One of the highly anticipated decks of Set 12 is Launch. Her unique take on the Awaken mechanic and the ability to fight off the meta decks makes her a deck to prepare for. Krieg Mayer took this deck to a Top 16 finish! He was kind enough to bring us his deck list and the interactions with his card choices.
“The build of Launch chosen for this event was Red Green aggro. The deck was inspired by Ryan Conolee and the El Toppo Loco teams original build. Without their videos and insight, I would have not chosen the deck to play!! Huge thanks to them!!
The decks primary goal is to be aggressive in turns 1-3 with hopes of having the opponent out of life by end of our turn 3. The deck was designed to abuse the free play mechanic on several key red and green cards and go wide with aggro to force our opponent out of recourses.
Launch is a very draw heavy deck, but reliant on key cards to enable her draw abilities. On her front, she is a 5000 leader that allows you to draw 1 card per turn when you combo. Her flip or as I call it “The Achoo Mechanic” allows you to flip the leader to the backside when one of your life cards is flipped face up by one of your card effects. This is by far the best part of this deck. On her backside, she is a 10k with a once per turn when she attacks to give one of your opponent’s cards -5000 power, and once per turn when you combo you can draw a card. On her backside she also has the “Achoo Mechanic” once per turn. You cannot flip her back and forth on the same turn, so you have to understand when to use the cards that flip her in correct orders to keep her on the side you want during yours and your opponents turns.
With the cards above, you can sequence the “Achoo Mechanic” reliably in a 50-51 card deck. At higher numbers in the deck, you will want to run some variance of the TP promo and the above red cards to make sure you can fully utilize the “Achoo Mechanic”. The Launch SR was extremely vital and knowing when to combo it to maximize the Activate: Battle part of the card to combo with it from the drop area. My tech with Hasty Dispatch Dyspo proved very useful during the event. I wanted to make sure the green cards in the deck were plentiful to help with our Arrival package, but he also allowed the fun plays of buying back our 1 drop Launch or Bulma on turn one or after our board was cleared.
The big damage dealers in the deck are the Arrival cards followed up with the Piccolo Jr. from the Draft box 3 set. These cards allowed for turn 1-3 pressure with minimal effort and investment. The game plan is to charge a red on turn 1 and pass. If you are on the draw and can attack t1 then you can apply small pressure and draw some cards with your leader’s effects. We want to pass with an open red to utilize the Arrival mechanic to its fullest, as well as combo to keep our life total high. When opponent attacks, we want to use Nappa Demolition Man to combo, trigger arrival, play Gogeta Resonant Explosion, trigger SS Gogeta Acrobatic Warrior, destroy one of their battle cards with energy cost 4 or less, and now have 3 battle cards on board. The perfect sequence would look like this: Opp Attacks Combo Launch or Bulma. Trigger Draw on leader. Achoo Mechanic, flip a life. Draw and flip. Combo Nappa, trigger draw on backside of leader. Arrival Gogeta 5, free play red Gogeta. At end of combat free play Nappa. Then after the opponent passes, we have our big turn 2!! On turn 2, we either play Piccolo Jr. Eradicator of Peace if he is in our hand, or use the Assimilate extra card to find one. The fun part of this interaction is Piccolo Jr. with Gogeta Acrobatic Warrior. When Piccolo attacks, he triggers his Alliance mechanic, allowing you to draw power from a red or green battle card. His Alliance mechanic states
If your Leader Card is red : This card gains power equal to the total power of the cards switched to Rest Mode by this skill for the battle; draw 2 cards, and if your opponent has 3 or more life, deal 1 damage to them. This allows us to burn our opponent’s life even if the attack is negated. The draw 2 is a huge plus as well, as it gives us draw in to move of the pieces for the deck. With Gogeta Acrobatic Warrior, we can now burn our opponents for 2 life on the attack. Optimal attack is opponent at 3-4 life, we attack with Piccolo Jr., trigger alliance, tap Gogeta, add 15k power to Piccolo, burn opponent 1 from Piccolo (Always trigger him first due to his stipulation of being above 3 life) then burn 1 from Gogeta, and a 31k Double Striker coming in before combos. This puts insane pressure on the opponent to combo out or have a kill card for our Piccolo Jr.
The “Free Play” card package is also one of the best I’ve seen without being reliant on a specific leader. Trunks triggers to free play when we have a Green Red Multicolor battle card in play Mercenary Tao triggers when we have 3 non token battle cards in play Bardock the Resolute triggers when our opponent takes a life from an effect like Critical, Burn, or their own mechanics. Bardock Awakened Instincts is a free over-realm 20k that draws 2 Beerus is free played off the Bardock discard trigger SS3 Goku triggers via our leaders backside neg, or our After Image Techniques Belmod is free after destroying 3 of our battle cards. The amount of free plays this deck can throw at opponents life total on t2 is amazing.
The last cards to talk about are the 3 After Image Techniques and the new Secret rare from Set 12 Supreme Kai of Time, Spacetime Unraveler. In my video deck tech I mentioned moving the Kai to the board, and I was wrong. I had stated that as she did not make much impact for me during the tournament, but the applications of the card on paper make her an auto include. She is there to get passed opponents wide boards, eliminate their unisons and thusly turning off their free play counters, removing blockers, etc.
The deck performed very well for me during the event. Very few hickups with the “Achoo Mechanic” but when they happened it was very frustrating. So moving forward I would recommend to anyone to up the number of “Achoo Mechanic” cards to 10, to ensure you can use the ability every turn.
My opponents during the event were all outstanding players. PPG ran a smooth event and made sure the environment was well sanitized prior to, and we all wore masks and had temp checks prior to entering. This made me, and many people feel safer given the conditions the world is in right now.
Shout out to my teammates on The Card Guyz for putting up with an old boomers nonsense. Shout out to El Toppo Loco squad for the deck idea, Ryan Conolee for his Ted Talks about the deck, and to the DBS Community for giving me a group to call home!!
Krieg Mayer aka Shipoopi.
The Doods
The Doods 