The Hidden Dangers of Costless Events

In the recently released Kaiju No. 8. series, we have a printing of a rare profile that essentially turns a costed event into a costless card. Normally, this wouldn’t be the cause of any alarm. Many costless events already exist. Events are in a strange space. They are typically more game-changing than many character cards. The main reason is outside of drawing and bonding to them, events are almost impossible to get in hand which is the trade-off for their generally boosted effects.

Many of the costless events that are popular in the current format feel rather medium at best. They aren’t particularly of any notable concern aside from a select few.

For the most generic events, such as the profiled ones above, they are generally well costed and provide a simple but fair ability. The reality is, for most decks, events are usually a last minute addition or tech card used for certain plays or specific match-ups. The reality is that events are considered, for the most part, to be cumbersome and generally lower consistency. Many cards are dependent on checks for characters and can only fetch characters, meaning these events will fail your conditions occasionally.

Furthermore, events can be quite niche. In fact, for many decks, especially when considering late game events which usually carry the most power, these events are a hard choice between using your resources for these effects or choosing to carry out your finishing combo more effectively. Costs are usually quite high for these events, and on top of this, the effect and certain conditions may require more specific builds.

This is further incentivized by certain interactions with other cards which would benefit you if you were to build a certain way. Take for instance, the Draco Buster event from Slime. It is a literal five cost bomb if you were to play it normally, but if you were to combine it with the 3/2 Milim combo, Milim reduces the costs of the powerful event, making it much more efficient. At the end of the day, it is your choice if you want to incorporate these events into your decks by comparing and gauging their costs and effectiveness.

This is why I want to draw you to the attention of a recently released pairing. In Kaiju No. 8 the character, Mina on the left, carries a synergy with the event on the right. Now events are balanced in the fact that they normally require some kind of additional card to bond to them or you need to find ways to luckily draw into them. What I consider as a concern in this design is that the basic premise of having to chance into these events is now partially mitigated by this Mina. Mina gives all your door triggers the ability to salvage the event. Furthermore, the costs on this event are arbitrary thanks to Mina as she reduces its cost by one, making the event completely free stock-wise as long as Mina is on the board.

All this sounds like a slight advantage, but there are two key things to note here. Firstly, Mina is a support card that comes at level zero. There are no associated costs to Mina, and she grants these abilities to the event for free. The event is of important note because of its modality. The first ability is a salvage character ability, something that is pretty common for 1/1 events of its type. The second ability is something that is more concerning. The event is basically a command kill spell that works on any front row character that is cost one or lower regardless of level.

The important key text here is that it targets any front row character that is cost one or lower. This lets this card essentially freely kill even level two cards as long as they are low cost. Contrary to many other games, kill spells in Weiss Schwarz are incredibly rare and even more so when it to main phase events. Although, on its own, the event essentially trades itself for hand or for a board deletion, there are many ways to possibly abuse this. Furthermore, decks that require any sort of field synergy are very much put in a hard position because of said event. Additionally, deletion on main phase gives your characters a bonus soul since you turn the slot that you killed into an open slot, allowing you to direct. If there was a way to continually loop additional hand and reliably chain this event together every turn, you could be constantly disrupting and blowing up your opponent’s board for free, making it very difficult for them to find ways to maintain advantage.

Arguably, why am I so obsessed or concerned with these fears about this costless event? It wasn’t that long ago where we had a similar issue pop up with another card in the past. Now granted, this 0/0 Mina support isn’t the same in terms of power as 1/1 Ainz. But we have to remember and think about how 1/1 Ainz and its associated event influenced the game during its reign in power. The 1/1 event, while not nuking a board like Mina’s event does, carries very similar properties in its first ability. Simply having the ability to salvage any character for free with no downside is partially what lead Ainz to his dominance during his era of power in the game. In fact, people are so often hung up on the fact that the 1/1 support gives 3/2 Ainz essentially invincibility cross-turn forget that it even has the cost reduction effect on the 1/1 event. Simply being a costless event that gave you advantage allowed the event to always be a welcome draw since it can always be exchanged with something of value from your waiting room or held for a turn later. All of this is before even considering the mad combo associated with these two cards.

Let us not forget that Overlord’s overwhelming performance thanks to this singular combo lead to a full banning of the 1/1 level assist. Even without 3/2 Ainz, this 1/1 support is no longer allowed to be played. Bushiroad has made it clear, that in the case of Overlord, you cannot have access to 1/0 costless events that trade for any type of selective advantage that you need. But my question remains here as I move this same scenario onto that of Kaiju No. 8. Will this become a problem in the future? If this interaction is disallowed in Overlord, why is it that it seems that Kaiju No. 8 is given this advantage?

So before we wrap up, I want to openly state that personally, I see this interaction being more impactful in Kaiju No. 8 than in that of Overlord. Before the pitchforks come out and there is chaos in the streets, let me explain myself here. Weiss is a game of circumstance and consistency. If we were to look at these two similar interactions and ignore Ainz’s combo entirely, we notice that Ainz’s level assist is a level one card with a hard stock cost. This means that you have to actually commit some amount of resource to play 1/1 Ainz. On the other hand, Mina’s assist is a level zero card, meaning it is costless and that it can be on field as soon as you begin the game. Mina’s power lies in her flexibility and ease of use. One of Mina’s abilities, the ability to salvage your event for free when you reveal a door trigger on swing is immediately active versus waiting until level one to deploy this effect. Level zeros are also the most immediately impactful cards in the game and can easily be salvaged through multiple effects. In addition, if you ever have extra hand, these 1/1 events are just free kill spells for Mina instead of limiting you to the first option to gain a free salvage effect. These are very subtle differences in terms of flexibility, but in a game, any advantage is gold. And this is also not considering the pool of cards that already interact well with Mina’s level one event as is.