Realworld Records 02

Heyo heyo, thought you wouldn't see a chapter 2? TL;DR at the end for anyone who doesn't want to read through walls of text. So a little background info: my sister came home for the duration of this week after 3 years in Japan, and brought along a friend. Now, I ask pretty regularly for stuff from Japan (including Battle Spirits), and about a year ago I had my sister watch Sword Eyes, so she knows a little about the game. Today I asked her if we could go a round, and she surprisingly accepted.

I didn't give much of an explanation since she's already got some background. My siblings and I also used to play Yugioh a lot when we were kids, most of our cards got given away/sold a while back. Due to an array of factors, I always lost... but back to the story. We played with the two English starter decks I have: I used Burning Stardust, my sister Chaos Guardian. My sister was pretty clear on the types of cards and how to use them, but had a bit of trouble with cost. She was confused about how cost reduction works and didn't know that you need a corresponding symbol for it to work; after a while she seemed to get it though. And since she's used to Yugioh, she had some initial mistakes with not being able to target attack. The battle was pretty straightforward, since she only drew 3 spirits over half a dozen turns and was a little reluctant about the whole battle. There were a couple of throwaway comments about "Who designed this game!?", mostly due to frustration over the unusual differences between Battle Spirits and Yugioh. I eventually finished the battle off with The Fire LithoGraphica Phoenixious, which by the way is still a really cool name.

Here's where things get interesting: afterwards, my sister suggested that I and her aforementioned friend should play. Said friend can only speak Japanese. Right. I don't speak Japanese. I can read and understand it, write a little, but I have no practice speaking it. EXCEPTIONS NOTWITHSTANDING. Through the week I was speaking English along with my parents (who understand almost no Japanese), while my sister was translating things for him. So this was quite the proposal, but I ended up going for it. I've got plenty of Japanese cards, especially since my sister brought some with her. Very fortunately, I had a Japanese rule book as well which he could read. I gave him a selection of 4 decks to choose from: Strongest Silver Robo Deck + other promos, and the seiyuu decks from Special Deck and Drama Set 2. The seiyuu decks were slightly altered: I took out ALL THE BURST WALLS in Suwabe and Horie's decks and replaced them with some other cards. He chose Suwabe's deck: in his words, "赤が好きだから" - <Because I like red>. Personally, I went for Midorikawa's deck.

This went quite a bit easier with cost, probably because he was watching me and my sister play before... and also because he read the rulebook. Man, I should remember to show people the rulebook first from now on. Even though the English decks didn't have braves, he was pretty good with those too. Quite a few times he forgot to do core step. I ended up winning that one as well with Victory-White-Dragon and Pegashione/Shieldybug. By far the most memorable part of the night was when my opponent used Brave Draw. He drew two cards, which went perfectly well... and then came the revealing of three cards. They were Burst Draw, Burst Draw, and... Burst Draw.

Sis' friend: "うわ、全部同じ" - <Whoa, they're all the same.> He puts the three Burst Draws into the trash without reading the rest of the card.
Sister: "うまくシャッフルしてないじゃ!" - <You didn't shuffle well!>
Myself: "「残ったカードは好きな順番でデッキの上に戻す。」って" - <It says to return the remaining cards to the top of the deck in any order you prefer.>
Sis' friend: (boke) "好きな順番でデッキの下なのかー" - <So to the bottom of the deck in any order...>
Sister: (tsukkomi) "いや、「上」だ!" - <No, to the top!>
By this point in time, I was speaking Japanese pretty smoothly; as my sister said, I'm great when I'm talking about cards.

My opponent made quite a good move after that by putting out The Burning Canyon and thus getting rid of his Burst Draws faster. After the match, he convinced my sister to play against him. She picked the Horie deck this time after I told her the English cards would be a lot weaker against the Japanese ones, though didn't like the idea of not being able to read the cards as well. And this time, I gave her the English rulebook to look at. This battle was the most interesting of all, for me. Instead of having guaranteed victory, it was a lot more fun to see an about-even match between two other players. My sister had quite a few Holy Life cards on field, and eventually won with Angeloid on Nue so her opponent couldn't block. My sister's friend had managed a few combos by using Pendragon's summon effect to deplete one card, and later combined Sagitto-Apollodragon with Spineed-Hayato.

One of the things I noticed was that both players were pretty hesitant about flash and burst. My sister had Burst Flame set, but didn't activate it despite multiple chances. Her friend was a little confused by how bursts activate in the first place; kind of understandable, since the particular one he had was a "When Summoned Effect" activation and those are pretty hard to come by. A couple times he mistook the burst and trash piles, too. He also mixed up the burst vs flash effect and tried to activate the burst effect when the card wasn't set as a burst. Burst and flash timing takes a little more finesse to use, I suppose. It's all about tricking your opponent and quick thinking, which is a little beyond someone just barely remembering how to add cost.

All in all, it was really fun to play Battle Spirits IRL again. The Japanese cards really are a lot better than the English cards, as long as you shuffle well enough. Summon cost was the puzzling part this time, rather than level cost. It's a good thing bursts were introduced later, and I'm really glad I didn't put Ultimates in the decks. Remember kids, tell your mom to get Battle Spirits cards on import: they're educational!