Buddyfight Strategy

Brampton Booster
Mar 18, 2014
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Welcome to part 1 of 0* of this card game created by Bushiroad. We all know this company hailing the Cardfight!! Vanguard franchise, but they have also worked on other products like Weiss Schwarz, Victory Spark and Milky Homes. Their latest effort is Future card Buddyfight(BF). But why am I talking about it? Well, it relatively simple for me to quickly test and push a finding.

*Don’t expect anything else about BF by me, I’m pretty sure more meta-theory will spark somewhere else.

Pure Advantage

Cardfight vanguard is the only game I’ve played that throws 3 cards a turn at you. This cuts entropy* without turning the game into one-off gambits (like PKMN). It also means that a draw only increases tempo by 1/3 (yet another reason why draw triggers are bad). Most other games limit advantage gaining as it literally doubles the amount of options they have. Buddy fight falls somewhat in the middle of the spectrum with its ‘charge and draw’ (which gets terribly repetitive) though there is still a gap from +0.33 and +0.5. With some cards being tied to specific events this pretty much serves as a mitigation technique for its own entropy it created. I’ll put a little more depth later.

*Entropy in thermodynamics is the disorder of matter/energy. In this context it means the amount of dead/useless cards you have. Naturally, as the game progresses more cards will become dead.

Elite Attack Force

There are three renewable resources. They are: Deck, Gauge and Attacks.

The deck should never be of concern.
Players start with 2 gauge and +1 every turn. The statistical average implies optimally the average of all your monsters gauge should be 1. <=> The sum of all your monsters should be no more than 50 gauge.
The attacking game is core to a card game. In general the faster you the field fills up the quicker the game propels itself. Most card games have an inhibitor mechanic to slow the pace of the battle, not for dragging it out but to provide time to set up. MTG monsters has ‘sleeping sickness’, while YGO used to need ‘tributes’. PKMN has more of a skill based lag, and CFVG has about three-four* turns of leverage. Buddyfight’s inhibitor is non-existent. We already see a problem here. Any advantage you gain is likely to be washed away by brute force. You’ll see this become more apparent later.

The average damage a monster deals is approximately worth one card. In other words: 2.5D = 1C = +1 advantage.

*Though it isn’t as solid

Weapons

Weapons as I’ll hope to prove are bad. They are inefficient and increase entropy.

Postulate 1:

What is the spread of monsters-spells-weapons-impact? Logically, the easiest way to deal damage is with attacks, and to get attacks you’ll need monsters or weapons. However you may have up to three monsters while you can only have one weapon out at a time. It is easier to remove monsters then weapons. Hence you need to have more monsters then weapons. We can also state that monsters have a chance to last more then one turn while most spells are lost once cast. Hence #monsters > #spells or #weapons.

Postulate 2:

Let’s consider a 1/1/1 field against a 2/W/1 field. The opponent has two options when you attack the centre: taking the hit or use a counter-spell. Both are -1. Now how many counter-spells do you expect to have at hand? [Hint: not enough].

2 W 1

1 1 1

The “Triple Offensive Maneuver” may look cool but you should avoid it at all costs. With three attacks for both sides, the opposing player will end up with a -3. The difference lies in how the minus is distributed. The top player will take three of some form of counter use and damage loss. For the bottom row the player loses 1 monster* and 2 of the aforementioned. If the opponent removes the centre monster (Dragonic destroy) to force the loss of 3 in anything but monsters, he traded a -1 for your -1. Also, since #monsters > #spell > #damage, it is natural to say that losing a monster is worth less then losing a spell. Therefore it is better to have a monster in the center.

Postulate 3:

This monster to card trade applies to any field setup as long as one monster exists in the centre. Weapons only work when the centre is cleared.

Conclusion:

This implies weapons are strictly inferior to the optimal strategy (monster in center) Certainly there are decent weapons, notably the magic world blaster. Monsters can also have ‘Move’, protecting you from arm by constantly moving back and forth. There are also support cards that only work if you are holding a weapon. In this case you need to ask yourself whether the advantage you gain is worth the extra 8 slots (4 for weapon, 4 for support), lower probabilities, increased entropy and wide open center. I say no*, just don’t use weapons and keep it simple. They are just too situational to be employed effectively.

*If you have ever played some game called Robotek, you will know exactly a unit is the only thing standing in the way of a serious laser show.

Two for one

Many cards are cleverly disguised washes, but there is always this one thing that leaves the door to advantage slightly ajar. Some can be obvious: If one card draws or destroys more than 1 card. Likely, those cards will have conditions like “if you have 5 of less life” or something equally limiting. But others may not be as visible:

Double attack
- Extra attack will lead to another -1 the opponent has to deal with.
- The pluses increases the longer it is out
- Countered by the fact that the card can just be destroyed to prevent the plus from going off
Soulguard
- To be fair, this needs to be combined with a charge to be actually a plus.
Opponent will need to waste an extra resource to remove the monster.
- Cerberus and similar cards are not pluses. It only counts if the soul came from the deck.
Penetrate
- Remove a monster AND deal damage.
- Like double attack, it can be paused before the plus
- Dependent on a monster able to be destroyed, and not to get countered by 50 different means.
7000+ Defense
- To explain briefly, it should require a link attack to be killed saving you from dealing with one more attack.
- Spells can obscure this plus.
Counterattack
- Normally the opponent forces a -1, but you get the +1 back and so you nice nice and tidy
- A hidden gem is the combination with soulguard as you can kill even if you lose!
- And as always, destructive cards takes this plus away

Do you see that soulguard is pretty much the only plus that is almost* impossible to remove? I’m pretty much convinced that soulguard is your go to and you should always attempt to stack your deck with these buggers.

*Magical Goodbye!

Essentially Extra

Lastly, I’ll wrap up some loose ends.

Impacts, as much as I dislike them, are quite useful. All will refund everything you use to cast them. The big giant sword of Armageddon for instance trades 1 gauge for 1 damage, and an empty centre practically screams punishment. (Checkmate!! is bad though). Impacts pack a heavy dose of advantage into one card (think: BR’s) so they are nice even if it does cause small consistency errors. The best analogy I have is that impacts are not so much as a win-more but more like a reduced life bar.

Most grade 3’s need to pay a hefty amount of gauge that could be better spent on Impacts, as they convert about 3 gauge into a +1 [the upped defense counts as +1 and then you add the other skill]. So I’m still questioning it’s utility. But they can troll real hard with counters (especially ones that give it counterattack), and those with soulguard AND 7000+ defense are terrifying. But many grade 2’s have good effects.

I really want to like these Set cards. They provide nice pluses over the course of the match, if the match exists long enough. They are like the inverse of impacts as they work better as soon as possible instead of near the end. But is it more likely to get an Impact by late game or a Set by early game?

Put as many counters as you possibly can. [Shields, 3+Counterattack, Destroy, etc.]They are vital in saving your bacon. If a non-counter isn’t giving you a lot of advantage (Dragonic Grim-ore) then it is in your best interest to leave it out.

World lines

So I’ll spend a few sections on the cards currently* out:

Danger World

Size 0’s: Nice extra
Armorknight Succubus : size 1 with soulguard!
Armorknight Golem : god tier stats
Fighting Dragon, Demongodol: soulguard AND counterattack?
Lightning Strike Dragon Garjion: meat shield
Emperor Dragon, Gael Karn: Amazing card to replace an impact with (as weapons sucks)

Dragon World

Dragon knight, Iwamoto: Without any destruction spells this is literally a +1
Dragon knight, Rudel: Debatable
Drum Bunker (All of them): The entire lineup is powerful
Rising Flare: OMG sooooo many good size 2’s. This is probably why they have terrible and 1’s
Inferno Armor Dragon: Big ass defense, but grade 2’s are so crowded
Proud Song of Soul: If the early game favors you…
Day of the dragon: Yum

Magic World

Magic Knights: Hard conditional but worth it
Center of the World, Mary Sue: Toolbox
Demon Realm negotiator, Gusion: Great plus
Gunrod, Bechstein: The only good weapon, if you want to use it
Begone!!
Devil Advantage
Great Spell, My Grandfather Clock: (getting lazy)
Great Spell, Saturday Night Devil Fever
Nice one!: really, pot of greed

*Dated March 18th, 2014

Conclusion

If you ask me right now (At the time of this writing), I’m going to say Danger World possess the best build. With a pair of fluffy grade 0’s (So you can have a 2/0/1), relatively cheap healing (letting you take one more hit then most decks), soulguarding for all grades, a powerful field clearance like spell (Devastation starts at +2), draw engine, and abundant denial cards. But I’m certain Bushiroad will provide boatloads of strong support* to their pet world (Dragon World) until it outranks everything.

In terms of strategy; keeping a monster in the center at all times is optimal, no weapons, max out counters and soulguards and field wipers. Yep. Not too much to it.

*So with that said I’m done with this game. Have fun exploring the [tiny and dragon-dominated] world of BuddyFight!