In the weeks leading up to everyone’s favorite holiday, here’s a special promo. Question: Since Witchmon’s magic is a programming language, does her capability still increase during this time of year when the barrier between the Other World gets weaker? She is from Witchelny.
If you’re looking for how Flatten works, check this article.
In Digimon World, you could inflict an LCD status effect on an enemy Digimon called “Flat”. It reduced their 3D model to a DOT sprite like in the v-pets and caused them to use a weak attack. It seems pretty appropriate to include for any 3D Digimon game that wants to include DOT sprites as with set Bit Depth. At the time, I already had this mechanic planned but no theming. So reducing the opponent’s dimensions one by one until they pop out of existence made a lot of sense. Originally, the balance was centered around having to obtain 4 instances of flatten. This didn’t test well. It took far too long to 4-hit-KO even when it can pierce evolutions. The next step was to tweak that number until it felt right in many many games. There was one point where I was torn between requiring 3 flattens and a regular damage hit versus 4 flattens and I ended up just including both due to how supports could be used to add more flats. The 3 flats with damage requirement was slightly too powerful while 4 as a fixed amount was way too slow without a constant supply of support-based flatten.
The case of 3+Damage was easy to fix: simply turn off the ability to KO from the damage unless that player attacked first. Being able to guarantee a 3+Damage flat on second attack meant the opponent was doomed and you could effectively play a support or two and guarantee a win without interacting much. That’s the kind of thing I hate most in games unless the opponent was already at an advantage to start with. They shouldn’t still guarantee that KO if I have the advantage! But of course, that weakened flatten in so many cases where you happened to start the rhythm of adding flats such that you get second attack on that damage turn. In the end, the perfect solution was to allow both situations. If you ended up giving 3 flattens and have the second attack, now is the time to try and get that final flatten by adding in a support.
Small note: Because I know someone will ask, the flatten happens after damage is dealt. So if you have the cross ability at the start of this post, you would deal the damage first then flatten after. Meaning you can’t go from the opponent having 2 flats and simply hit them with your cross for a win!
For some reason, at the last minute I made a huge mistake and changed the number of flats required to 3 or 2+damage as was the final rule. I had been very worried about the balance of such a mechanic for some time and flip-flopped many times during development. But I think it could also be because a playtester came across a fast-evolving deck they absolutely couldn’t beat with the requirements and always lacked enough flats to get any KOs before its actual damage would’ve caused the KOs. They tracked what would’ve happened if they supported with Power boosting and used deadly attacks instead of their special but weak flatten attacks. This was a bad move on my part because it was close to release and made flat a bit too fast for some matchups. This is a very hard mechanic to balance since HP is a variable factor that makes some Digimon harder to KO than others. Flatten is the great equalizer. If your opponent is a huge tank, flatten is great. If they’re a tiny flea, flatten sucks compared to damage. The thing is, your card actually has both. Meaning you can always use whichever is most advantageous! But this person was maybe approaching it in the wrong way. I was later able to test the same matchup (and many similar ones) by simply pivoting to damage when necessary. I found two things wrong with the original test report: you can’t always just pivot to your deadly attack and that means flatten attacks had low risk with high reward (so the “if I used damage” tracking wasn’t accurate); and you can sometimes pivot to deadly attacks which meant getting more KOs (which means they should’ve just done it). It does suck to lose your flat progress during the game by switching to damage. But a KO is a KO. You take it if you can.
After the last minute change, I did at least add a rule where you could remove flats from your Digimon by evolving at a higher cost. This worked well in some late testing and may have been the only mitigating factor that stopped the launch from being awful. But two radical wrong moves do not perfectly cancel out to a right move. I just got lucky this time. The big problem was it broke the DP tuning in every deck it faced. Most players just evolved by DP at the time and largely ignored Evolution cards (my fault—the evolve phase was complicated and those cards were sometimes underpowered). But I do consider this an overall net positive for me as a designer because I was able to quickly find the stress points in the game where it breaks down. This was never meant to be a game so heavily reliant on perfect DP tuning. It’s just one mechanic in a field of so many. I saw why it was breaking down and that gave me insight into how evo-boxes were overused and how the DP cost reduction bonus was also over-used. Once players had to add that reduced 10 DP cost back in, decks essentially evolved at the speed they were meant to without evo-bonuses. This made games a lot closer and reduced snowballing significantly…except versus flatten decks. So now, my goal is to make cards and erratas that do something other than pure DP cost bonuses and make flatten a bit slower as was originally intended. This game isn’t intended to be super fast, flashy, and have tons of effects flying around everywhere!
Digimon Battle Evolution is a game where the most common number of powerful effects you get per turn is 1. There are ways to extend it such as with evo-bonuses, Evolve phase card play, and Any phase card play, but the absolute most common and intended experience is one major effect per turn. In TCGs with alternate win conditions, you usually suffer a failure if any of the following happen: The opponent plays a bunch of cards that tilt the game’s favor away from you; you brick combining your cards for the alt-win due to chance; or it was designed poorly. This makes alternate win conditions in most games either overpowered (when those factors are eliminated) or unreliable.
For this reason and many others, I tend to shy away from creating game wins that weren’t originally intended. Games tend to systemically fail if you don’t go with the flow. But in DBE, Flatten doesn’t actually provide an alternative win, just a new method to the existing win condition. It’s like if HP didn’t reset on evolution. If that were the case, you’d need some complicated process to take the difference between your old printed HP and new printed HP and add that to your current HP. This could obviously be very annoying to figure out in-game. Plus it could cause very swingy games as players get hammered. That might lead to lots of decks being played that primarily stall. Stalling is not fun. Just as alt-win conditions are often not fun to have played at you, too much stalling also means you don’t get to play. For every “take that!” mechanic in these sorts of games, there has to be some negotiating factor on behalf of the designer to make sure the game stays fun for both players. Flatten is a mechanic that can pierce through a stall deck because screw those things.
So it feels good now (as it did up to about a month before release) but the way you actually track flats in-game…ugh. You used to pull a blind card from the top of your deck and that was your flat token. Neither player could look at it. Why did I do this? Because I was desperately trying to avoid adding auxiliary tracking tokens into the game. I like when a game is simple to carry around and repurposes its cards for many uses. DBE already does this with Digimon cards: They have stats for battle, evo-bonuses for small effects, supports for big effects, and +P to help evolution. I try to put as much of the games work on the card itself so players can get to the good stuff. But flat wasn’t built into the game at first, so I didn’t have an intuitive way to track it. That irrational hatred of little coins or tokens to track flatten became an annoyance to decks that recycle, recode, or otherwise mess with the top of their deck. And it essentially made flatten incompatible with corrupt as a mechanic and half the card “Lucky Banquet”. Plus, you’d go to take a card from your deck with some search effect and figure out a key component to win was stuck face-down as a flat token.
Due to the subtle decision trees players follow in the game to mulligan, it actually meant that flatten would hit Aces, Firewalls, Partners, and other power cards much more often than if by pure chance. You typically won’t mulligan your hand if those power cards are present and typically will if in a bind and they’re not present. This means your very decision structure sort-of filters the good stuff to the top faster. All a flatten player has to do is hit with flatten during the midgame. This was already a concept used in decks that trash cards but at least that mechanic was designed to achieve that card denial. And it was soft-denial in that there are effects to take stuff out of the trash. In the end, I had to admit I was wrong and just require players to bring flat tokens to each game. It’s not a big deal anyway since flatten is not an effect you throw into any old deck (again, similar to trashing).
NEW MARKER!
Click here to also download a printable TIF at 300 DPI, ~1 inch.
Now the only hard parts left are how much to support the damn mechanic! When you introduce a new mechanic into a game, it’s best to try and populate it heavily but also not overwhelm one set of cards with it, or else everything will feel lopsided. Usually, the solution is a big-ish set release with about 20% of your cards being peppered with it uniformly. Since Bit Depth was a big Marine release, it was the obvious primary choice to kickstart the population of the effect—incidentally, BIT has 70 cards with 14 originally printed with flatten, exactly 20%. Nature was originally my second choice since it too was very prominent but I backtracked this immediately during the first round of card tests due to interference with Nature’s normal mechanics—that “master plan” they do with all of the tactical conditions. I ruled Dragon out because smashing things is their deal, not flattening and a good half of the BIT Dragons were also Nature. Jungle was a terrible fit since you’d get so powerful from fast evolutions that you would prefer defense rather than a slower offensive mechanic. It later became the counter to flatten itself once DP-healing was added—making Jungle even worse since it would be its own mirror match counter. Or maybe that’s better. I don’t really know. Enigma is oversaturated with mechanics (especially in BIT which added Static) and should never be allowed to KO that easily with its deliberately weak Level Cs. In the end, Nightmare was the better secondary fit due to its heavy focus on disruption effects and game flow control.
But then more problems. Always more problems. I was designing something that literally flattened the game’s flow after all. A game primarily designed to have variable flow as a primary mechanic, to reverse snowballing and allow players themselves to evolve during the fight! Like if DBE wasn’t free, all that weaving and changing would be the selling point. So the new problem is that I have my 20% (spread among Cross abilities and Support effects) but now every card with a flatten effect is only good in a flatten deck. When I designed “Shatter”, it had the same problem which I fixed by giving it the power reduction effect with the attachment-breaking. Flatten is already too complicated for heaping such extra garbage onto the pile and too bespoke to leave as it is. The solution was actually pretty easy. When you playtest a rough mechanic, always leave multiple alternative rules open to yourself and see which ones you use the most often. Before, I did that with the number of flats required to KO in order to find the right balance. Doing it again, I could just change the Supports into “OR” with some other useful effect! Costing that properly was pretty easy too. It’s just the same as any other OR.
Cross specials had to be changed in a slightly more complicated way. The first thing was removing Flat from ALL non-Marine cross attacks except a couple which I will explain. Since flatten isn’t very good on its own, it needs a huge body to support it in the form of Level U or M—and Level M prefers to guard its precious 2 KO points rather than spend all day trying to get a KO in the slowest way possible. Personally, I also didn’t like how it removed the tense and interesting interactions with trying to decide between a deadly but risky Circle attack and a boring but reliable Triangle attack. You take all the guesswork out with that super-hard to punish but weak special Cross. This can be fine at lower levels, but M? That’s the end of the line. Literally, in Japanese “Kyuukyoku” or upper limit; zenith; ultimate. There’s nowhere left to look forward to, so it’s time to get down to business and really lay on the hurt. Flatten is primarily balanced for the Level C portion of the game and secondarily for fighting against Level U+ or between two unevenly matched Level Us. Since Marine was so populous, it could stay on their attacks as long as their HP was very high (which it is), since that wouldn’t detract too much if they were simply placed into a non-flatten Marine deck. That one card could still KO through Flatten just fine due to its heavy endurance.
As for the other oddball cases where something isn’t Marine but has the Flatten…remember how its the great equalizer? Well if you’re Level R, it’s similar to getting x3 VS. This means most Level Rs with x3 VS in either Marine or Nightmare could be substituted for a type-based Flatten. There’s tradeoffs. If you wouldn’t stay on the Level R and stick out that full KO, you pretty much lose all your progress without any support. But you do have the opportunity to stick it out with some protection due to how the damage persists after evolution. So x3 VS is preferred against a slower deck since the damage sticks after you evolve. But Flatten is preferred against the faster decks (funny enough) since you have a chance to keep the Flat point or scare the opponent into removing it at a cost. This makes Tapirmon potentially very bad in a deck without protection but potentially good too if you can pull off a bluff that you’re really going for Flatten KOs. Of course, x3 VS is in a similar boat to Flatten already, given that both are conditional on some opposing type or having extra support to finish the job. Because of this, it can be costed similarly but with great caution. The other example was Minotaurmon but it’s special. Firstly, Minotaurmon exists in 3 types so future flatten support scales very well with it. Secondly, it’s an unconditional Flat, so it’s an all-in-one solution. There’s never a dead case for the Flat that wouldn’t be universal to all flats.
So what’s the solution going forward? I initially wanted to sprinkle Flat support into every future set but that’s proving harder than I anticipated. Most sets just don’t have such lopsided release support for one type and are large enough. It doesn’t fit well into auxiliary sets because they’re small. Except for Nightmare or Marine. Nightmare still needs more but more Marine just compounds the problem of lopsided flatten. There are very few large-ish sets planned and those don’t have lopsided types, so I’d have to sprinkle the Flatten in uniformly, hoping to make future support. That makes those cards feel bad in the meantime. It may be that Marine and Nightmare get future Flatten attack abilities but everyone else gets Supports with “OR” clauses. Whatever the case may be, I’m looking forward to solving this puzzle as with so many others during my time designing Digimon Battle Evolution.
The final thing I should say is I hope people have fun with flatten. I saw several players enjoying it even with the rough release. Hopefully that experience is smoother now and can be expanded in the future.
Before the next errata list drops and an upcoming set is released, I’d like to give everyone a couple of cards to play around with that I think are pretty interesting.
There are also 2 new symbols created to make player’s lives a lot easier. In the past, there has been confusion about which evo-boxes give effects permanently (like Power changes) and which are one-and-done. With all new cards (and any that happen to be errata’d in the future), evo-boxes with permanent effects will have the Permanent symbol, denoted by a stylized lemniscate . These are only found in evo-boxes for bonuses, so other permanent effects won’t have the symbol.
The second symbol is to denote an opponent, marked by this target-looking thing . Originally, the “opponent” symbol was only needed for evo-boxes to both save space and clear up confusion about whether an effect is you, your opponent, or both players, but will now also be used in all effect boxes on any new cards. The word is just used so often that unlike permanent effects, I see no reason to make it specialized. This should save a lot of room, clear up a lot of confusion, and increase reading comprehension.
Both symbols’ meaning have also been added to the rules page.
Sounds menacing right? Grudge is the middle answer to threatening a particular attack between “to zero” and “counter”. It works the following way:
/ / Grudge: An attack ability or effect (granted similarly to Counter), which makes you attack second, double your Power against the specified attack, and revive with your Power as HP if you’re KO’d by that attack.In technical terms, here’s how you play it during the Battle Phase when attack abilities resolve:
It’s like a real grudge. You predict what attack your opponent will use, get a power boost, and insure yourself against KO. The opponent still receives a KO point as with any revival. In fact, the revive part follows all revival rules including a Level M no longer counting as 2KOs after that revival. Because the 2nd Attack of Grudge is not permanent as with Counter, you can still use the “1st Attack” ability to sort of cancel-out that effect and go by turn order. When you play Grudge, try to imagine your Digimon taking it to the face and having the poise to come back with something fierce, even if it’s from the grave. That should give a clear image of what’s intended. This can severely curb someone’s attempt to KO with a specific attack, such as a Circle which can 2-hit-KO your Digimon when it has Circle Grudge. Like a “to zero” or “counter” effect, this introduces an element of risk and prediction. This can also be an interesting way to punish 1st Attack, since that’s normally used to ensure a KO.
Have fun everyone!
It’s time this one had a wee bit of an update. Millenniumon’s DATA card has been heavily contentious since its release (and before its release frankly). There’s an obvious bug that needed plugged with this little blighter for quite a while. Thanks to user Darkness for motivating me to finally solve the problem :)
The bug: Mulligan your hand until you get this on turn one. Fetch your ACE, Partner, Firewall or any 2 cards that will allow you to set up. Your mulliganed trash goes back into the deck. Your only sacrifice was evolving to Mega, which may not even be necessary if you grabbed Download and any Level U.
The fix: Firstly, let’s put a stop to mulligan breakage. Mulligans are intended to be risk-reward, at least for a while until you can get some other cards to replenish the deck (provided this is your style). A clause was inserted that you (Do not use if you mulligan this turn). Following that, we double down on restrictions by forcing a player to pick 1 from the trash and 1 from the deck. The whole idea behind shuffling the trash back in before picking was to allow seamless picking from either zone. In this case, we’ll restrict access to the cards you want so that you have to wait till mid/late game if you want to get two nice cards for the price of a data-break.
The future: Going forward, will this fix the inherent problem? It’s difficult to say. Searching effects are always very powerful in any strategy game. It’s appropriately costed as long as a perfect early play isn’t possible with that cost (no late-cost is ever enough to equal a perfect early opening in any game). One possible existing exploit is to use repeated mulligan to get this card again, then wait one round to activate it and do something similar to what you would before the fix. Maybe not exactly the same, since you won’t have access to 2 from the deck and therefore how much you mulligan actually matters (notably, if this card is later in your deck, you’re punished less in this case). However, it can’t be denied that this will hamstring powerful opens such as Download+Ultimate, Partner, ACE, and so on. More to the point: this will give an opponent a turn to respond. One of the picks is now visible from the trash and therefore can be anticipated. Plus, they can now aggressively mulligan for their blocking/counter play. Only time can tell if this will be enough to curb the madness of Millenniumon.
For those of you who use Tabletop Simulator: the module will not immediately be updated, so please use this post as reference material until then.
The first of the small, approximately 10-card supplementary sets is here: Auxiliary Set A (or XA for short). This symbolizes a switch to a smaller set format so that I can actually release these as a solo creator more rapidly without having to make massive, difficult-to-playtest, sets every year or so. The intent is also to theme them around some central idea. This set’s theme: Dracomon! You’re getting reprints of Dracomon, Coredramon (bringing the total to 3), Groundramon, Wingdramon, and Examon. There are also 2 new DATA, a new Evolution, and 2 new Megas that were sorely needed. The gallery has been updated with these cards too.
You may notice the new Attachment icon in XA-008. Pay attention to that because it will be how attachments are handled going forward! Anything after that icon in the #fa498b;">magenta text is the ability given once it’s in an attachment slot. It may also be used going forward for other purposes such as “Trash 1 [attachment]”. Cards with that icon in their text will be considered “attachment” cards, much like how Ace and Firewall keywords are used to identify those types of cards. For now, there are no plans to retroactively change every card that attaches in the game but I’m trying this out as the new patter going forward. The rules have been updated to include the new icon’s definition. It may take some time for me to update the site’s icon font so it can be displayed.
For high skill players, this deck is packed with ways to take advantage of specific situations and force edge cases when brute force isn’t enough. Cherrymon, Knowledge Crest, and Super Evolve are built-in toolboxes. Much of the rest of the deck is dedicated to drawing cards, power gain, racking DP, or exploiting evo-bonuses multiple times. Bladekuwagamon, Vegiemon, Moxie, and Knowledge Crest are all valid attachments; so more experienced players should take note of when they might have to free up a future attachment slot to pivot their strategy.
Primary type: (30)
Rare types: (2) | Lesser types: (1)
Entirely weak to Jungle x3 VS, with extremely rare other weaknesses.
Prioritize removing these particular cards in the pre-setup. Adjust to your matchup.
This pre-setup removal will prioritize saving blow-out cards for later game. A more offensively focused pre-setup might remove 3 Cherrymon’s Mist and keep Behemoth, Metal Parts, and Disrupt Ray instead. This could allow for some early KOs in critical matchups.
See visual list for specific card versions whenever ambiguous.
Jade Library is heavily reliant on churning through the deck both to evolve quickly and set up the trash for future play. Keep the following in mind while playing:
Watch out for the following Megas, which can actually rival Herc directly:
Despite the number of contenders at Mega, most of the rest have to work very hard and it’s peerless against Ultimates. If speed, a toolbox, consistency, high draw power, and a very powerful Mega sound appealing to you, give Jade Library a try.
For high skill players, this deck has multiple layers of consideration: what to toolbox when, how aggressively to mulligan for a type-hate champion, or keeping track of deck size are all important. Mostly, it’s a deck for those who prefer to hit one button (Cross) and keep hitting it for most of the game.
Primary type: (25)
Lesser types: (2) | Lesser types: (3)
Rare types: (1) | (1)
Mostly weak to Wind x3 VS, but several additional weaknesses occasionally.
Prioritize removing these particular cards in the pre-setup. Adjust to your matchup.
This pre-setup removal will prioritize getting as much early-game as possible and minimizing late game. In some cases, early Mist could be better than protecting your Cross with Letterbox, so make adjustments where needed.
See visual list for specific card versions whenever ambiguous.
This deck is incredibly vitality-based and capable of paying trash costs almost indefinitely. Given that this feeds back into its own “Chip”-based strategy, it’s similar to many trash recursion decks. Let’s take a look at some of its strengths and weaknesses, and keep these in mind while playing:
Valdurmon—For when Phoenixmon isn’t intense enough.
What’s good about it: Every Digimon has a ability but very few have a ability. Valdurmon not only has both but also an implicit ability! Evolving in the typical way using its evo-bonus gives a heavy Draw 3, which is an immense advantage while a Mega is live. Valdurmon can even continue to draw using its cross ability, so your hand never dies. This Digimon is incredibly defensive with its 1840 HP and Shatter ability combination. In addition, its ACTIVATE is nearly as powerful as the ACE Ground, with an additional Recycle any 5, which can be the end-game gambit for filtering your deck into using your best cards ad-nauseum. The ridiculous Phoenixmon DATA card is valid in this deck. Valdurmon also has a generic Level U DNA, making it pretty consistent even for decks that will have trouble racking 60 DP—which Wind rarely has trouble making. Lastly, Valdurmon’s cross is about as strong as most Level M/U triangle power, which is unique. What’s bad about it: As ACTIVATE abilities go, this one is pretty limited. Being forced to use can delay a safe window for it several turns depending on the opponent. Since its DNA includes a Mega, the Phoenixmon DATA card must be in-hand to skip the 60 DP requirement. Despite being a Ruler, its numbers are overall a bit lower than many 60-cost Megas due to the staggering number of attack abilities and their utility. Despite this, Valdurmon has no recourse (such as Counter or To-Zero) against a stronger Digimon with more powerful attacks. Tips: If you want to use Valdurmon without being roped into Garudamon, Piximon, or DNA try using Penguinmon, Love Crest and Moxie to get extra evo-bonuses (Plug-In A isn’t valid for Level M). You could also double the bonus and draw 6 cards! Having a Ruler type means the ability to use Dominion to freely add/remove Types during your turn. Make the best use of this by including Digimon with extra types so as to be able to play Pink D3. Using Phoenixmon DATA for the Data Break can be an effective way to keep your ultimates live and in the game when losing horribly and the prospect of evolving to Valdurmon seems unlikely. The data’s Any Phase also compliments Valdurmon’s two draw effects by making sure your hand size stays consistent throughout the game. Recovery Supports or Evolutions (around +300 or more) are useful the turn Valdurmon enters the field if 1840 isn’t enough Power, which should then be enough to kill most Level U/M in the game. Love Crest is incredibly devastating with Valdurmon and it may even be recommended to use Incubator to search the turn it enters play. Since the ACTIVATE says “make own Power same as own HP“, it won’t matter if becomes the weakest. What might actually matter is if becomes incredibly strong with Shatter (250)! In addition, Love Crest immediately grants an evo-bonus so you can Draw 3 again. One last tip: Valdurmon’s ACTIVATE has one of the most powerful recycles available, in that you get to choose any 5 to put back into the deck. Wind tends to be able to make use of decks that run 1 copy of multiple powerful or situational Option cards, draw/self-trash a ton of the deck, and then put the best cards back in for re-use later. This can effectively make their late game a kill machine. Valdurmon’s recycle is like a turbo charged version of an entire Wind deck archetype.
Research—what does the scouter say?
What’s good about it: Knowledge of hidden information is a rare thing in Digimon Battle Evolution. Having not only hidden knowledge but also the ability to change your choices based on it is even rarer. The draw effect is just icing on the cake. Since Research can be a proxy, it has added searchability for Partner-centric cards like Partner Finder. Research can help you remain flexible in case of an opponent with specific-attack hate, in case of your own attack-hate being applicable/not-applicable that turn, or other corner cases such as the resolution of Support effects and Activate effects that may change attacks at the last minute. In addition, when you choose a with Jamming, you are allowed to reveal the attack before Supports resolve, void the opponent’s support and Cross-ability, then use Research to change your attack to something like for a devastating combo. What’s bad about it: Like most options, Research is Support-timing only and is mostly a corner-case or utility card that isn’t always going to be applicable. In some ways, it’s also a crutch as a player who’s excellent at attack prediction will rarely need Research outside of special cases. In most cases, confirming what attack you suspect was chosen is far weaker than playing a card to actually capitalize on it, which is where its “utility-ness” can be a drawback. Lastly, there’s a heavy downside in that you may only see your opponent’s choice when your level is lower, which immediately rules out several situations and deck structures. Tips: Research is a card that helps you when you don’t know what to do; If you’re not very good at prediction, it can fill that gap in your skill. The card is strongest when your Digimon has counter (anything), to-zero (anything) or jamming—possibly flatten (specific attack) in some decks. There are times in the game where your opponent can use all their attacks equally effectively. In these instances, Research tends to shine. If your level is equal or higher, Research is most useful on your own turn, as you may be able to benefit from the attack change regardless, especially if their support gives away the choice. This tends to be an excellent choice in a deck that heavily abuses Cross abilities but also low-level decks. Sometimes one of the most effective strategies is playing 3 plus a proxy with several Rookies that have different counter-attack abilities.
Silver Ball—more like cannon ball
What’s good about it: Doubles your power and sets the opponent’s to 0, allowing an easy come-from-behind when you lose the evolution race. Since your own Digimon can be any level when used, it can also act as a “get ahead” gambit that preserves your own health while taking a significant chunk out of the opponent. The “If not” case can be really helpful as well, though not as strong as cards dedicated to discarding. Discard 1 can disrupt your opponents ability to evolve, rack DP, Support on the next turn, or even dump them into the dreaded 0-card hand. What’s bad about it: Silver Ball tends to be least effective when your opponent is stalling or losing, which makes it less effective if there’s a significant gap in deck or player strength. Until such time, it’s a mere discard 1 which can be difficult to time properly or prioritize when you should presumably have more impactful effects. Having multiples of this card is therefore not very recommended. Tips: Since, most every deck tries to evolve to Ultimate and Mega Digimon—which are big and hit hard, Silver Ball tends to be devastating when played at the right time. Put one of this card in your deck and most of the time it acts like having a second ACE. It should almost always start in the side pile, so as not to clog the opening hand. Key moments to play this card are when the opponent is Level R or C but has 1 card in hand or when they’re U or M and doubling the power would decrease the number of hits-to-KO. Alternatively, when they’re at Level U or M and their attack would KO. When you calculate potential damage for both players, it can sometimes be better to wait for your opponent to reach Mega. If you can tell the current Ultimate won’t deal a knockout blow and the Silver Ball is close enough to KOing their Mega (they haven’t played yet), try saving it for that instance and net two KOs! Silver ball is both a sword and shield against the strongest Digimon in the game; as such, it is a tool from which every deck can benefit.
Cyclomon and Monochromon—A Double feature of evo-bonus madness! These two dynamos of Evolution are quite similar in may regards, leading to today’s unique COTD.
What’s good about them: The evo-bonuses of these two Digimon combine deck searching—one of the strongest effects in the game, with Evolution cards—one of the most powerful cards when used correctly. Both effects tend to be limited but very powerful, which is mirrored by the the Monochromon Cyclomon duo themselves. They add significant speed and consistency with regard to activating evolution effects. Monochromon in particular has a very nice balance in having a strong attack set, aggressive Support, and sturdy health. Cyclomon likewise is even more sturdy, nearly as good of an attack set, though more niche Support use. The Cyclomon support can still be great for attack fixing and the peek beforehand allows using punishing Cross effects. to Zero is a solid Cross ability that both share and with enough of it in a deck, Cyclomon’s support becomes truly horrifying. Not only for fast evolutions like Digivice or Super Tag, this evo-bonus helps toolbox utility evolutions like Burst Growth, Meatvolution, or Plug-In A. On top of that, it can search the ACE evolutions Download and Super Evolve, in addition to the Firewall evolve Immortalize! What’s bad about them: Independently, Monochromon’s support is situational to when using Circle and Cyclomon to when potentially wanting to use Cross but only when you’re unsure. Additionally Cyclomon’s Support is limited to Dragon while Monochromon tends to work well in both Dragon and Nature decks. Playing both in the same deck for their evo-bonuses is quite difficult, though this is more of a denial of a super bonus than a strict downside. The evo-bonus is very central to these cards so they lack luster in decks that aren’t tailor-made for their evolution tree, which limits effective deck building. Some evolutions like Warp Digivolve or Data Hijack are a bit less effective simply due to the nature of their levels. Tips: Don’t try to run Monochromon and Cyclomon together unless you have a really good plan. The deck will tend to be unfocused and Rookies will be inconsistent. Losing consistency to gain an effect that improves consistency is pretty counterintuitive. It’s heavily suggested to use a partner that can evolve to one of these, since you’ll get the Evolution search for free and the partner itself can be searched. One of the downsides of Hyper Digivolve is that it’s generally central to a strategy yet limited to 2 copies and that is considerably remedied by this search effect. Don’t forget to re-consider all the evolutions you normally avoid due to limited utility now that they can be searched, in addition to considering obvious choices like Download, Super Evolve, and Immortalize. If you have a single copy of many types of utility evolutions (Incubator, Sniper Disk, Plug-In Backup), you should always have the right tool for the right job, if potentially one evolve-phase late. D-Link in particular takes on new life when used with Monochromon or Cyclomon since it implies all of your Ultimates can be of a different type and it won’t matter (plus they’re cheaper). D-Link would therefore open up many new creative combinations.
Dark Evolve—The most tooled version of three other Evolutions.
What’s good about it: Dark Evolve works like 3 previously printed evolution cards at the same time: Warp Digivolve, Digivice, and Mutate depending on your current level when played. As a Warp Digivolve replacement, it can take you from R to U (with no DP cost). It’s a Digivice when progressing C to U without DP. Lastly, as a Mutate from U to U and allows abnormal. Since the three aforementioned Evolutions are not always a valid option by themselves, it’s incredibly useful having one in the deck that is always live. Dark Evolve can be used even when you’re abnormal for even more versatility. Since it ignores DP, you get to keep any that was racked. Not for nothing but since it attaches and provides a downside, opposing “Shatter” abilities will backfire, causing opponents to be less likely to use them and also get the damage reduction effect. What’s bad about it: Plan to replace or detach Dark Evolve. If you don’t, the passive conditions are totally devastating. Without a way to remove this attachment, your shiny new Ultimate is defenseless to Counter, Flatten and To-Zero effects as well as every single prediction-based Support. Having someone support with Net Worm and kill your entire hand would be game changing, Ultimate or not. Since it also removes the ability to use “Any Phase” effects, Dark Evolve can significantly limit deck building. It would be difficult to include the ACEs Digi-Diamond and Miracle Ruby, DATA cards (if using the Any Phase primarily), half of Partner Finder and Data Morph (many more), both Super Hit and Moxie will have to be played as Support to attach, and could be voided. While it has one of the use cases from three different evolutions, it doesn’t have every use case. You can’t Mutate C to C or Digivice R to C. This is significant only for the fact that Ultimates tend to be at a lower quantity in the deck and thus less likely than Champions to be in a given hand. Lastly, having to trash 5 when you get KO’d or even when you net a win is pretty steep. That’s a forced full-hand mulligan which essentially means you can’t take a mulligan during a game that Dark Evolve has to stay attached until your Ultimate dies. This is yet another significant restriction but is still a kind of soft-restriction, since you could barrel in head first if you want. Tips: If you play something like Lesson Plan or Nanimon which requires/allows you to discard an attachment as part of its effect, you won’t have to run as many attachments in the main deck to clear a Dark Evolve quickly. In this way, you can technically use those cards (or Support attachments) to trick the opponent into using Circle hate while choosing another attack (don’t get voided!) and Dark Evolve would be removed by the time your attack resolves. Attachment-heavy strategies, like Flatten which uses Letterbox, can make Dark Evolve a tempting Evolution. Be careful of having cards like DarkLizamon, Super Hit, or level Ms that add attachment slots. Since you’re not allowed to remove attachments at-will, these will put you in more danger of having to keep the Dark Evolve. Notice the pattern with deck building and Dark Evolve: don’t bother building an entire deck to cater to it, but many decks can run it without much risk. This goes double for decks that can’t easily search the Dark Evolve since its trash 5 penalty makes it too risky to aggressively find with mulligans. A copy or two in a Monochromon/Cyclomon-heavy deck can be wonderful in theory, due to the evo-box search but consider that a Digivice is strictly better to find in that instance. Cards that change both players’ or your opponent’s attacks like Coliseum and Disrupt Ray help temporarily cover the stopping effects and tend to be good enough to run coincidentally with Dark Evolve instead of as a halfway solution to it. In short, build the deck smart with quick ways to remove the attachment but don’t dedicate a huge chunk of the deck to this card since it’s limited to 2 copies and therefore could weaken the deck overall.
This is a card game obviously inspired by Magic the Gathering but with other mechanical leaning toward traditional RTS videogames such as Command & Conquer or Star Craft. You build one type of resource to generate another resource to ultimately cash out by playing combatants. Combatants are therefore actors that can attack the enemy base and potentially destroy sites, while also blocking attacks to prevent site damage. Players take turns attacking sites and trying to deal 25 damage to their opponent.
I can’t quite tell what card stock this is due to not having ripped one yet. If I had to guess, it may be 280gsm and grey core. The card is almost transparent when a light is shone under it but they tried to make up for the cheap stock with a heavy gloss finish. For the price, I think a higher quality card stock should’ve been an absolute in the eyes of the designers. The print quality is overall good, if a bit dark in some areas. However, the game comes play-complete (max playsets of each card, plus some extras) which is a huge plus. Many times, you open one of these expandable card games (usually from Fantasy Flight) and do not get a whole play set of each card, causing you to buy more sets thus increasing the price point beyond what you expected. Read more
Hasbro released the Transformers TCG designed by Wizards of the Coast today. I had some interest in this game after checking out the rules and seeing that it would be a pretty intense showdown experience. Naturally I did what any normal adult woman would do and pre-ordered two booster boxes. They’ve arrived and now I have a product review for you all. A foreward: I used to be a TCG player for nearly all my life. As someone who dislikes predatory business models, TCGs have been off my radar for quite some time. The Transformers TCG will be ultimately no different. There are rares, uncommons, and commons. There’s tons of wasteful garbage you throw away after unwrapping them. You’ll pull too many copies of the same common for just yourself. The steep price of the product is ultimately for pretty cardboard. Given that I do not appreciate the TCG model, I will not be giving a review of its full distribution nor as a game. This review will be accepting all of these things as granted, therefore you will not find this to be an anti-TCG rant. This will purely be an opinion article reflecting how I feel about what I opened. In that way, I am biased more toward games that offer as much of a complete playset as possible in a box.
This review is based on the opening of two booster boxes and therefore pull rates will reflect this. Read more
This game is a nightmare. I’ve kind of spoiled my entire review at the start so let’s step back a moment and talk about the good in the game—what little actually exists.
Quality is standard here for Fantasy Flight: you have good linen quality cards, you have good linen quality chits, and everything is thick and very nice overall. The miniatures are great (though the lack of female representation is pretty stupid in an adventure game. It’s 1 out of 5.). The player boards are very inventive and they’re fun to play with. They do their job better than a game without such dynamic play boards. Read more
