Dragon Ball Book Review – Pojo’s Unofficial Dragon Ball Z Cards Simplified

Pojo’s Unofficial Dragonball Z Cards Simplified: A Player’s Guide

The Dragonball Z Collectible Card Game (CCG) premiered in 2000 with the Saiyan Saga starter decks and booster packs. There are now over eighteen expansions and several rare and promotional cards to play around with. The CCG’s purpose is to play mock battles in Dragonball with your favorite DBZ characters and abilities, mixing and matching fighting styles and combat techniques to come out the victor.

Pojo’s Unofficial Dragonball Z Cards Simplified: A Player’s Guide details the origins of the game, the various cards, and strategies from winners of national tournaments.

The book starts off with a nice introduction to the Dragonball series and is a suitable primer for those unfamiliar with the topic. Of course there’s no substitute for watching the show or reading the comic book, but it sets you up for the rest of the contents. It follows with a description of the various card types, such as Physical Combat, Energy Combat, Non-Combat, Dragon Ball’s, Battle Grounds and Locations, and Mastery cards. It then breaks those down into different fighting styles, including Red, Blue, Black, Orange, Saiyan, and Namekian along with descriptions of what makes each one unique.

Overall it gives a pretty good idea of what the game contains, but it doesn’t actually include the rules, so you’re left trying to piece together how the game is played from the descriptions of cards and strategies therein. I suppose this is because the rules change frequently with each new release of cards, and it would have been difficult to summarize all of the rules into a few pages, but it would have made a lot more sense to me if they had tried.

Layout and graphic design of A Player’s Guide is excellent, with full color pictures of all the DBZ cast members, sections laid out in different colors, and an overall DBZ theme throughout. There are a few minor complaints, like the typesetting in certain places, but that doesn’t affect the content in any way. The large pages are pleasing to the eye and pull you in deeper.

Near the conclusion they list all of the cooler cards that were released over the three year period since the game started and the book’s release. It includes a top 10 list of each Saga (Box Set), and provides really great (and useful) information for any player of the game.

In the end I was really pleased with Pojo’s Unofficial Dragonball Z Cards Simplified: A Player’s Guide, and it actually got me thinking about starting to play the CCG myself. There are probably tournaments still going on in the neighborhood hobby shop, and it might be fun to drop by and throw down a few Kahemameha’s.

DBZ Book Information:

Editor in Chief – Bill Gill, AKA “Pojo”
Published by Triumph Books
Price: $9.95
Pages: 96
ISBN: 1-57243-600-X
Amazon Link: Pojo’s Unofficial Dragonball Z Cards Simplified: A Player’s Guide

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