle cards anymore. Blue cards tends to have a rather weak base power, meaning attacking with our battle card will often open them to a leader attack the following turn.
- Once Awakened and ahead on board, we just become a heavy hitting machine, with the ability to recuperate cards with FS02-03 to keep having combo cards available.
- Broly plays differently compared to the other starters, as it doesn't try to pressure the opponent, or seize the board early on. Instead, Broly is perfectly fine with a tied situation, at least until FS03-10 can be played.
- This is kind of why I'm not a fan of picking the green starter for a F2P journey, as we give our opponent more time to play the rarer, more powerful cards we don't have access to.
- Only consider battle cards, and don't help your opponent awaken unless you have a reason to do so. As for your awakening, you have little reason to want it except get to 25,000 base power, or need to extra energy on the following turn. Keep in mind you will lose an extra health when Awakening, and staying alive gives you energy as well.
- Frieza is the best starter to go for mostly thanks to its signature ability when Awaken, alongside being able to turn opposing cards to rest mode. Together, these two mechanics will allow you to dominate the battle cards economy, the most important part of the game when we don't have access to super rare cards, able to help with big tempo swings.
- Against Blue and Red, your goal will be to seize the board early while opening attacks to battle cards. Then, you make it harder for your opponent to awaken, as you aren't hitting their leader as often, and build a commanding lead for the moment you decide to pressure their health.
- Green is a little more difficult, as you have to act as the aggressor, which can be tricky to do without some of the rarer cards. Yet, FS04-12 is absolutely huge to fast awaken, while bringing some heat early on. Mulligan to find it as often as possible.
Improving your deck and spending your gems
The first thing we want to do is purchase two copies of the same Starter Deck, so we have four copies of all the important cards. This will represent the foundation of our collection for the weeks to come, so pick wisely. Then, we want to wait until we amassed 1,000 gems to open packs, as it guarantees some Super Rare cards in ours Booster Packs.
When it comes to gathering those precious gems, you can expect to open 10 boosters every two weeks on average. Make sure you complete your quests every day and get those twenty weekly wins. This slow collect of gems is another reason why we don't want to grind too fast, and instead look at the grind over several weeks. Indeed, you want to play every day to collect those gems, so don't burn yourself out a day if it means you won't feel like playing for a few days and pass on gems as a result.
Regarding the impact on your deck, don't expect more than two to five new cards to include when you open those 10 boosters. Fortunately, you have most of the cards you need to grind already, even if you'll always want some from the boosters.
- Red is the most flexible color, so it can include a lot of cards into its Starter Deck, or even switch to FB01-002 or FB01-001 if you open them. Personally, I got both leaders in my second opening, and pushed through the Master ranks mostly with a Universe 7 deck.
Plus, Red gets a little bonus, as the game will give you a copy of FP-006 early on. Otherwise, most Super Rares are incredible standalones, while FB01-025 and FB01-004 can carry you in certain matchups. - Yellow has the best starter deck, and Frieza is regarded as a top tier Leader. As a downside to this strong foundation, apart from the Super Rares, there aren't so many cards we can just throw as great standalones. Plus, there are a lot of cards from the Ginyu Force deck to open, which are great to have, but only if we have multiple copies.
FB01-130, FB01-124 and FB01-116 would be my top three cards to get. - Vegeta has most of what it needs in its starter deck, as the key to the deck is repeatedly attacking for 35,000 power once the opponent is in the danger zone. We are forced to use a lot of extra cards early on, which is the big downside I would have about the game.
Then, I wouldn't have my hopes too high when it comes to booster decks, even though super rares are great to have, even if they look like they synergize with the other leaders more.
Two cards I would be really happy to pull for my Vegeta deck are FB01-058 and FB01-056. One or two copies of FB01-039 is also great to synergise with Gotenks.
Just like Red, we also get a nice bonus as we'll receive FP-007 as a gift when leveling. - Green can quickly become a powerhouse if we get the right pulls. Yet, I feel there are way too many cards we want from booster packs to not rank green as the worse color to pick for a free to play grind. If you invest money into the game however, this immediately jump to being one of the top colors in the game.
Building a killer Starter Deck
This is probably one of the main reasons you opened this guide, how do we build a solid deck without putting money into the game. Well, once you get your two copies of the Starter Deck you picked for the climb, here's how I would build around each of them.
First cards I would replace: FS01-13 and either FS01-14 or FS01-12 depending on how many Broly opponent I go against. The more you need to attack for 25.000 power, the less you will need the critical 2-cost card, while the other card can help a 20,000 power card reach the necessary threshold.
First cards I would replace: FS02-12 and some of the extra cards, six can quickly stick to your hand, even if you can use them as energy. You could also get more of FS02-07 in your deck, but know the card will often attack once and then be dealt with the following turn. I wouldn't mind getting three copies though, and plan for a turn six with two attacking into the enemy leader. If you notice you end up using it as combo after some tests, then FS02-12 has more value thanks to its 10,000 combo power.
First cards I would replace: FS03-02 and FS03-08 are the two cards we will typically use as combo in this deck. The 30.000 power can be decent for trades, but with FS03-16, we will skip turn four quite often. As for the critical 2-cost, we would rather get the bonus 5,000 power in order to trade enemy battle cards more efficiently.
First cards I would replace: FS04-06 is the card we are including simply because it has a 10,000 combo power attached to it, but I wouldn't mind running more extra cards if you find more use for those. FS04-02 is the other utility card we are running, as it recycles itself thanks to drawing a card upon being KO'd. Yet, if you find other draw abilities, you can definitely remove it as time passes.
Closing Words
I wish I could include even more tips in this guide, but I think this coupled with our other strategy piece should give you a great foundation to take on the free-to-play challenge. Definitely, I cannot recommend you enough to take it slow, see it as a grind over several weeks, and focus on learning the game more than anything.
There are times when you will want to invest money to go faster, or just give up on your goal altogether. However, keep in mind seasons are rather long, about 10 weeks. Then, even if you win two more than you lose every day, you are still on pace to reach the god rank, as it would represent 2,800 total points gained.
I hope this guide was helpful, and may have inspired you to take on the free to play challenge. Feel free to ask any question you might have in the comment section. You can also contact me on Twitter.
Good Game Everyone!
