Panda - Now You're Endangered

As seen in the latest Online WW Championship rankings, Panda is up there along with Paul and here's why: Trout Sweep. This card combined with Panda's monstrous base damage forces the opponent to focus against a Panda with 5 cards and risk a potential One hit KO (or the worse case, 135 HP). If you don't like to leave your entire health bar to a coin toss and choose to block, you may lose 15 HP, and sometimes, that 15 HP (or more depending on how many Trout Sweep the panda has) could mean death by the last 3 cards of Panda. That being said, here is the Panda deck a friend of mine used to get to the top 50 of last week.
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Trout Sweep

• 3x Trout Sweep: 20 Damage, Punch, After the attack: Dual Block: Opp -15 HP
• 3x Bear Slash: 10 Damage, Punch, After the attack: Block missed: P cards + 8 Hit
• 3x Salmon Swipe: 18 Damage, Punch, After the attack: Block Card +20 Hit
• 1x Killing Uppercut Grizzly Claw: 30 Damage, Punch, After the attack: This card hits: Keep card & Card -30 Hit
• 1x G-Clef Cannon: 40 Damage, Punch, Before the attack: Opp Strike & Opp cards = 1: Opp +50 HP
• 1x Salmon Hunter: 60 Damage, Punch, After the attack: Focus & Opp HP ≤ 80: -30 HP
• 1x Rabid Bear: 55 Damage, Punch, After the attack: Focus & Opp cards ≤ 1: -40 HP
• 1x Grizzly Claws: 25 Damage, Punch, Before the attack: Opp Strike: +20 Protection
• 1x Ultra Kuma: 40 Damage, Punch, After the attack: Block: Cards +10 Hit & +40 Protection
• Power Card: 210 HP

Strategy: Focus till 3 cards if Trout Sweep is not part of the 3 cards, press Strike and repeat, else Focus till 5 cards, Press Block. Flip a coin, heads press Block, tails press Strike. Repeat flipping coin till 0 cards then repeat from beginning.

The probability of drawing at least 1 Trout Sweep is 76%. The Minimum damage a set of 5 cards can do is 135 HP, but that is with 3x Trout Sweep. According to the Tekken Twitter, Trout Sweep is on the watch list for changes. I am not sure about the Pauls and Pandas out there but, I am looking forward to a Tekken Card Tournament where I never have to see my health bar drop from 100% to 0% in a couple turns.

Characters

If you haven't created a character yet then this information might be useful to you. As of the time of writing, the most successful characters in the "world wide championship" are Paul and Panda. I don't believe there is a weakest character or at least there shouldn't be (if there is one, it's definitely Yoshimitsu). According to the Twitter and Facebook page, each character is designed to be strong against some and weak against others. As of right now, Paul and Pandas are dominating the scene, with Nina and Lili not too far behind. Last week it was Xiaoyu and Nina. Next week it could be anyone, even maybe Heihachi.


Each character has a different play style and strengths and weaknesses. After I completed an "A" Yoshimitsu deck, I regretted it because I wanted to play as Kazuya. I will probably stick with Yoshimitsu till I have 3 of every card and all the SR cards, including the power card.

Kazuya is kind of an average fighter at first, but when his HP is low, his card effects tend to overwhelm the opposition.

Paul's cards have extremely high damage, but usually have negative effects as a tradeoff.

Law is a rather well rounded character with mid to high base damage and cards that negate the opponents card effects.

Yoshimitsu's cards are average base damage and the card abilities are quite weird. He has a very large assortment of tricks but the thing unique to him is the power to conceal his cards (not that useful at all) which is currently 'not working and will be improved/fixed'.

Xiaoyu draws cards fast. Her cards are usually 10 damage with the exception of a few. She is one of the few characters that will probably play strike more than focus.

Nina is a rather well rounded character as well. I believe she specializes in healing. Like Xiaoyu, she also has many ways of drawing cards without actually focusing.

Lili has many abilities, the ones I notice the most are her parries. I also see a lot of ways for her to draw cards without having to play focus, sometimes this involves the opponent drawing a card as well. She also have mid to high base damage on many of her Punch cards.

Panda hits as hard as Paul. She doesn't have much heal or any reliable heals but her SR card has the highest starting health and many of her cards come with protection to make up for the lack of healing.

How I picked my character was Law because I wanted to see him do a somersault in the animation (this never occurs by the way). After a couple games I got the feel of what the game was like (I only had bronze cards) and I began to explore the buttons on the user interface. It led me to logging out and because there is no option to create a password at start, I abandoned that account and made a Kazuya deck. I mustered enough credits to buy an ultra pack, opened it and got a golden Yoshimitsu power card. So I sold all my cards and started a Yoshimitsu deck.