Unique Cards, Flavour Wins, and Older Supports

I think I’ve been a little too harsh towards Bushiroad for the longest while now. I tend to point out many flaws and things that I would like to have changed while not really highlighting things that Bushiroad has done well in terms of card designs. Now, I have many many gripes with Bushiroad, but that is not to say that all of their card designs are poor.

I love cards that have very unique designs and specialized costs. With these kinds of designs, they force the player to build in more specific ways to take advantage of a card’s full abilities. In a twist of fate, I think the restrictions placed upon these cards allow players to be more creative in trying to find ways to consistently make these cards work in their decks.

Take Heart-san on the left (if you know the reference, you know). She is a card that, at first, simply looks to be a global burst power support with her first ability. However, her second ability allows you to pay an interesting cost that interacts with your opponent’s board and provides a minus-two soul ability. As such, this card forces your opponent to think more carefully about how and where they field their cards. But that is not all; by discarding a copy of herself, once per turn, you can bounce any character on your opponent’s stage back to hand, making use of extra copies of herself in hand.

All of these abilities, aside from the first ability, are relatively niche abilities that would normally be ran on separate cards. However, Heart-san allows you to combine all these abilities on a single card while also turning otherwise additional bricks in hand of herself into other ways to interact with your opponent’s board.

Even cards like Rena in the center are quite fun. By fulfilling her condition with Haruto on stage, she gains two additional abilities to potentially generate additional stock while also giving her clock encore as well. Haruto transforms this otherwise generic beatstick into something that can hold field and create additional value while giving her power as well, making her an annoyance for your opponent to deal with.

Lastly, in both a thematic way and also a really cool way, the statue card from Frieren featuring the old heroes is a phenomenally fun card. As a statue, the card cannot attack, but you may pay its costs to send it to memory to empower your later finishers while also letting you salvage two different cards from your waiting room. Furthermore, it sends itself to memory, just like how statues are meant to memorialize individuals or events.

So what’s something in common with all these cards? These cards are all very specific in their requirements, and the effects they perform can be quite unique. They usually call upon having other specifically named cards. They aren’t cards you can just casually slot into any deck, and you have to consider their requirements and build around them to make use of their full potential.

I think the next category of cards that I find very cool are just pure flavour wins. Now this is to be taken with a grain of salt. Flavour is something you have to try and connect to the original source material to the best of your ability. They don’t always translate perfectly to cards. Furthermore, extensive knowledge of the source material is needed. Nevertheless, let’s begin.

Starting with Hitori on the left, as her effect states, she must be absolutely alone. For those who don’t know, Hitori can also be translated to “being alone” and if you fulfill her conditions, Bocchi can transform into any character from your waiting room that’s level one or lower. It’s a very unique effect and rather rare, but it can be quite powerful with the right amount of luck and set-up on the first turn since you can only attack once anyways.

Kaori in the middle is a handfix card, but aside from that, when she’s fronted, her hero in red, the almighty Kenshin appears from out of the blue to save her. And this is perfectly represented on this card as Kaoru goes to clock to be replaced by a more powerful Kenshin instead.

Lastly, Miss. Eve Santaclaus lets you pay her costs when she swings to mill your opponent’s deck by twenty-four cards. Considering her namesake, and how she’s literally a pun on Christmas’ Eve, she performs a mill equivalent to that very day, December 24th, milling twenty-four cards. It’s a little puny, and it may or may not be very effective, but it’s still a flavour win in my books.

I feel flavour effects are very cool and are really an essential part of Weiss Schwarz’s appeal. After all, the point of Weiss is to be a fan game to celebrate and connect fans of various anime and other series together. These flavourful cards are part of what creates that connection between the game and the original source material for the series. helping fans reminisce of those fond memories of the original series.

I think the last category of cards I like the most is something that isn’t really spoken for enough. Bushiroad often gives some bits of support to older decks. When I mean support, I don’t mean just generic cards like Riki profiles that you can slot into any deck. I mean support that is very much incentivized for specific cards from older sets.

Take Mio above. Mio is a newer profile that performs a Riko-esque ability. However, instead of checking the top card of your deck as the condition for her salvage target, she checks the total number of your Mio set one finishers. As such, she rewards you for playing the 3/2 Mio finisher, and you can turn those level three finishers into additional ways to generate better value. This is great as it provides additional value to having your finisher in waiting room while also giving you a potentially better way to salvage compared to the standard Riko profile.

Karen is another example of recent support for an older series. This time, Karen is a support that works as a Helmet profile only for members of her specified unit, Triad Primus. What does this mean? If you are playing the old Triad Primus deck from back in 2016, she’s another tool that really only benefits that deck in particular (she only grabs herself, Nao, or Rin).

Even little pieces of support such as these two cards can make a phenomenal difference in the quality of play for using older cards. They can breathe new life into older decks. While not exactly bringing older decks up to the modern standard in terms of play, it gives them more options and usually filters to work with to orchestrate their game plan better or allow you to do more with the older decks. Who knows? You may also be able to bring these older decks back into prominence with such supports maybe.

Honestly, in terms of these categories, I think Bushiroad is doing a phenomenal job. Ultimately, while writing this article, I’ve realized one thing that’s similar between all these categories. Cards that I deem fun and good designs are often restrictive to some degree and incentivize specialized builds rather than creating decks with generic effects. I think that’s a good thing. After all, I think deck builds are there to showcase both the original series and also a part of a player’s personality and individuality.