Unique Climax Triggers and Designs

If you’ve been keeping up with the game, you’ve probably noticed the introduction of some new trigger icons that provide new effects. In addition to these triggers, some traditional climaxes have also had slight changes instead of being limited to the more commonplace +1000 power and +1 soul design.

With the advent of the Tales of Series, we have two new triggers that have joined the game for their respective colours. On the left, we have the Chance trigger (affectionately called “light bulb” with my friends) which gives you a potential net of a single stock and an extra hand when triggered from the top two cards of your deck. The other trigger is Discovery (telescope), giving you a check-three-add-one ability on trigger for a character.

As far as this current post goes, these two triggers are exclusive to Tales of until we get more reveals in later sets (for now). I think these two triggers add much more variance to the gameplay of Weiss through granting more options and avenues of play. Chance gives the player the opportunity to add something like a climax to hand, normally something impossible for red, on top of retaining stock (you pay out the climax). Discovery, on the other hand, grants a new way to scour through your own deck on trigger, letting you potentially mill away without having to use a card on board. I also find both these cards very thematic to the theme of the RPG series that they are introduced within. Chance feels as if you are uncovering some secret hidden treasure chest whereas discovery feels like you are searching your deck and uncovering new territories.

I think, in due time, with more upcoming sets I hope, that Bushiroad will continue to implement these new trigger icons in newer sets, letting more players play around with them in their favourite IPs. I mean, the last introduced trigger, choice, has been a fantastic addition to the game by giving agency and modality to the players. I still think choice has been one of the best designs by far when it comes to climax triggers since it does have a build-around requirement and creates its own distinction from the generic door trigger.

One other change that you’ve probably hardly heard of, and I don’t blame you, is the modification of the book trigger. Recently, and I mean as recently as Grisaia: Phantom Trigger, the book trigger has been modified to have an alternative ability on play with a draw and granting of soul to two characters rather than the traditional +1000 power and global soul. This trigger hasn’t been reprinted in newer sets that much to my knowledge, but that may also be due to competition with the more popular arc trigger. I think it’s a very unique take on book and offers an alternative style to the generic global pump that is the more common climax effect.

Originally from Grisaia, the LINK climax mechanic hasn’t made much of return aside from a singular series where its mechanic defines the very series itself, Macross Delta. As of this writing, there are only four sets that even feature LINK which are Grisaia, Macross Delta, D4DJ, and Project Sekai. In my opinion, I don’t like how dominating the LINK strategy is in Macross because it takes away from other builds within the series. Furthermore, LINK is a very linear strategy that requires you to meet its very specific requirement of having a multitude of climaxes with different names. It’s an all-in strategy which is akin to putting all your eggs in one basket. Macross having cards that work exclusively with LINK are nice, but they feel very mediocre otherwise if you don’t have the conditions.

By and large, I don’t mean to axe the mechanic whatsoever. LINK is in this strange spot since the only LINK deck to have some sort of prominent appearance in the game to my knowledge was that of Macross. I think Macross’ success was because of all the direct LINK support given in the cards, but this also limited the building potential of the series since so many pieces were dedicated to that same mechanic. There was an inflexibility in both deck-building and making plays just because of how dependent certain pieces of the deck were to get the mechanic going. In the other series that had LINK, LINK felt more of a random design rather than a coherent partition of decks. You were running LINK because the cards themselves had useful utility rather than the fact that LINK was part of their core design. In the future, I would like to see design and balancing be catered to make decks a little less all-in on the mechanic while maintaining some decent payoffs and integrating it flavourfully and mechanically.

Speaking of which, and lastly, my final point for this post, I feel, even with all these years of card design, triggering climaxes have felt largely underutilized. For the most part, still, players do not want to be triggering climaxes. They get stuck in stock, and then, especially now due to the ever-increased power of the endgame, it can be a death sentence if you do trigger them. Firstly, beginning with the good, design space has opened up to include large varieties of ways to utilize and pay-out climax triggers. Older designs like double triggering cards are not as common anymore, at least in the old pay-a-stock and trigger twice sense, but in place of them, the new trigger outlet providers like Frieren on the left have done a very good job at giving you opportunities to pay out said climaxes. There are also a plethora of new designs such as brainstorms that reward you for playing specific climaxes and giving you rewards either through increased chances to hit or some other filtering/hand generation effect. Cards such as Kana are cute because they emulate the triggers of climaxes while not punishing you for having them in stock.

Now, all the above is great, but this still doesn’t stop players from trying to prevent themselves from triggering climaxes. These designs dissuade triggering climaxes and act more as safeguards to prevent the potential placing of climaxes into your stock. However, this is where I propose a completely different idea and have players look forward to hitting their climax triggers. I can’t think of many decks that have pushed this idea actively outside of the Princess Connect deck featuring Sarendia and Mercurius Foundation. For those without the knowledge, the game plan is to use Saren, the early advantage combo to trigger twice for free, increasing your odds of hitting climaxes whose effects will have additional benefits through cards such as 1/1 Yukari above. I think this is a very unique game plan that could be further repeated with some alterations of course.

And no, I don’t think that having to trigger climaxes in the endgame or use them for check abilities count as the same thing. I’m talking about decks that function with their main game plan being to push you to trigger climaxes intentionally. This has to be an active and conscious design, not simply triggering a climax and then using it as discard fodder for another effect. In that sense, I feel this is a relatively unexplored space.

Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with the direction designs have been going with climaxes. I think there’s been many alternative and cool effects thanks to new triggers and static abilities on climaxes. However, I still think there’s plenty of space for improvement. Now, one caveat I will mention, is I do not want the dominance of standby to return with a climax trigger that essentially overpowers other strategies through sheer raw mechanical power. At this time, I think standby is in a weaker place or, at the very least, isn’t dominating the current format, but I definitely do not want a return to that type of design.