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?