Update: 17/10/2014

So I went back on some of my posts and I felt some of them needed to be updated. So here are the list of updates on previous articles.

Deck Weaknesses: A guide to how to fight each World!: Massive update to accompany new testing and support and added the new Darkness Dragon World and Legend World guides as a way to give my first impressions of them.

Deck Building Basics: Fixed up a few of the staple cards to better reflect the new support for each world, but have yet to put in Darkness Dragon World or Legend World.

And a few light touch ups on a few of the wording in other articles.

On a side note, Future Fighters Cast episode 2 has finally been recorded and is now first in line for my editing queue. That will hopefully be up by next week, probably this weekend. Also due to myself almost being out of school, my you-tube videos will start being more active as a whole, however due to this being a project I would do during my spare sessions at school, this blog may lack content for the most part, so ill try and do more for it when I'm not making videos or building my RPG. Oh yea I never mentioned that I'm building a game before. You see I Love making games, and while I have made Trading Card Game prototypes before, I've been mucking around on RPG maker to create a new game. I may keep you guys updated on that but for now I've just been trying to get the battle system to work, quite tough actually. That's all for today, I'll see you guys next time, Giraton Out.

The Centre: What I think of the current meta game's stratergies.

I like what this does,
for more than you think.

Ever since dungeon world was released, I have been seeing less and less situations where a monster in the centre actually helps. This trend can easily be shown in the 3 biggest meta game decks, Dragon, Dungeon and Danger. Dragon has multiple forms of its decks, but the two most popular right now are Thunder Knights and Jackknife, and even Sky Knights, as bad as they are, still count on an open centre and they are the newest archetype for dragon world. Dungeon uses Glory Seeker and other Adventurers weapons to both provide a target for Tetsuya and Tasuku and get that extra damage in. Danger was the original open centre deck, but before EB02 even they needed a centre monster, but as soon as they got the set, they changed from having a centre monster about 45% of the time to having a centre monster only on turn 1 or 2 just to stall for a weapon. My current Danger build only uses a centre monster if its Wall Lizard turn 1 or if I'm up against Seiger and I have Golem. These situations surprisingly come often enough to mix up a few of the games, but are not something I rely on for most games. The main reason for this change of play with most decks is because Dungeon paved the way to consistent 8 damage penetrate with an impact cheap enough to finish the job and not only that, but the impact was searchable. Scary if you have a monster in the centre, but relatively easy to deal with if you have open centre nulls like green dragon shield and battle aura circle. This is a worrying trend.

Play Styles and How I Play

So with EB02 being out for some time and Set 4 just gone through its pre-releases, I wanted to discuss play styles because allot is going to change in how people play Buddyfight. Play styles are, well, your style of playing the game. They are different for every person but there are two main factors: Personal preference and what deck you play. Your deck will be more influential in how you play, but everyone's play style is different because everyone is different in how they think in one way or another. What you should realise and hopefully you have, is that your play style WILL CHANGE over time, even with the same kind of deck. Also how you play determines hat deck you should try out. Work out how you play before deciding your main deck to go with, because even as worlds are still coming out you should work out how you play before deciding to go with a new deck.

The Buddyfight Bootcamp Experiment: Week 2

So there have been issues with this experiment, mainly at the fact that while two of the subjects have completed the hearthstone goal, one remains. As such today I will pass the Hearthstone part and continue the experiment, with subject 3, the one who did not complete the hearthstone section, will still need to complete it before part 4 of this but I will get him to go onto card research anyway.

The Hearthstone section for subject 1 and 2 was quite difficult, as getting their decks to level 10 then reaching rank 20 seemed a little much, but both made it. I may have to supply more tips then I would have liked to subject 3.

For part 3, I need to create a list of all the important cards in Buddyfight and their abilities, then explain how each card works to them in detail before letting them research the cards themselves for part 4, the quiz. I will supply them with the list today. Hopefully this will be the part where they start taking this experiment seriously.

So that's what is happening, I will keep you guys updated.

The Buddyfight Boot Camp Experiment: Day 1

So the worlds are coming up for all busiroad events and I have to prepare for it in the best way possible. However, I also have a few friends I help regularly that play Buddyfight. I build their decks for them, I teach them not only how to play but how to be good at the game, in fact they are the reason I made this blog. However, lately I've been having trouble pushing them to become better than myself, and they complain they can't beat me. As such I came up with a plan to help push them to their ultimate TCG potential. That is the Buddyfight Boot Camp Experiment (not that they know this is an experiment). I have 3 subjects that I must make into the ultimate Buddyfight players and be able to compete at my level or above in a 3 week plan. Here is the plan:

Deck Weaknesses: A guide to how to fight each World!

NOTE! THIS POST IS SERIOUSLY OUTDATED! I AM WORKING ON A NEW POST WHICH WILL COVER INDIVIDUAL DECKS RATHER THAN WORLDS AND BE UPDATED TO THE CURRENT META! USE THIS POST ONLY AS A REFERENCE TO THE PAST!

As with any Trading Card Game, no deck is perfect. Each deck has a weakness that can be exploited. For buddyfight, currently these weaknesses are quite clear for every world but dragon world, though dragon has weaknesses dependent on what kind of deck its running. Today I will be going over the current most popular builds for each world and going over their weaknesses. This is knowledge I have exploited myself during tournaments such as the buddy challenge, and is must have knowledge for any competitive player. Yes this is basically learning the meta, but I won't be going over everything, so don't think this knowledge is everything you need to know. This is also both my opinion and experiences with each world, so it may not be correct.

The Australian Buddy Challenge

So I entered the buddy challenge in Australia and man it was a great experience so today I'm going to tell you all of my experiences. However, this is just a brief overview, I will have my entire thoughts will be on the next episode of the Future Fighters Cast podcast.

So first, I did not win, but I did get to the top 8. There were about 37 players with about half playing Dragon World, about another quarter playing Wizards (am unsure if there were any 72 Pillars entered), and the rest were split between Katana and Danger with no Ancient World. The top 8 consisted of 1 magic world deck, 3 Danger world decks (including my own) and 4 Dragon World decks. I think all my games were against Dragon World, put it was fun anyway. One battle I had would have me lose through Galvanic Feather Dragon burning me to death as I tried to kill it with Khan only to be stopped by an endless stream of dragon shields. I won the next two matches against that player, but man that was a fun loss that I didn't even think was possible. The games were really tough (except for one preliminaries match), the giveaways were in the plenty and the set up was professional and had no problems with judging, between matches or the set up. On terms of players skills, i was one of the better players there, with the top player beating me through top deck and the 3rd place player completely thrashing me, I find it difficult to imagine there were many more players that where of their level. However, for the average, casual player, you weren't going to win often. Out of what i saw out of the Weiss side of things, they had twice as many players but ran just as smoothly, Neko Cards employees and volunteers know how to run a smooth event.

So thats just an overview of the event, if you want my deck list its here: http://www.tradecardsonline.com/im/showDeck/deck_id/528862 and I will have more to talk about in the podcast, which will be on YouTube on this channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI-g6hJUYqw-lzCQ_9SMa5Q my slightly more updated deck list is also on that channel, but it didn't change much. I might even have an interview with the winner.

Competative Attitude and Sportsmanship

This will be a difficult topic for both me and you, dear reader. Today I will be writing about how to think competitively, but also how to be respectful of your opponents and rivals. Trading card games have reached the point where they can be considered a mental sport, much like video games are turning into full blown events. Magic the gathering has massive events streamed to the world with high production values, amazing commentators and high level prize pools. Buddyfight seems to be trying to take Vanguards trail and rush its way into a competitive scene, evident with the buddy challenge giving away plane tickets to even bigger events when the game is not even at its 3rd biggest set. This is a risky move by Busiroad, and I'm really excited for it. As I write this I am preparing for Australia's buddy challenge in Melbourne, and I've been training and reefing both my skills and deck for the big day, and I feel both confident and anxious, which honestly is a weird

Buddyfight Metagame Analysis: What it is and how to do it!

With any competitive, multiplayer game with collectable aspects, buddyfight has a meta game. For those who do not know, a meta game is not how you should play the game, but how people are playing the game. Now before I continue, I WILL NOT ANALYSE THE CURRENT META GAME IN THIS POST, this is a guide on how to analyse it yourself rather than getting others to do it for you. This is a valuable skill not only in game, but also in real life, as analysing how other people do things allow you to change your own actions to be more effective in anything you do. Also meta games are dependent on where they are, as different groups of players play different things depending on what resources (in this case cards) are available to them and what people like. So first, lets see how a meta game works.

Deck Building Basics

Note: This article is of my opinion and written for beginners only. As such, this article is to be used as a guide only, not a set way of how to play. Aspects of this guide will change for various reasons.

One thing I have noticed in Buddyfight is that building a deck isn't as clear as Vanguard. You have your world then your Attribute (example: Dragon knights, Armordragons, 72 Pillars are all attributes) and maybe an Archetype ( to work with but that's all that guides you. This means its rare for your deck to be exactly the same as someone else without net-decking (The act of copying a deck list off the internet) and I like that. Unfortunately this has led to people putting random decks together and unsure what to do. So here is a simple guide to help those having trouble building decks.

Card Advantage and Resource Management

In every card game these are three key words that give glee to all who play, Draw A Card. These amazing words have been the basis of many powerful cards in many games. Any card that adds to what you can do is spectacular, the more specific the better. So buddyfight is no exception, but it makes it a deviously rare ability and never for free. So lets look at it shall we.

First of all, let us define card advantage and resource management. Card advantage is simply this, having more cards than your opponent. The more cards you have the more things you can do. Quite simple but getting such advantage is difficult. This is where resource management comes in. Resource management is getting the most out of what you have. You have to find the most effective card to play that wont cost you too much resources. Your resources come in the form of your hand and gauge. There is also field advantage, but in buddyfight, your field can be cleared quickly so it isn't so important. If you have anything in the field at the start of your turn then your opponent is either focusing on dealing damage to you or is losing.

So now to see how to gain card advantage and resources. There are 4 cards in set 1 that are good examples of how gaining cards is tough. That’s Survival Chance (at 5 or less life and 1 gauge, you may draw 2 cards but can only be used once), Dragonic Grimore (at 5 or less life, you can use this card to discard your hand and draw 3 cards), Nice One (for 1 gauge, you may draw 2 cards but can't use it again) and Devil Advantage (this cards allows you to get 2 72 pillars cards from your drop zone to your hand for 1 gauge).  All 4 take something away from resources and take specific conditions to get more advantage. Now you could argue that Dragonic Grimore is not much of an advantage card but it either can be used to replace a hand for better options or just gives you straight up more cards so I consider it an advantage booster. These cards may not be staples, but they can all give you the upper hand in battle, so maybe some good sideboard options.

So here we go on monsters that could give you an advantage. The abilities Soul Guard and Double Attack have been staple abilities for a reason. Soul Guard keeps your monster on the field for longer, and if it lasts the opponents turn then it can attack again. If it doesn't last then your opponent has used their resources to get rid of it. Double Attack is the opposite and the ultimate counter to Soul Guard. It allows you to attack twice, which can clear fields, beat Soul Guard, open centres then deal damage, simply double your crit and, best of all, makes your opponent needs to use more counter cards to stop it entirely. It simply gives you advantage by taking away your opponents.

Now we get to how resources should be used. Under current abilities, 1 Gauge = 0.75 life, 1 life = 1 draw and 1 gauge + 1 hand card = 2 draw. As long as a card meets those costs, it is a worth while ability. Do remember though that life its self is a resource and the goal of the game is to make your opponent run out of this, don’t use it up quickly yourself. The trick with resource management is that you must pick the best cards to combat the situation with the least cost. Don’t think vanilla (cards with no abilities) cards are useless, most of the time they are more appropriate for the job and cost less for it too. Size 3s tend to take allot of resources, but can also waste allot your opponents resources to kill it. so remember that when working out what card you want to use.

So now that you know about card advantage and resource management you can hopefully see this being done by all players and help you do it yourself. It is a key aspect to all card games and buddyfight tests ones knowledge and ability to manage it. Practice managing it and you will earn the key to victory.

Future Fighters' Cast now Online!

Our first podcast has been released to the inter-webs in the form of a YouTube video. Check it out if you can. We talk about a whole bunch of things all related to buddyfight even surprising ourselves with our thoughts (or at-least I do). You can see the first episode here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI-g6hJUYqw-lzCQ_9SMa5Q We plan to do more and even make mini episodes to give our thoughts on specific parts of buddyfight. So come join us!

So you wanna be better at collectable card games?

Play Hearthstone......

What you want more? Seriously the game hearthstone teaches every basic strategy in the game that can easily apply to other games, has an awesome way of bringing more games out of you and you don't have to spend any money, you can but I haven't....yet. Simply playing the game can make you play any CCG/TCG better, it's worked for me. Anyone can easily pick up the game and learn allot, even experienced players can learn a thing or two from it.

If you can't be bothered though, here are a few quick tips (note, this is basic stuff and advanced players will know this stuff):

• Card Advantage: Above anything this is important. This is above all a must needed strategy and even more so in buddyfight with it's lack of card draw. Card advantage is simply having more cards than your opponent, and this can be done with card draw, double attack, soul guard, ect. What you want to do is use as little cards as possible to get rid of as many of the opponents cards as possible. Allot of new players in any game tend to end up with a low number of cards in their hand. This is because new players don't pay attention to how many cards both players have and simply just throw down their most powerful cards. Size 3 are (in my opinion) good in this aspect because they can be a clear example of how to gain advantage, as they can rid of everything you opponent has and waste opponent's cards to get rid of it. If you want a quick guide watch this (and yes it's a hearthstone video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxN7i1sh29I
• Resource management: I'm going to have a full blog post on this and card advantage but basically its the gauge version of card advantage. You have to manage your resources (gauge and life) to get the most effective use out of your resources. This is the big reason to hate size 3 cards as they are eater of resources, they are hungry for them, and they don't necessarily give back in card advantage.
• Learn the Cards: If you know all the cards you know what to expect, simple as that.
• Learn the Meta: learn what people are using and make a deck that can counter such deck. Don't follow the crowd and think for yourself. One that net decks is predictable.
• Practice: any game, any activity in general, you can only get better by repeating the activity over and over. learn from your mistakes and don't complain, keep calm and look over what you did wrong, what really did come up to luck and what was truly the opposing player being better than you.

So yea, hope this helps and seriously, hearthstone will make you a better player in any TCG/CCG. It's so simple it simply just makes you better. It's a crash course in card games.

Buddyfight: My first experiences, thoughts and strategy

(Note: this was meant to be my first post, forgot about it)

Future Card Buddyfight is a weird game. I myself don’t know why I like it so much compared to other card games. I think it's because it has something that I have felt only twice before, the beginning of a game with beaming potential, but more on fun rather than seriousness, the sense I felt when I started card fight vanguard and when I was a kid starting yu-gi-oh. It is a feeling I have attributed to fun, nostalgia and thought. I wish I had a name for it. All I know is when I feel this, I know I will stay with the game for along time. So today I'm am sharing my general thoughts and what I have learned from this and other games that will help my future play.

Now how does such a game with what seems to be a luck based system work to a point where one could consistently win? Its knowledge and prediction. The trick is to know when to attack and when to hold back and try and fend your opponent off, and you do this by working out what they most likely have, and working out how they are playing to deduce what they have in their hand. This is oddly difficult to teach and apparently to pick up. I seemed to have picked it up out of no where and have trouble teaching it to others. Maybe it is just luck and I just make the most of it. I don't know but ill try my best to tell you.

Now, not going to lie but I lost horribly in my first tournament for buddyfight....and vanguard.....and beyblade.....and pokemon. I’ve never been one to come up with strong starts even if everyone else is just as experienced as me. However, I've always looked at a loss as a learning experience. That buddyfight tournament was the first in Melbourne, and in the last fight I lost even though at one point I had 13 life to 2 (Damn Turtle Dragon), and my losses early on allowed me to learn how people think the game is played, and allow me to learn how to turn that against them. I think the greatest push for me to play the game was hipster-ism, I wanted to play the game that no one took seriously. So far I've enjoyed that aspect oddly enough, as I've found enough people to play with, but not too many that I feel overwhelmed like I had been for vanguard. It was also new, so researching all the cards was quite easy, and like pokemon, once you get a few hundred cards memorised, the rest come together quite quickly once a new set is released. This has been key as knowing what is most common in decks and what cards are good allow you to easily work out how your opponent is playing and what they could and might do. Not that my training partners have been great.

At the time of writing this, I have fought 2 magic decks and one chess deck. While I did win those matches, they were close as I was unsure how the decks worked as a whole. The trick to winning is knowing what they can and cannot do, and if I don’t know my opponents then I'm just pulling what I can of the deck and most likely running out of cards and hoping for the best. You don’t want that, so having a variety of opponents is always a good thing. Unfortunately, while I can go out and fight other decks, my 2 main opponents are both dragon world players, and that makes it difficult to learn how other worlds play. If you have a variety of opponents, make the most of it, you will need it. If you don’t have a variety of opponents, there is one way to play against a variety of people, and that’s though a little site called trade cards online. Probably the best why to play the game online for now and already has a rather decent community on it. Go check it out.

Next up is deck building, and it really depends on what world you are playing, but know what you have access to, know what you need to get and know your meta game. For those who don’t know, a Meta Game is a game within a game, the deep part of any collectable game, paper, figure or digital. It is what can counter what and what is strong and weak. It is what players use most often. A healthy meta will rotate the strongest part to a new strongest regularly, whether with new options or with new combinations discovered by the players. Know what the local players use most and play it to the best of your advantage by using cards that really fight the meta and who knows, your style of deck may just be the next big deck! Cost, however, is always a big part of any collectable card game. You must understand that any big game will cost money to have the best selection and parts around. Almost no trading card game with a competitive scene has an average competitive deck cost for a deck under $100 (if you buy each card individually, and can be more or less with booster packs, normally more) and this aspect shocks allot of new players. Fortunately, if you start buddyfight now with a danger world deck, your complete deck shouldn't cost more than $70 unless you want all the shiny stuff. The trick is working out your budget and what you like. Net decking (the act of copying a deck off the internet) isn't always a bad thing, and while it does lower creativity, it will give you a scope of how much you need to spend and what works as far as the player base has worked out. If you want more tips on deck building, check out my podcast on buddyfight where we go over what makes a good card.

So that’s it for my first experiences, thoughts and strats for buddyfight. Hope this helped you look at this game at-least in a new light or help you win more. If you want more of my thoughts and also a few of my companions thoughts, I am planing to create a podcast for iTunes and you-tube, Future Cast, where we sit for about an hour talking buddyfight strategy, news and general thoughts. I also have a you-tube channel that I use from time to time to post videos. So I hope to see you around, Giraton out!

Aggression: When to attack and when to defend

A key to most card games is knowing when to attack and when to be a little more defensive, and this is even more important in buddyfight. Allot of new players tend to just attack or destroy every monster they see, but the key to winning is knowing when to attack a player and when to attack all the opposing monsters. A good turn is when you do both, but I will get to that another time. This post will help you learn when to strike and when to lean back a little.

So before we go into exactly what to do and when to do so, we need to discuss nullify cards. Lets have a look at Green Dragon Shield, Aura Battle Circle and Solomon's Shield. These cards are staples in their relative worlds and all require you to have an open center to use except for the magic world card. If you have one or more of these cards near the beginning of the game, YOU DO NOT NEED TO PLAY DEFENSIVELY! When you have these card you don’t need to hold back and have monsters in the center if you have an item equipped. These cards will be your life line so make sure that when you use them its worth it.

So now that we got those out of the way, lets look at our two play styles. Attacking is when you want to deal as much damage to your opponent as possible. It involves having creatures with strong critical values attacking the player, and cards that can clear the center and maybe deal a bit more damage while doing so with the penetrate ability. This is when you need to deal allot of damage quickly but not necessarily clearing your opponents field. Defending is when you are getting rid of anything that could threaten your survival in the game and getting something in the middle to keep from your opponent finishing you off. Your goal when in defense is to not lose that turn.

So when do you switch from attacking to defending and back again? That’s when this comes in:

The 2 out of 3 theory!

So new games normally require testing to see what is the best way to win. One particular you-tuber, Kudou Kun, had came up with one almost instantly, and so far its hold true. It is the 2 out of 3 theory.

So what is this theory you ask? Well the 2 out of 3 theory revolves around the theory of doing two of three things during your turn. They are as follows:

1. Clearing the field.

2. Defending yourself with a monster.

3. Dealing damage.

That’s all it is, but lets go a bit deeper into how you do each. Clearing the field is getting rid of all opposing monsters on the field. You do this by using spells and monsters to destroy the monsters your opponent controls. This is effective by eliminating any threat to your survival and victory and embodies the defensive state and aggressive state of battle, so try to do this as often as possible. Defending yourself with a monster is placing a monster with a good amount of defense in the center. You do this if you need to defend against your opponents next attack and embodies the defensive state. Dealing damage is just that, dealing damage to your opponents life. This embodies the aggressive state and brings you closer to victory. As long as you can do 2 of these 3 a turn you are in good terms, but if you can do all three then you are in the green and ready to win. This is where move comes in. Now at first I didn't like move because the first I saw of it was a weakling size 1 monster that looked like it couldn't hurt a fly and could be taken down by a fly swatter. That’s when Thunder Knights, Halberd Dragon comes in and proves me wrong. With decent power, a nice 2 crit and only a cost of 1 gauge it is one of the most effective card I have seen so far at performing all 3 moves. You can do all 3 without it, but its the best card out there at doing so. That’s all there is to it! A like to Kudou Kuns channel is right here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcoGbE4v0XCBhiGSrs49WaA . Say I sent you.

While the 2 out of 3 allows you to always go aggressive or defensive or both and is a very solid strategy, its not something you can always do, so try to do it as much as you can, but what if you can't? Well look at how your opponent is playing. If they are trying to stay as safe as possible, don't let them. If they are going out to win, don't let them. This game revolves around if you can counter your opponents moves and then pull your own off, a strategic tug of war as you might say. If you can only perform one out of three, make sure its the best one for the situation.

So I must say this, always make sure if you can win and if you can, go for it. Too many times I've lost because I wasn't paying attention if I could win or try to hard to win then get hammered by their big hand of nullify cards. Study your opponents moves, assume they always have a nullify card and only consider winning if you know they don’t or can get around it.

So take these notes and see how you go. Now I've most likely missed things or just couldn't work out how to put them into words so leave comments bellow if you find anything I've missed or got any questions you want answered. That's it for this post, thanks for reading. Giraton out!

All images used are from the Buddyfight Wiki, all copyrighted material is reserved by fair use.

Welcome to Future Fighter, the blog for all things futurecard buddyfight related!

Hello dear reader and welcome to the blog. I am Giraton. This here is my first blog so I am new at this however I am a massive card game player and upcoming game designer, so I do know what I will be talking about, however all constructive criticism is welcome. This post will just be an overview of what i will post here.

So here i will post my thoughts on the game, current strategies and deck builds as well as theory on how the game balances itself. So I hope to see you guys around, Giraton out?