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For the uninitiated, one look at aBattle Spirits Sagacard can be a daunting task. There are so many numbers, symbols all over the place, and what on earth are all those levels about? There’s a lot to take in.
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Fortunately, while Battle Spirits Saga does do a lot of new things, with its inventive core system and Flash Windows making combat unpredictable, it’s also remarkably easy to pick up once you know the basics. In just a few minutes, you could be shuffling up and playing Spirits, Nexuses, and Magic cards like a seasoned pro.
Building Your Deck
In Battle Spirits Saga, you and another player duke it out withdecks made ofat least 50 cards. There is no upper limit to how many cards you’re able to have in a deck, althoughsticking to 50 is recommended, as this ensures you have some degree of consistency when playing.
Each deck can have up tofour copies of any card of the same name,of which there are three types:
Cards belong to one offour colours: red, white, purple, and yellow. While your deck can have any number of these colours in it, it is advised that youone, two, or maybe three colours in your deck. This is because each come with their own synergies and strategies, and thecost reductionmechanic rewards you the more of the same colour you play.
Description
Red
Highly aggressive strategies where the goal is to rush your opponent down before they can mount a defence.
White
Defence-focused strategies that try and block until your opponent runs out of options and stalls out.
Purple
The colour most focused on controlling your opponent, the board, and amassing a large number of enemies. It’s also the colour most easily able to directly destroy your opponent’s Spirits.
Yellow
The Spellslinging colour that likes to use Magic cards, and find ways to bring Magic out of your trash to use it multiple times.
While these are not in the English-language release of Battle Spirits Saga yet, there are two more colours found in the Japanese game:green and blue.
Blue
The main colour for ‘Mill’ strategies, where you aim to put all the cards in your opponent’s deck into their Trash area.
Green
Aims to produce more resources than any other colour. It is good at producing cores and playing big Spirits.
Setting Up The Game
Battle Spirits Saga’s playing field has a number of zones that all serve different purposes.
At the start of the game, each player shufflesboth their own deck and their opponent’s deck, and then drawsfour cards.
If you don’t like your hand, you can choose tomulligan your handby putting all four cards on the bottom of your deck, and drawing four more in their place.You can only mulligan once. If you don’t mulligan, you get to draw another card, meaning you start the game withfive cards.
Once hands have been drawn and cores placed in their proper areas (Life, Void, and Reserve), you must determinewho goes first. This can be done in any random way, such as flipping a coin, rolling dice, or a simple game of rock-paper-scissors.
After this, the game begins.
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Winning The Game
Games of Battle Spirits Saga are won in one of two ways.
The first is by reducing your opponent’slife total to zero through attacking them with your Spirits.By hitting your opponent with Spirits, you reduce their life coresby the total number of symbols in your attacking creatures’ bottom right corner– for instance, if you hit with two creatures with one symbol each, your opponent will lose two life cores.
The second way will be one familiar to most TCG players, known as ‘decking out’. If you go to your start step with no cards left in your deck, you immediately lose the gameregardless of how many life cores you had left remaining.
Of course, there are other potential outcomes, such as both players winning at the same time (resulting in a draw), or one player conceding the game and losing as a result.
Start Step
This step is more about checking the condition of the board.Any effects that say they happen in the Start step are resolved,and the active player must check to see if they still have cards in their deck. If they don’t,they immediately lose the game.
Core Step
The Core Step has the active player puts one core fromtheir Void into their Reserve. Any effects that are stated to trigger now are also resolved.The first player doesn’t have a Core step on their first turn.
Draw Step
This step is simple enough:the active player draws a card. If any effects trigger now, they are also resolved.
Refresh Step
In the Refresh Step, every currently-exhausted card (those turned 90 degrees) are returned to their normal position.Cores in your Trash area are moved back into your Reserve, and any effects triggered by this step are resolved.
Main Step
This is the earliest point in the turn where you can play cards. In the Main Step, you can playSpirit, Nexus, and Magic cards,level up cards already on the field, set cards in your Burst area, activate abilities on cards,or merely move onto the next step.
Attack Step
This is whencombat happens, and the active player can decide which Spirits they are attacking with, while the defending player can choose their blockers. Alongside combat, this step also includes twoFlash Windowswhere cards withflash abilitiescan be played.
End Step
In the End Step, any effects that specifically trigger during the end step, or last until the end of the turn, are resolved. After this, the turn ends, and the next player begins again at the Start Step.
Cores
Cores play a lot of different roles in Battle Spirits Saga. Not only are your primary resource for bothplaying and upgrading cards, they’re also yourlife points, and the HP of your Spirits.There are two types of core: regularcores, and a singleSoul Corethat provides different effects depending on how it is used.
Each player has roughly30 coressat in theirvoid areabefore the start of the game, before moving five into theirLife area, and three regular cores and the single soul core into theReserve area.Cores in your Life area are your life total. If you lose all of these cores, you willlose the game.
Meanwhile, cores in your Reserve area are yourresources,meaning you’re able to pay costs by moving cores from your Reserve to yourTrash area.On each of yourStart steps,you can move a corefrom your voidandevery core in your Trash areaback to theReserve area.
Cores can also be moved between cards – howeverthey cannot be used to pay for casting costs.For instance, you could remove a core from one Spirit to level up another, but not to cast a third one.
Playing Cards
In your Main Step, you cansummon Spirits, play Nexus spells, and cast Magic.
The number of cores you’ll need to pay to cast a card is noted in thetop left corner. For instance, to summon an Ankylosauroid Gaston, you’ll need to pay with four cores by moving them from your Reserve into your Trash area.
Keep in mind that most cards will require you to havemore cores than just their cost. This is because each card needs to enter with cores on it equal to itsfirst level. So, for Ankylosauroid Gaston, you’ll need not just the four cores needed to play it, but alsoone more core to make it Lv 1. and give it 3000 Battle Points (BP).BP is both a Spirit’sattacking power and its life, meaning without that first core, it would have zero BP and die immediately on entering.
Some cards, particular Nexuses, have a first level cost of zero, meaning youdon’t need to put any more cores on them.
At the start of your next turn, any coresnot placed on Spirits or Nexuseswill move back from the Trash into your Reserve.
Cost Reduction
Synergy is a big part of Battle Spirits Saga, thanks to the cost reduction system letting you play cards for cheaper depending on how many other similar cards there are.
Looking at Ankylosauroid Gaston again, in the bottom right corner there is a red hexagonal symbol. This marks it as ared card. In the top left corner, next to the casting cost, you will see there arefour more red hexagons. This is the card’scost reduction.
For each other card you have out in play that has the red hexagon in the bottom right, Ankylosauroid Gaston’s core cost is reduced by one, up to a maximum offour. This means that, if you have four other cards with red hexagons in the bottom right in play,Ankylosauroid Gaston could be played for free.
Cost reduction is found on every type of card, although onlyNexuses and Spirits will have the symbol in the bottom right of the card.
Upgrading Cards
During your main phase, you can put cores onto Spirits and Nexuses in order toupgradethem. Doing so will give you access tonew abilities and stronger Spirits, so doing so is highly advised.
You can seehow many cores are required for each levelin themain text box of the card. For example, Ankylosauroid Gaston only requires one core to belevel one with 3000 BP, however if you put two more cores on it, it will becomelevel twoand have 6000 BP instead.
Other cards may have more effects than simple stat boosts, such as Fierce Gorer Horngrizzly gaining confront (meaning it must be blocked if able) when it is levelled up to levels two or three.
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Burst Effects
Burst effects are essentially traps you can set for your opponent. During your main step, you can set a card (almost always a Magic card) with a Burst effectface-down in your Burst area. As mentioned, only one card can be in your Burst area at any one time – placing another will send the original card to your Trash.
Burst effects can only be activatedwhen their conditions are met.For example, Burst Venom’s burst effect triggers when an opponent destroys your Spirit, and allows you to revert any Spirit in play back down to level one.
While it isn’t necessarily a given, most Burst effects also allow you to then pay the usual core cost of that card to play its main, non-Burst effect in addition to the Burst. This lets you get a large amount of value off of your cards, although it does require you to hold back cores you could be spending on your turn.
Attacking And Flash Windows
In your turn’s attacking step, you can declare your Spirits as attackers by turning them on their side andexhaustingthem (Magic: The Gathering players will find this familiar, as it is the same process as tapping to attack).
After you’ve declared your attackers, the first of twoFlash Windowsoccur. During this window, your opponent, and then you, can activateflash effectson cards in your hand. Flash effects can be anything from destroying a Spirit, to giving the BP of one of your attacking Spirits a boost to ensure it survives the attack phase.
Once you and your opponent have both resolved your flash effects (if any), your opponent can thendeclare their blockers. Only Spirits thatare not currently exhaustedcan be declared as blockers.
The second Flash Window happensafter your opponent has declared their blockers, and the same thing happens – your opponent, then you, get to activate flash effects before the final damage is calculated.
Calculating Damage
Calculating damage in Battle Spirits Saga is easy. Once all effects have been resolved, the Spirit with thehigher BP wins the attack. The one with the lower BPloses, and is destroyed. All cores are removed from it, and the card is moved into the Trash area.
If both Spirits have an equal amount of BP,both are destroyed.If your opponent has no available blockers, your Spiritattacks them directly, and they lose life cores.It is important to note thatdamage does not ‘trample’ over Spirits– if an attacking Spirit is blocked, all of its damage is taken by the blocking Spirit, and none will overspill onto the blocking player.
