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.

Merry christmas !

credits

I wish all of you a merry christmas,
and lucky pull in your BF packs.

Video : Game review - Legend world Hero vs Dungeon Knights Top 4 French champioship

I hope you will like it and learn from it

French Tournament 2015 Report

     French WCQ was canceled. In compensation, Bushiroad gave France it's own tournament. This where I went past week end (13 december 2015).
I wasn't willing to buy a new deck, so I went with Hero. With the playtests I did with my friend who played Wizard I felt that Hero was a bit outdated, and I would struggle against the new support from HBT03. So I wasn't expecting much coming to this tournament.

TL;DR : Wydar Sarkal

Happy birthday Buddyfight notebook !!

Credits

Decks list (last update : HBT03)

You just arrived on Buddyfight and you  have no clue what all the existing deck are ? And you are also looking for the deck that suits you the best ? This list is desinged for you. It referes all the archetypes existing and the decks created by the players.
If you are looking for the best decks of the metagame at the moment, this article is not done for you as it doesn't integer any tier list.

There are currently 10 worlds.
Besides those worlds, there are 2 additionals flags that allow you to play a cross-over between worlds.
There are also generic attributes that can be played into every worlds (but have their prefered flags).

Note : for each world's ambiance description, credits go to the wikia

I cannot assure to know every decks and every variants in this game. So any willing to help, please post in the comment sections.

Deck review : Hero (Legend world)

Playtest notes

TL;DR

      Hero is a control / grind deck.
      The deck was really struggling at first because it was filled of low stated monsters which needed to link attack to get their  bad effect. The deck is now very good, but play none of those link attack monsters. Keep in mind that they exist, we never know, their effect might become handy.
       Hero is an open center deck which turns around a toolbox of weapon which can be changed for no cost thanks to the Equipment change ability.

TL;DR : Hero (Legend world), 3rd place French WCQ

Complexity of gamestate

    One of the numerous things I learned while reading Yugioh articles, which you can find in the librarie here, is the notion of complexity of gamestate.

Blog update : Going to Twitter

     Hello guys,
what's up ?

   As previously said, there will be another article this week. It hasn't been written yet, but I promiss it will be released this week. I will give more informations about that on Twitter.

    About twitter, I re-started using it to throw some random thought. It will also be used for any update on article and blog.
    Weekly Blog update will now be published on Twitter or more precisely TwittLonger. The reason is simply because I want my blog to be free of those kind of very temporary article. Any old Blog update article has been erased.

    So I hope to see you for my next article this week
    And on twitter next Monday.

   Until next time,
   raise your flag...
   please

Why Water never broke out ?

    Water (or skull water) is a highly defensive deck. It is turning around Water Technique, Shinotsukuame which turns all your monsters into big walls. When we see White Dragon Hermit, Nanase turn into a free Sieger, it is legitimate to think that this deck will be huge. Eventually, nothing happened...
    Why ? I will review all those weaknesses, and what we can learn from it.

TL;DR : Water

The water deck I used to test the deck for my next article.

05/10 Blog update : Not much incoming

     Hello guys, what's up ?

      Again, I can't promise you any article soon. Maybe if something happen, I would write something about it; but otherwise nothing must be coming soon. I am looking for a topic for the basics serie to complete this lack of article incoming.

       I wished arena was updated, because I am not motivated at proxying right now.

       Sorry I could not bring anything more joyful

Kaizerion's death

      The full extension of HBT3 has now been revealed. And within those cards, two generics cards have caused very strong rections. Here are those two cards : Barbared wire, Size 0 monster, pay 1 gauge, discard, -2k defense, -2kpower, -2 crits on the opponent's weapon (I haven't found the wiki page sorry).

      Kaizerion has been dominating since it's release. This is because Kaizerion allies very good stats, Soulguard which removes 90% of the anti-item options (plus the fact that kaizerion is not a weapon, consequently not affected by anti-weapons like Double guillotine), and makes the best uses of the Ace-like brave machine (Beast Deity, Tigerthrust, Bird Deity, Sabird and Ocean Deity, Slashark).
     This reign of terror is about to end with the release of the two cards present previously.  But this does not come without any problem.

      Hunter serge made a video about it. And topic / meme started flourishing on the FB group.
      Make sure to watch Hunter's video before reading the rest of the article.

Talking negatively of Vanguard

       There are two things that I see (and been part of) since a long time, and I want to go over that :
         - Debatting how -insert negative adjective- Vanguard is
         - Using it as a reason why Buddyfight is good.
I will explain why they are fruitless or negative efforts.

Life break

      Life break X is an acronym for the official wording "When your life is X or less". Most of the times life breaks are put on spells and they simply cannot be activated if you don't meet the condition.
       The most famous spells with Life break are Dragonic grimoire and Abyss symphony which both have their own clones.
        What do they mean to the game, and how should to play around it ?

The library : Yugioh - Alter reality games articles from 2014

Yugioh Articles from 2014
Explanation of the library

Top 5 best openings

     This article is, in a way not very useful. Knowing the best opening is not helpful.
But I just thought it would be funny to list the best cards to pull turn 0.
Criterias are :

• the power of the card turn 0
• number of decks used by this card
• yes gold ritter turn 0 is strong, but it is very unlikely. So it has been removed.

Here we go :

Article from other cards games : The Library

       Despite having a tremendous amount of ressources about buddyfight considering how new the game is, we still don't have the same amount of ressources as the most famous cards games (some website even pay the players to write articles, and I am thankful because it brings very interesting contents).
        And inside those articles, there are a lot which are fairly general articles. And can be used to improve your skill in any card games, or that are simply interesting without knowing the game.
       I want to ather them all to one point :

THE LIBRARY

The library : Yugioh - Alter reality games articles from 2015

Yugioh Articles from 2015
Explanation of the library

Why has Armorknight demon disappeared.

      Armorknight Demon used to be the best size 3 in Danger world. He was pretty much untouchable. Played in every decks, I thought this card would still be a stapple in 100 years.
    Now, he is rarely seen as a one-off in Armorknight's sideboards.
    Analyse of a monster that was hit by the Powercreep, and more importantly, was beaten up by a shifting meta.

TLDR : Crimson

TLDR

Crimson pure and crimson Drum

Deck playtest : Crimson battler

Credit

     Crimson is an archetype from Dragon world that get enhanced when you are equipped with an item with Fist in it's name. What is so nice is that other than this item name restriction, every monsters aren't archetype dependant.
      You just need a few non crimsons monsters which woul stay solid even if you don't have  your fist.

Deck review : Crimson

Deck playtest 

TLDR

Introduce your friend to the game

     It is always fun to introduce a friend to a game you love. But it is also pretty messy because you will improvise which leads to missing some key parts and pointing some complicated rulings that are pointless when you begin.

TL;DR Star (Top 4 French BSF)

For more analyse about stars

Buddy :  Moon Celestial, Selene

 Size 2 (8) 

4 King of Forest, Zlatorog 
4 First Tribulation, Gold Lion of Nemea

 Size 1 (10)

4 Schedar Cassiopeia
2 Rigel Orion 
2 Sirius Lailaps
2 Stallion of the Divine King, Sleipnir

Size 0 (6)

4  Moon Celestial, Selene
2 Procyon Melampus

 Spell (23)

4 Starfall Night 
4 Great Fate, Frozen Stars 
3 Symbel Gard
4 Breathen Gard 
4 Holy Grail
4 Oswira Gard

 Item (3) 

3 Star Bow, Artemis Arrow  

 

 

 Sideboard

1 Fifth Omni Dragon Lord, Tenbu
2 Taurus Aldebaran 
1 Stellar Deity, Astraeus 
1 Capella Origar 
2 Loki the Ehrgeiz
3 Dragon Extermination Knight, Siegfried 

Update with HTB2 :
- 2 Rigel Orion
+ 2 Seventh Omni Earth Lord, Count Dawn
 (no Perseus Algol)

Decklists inspired from Damian Siwy's.

Tournament report : French Bushiroad Spring Fest

 Decklist (OIW)

     It was my first Buddyfight 'big' tournament. (By big I mean with stake. We where only 27 but because it was the bsf, everybody was more motivated to win than in a regular weekly tournament). My first 'big' tournament was in Yugioh. Obviously it was no way near the same atmosphere.  We were very few compared to Yugioh's French champioship (or even regional) which mean it was less competitive (quite a few Trial decks and 'just for fun' players).
    But it was more relaxed and gathering : people aren't just coming to be with their friends and 'see' other players. Everybody was talking to each other during/after the tournament.
     I won't say it is better or worse, it is just different.

     I just really hope Bushiroad will give at least 3 invitation to Europes during WCQ, because I really want to go to the European champioship, and having only one tournaments that gives only two tickets is far from enough especially in a card game (which mean with a random factor).

      Now let's get into the games :

The basics 3 : Do not give your opponent unneeded choices

    If you consider yourself as an ok player, don't read this article. This is a reminder of something that seems obvious but that is not.
    I've been seeing this two or three times : call more than one monster turn 0.

New video : Game replay : Star vs Purgatory knights

Advertisings on the blog

     Hi, you will probably notic (or not if you have Ad block), but from today there will be a few spots of ads on my blog.

      Because it is always a bit irritating for you, I want to take some times to explain my thoughts behind this.

Why I think rotation format is the best

    I had a quick argument on the facebook page on whether or not Bushiroad shall establish a rotation format.
     This is why I want to take an article explain why rotation format is, in my mind, the best format.

Deck review : Star

Deck playtest

TL;DR (top 4 French BSF)
Update Buddy All-stars

   Star is a grind deck which turns around stuns. With all the two criticals, they dig slowly the opponent's life while soft locking the opponent with Great star.

    Because of Frozen stars, your opponent will be forced to focus your side monsters, and with Schedar cassiopeia, lion and Zlatorog, you can refresh the board every times it gets empty (at least you are supposed to, on paper) .

    The main (if not only) formation in the deck is : size 2 non star to the center, size 1 and size 0 star in the sides. The size 2 (Zlatarog  or Gold lion of nemea) are here to give you on call advantage, it is logic to call them to the center otherwise your opponent will ignor them.
     Of course, the two stars on the side are here to enable Frozen star.

     With all the 2 crits, they have good damages, and Breathen gard can easilly kill at 6 lifes. Which is very unexpected and gives Star good power play (this + Frozen stars).
     With gold lion and Cassipeia, they have nice Card advantage.

    But outside of that, I hardly find any quality to the deck :
       Field control is not that good : They have better power than Wizard, but no destruction.
      As a legend world deck, they have very lackluster defense.
      But unlike other Legend world's deck they have bad Gauge management. LW gives them gauge, but the huge cost will make you run out of gauge.
      It is a pretty straightforward deck, and very unconsistent because of how reliant on Frozen star they are.
     
Interested in the deck ? Learn more about individual cards in Deck playtest

Deck playtest : Star

     Star, archetype that was first seen as a total stun deck, with the combination of board nullifier (Frozen stars, also called 'The gate') that applies as long as you have monsters on the sides, and Astraeus that willl make those monsters undestructable.
      With tests, this way of playing is for the anime only. In the TCG, you have to play it a different way.

What i would like to see in Buddyfight

    This article is only about what I dream of for the game buddyfight.  They will probably never happen.

Super buddy : 

    They are a slightly superior version of another card. For instance super drum has 6/3/5. They can only be played at one and only as your buddy.  You can only call them once and only by buddycalling him with one of the original version of the card that is in your deck (remember what i told you on buddycall in my previous article). This boost must not be too big to not favour too much the player who buddycalled, it can make viable some unplayed cards like Mega evolution did on certain Pokemon (in the competitive format of course).

Rate a deck

     I want to thank Bradley Stone, Wesley Small, Osvaldo, Reversed, Kingofthepanda and Taigon who took time to answer my question. It really helped !

Rate a deck part 1 : Deck style

Rate a deck part 2 : Deck strengths

Deck review : Wizard

Quick overview :

   Wizard is a grind deck. They avoid fighting the opponent's monsters. They kill slowly but surely their opponent with 2 criticals attacks and burns.
   To protect themself, they don't use destruction but disturbtion effect (mainly bounce).

Wizard deck playtest

Deck review : Purgatory knights

Quick overview :

    Purgatory knights is a control/Aggresive deck in Darkness dragon world. As a DDW deck, they can abuse all the goods Counters cards DDW have. They are turning around the ally-destruction mechanics with monsters who get enhanced when tributing a ally, and monsters who gets their effects activated when their are tributed.

Purgatory knights deck playtest

TLDR

Description :

    Purgatory knights is or a control or an aggressive deck with a lot of versatility.
   They have field control (most of your monsters have more than 6k power, destruction effects), and a good defense (mad Halberd, your size 3 monster, and one of the best counter line up)  which allow you to play control.
   And power play such as Demios' 6 attacks play, you can aggro your opponent. The problem is that this power play is very fragile and risky.
   If you call Knuckleduster, Eval grebe, Demios and equip with an item, you try to deal 11 damages, but if your opponent destroy or bounce your Demios, you only have your knuckleduster and Eval grebe which deal only 3 damages. This play is heavily reliant on Demios. And Demios has no self protection. This is why I cannot rate Damage higher than 50.
   Also if you go for an aggressive play, you cannot call one of your defensive monster (Mad halbert, size 3...).



   A Demios' attack formation is the most infamous part of the deck, but overall, PK have far more options than this, consequently is far from beeing reliant on this card.
    And having Forever which can give you any of your Purgatory knights gives the deck even more options.

    PK Forever, Abyss symfony/Life dwells into hades too and Eval grebe gives you just the ressources needed.
  
   In term of gauge, they have very low gauge cost, and Crossbow can give you just what is needed.
   I cannot give them more in terrm of power play, Size 3 + lots of protection and Demios' attack formation are the only two power plays, and the second one can easily be countered.

Match ups :

   Because of Demios' fragility, Purgatory knights tends to be less effective against decks with options against him. But against decks that haven't (Dragon world, Legend world) they can easily go ham and make the opponent struggle.
   But overall they don't have any horrible match up because of the deck versatility.

Interested in the deck ? Learn more about individual cards in  Deck playtest

 

Rate a deck part 2 : Decks strengths

Go to Rate a deck

   Now that we know how decks are played according to their playstyles, we can see it's strengh and weaknesses.

    Knowing a deck strengh and weakness is a very interesting thing : it can help your build by letting you know what you should look to fix with personnal techs, and let you know what you should keep in mind while playing the deck.
     And it is a very good reflection exercice : you will rearrange the ideas you get from the playtests.

     This is why I highly recommend to any Buddyfight content creators to do the same. Not only it is usefull for the viewer / reader, but it will also help you have clearer ideas (I did it with Wizard and Purgatory knight, and it was usefull).

Rate a deck part 1 : Deck style

     This article is the beggining of a two article serie to define all the criteria for a deck.
When I talk about deck, i mean archetype. Not someone's build. We consider the most optimal build of the archetype.
    As much as possible I want to make something general where everybody will agree with. This is why I picked opinion on this subject.
     I want to thank Bradley Stone, Wesley Small, Osvaldo, Reversed and Kingofthepanda who took time to answer my question. It really helped !

     We will first see what are all the styles a deck can have, what playstyle does it run.

TLDR Purgatory Knights (Archives)

no spoil...

Size 3 (3)
     2 Divine Demon Slayer, Amenoohahari
     1 Fifth Omni Dragon Lord, Tenbu


Size 2 (7)
    4 Purgatory Knights Leader, Demios Sword Dragon
    3 Purgatory Knights, Mad Halberd Dragon

Size 1 (10)
    4 Purgatory Knights, Eval Grebe Dragon
    4 Purgatory Knights, Gairahm Lance Dragon
    2 Purgatory Knights, Angry Hand Dragon / Purgatory Knights, Sword Breaker Dragon

Size 0 (6)
     3 Purgatory Knights, Knuckleduster Dragon
     3 Purgatory Knights, Crossbow Dragon

Spells (18)
     4 Death Grip
     3 Dark energy
     4 Black dragon shield
     3 Abyss symfony
     4 Purgatory Knights, Forever
 
Items (6)
     4  Evil Death Scythe
     2 Purgatory Sword, Fatal 

Decks playtest : Purgatory Knight

    Purgatory Knight, is THE DECK everybody is waiting for. One of the most hyped deck in Buddyfight. Before the deck even makes his premier, I am here to analyse it.
    (No this article has not been written after HBT01 released, and no i am not trying to fool you).

Latest update : HEB04 Buddy AllStars

Toronto's grand final analyse seconde game

    72 pillars open with Buer once again, cast Nice one ! and hits for one.

    Thunder Knights then calls TK Drums (with 1 soul), and Buddycalls Boomerang Dragon. He hits

bruel with Drum. 72p, answers with Check it out and bounce and recall Buer. Boomerang then attacks Buer. He used a card and a gauge to save 3 lifes, which is a wash. He loses Check it out ! which is a very important out  though.

Toronto's grand final analyse first game

    Welcome guys to my new video... Oh wait.
    At first i wanted to analyse the final with a video, but it was complicated and because i got recked by my video recorders (OBS crashed, and Bandicam is limited to 10 minutes), i gave up. And i decided that i will review it on paper.

    The final was recorder by Debauchery Tea party, you can find the link right here. I also want to thank him to allow me to use his video for my vide... article.

     Shawn (72 pillars) is facing  Michael (Thunderknights).
    Since I am lazy I will call them with their deck's name.
 

Greece first runner up Armorknight Ace deck

     As much as I was happily surprised by the Deep deck, Doxopulos Dimitris' Armorknight Ace deck left me a bit disappointed. This is probably because I had a lot more expectation from Dimitris' deck because i knew a lot more Ace than Deep, but there are still lots of things I would change in the deck.

Greece Winner's Deep deck analyze

    Greece has finished it's national. We now have the winners' decklists. You can find them here. Lucas Tsiplakos, the winner, played a Deep deck. This is something very surprising because of the bad reputation the Deep deck have. I decided to test the deck to see what it gives. And it did far better than i expected.

The basics 2 : The archetype written on the card isn't obviously the one where it should be played

    Archetypes are here to preserve game diversity.

    If any cards were available in all decks, only one deck would be playable : a best of the best of all the cards that are available at the moment. Don't get me wrong, it is interesting in its own way since there will always be interesting techs, but a big part of all the dcks will be the same.

New video : Mistake Review : Do not cast your shields too early

Hero world thoughts (Super Hero)

    Today, i want to talk about Hero world. More precisely Super Hero (i haven't tested Brave machine yet). At the beggining, i wanted to make a video about it. But i wasn't happy of the quality of content i produced, and since i am far more confortable writting articles than making videos, i decided to switch it to an article.

The buddy mechanic on a next level

   So far, there were only three strategyc points that would affect the decision of your buddy : 

1. It is a four-of in any match up, and is a card that can be played at anytime
2. Ultimate buddy shenanigans
3. And finally how easily you can acces to this card. For instance you can search drum with form a party, he is a better buddy than a Bladewing phoenix in hybrid decks.

    But now a fourth reason might come into play. Reason that may push the buddycall to another level.

Glossary

Every TCG's vocabulary :

 Stapple : Card that is played in every single decks (with a few exception of course).
Mill : Send cards from the deck to the drop.

Buddyfight :

This are word that i use, and is not a standart in the Buddyfight community, thought i think it is better to use them rather than "card X"-like

Battle booster : cards that say  : +3 power, +3 defense, +counterattack. Usually called "Drago-energy like".
Every other cards that give an advantage in battle but no counter attack are "Vanillas battle booster".
The cards who gives counter-attack but not exactly Battle spirit union, dark energy... will be called alternate battle booster

Shields :
here are the basic shields. Some cannot be classed so we will call them alternate shield until we have a better name. To make thing easier, shield are cards that cancel an attack or block damage. Cards like death grip can be used as shield because they counter an attack, but won't be called shield.
-open center shield : blue/green dragons shield, battle circle aura, holy grail...
-non-link shield : solomon's shield, midnight shadow...
-damage shield : chillax, black dragon's shield
- -2 shields : phoenix wall, white dragon shield.

Gauge charger
cards that give gauge, i called them Gauger before, but i prefer gauge charger.

Cancel :
cards that cancel spell (abra cadabra, breathen card).

The basics : Make the best use of your card

     I found out that a lot of player on Buddyfight area were not that good. And this is tottaly fine.  Everybody must have a first card game where he will learn the basics of the Tcg. I played yugioh competitively before but everybody has not.
    This is why i start this basic serie where i go back to the whire for all the players who started buddyfight as their first card game.