V-Mundi

Digimon COTD: Mastertyrannomon

Mastertyrannomon—Power up!

What’s good about it: Mastertyrannomon sports a pretty “square” body of attacks, in that they’re all quite closer together in number than other . In a correctly built deck, its support is stronger than an Attack Chip. The evolution box bonus gives unprecedented toolbox power—take any 1 Digimon from your deck! The x3 VS gives the ability to hit Jungle/Nature for 1080 to start, which easily one-shots all Jungle champions and 2-shots all Jungle/Nature Ultimates. With the evobox containing multiple, tightly-grouped champions, a deck that always gets the evobox bonus is easy to achieve.

What’s bad about it: Like most , Mastertyrannomon suffers from low HP. In fact, his HP is lower than the average in his cost and type. If you’re not facing Jungle/Nature, his x3VS is just wasted power going unused, which also means he doesn’t have attack hate and therefore can’t protect himself against enemy attacks, which he would be weak to. Given that you usually want only 1 copy of a “hate” card but his support requires you run him around 4, this is an additional downside. His evobox doesn’t include a DP cost reduction, meaning most of the time he takes 2 rack-ups to get, or requires an Evolution card. The Support, while potentially very powerful, scales slowly and requires a certain amount of time or effects to have passed during the game to really be useful. In addition, “-tyrannomon” cards end up having to be in the deck at high numbers, potentially choking other ideas out.

Tips: Choose your other Tyrannomon ultimate—it’s not a great idea to only run Mastertyrannomon. Try using Super Evolve to pick Master out of the deck when his x3 VS would be relevant. Since his evobox can take another Master from the deck (for Support), it’s recommended to pack Partner Finder, use the partner evolve to get to Deltamon, Tyrannomon, Darktyrannomon, or Coredramon (any) in preparation. This should guarantee having your powerful support. Master works well with cards that have trash costs such as Mega Disk, Mega Chip, Dark Wings, and occasionally Giga Cannon (though HP can be relatively low in a Tyranno deck). Once a Master’s support is high, it should stay there barring opposing Static effects, so there may be no need for tons of recycle. Try re-using Master supports over and over again for a quick win. If you’re willing to give up evolution to Mega, try running Zeedmillenniumon/Millenniumon with Cyberdramon DATA and Millenniumon DATA: This gives you access to a +800 Power Data Break and 5 selective recycles to re-use Master’s support.

Digimon COTD: Magic Word

Uh…uh…uh…you didn’t say the

Magic Word—A new firewall that stops Any Phase effects and sticks around to void.

What’s good about it: If you’re good at attack prediction, this card can gain almost endless voiding of Digimon, which is incredible value. Magic Word also heavily punishes decks that use evolution box bonuses to lower DP costs, which can throw off their entire evolution progression. Any Phase effects can be some of the most flexible and hard to deal with effects in the game since they occur outside of normal play. No more sudden use of Digi-Diamond, Kabuterimon, or RedOtamamon, just to name some. They would have to Support with those effects—the Digimon you can continuously void; the Option you can void by merely trashing the Magic Word! Having the ability to trash it at any time to void Options can make opponents play their Options more conservatively, so it’s always threatening.

What’s bad about it: Magic word is a two-edged sword—you don’t get to use “Any Phase” or evolution boxes either. Depending on whose turn it is and what your opponent plays, it can be a played around or voided (on initial Support). Suppose you’re bad at prediction, or the opponent is better: your Magic Word’s usability drops off significantly. This can easily make it worse than any other Firewall. More than one Magic Word at a time is pretty much nonsense unless your opponent supports with an Option so you can trash it. Other firewalls tend to be far more usable one after another. Lastly, Shatter is an attack ability, which this doesn’t void, and it gets rid of Magic Word.

Tips: Try to keep your “Any Phase” effects to a minimum. DATA cards may still be worth it, especially since you can dictate the terms of when it leaves play to some degree. Try to ensure your own deck doesn’t require evolution box bonuses for decreasing DP. Try cards that attach directly from the deck! In this way, Tyrannomons can become extra copies of Magic Word in the deck. Love Crest and Moxie are good for decks that aren’t attempting to “double-dip” on the evoboxes, since the deck should be able to evolve fine without them but can get nice bonuses when these are attached instead of Magic Word. “Research” lets you mismatch your attack, guaranteed.

Digimon COTD: Disrupt Ray

Disrupt Ray—Choose your opponent’s attack, sort of

What’s good about it: If you’re an expert at prediction and attack-choice punishment, Disrupt Ray can be incredibly potent. This card can be used, with significantly higher accuracy than not, to force a Counter or to-Zero effect, or at the very least save you from a deadly . Don’t forget that this can protect you from a powerful opposing like a Counter/Flatten/to-Zero effect which threatens your own attack, in addition to a one-hit-kill Crash/1st Attack/x3 VS. Replacing itself with a draw is a nice bonus too!

What’s bad about it: There’s no fast-and-loose way to specify what attack you want an opponent to use in Digimon. This is on purpose—taking away a player’s choice is heavy handed design and can lead to less mutual exchange of intelligence and tactics; as well as ruining fun for players when you’re making choices for them. Disrupt Ray is therefore limited in its capacity to change attacks by forcing its player to figure out what the opponent would choose and, if the Ray is still the best card to play in that instance, decide what “direction” they want to rotate the attack selection from that presupposed choice. If the deck playing Disrupt Ray is telegraphing that it does attack changes, opponents can play further mind games to disrupt the disruption. In addition, many situations make Disrupt Ray significantly less effective than simply playing a Recovery Disk or other protection from damage. You have to work hard to get the best use of this. It also doesn’t stop Jamming. If an opponent wants to reveal with Jamming before this Option resolves, they can do it and still Jam your attack ability (not this Option), then their attack will change. This means Jamming effectively gets better if Disrupted.

Tips: Don’t tip your hand by being incredibly obvious about your ability to counter or nullify attacks. But the mere existence of Disrupt Ray can also effectively disrupt how an opponent chooses attacks if they know you have it, or suspect, and you respond by not playing it. In that case, you still have the card to play and predicted accordingly. If you absolutely must force a specific attack, usually for Counter, Flatten, or to-Zero, make sure you understand the situation and opponent’s current payoffs. If they are none the wiser and have the ability to one-hit-kill your Digimon with either or , and you have Counter on your , you can safely assume Cross is your best attack, support with Disrupt Ray, choose the bottom option (which assumes they went for the “safer” Traingle-kill) and roll them up to Circle for your counter! Now you take no damage and they take it all. Notice that by being in a weaker position (both Circle and Triangle can KO instead of just the typical Circle), there’s no need to guess what they’re playing. If it’s a Circle one-hit KO and Triangle two-hit KO, you still have to guess whether your opponent values taking you out now, can afford to take you out next turn, or prefers to be unpredictable. Keep these things in mind. Disrupt Ray is also a good choice for decks that need to hit with commonly—and it supports protecting your attack as well as a Coliseum. Often this protects from a Counter/to-Zero/Flatten to your favored attack.

Bit Depth Set Release

 

Bit Depth Full Spoiler

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Digimon COTD: Reload

Reload—Refresh all the things!

What’s good about it: As an ACE, it pulls its weight in utility by providing any two cards from the deck and effectively making trash costs—or opposing trash strategies, null. You get a full deck, a full hand (some of which is picked), and to setup part of the deck going forward. It’s a great preparatory tool for the transition into late game. And if willing to give up on the huge effect of a late game deck refresh, it can still be used to refresh the hand and pick any 2 early on, which in some cases can be more effective earlier game.

What’s bad about it: You don’t get to keep your current hand. It’s not always a bad thing but it’s worth noting that it will reduce its efficacy window if you have to give up other critical in-hand cards, then waste some of your 2 picks on those cards again. You can also lose out on the effectiveness of the deck refresh if you haven’t gotten any trash-cost cards or you are forced to play it early. Like Polymorphic Code, you get a hand of 4 that turn; unlike it, Reload is voidable and is your only support for turn.

Tips: Once you decide Reload is best for your deck, always try to maximize every bonus it provides. This goes without saying, but it can be tricky if you plan for a deck of trash costs for heavy effects (Mega Chip, Mega Disk, Phantomon, Dark Wings, Giga Cannon, et al) and end up trashing the Reload without any way to recover it. The good news is Reload can be gained back with “recycle any 1” effects. Some evolution boxes will make this a practical ACE search when combined with reckless trashing, which Reload would then erase as if it never happened, effectively making high-trash costs in your deck into ACE-power cards! In addition, cards like Aquilamon are intensely powerful when combined with Reload, since this gives you effectively 5 copies of the Reload for purposes of sequencing: now you’re more likely to draw the Reload earlier than trash cards.

Digimon Errata May 2018

Today set “Bit Depth” releases and with it, our (hopefully) final set of erratas for past cards. Several cards had their evolution boxes expanded (in preparation), patter streamlined, effects re-balanced, bodies changed, and so much more. Don’t get too excited, it’s mostly just typo fixing and patter updates. So that players don’t feel like the erratas differ too much from the look and feel of new cards, each changed card has had the new Bit Depth font changed for its effect text as well. Some of the fixes are merely correcting errors from the previous errata (Panjyamon from the subtype update, we forgot his marine type!) but will still get the font change. Be sure to update your decks accordingly!

Check the card gallery to see for yourself.

Errata List
Type listed is the primary printed type only, so you can find it in the Gallery more easily.
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Flatten Mechanic

Flatten is a mechanic that was released with set Bit Depth. It decreases the dimensions of opposing Digimon until they shrink into a point and vanish!  On its own, flat doesn’t do any damage or cause any immediate effects—instead, it’s a ticking time bomb. So here are the rules:

  • When you meet your condition (in the pic, opponent used Circle, or opponent’s type is Dragon), you will cause a “flat” to the opponent
  • On attack abilities, only one condition can be met per hit. (If a Dragon uses Circle, it only causes 1 flat, not 2.)
  • Track “flat” by taking a card from the top of your deck, if any, and placing it face-down in front of your active. Neither player may look at it.
  • If you would ever have 3 flats, you get KOd! Shuffle all flat trackers back into the deck. Note, this means you must have 3 remaining cards in your deck to be KO’d by “flat”.
  • If you would take damage while you have the 1st Attack and 2 flats, you get KO’d!
  • When you evolve, you can pay 10 DP from anywhere (such as your DP zone or your Immortalize card) to remove 1 flat marker (shuffle it in). You can only remove 1 flat per evolution.

And that’s how it works. Check the rules for an official explanation (glossary or attack abilities). Flatten is specifically intended as an alternate win method, similar to trashing an opponent’s deck out (which may reduce your required KOs). You will still have to use all your cunning and experience to make the most of it, but it can be a powerful KO method. Since it “poisons” a Digimon, opponents may have to slow down their evolutions. Or you could exploit them after they evolve to Mega for 2 KOs. Repeatedly gaining 3 flats can be difficult, even if you maximize your opportunities, so be sure to have a backup plan.

 

Term Change: Proxy card

These little “P” symbols used to be called “Partner Options”. Option like choice not the card type. I bet you can see how this is confusing. Especially when DATA and Evolution cards have the “P” symbol now. There’s a new term change—Proxy. It starts with P, it’s thematic, and it’s what you’ll use now! Just a heads-up.

Deck Size Change – Construction Legality

With the release of Bit Depth, it’s time to officially unveil a change to the game’s basic deck construction rules that we’ve been playtesting. This is something that came about after we announced we would be working on the new set (Bit Depth) 9 months ago. As this has had incredibly positive results, damn-near zero negatives, and fixes several aspects of the game, we’re proud to announce a very carefully crafted change to deck size! If you’re just here for the rules and don’t care about the “why”, skip to the Pre-Setup Procedure section. Read more

Why Mission-based Card Games Don’t Work

One of the hallmarks of western card game design since the early 90s with Decipher Inc, is the “location” or “mission” card. You can see its presence even today in some of Fantasy Flight’s biggest earners. I’m here to say that I don’t think this style of game design really works for dueling card games. Their apparent primary narrative purpose is to give a sense of dimension to the board—making it somewhat like a board game, and add a layer of depth to the game. Its apparent mechanical purpose is to split player resources across various goals (locations/missions tend to give rewards). This is a style of prescriptive design wherein the designer assigns a mechanic to the game and players must play around this mechanic. This is opposed to a freestyle game such as Magic the Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh or a semi-prescriptive game such as Pokemon. In those games, you can pretty much do what you want within a much larger constraint space. Players tend to value that large space because it acts like a sandbox that gives them authority and power to craft their own style of play and consequently, their own player-driven narrative. But maybe mission cards are just kinda bad. Read more

Digi-Deck: Time Stop

This deck primarily relies on its Ace—Download. By cheesing through Levels rapidly, it can arrive at Millenniumon and effectively stop most opposing strategies, as well as disrupt the speed of the opponent’s play. Using high-body Ultimates like Kimeramon, this deck has an easy time progressing through its evolution steps, with or without its many Evolution cards. It tries to pack an answer for every occasion, then uses Millenniumon’s ability (and DATA card) to refresh the deck of the best solutions for the current matchup. Over a short time, the deck becomes incredibly tooled to the specific opponent being faced.

For high skill players, the deck also tends to have a lack of good prediction effects. Only Millenniumon and Airdramon have good To-Zero specials, with the former’s requiring a turn to set it up. Airdramon won’t be a body on the field for long, but that can hypothetically increase the usability of its To-Zero. Kimeramon has a Cross To-Zero but would rarely use it unless it’s time to evolve or the opponent can gain way too much advantage from a 1st Attack, x3 VS, or Drain ability. Outside of these mundane cases, Set EX Palmon exists in the deck which can give an attack-prediction for +400 Power. This can be absolutely crucial, but if not recycled, is highly limited. Due to the limited predictive power, it is an easier deck to play but also one with less maximum potential.

Types

Primary type: (22)
Lesser types: (8) | (5)
Rare types: (4) | (2)
Mostly weak to Wind x3 VS, but several additional weaknesses occasionally.

Suggested pre-setup side choices:

Prioritize removing these particular cards in the pre-setup. Adjust to your matchup.

  • Millenniumon DATA
  • 2 Mutates + 1 Silver ball
  • Level Crush
  • Vending Machine

This pre-setup removal will prioritize getting as much early-game as possible and minimizing late game. Most games, I will remove the Mutates and Silver Ball over the 3 Firewalls in the deck, just because Firewalls are technically more viable early game most of the time. Level crush is absolutely dead. Millenniumon DATA could be good but only if you lead with an early lot of trashing, which is rare. Vending Machine is even worse because it’s also slow.

 

Credit for the original list goes to member SubZero.

See visual list for specific card versions whenever ambiguous.

Time Stop
Destiny Zone
Possible Changes

 

Destiny Zone

Key Points

In the briefest of terms, this is a juggernaut of a deck. It’s incredibly fast and incredibly tooled. Let’s take a look at some of its strengths and weaknesses, and keep these in mind while playing:

  • Incredibly fast. Download, Digivice, Super Tag, and several +30P Digimon make this deck a monster of speed. Skips levels regularly.
  • High endurance. Usually, speed decks lack endurance because they skip crucial stepping stones like Champion Digimon, removing hit-absorption before healing through evolution. This deck uses Download and Mutate to repeatedly skip around level Ultimate, healing constantly. In addition, it Level Crushes from Mega to Ultimate for the same effect. Immense endurance.
  • High Power. Speed decks tend to lack consistent matchup power as opponent catch up to their level. However, this deck abuses high-body Digimon and doesn’t suffer low power here.
  • Inevitability engine. Millenniumon plus his DATA and other picky recycles (Birdramon) allow this deck to continuously weed out the unnecessary cards through the course of the game. Bricking becomes non-existent by late game.
  • Early game can brick. Due to high reliance on Evolution cards to set up, your early game is incredibly vulnerable to well-placed Death Evolutions and simple miss-hands. Mitigate with a liberal opening game mulligan and have a backup plan to evolve orthodox.
  • Vulnerable if it has to mulligan too much. Some decks can bounce back and typically one with this much recycle can, but it tends not to be enough. In fact, the deck tries to actively put bulk in the trash. Surprisingly vulnerable to a trash-oriented deck.
  • Control decks make this a tough matchup. You don’t have much to recover hand size other than set DB Biyomons and single cards. If someone can effectively keep your hand low and fog the game long enough, there’s not many tricks in this deck to overcome that.
  • Circle punishment is devastating. This is a deck that is overly-reliant on Circle until it gets Millenniumon, where it can ride Cross to victory.
  • Lower-level cards are devastating. Data Hijack, Black Gear, Whistle, and the list goes on… low-level cards can grind this deck to a screeching halt, allowing the opponent ample time to catch up. This effectively nullifies all of the speed the deck has built to that point. It would then need to solely rely upon endurance and its inevitability engine.

 

Behind the gears of “Time Stop” lurks a beast ready to awaken. This is a deck that thoroughly abuses time asymmetry—wherein earlier plays tend to compound their effects on the game; not only through insanely fast evolution, but also by streamlining the deck of unnecessary cards based on the opponent. Given this, it’s difficult to soft-counter this deck, much more to hard-counter it. Absolutely top play is necessary from the opponent in order to not get run over immediately.

If Digimon Battle Evolution had tournaments, this is the style of deck I would expect to see at top levels of play. It gets checked hard against Rookie-counter, low-level Crash, and rush decks that pack Circle-hate, but it plays the long game while also setting up totally insurmountable Digimon early. In this respect, it might be comparable to Magic‘s “Tron” deck type in modern. If you’re the type of player that likes to get in early, have a ton of contingency plans, and set up for the long winter, give Time Stop a go!

Credit again, for the original deck list should go to member SubZero. Mostly with respect to the bold idea to have the DATA as the proxy, repeatedly abuse Download, and use a Wind core for consistency. This version of the deck has been adapted to the deck list legality changes that allow more cards (50 shared between the DZ and main deck, adding +6 cards to the deck) and to further refine its main strategy.

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Digimon COTD: Puppet Switch

Puppet Switch—Setup your hand and DP.

What’s good about it: Puppet Switch puts any card in your trash in your hand. This card is fantastic for reusing powerful cards, and setting up for high DP cost Digimon. Just imagining the possibilities with Ace cards, for instance: you could re-use Warp Dimension, netting you 18 cards of deck damage. Also, since you can change your type, this is usable with an attachment that fell into the trash along the road that your current active zone can’t use. You could change your type to Metal and re-use a Miracle crest to suddenly gain support effects outside of Metal’s domain.

You can do almost everything Puppet Switch does with other cards, but it always takes more than one card (and therefore turn) to set up these sorts of scenarios. This is a high-value card that can give players a host of new and unexpected outs. Most opponents wouldn’t consider a clutch Puppet Switch when playing out their turn. The fact that it gets back cards like evolutions or Digimon that were paid into DP means you can get insane DP value for later evolutions. Example: rack a Redotamamon for +40P, evolve, support with Puppet Switch and get back the Redotamamon, then it gives you +10P. By your next opportunity to evolve, you’ll have a guaranteed 50P and a net card advantage of +0. Lastly, a deck with x3 VS against your type can fall apart if you change your type away (plus you’ll net some sweet cards and DP out of the deal).

What’s bad about it: This card can’t be charged into DP normally—you have to play it as support to get it there. If you’re not set up for multi-color, you lose one of its effects; and if you are, you need a tight evolution-box line.

Tips: If you’re looking to reuse specific cards in your deck, Puppet Switch is a good universal way to do it without splashing into Jungle or Enigma. In fact, Puppet Switch is a good way to unlock the potential of your existing cards and therefore provides good universal synergy. Many games can come down to a well-timed Ace play that doesn’t get voided, so Puppet Switch on reusable Aces can give you the edge to win.

Card template change!

Subtype Change

The card templates for Digimon Battles now reflects the subtypes better. Instead of a permatext denoting that it’s “Also ” etc, it now displays all the subtypes in a new black bar under the primary type icon. The site currently has all the new images updated but TTS and OCTGN do not yet. The change is superficial only, so you won’t be required to update your decks. Example of the change below:

Promo Cards – Dukemon & Herculeskabuterimon

Along with some emergency-erratas taking place after the launch of Data Breakers, we’re bringing two new Promo cards that will be legal for play and available on both Tabletop Simulator and OCTGN: Dukemon and Herculeskabuterimon.

Originally, these cards were slated for a much later set release that would likely come out at the end of the year. Instead, we’re moving them up since they’re fully ready for play and to apologize for the mini-errata coming soon, as well as the lack of COTDs. Those COTDs did have to be put on hold temporarily however, since much of our attention has been diverted attempting to convert Alsciende’s NetrunnerDB into a DigimonDB, as well as other side-projects. For now, we’re shelving it since it’s eating up too much time and should return to COTDs and design shortly. Without further ado, here are the new cards!

These aren’t being released as part of a specific set. Instead, they are numbered for the “PR” or “Promo” pool of cards. We’ve had promotional cards before, but they were always previews of upcoming sets. This time, we’re starting a promo pool so cards can be released in-between sets, especially ones that would be nice to have in the game but won’t fit within the parameters of the next set.

These aren’t really an apology and were going to be released anyway :)