Buddyfight NoteBook: Looking back at the 2015 Buddyfight year

      The year is about to end, some persons are getting their house ready to host a New year night, some persons are already drunk, and Buddyfight players are looking forward next year. Looking forward an awesome 2016 years.
       But first, let's look back at the year that we are about to leave. With the 10 most important events in the Buddyfight card game.

      Note : This list is about the card game. I don't follow the anime, I cannot talk about iconic events that occurs during it. The tournament result aren't 100% accurate. It is done with the results I read on the North america group and Bushiroad website.

1 First special flag.

BT05: Break to the Future January

     What a way to conclude the first season and open the the year!
Break the future introduce the flag 'Dragon Ein'. Ein is the first flag has a totally different way to be builded because it allows you to play any Dragon type cards and alters the starting conditions with starting at 12 lifes and 4 cards.
    If the flag isn't highly competitive because of the hand disadventage, it still sees big popularity. It also brought somthing fresh and shows that Bushi is willing to do something creative with flags.
    The flag is also the home of Azi Dahaka, the first (and currently only) size 4 in the game.

2 Golden Buddypack : the disappointment

PP01: Golden Buddy Pack ver.E March

    Golden Buddypack is certainly the biggest 0 to 100 to 0 in Buddyfigh this year. Bushi promised reprints for a lot of expensive cards (Armorknight Demon, Mary sue, Asmodai) and everyone were looking forward to get those cards for a cheap price.
    But it ended up that the reprints were so rare that the secondary market wasn't affected at all.

    This is obviously a bit painful for the community, but we moved on.
   But it sets a big question : will Bushiroad ever mass reprint cards ? The answer comes this year.

New serie : Buddyfight Hundreds which introduce three new flags.

H-BT01: Neo Enforcer ver.E April

3 First of, Parade of the Hundred demons.

At first, people supposed that it was called 'Bug world'. The official name is finally much better.
Despite a 'Thunder mine' mechanic that is (in my opinion) not very creative, the 'bad-guy' touch make the the flag very cool.

The fact that any HD support could also be implemented to the world it belongs is very neat.

4 Then there is Star dragon world.

With a futuristic and shiny design, a unique mechanic and star cards like 'Star Guardian, Jackknife' ; SDW is a success. The price of 'Star Guardian, Jackknife' staying high despite having no competitive result is the proof.

5 Finally, the longely awaited : Hero world.

    Again, it is a world that is very appreciated. After hinting the world in the first season, Bushiroad cleverly made us wait for the 2nd season which builded the hype very much.
    In my local, a bunch of players started Buddyfight because of Hero world.
    But for some competitive players, the premier of the Hero world was something that the players were frightened :
     Hero world brought the most notable mechanic of the year : the Ride/Transform mechanic. The Ride/Transform allows you to equp yourself with a monster. Not only does that fix the major flaw of the weapon (beeing dead if you draw more than one), they have defense, are now eligible to Counterattack, and icing on the cake, they are incredibly cheap.
    This level of power the mechanic had was hold back at first, but it was just a question of time before it breaks out the game...

6 Omni lord : the hype.

H-BT01: Neo Enforcer ver.E May

    First translated 'Angle King' in the wiki (I find the translation nice), they are the first powerful cards playable in any world (at the beggining of the Omni Lords, Generic cards were all archetypes based or extremly situational).
    And what a way to introduce this keyword : Tenbu, the dragon lord which is a Raigeki with paws.
    We have almost all the omni lords, And we can say that they delivered. Very few of them are bad, but most of them have very high potential and are mandatory in everybody's collections.

7 Miracle Impact brings Impacts a new meaning

H-EB01: Miracle Impack! June

King's Wave, Caliburn Grief, Demon Arms Door, ArMoreD Gate!, New-Era Great Spell, The Creation
Those are 3 totally differents styles of impacts. Not just stupid finishers.
In this booster, Impacts are now spells with differents mechanics and interactions.

I am a bit sad Bushi did not fully follow the path Miracle Impact brought. But this is still a good step toward a mechanically diverse game.

8 The beggining of the reprints

H-BT02: Galaxy Burst July

A friend told me that according to his Vanguard experience, Bushiroad is not very enclined for reprints. But the Oborogenbu reprint proved that it was wrong. Oborogenbu was needlessly expensive. It is now half of the price. A lot of promotional cards joined him to the path of the Uncommon (Making of the great dragons, Wrath trigger...).
Old and expensive cards also got reprinted in Rare or higher. This is no mass reprints (Blue dragon shield still cost around 8 bucks, Divine dragon creation 20), but it shows that bushi is willing to give reprints.

9 Kaizerion : Futurecard Mechafight

H-EB02: Shadow VS Hero August

The biggest mistake of the R&D team is Kaizerion (perhaps the only mistake).
The card has powerful raw damage (3 crits, penetrate, double attack). But more importantly, it truly lacked counter plays : there was next to no spell that could effectively deal with items, and 90% of them were stopped by the soulguard.

Bushiroad very quickly patched the problem with counters to item (Barbed wyre, skill that reduce items' stats).
And now Kaizerion's dominance is just a far far souvenir

10 The continental shake up

H-BT03 Assault of the Omni Lords November

Assault of the Omni lords is the defining booster of the continental format. But what a booster and what a format. 4 game changing Omni lords, boost of old archetype (like Raging spirit), and new archetypes (Knights, Fifth omni, Wild dragon [which wasn't a competitive archetype before]).
Shoutout also to the Knight archetype which bring the dual items mechanic.

A review of this year's meta

Armorknights, Raging Spritis, Wizards and Kaizerion. Outside of the fact that they are competitive, do you know the common point between those decks ?
They don't have any ! They all have differets playstyles and mechanics. Aggressive, defensive, grind, Item centric, monster centric, size 3 centric...
This truly shows how diverse Buddyfight is. No matter who you are, you will find the deck that suits you.

Closure

Looking back, I see all the surprises, teasers, hype, rag I had with Buddyfight this year. And I can say, it was a great year.
For next year, I have my wishlist :

More new flags

At least one special flag

New archetypes for worlds like Magic, Danger...

Return of the Impact mechanic HEB01 brought

Keep on doing reprints

But I know that even if none of this hapen, Bushiroad will deliver some great stuff, and I can't wait to see that.
This is a heady feeling that I never felt in the previous card game I played.

Buddyfight NoteBook

jeudi 31 décembre 2015

Looking back at the 2015 Buddyfight year