Green Son Goku (FB05) Leader & Deck Guide

Heya everyone! Today we're covering the new FB05 Green Leader, FB05-049-son-goku-177. Green FB05-049-son-goku-177, also known as NameKu (Planet Namek + Goku), has made a strong early impact in the FB05 meta, performing well in tournaments. Many players are optimistic that the deck will remain competitive as the meta evolves.

Unlike other Green decks, we're not heavily invested in the "Ramping" strategy. In fact, we're trying to stay at 7 or less Energy to get the most out of our Leader's Life card gain effect. The extra Life card we gain gives us more survivability against opponents' attacks, especially if we remain at 3 Life cards.

Gameplan

This deck wants to drop on Life cards quickly, as many of your cards require you to be at 2 Life cards or less to activate their effects. So the list is heavy with self-damage cards like FB05-064-muri, FP-034-son-goku, and FB04-064-nappa to help drop us down to 2 Life cards.

We'll focus on self-damaging our Leader to evolve as early as possible. Your opponent might avoid attacking your Leader in an attempt to prevent you from going down to 2 Life cards before they've developed multiple attackers in play. Even when we awaken, we'll need one of our low-cost self-damage cards to get to 2 Life cards and start making our strong plays.

However, going down to 2 Life cards can put us at risk of losing the game on the opponent's upcoming turn to a Double Strike Battle Card. This is where FB05-049-son-goku-177's effect comes into play, discard a card from our hand to add the top card in our deck to the Life area, giving us a better shot at continuing to survive the upcoming turns. So we're usually dropping to 2 Life cards, making our strong plays, and at the end of our turn, we'll go back to 3 Life cards.

An awakened FB05-049-son-goku-177 will also gain +10,000 Power, making your attack more threatful and forcing the opponent to commit more Combo plays. On the downside, you can't draw a card when attacking with awakened FB05-049-son-goku-177, so if you're about to awaken, make sure to attack first, then awaken mid-combat to get your card draw.

This list is packed with cards that can activate their strong effects when you're at 2 Life cards or less. FB05-070-dr-briefs-spaceship for the card draw. FB05-056-chiaotzu and FB05-054-son-gohan-youth to slow your opponent down, saving up your Combo plays for other attacks. Finally, FB05-119-son-goku for the added pressure, creating game-winning attacks for only 3 Energy.

Since most of our plays are at 3 Energy, we can play our draw cards to continuously keep combo plays in our hand, using them defensively or offensively and slowly outvaluing the opponent.

Key Cards

Self Damage + Ramp

This is heavy on the self-damage, helping you go down to 2 Life cards to get the most out of your cards' effects. However, your Battle Cards aren't in there solely for the self-damage but have other effects that empower your strategy.

Your self-damage cards play a key role in your strategy, helping you go down to 2 Life cards as quickly as possible to activate certain effects. FB05-051-krillin-379 isn't on the list just for the self-damage, but can also ramp you up when he's KO'd, helping you make more plays on your upcoming turns.

As for FB04-064-nappa, he's a 30,000 Power 3-cost Battle Card, making him a tough threat for your opponent to combo out of his attack or even remove from play. Since Unlike FB05-051-krillin-379, FB04-064-nappa will ramp us immediately by placing the Life card in our energy, making it easier for us to make stronger plays on the upcoming turn.

Low-cost Self-damage

FB05-064-muri is a busted 1-cost Battle Card, offering a low-cost self-damage option, which can be played early in the game, but shines most in the late-game when you need to fall to 2 Life cards but don't want to commit too much Energy. For just 1 Energy, you're taking a Life card and developing a low-cost Blocker that can block one of the opponent's attacks or at least force your opponent to commit resources to remove FB05-064-muri.

Control Cards

FB05-054-son-gohan-youth is your strongest removal option, having two effects for you to choose from. The first effect requires you to be at 2 or less Life cards to activate, allowing you to KO one of the opponent's Battle Cards, regardless of its cost. This can remove an opponent's win condition without having to commit attacks at it, focusing your attacks on your opponent's Leader instead.

Your second effect is best used in the early game, self-damaging your Leader and KO'ing one of the opponent's Battle Cards with a cost of 3 or less.

As for FB05-056-chiaotzu, he's a stall card, preventing one of your opponent's 5-cost or less Battle Cards from attacking you on the upcoming turn. You're shutting down a threat from attacking for a whole turn without committing too much of your Energy to deal with it. FB05-056-chiaotzu's effect is only activated when you're at 2 Life cards or less.

FB05-071-full-power is another card that only activates when you're at 2 Life cards or less. However, its ability to KO two 4-cost or less Characters makes it a great option against decks trying to wide on the field and aggro you down. Since it's only 2 Energy to play, you'll have enough Energy to develop on the field and keep pressuring your opponent.

Aggressive Winners

When Attacking, FP-034-son-goku self-damages your Leader, which plays into your strategy and since you can switch him as Active, you can attack twice in one turn, forcing the opponent to expend more Combo plays to shut down your attacks.

At the end of your turn, FB02-089-son-gohan-future can cheat out one of your 3-cost Battle Cards and prevents your opponent from removing them through their skills. This forced them to shift their focus on FB02-089-son-gohan-future, which you'll usually protect from their attackers to keep the protection for your other Battle Cards online.

FB05-119-son-goku is the Double Strike win condition, becoming a premium player when you're at 2 Life cards. Instead of having to spend 7 Energy to play FB05-119-son-goku, he'll become a 3-cost Battle Card when you're at 2 Life cards or less. A 3-cost Battle Cards with 45,000 Power and Double Strike is a massive low-cost play that creates a win condition and you can still make other plays alongside him.

FB04-052-great-ape-vegeta acts as a control and a win condition card. When played, you can discard a card from your hand to KO a 5-cost or less Battle Cards, essentially removing a threat from play. Then. FB04-052-great-ape-vegeta's 40,000 Power + Double Strike will create a huge attack to either deal 2 damage or force your opponent into expending their Combo cards.

Ideally, we'll play FB05-067-destructo-disc when we're trying to drop the opponent to 2 Life cards and prevent them from adding a Life card to their hand. The Critical keyword will force them to Combo out of our attack or discard a Life card and drop low enough for our Double Strike win condition to finish the game. FB05-067-destructo-disc can be played on FB05-119-son-goku if your opponent is at 4 Life cards, or on your Leader or one of your other Battle Cards if they're at 3 Life cards.

It can still be used as a finisher, the +20,000 Power is a huge boost for only 1 Energy, making it exceptionally difficult for your opponent to protect themselves.

Techs and Options

FB02-085-cell-jr is a value play to add an Extra card from your drop to your hand.

A 2-cost self-damage Battle Card with 20,000 Power. FB05-063-vegeta can be played early in the game if you don't have FB05-051-krillin-379, however, he finds most use when your Leader is at 2 Life cards, giving you a card draw when played.

A +15,000 Power boost without having to use any of your Energy. You will though have to deramp to activate FB01-101-instant-kamehameha.

A self-damage Extra to help get you down to 2 Life cards, but it also draws you a card and cheats out a 3-cost Battle Card from your hand. So instead of just spending 3 Energy to play a Battle Card, you're drawing a card and self-damaging.

General Tips

• Since our awakened Leader can't draw when attacking, we'll often attack first when we're at 3 Life cards, get the card draw, and then awaken to benefit from the Power boost.
• Although FB04-064-nappa is an extremely strong Battle card in the early game, there is less incentive to play it in the late game. You have better options at 3-cost that can help you control the field or go for more aggressive attacks.
• When using Leader effect to gain a Life card, we'll discard the card we'll least need in our hand to hopefully add a better card in our Life card that we'll later put in our hand.
• We're constantly trying to fall to 2 Life cards, make our plays, and then gain a Life card through Leader effect. So you don't consistently have to rely on your self-damage cards, you can take a hit from your opponent to fall to 2 Life cards. However, we have to be confident they can't close out the game with a Double Attack Battle card afterward.
• This deck can play a bit aggressively, especially with the multiple removal/stall cards you have. You have control effects to slow your opponent down, giving you more freedom to focus your attacks on their Leader and try dropping them low on Life cards.
• FB05-067-destructo-disc giving +20,000 Power and Critical will shine the most when you're trying to put your opponent down to 2 Life cards, ensuring they don't add more resources to their hand. You'll often want to combo it with your Double Strike attacker FB05-119-son-goku to discard 2 of their Life cards.
• Often if you play FP-034-son-goku early into the game, you'll attack once with him and then set him as Active. This prevents your opponent from attacking FP-034-son-goku on the upcoming turn, forcing them to attack your Leader instead. If you're against a deck that can keep rested Battle cards from becoming Active, you can also opt to attack once.

Mulligan Tips

• FB05-051-krillin-379 and FB04-064-nappa are great to have in your opening hand, ensuring a strong early game thanks to their self-damage and ramp abilities.
• You can't go wrong with an early FB05-062-bulma, helping you inf Planet Namek type cards like FB05-051-krillin-379 and FB05-119-son-goku.
• We'd rather not have cards like FB02-098-hercule, FB05-070-dr-briefs-spaceship, and FB04-068-bulma in the opening hand as they don't offer much until the later stages of the game.

Matchups

• Since we're juggling between 2 and 3 Life cards, we will be vulnerable against aggressive decks that can go wide. Red decks for example can play pretty aggressively, so we might shift our focus to keeping control of their field instead of going all out.
• Against Green decks, we're generally trying to aggro them down before they drop FS03-10-broly-br. From there, we only have FB05-054-son-gohan-youth to deal with him. FB02-089-son-gohan-future is great for protecting your 3-cost Battle Cards from FB01-078-android-17android-18, your opponent is forced to remove FB02-089-son-gohan-future first, which we won't allow it so easily.
• FB04-077-majin-buu-evil decks can force you to discard cards from your hand. Playing NameKu, you often will have 6 or more cards in your hand, so it can be easy for your opponent to cut down on your resources. Yellow decks can rest or keep your Battle cards rested, slowing down your aggressive strategy. Early in the game, when resting your Active Battle Cards, they can shift their attacks on those rested Battle Cards instead of your Leader, slowing you down from hitting 2 Life cards.
• Against Blue decks, FB02-089-son-gohan-future plays a massive role in preventing your opponent from removing your 3-cost Battle Cards with their Skills.

Closing Words

Green Nameku is kicking off FB05 meta with a great start, winning Egman Event’s Triple Win A Box tournament and players have high hopes for this Green Leader to remain relevant in the new meta.

We're still in the early FB05 meta, and players are in the experimental phase, trying to figure out the strongest Leaders and best builds to play. Most FB05-049-son-goku-177 lists share a similar core, but player preferences vary when it comes to tech choices. FB02-089-son-gohan-future is a debated inclusion—some players value its impact, while others find it unnecessary and leave it out entirely. FB04-052-great-ape-vegeta is another contested option. While the deck prioritizes low-cost Battle Cards to maximize draw potential, the control effect and Double Strike from FB04-052-great-ape-vegeta make it difficult to overlook despite its higher cost.

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