Weiss Schwarz: The Goofy Anime Card Game

[commandercool]

My roommate has gotten me hooked on Weiss Schwarz, the anime trading card game by Bushiroad. It sort of reminds me of Upper Deck's Vs. System superhero card game if anybody remembers that, only with more rubber-band mechanics. It's the least Magic-like TCG I've ever seen, and that has caused me to become fascinated with it. I don't know what the fuck is going on at almost any point in a game, so now I have to learn it because it's foreign and weird. It seems to have interesting flow and some kind of internal logic to figure out, and you draw a ton of cards with a small deck so in some ways it's less luck-based than a lot of other games, but because of the damage mechanics also much more. I kind of like it. So anyway, does anyone else play it?

I started learning it a couple of weeks ago, and last weekend he and I both ordered booster boxes (he got a Persona 4, I got a Kill La Kill). Mine came in the mail today and I just finished opening it. Yesterday I got my Japanese Railgun S trial deck, and I pulled chase cards out of both (a signed Mikoto and a signed Ryuko), so I'm considering flipping them to buy another box. Or not, I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing. I wish someone local also played this so someone could teach me and I could trade with someone, but the only people I could find are either my roommate, who's in exactly as deep as I am, and a few people at my comic book store who own trial decks and know the rules but have never really played. I should try to get a league going or something.

[yuyukos]

+2 soul yolo. Luck is a pretty big factor in this game so don't take it too seriously and enjoy playing with whatever series you like.

[commandercool]

There's no question of getting deep into this. Not when packs cost a billion dollars and all rares refer to other rares by name to work. It's strictly casual-only. But as casual games go I like it a lot. It's quick to play and because it is so luck-heavy things are always at least tense. Often that tension doesn't pay off in favor of the person making the better plays, but when it does it's neat. I hit a guy for nine in one attack with that level two Mikoto from the Railgun deck earlier and it was amazing.

[PX]

I'd be up for playing if you have a webcam and skype, as that's pretty much the only way to play online. I have so many cards and nobody to play against >_>

[[Y]oukai [J]esus]

I'd be up for playing if you have a webcam and skype, as that's pretty much the only way to play online. I have so many cards and nobody to play against >_>

1v1 me scrub

[Spotty Len]

We're a few to play this game within my association, but I kinda lost my interest into it since a few months. Too much RNG made me lose my taste for it, especially since there are so much other competitive stuff we can do over here.

It was fun though, and we could scream at our hearts content, because the president was playing too and was as frustrated as us. I started with a Disgaea deck, and then moved on to Kill la Kill because we were never getting those Disgaea boosters.

Then Vanguard came in and everybody started playing it, except for me. Things go fast.

[commandercool]

Tried my new Kill La Kill stuff last night. Having three different cards fighting over my one-of copy of "Only Clothing Ryuko Has, Senketsu" is unfortunate, but I put the deck together entirely with cards I got in my box and it seems to be about on the level with trial decks, so that's cool. I don't want to get too far ahead of locals who haven't bought any packs. Might pick up just a few singles for consistency, but I don't want to go too crazy.

Does anyone else play with the house rule that cards that have ever been visible remain visible? The game wants cards in stock or used as markers to be face down, but since they stay in a fixed order and are seen by players (at least usually) for at least a moment we've been leaving them face-up. The couple of games we played the accurate way ended up with one player wasting a ton of time trying to memorize where cards in their stock were so they could dig for them and it didn't add to the game, it just wasted time. Obviously if a card gets added to the stock or as a marker face-down it remains that way, but that's rare. We have this rule in a lot of games (like the board game Small World, where score is supposed to be hidden, but if you wasted a bunch of times keeping track of it you could figure out how many points everyone has) and it always seems like a good change.

Also I got a rules question. When a card cares about the number of copies of certain kinds of cards you "have". What does "having" a card mean? Conventional wisdom assumes it's in play, but the Railgun S card "Sisters" wants to know if you have "four or more" redundant copies. This makes me think that there's either a way to have six or more characters in play (is there?) or having cards counts zones other than the stage.

I'd be up for playing if you have a webcam and skype, as that's pretty much the only way to play online. I have so many cards and nobody to play against >_>

I'll do that, but my webcam is built into my laptop so you wouldn't be able to see my cards. If there's a Vassal or Tabletop Simulator plugin we should be good to go though.

[yuyukos]

Remembering the order of cards that go to stock is just a skill thing. It's important if people need to payout a specific card for change and salvage effects or a climax before refresh. Face down is the official rule but if no one cares in locals, then do whatever everyone wants to do.

Sisters' third ability allows you to have more than the usual 4 maximum in your deck. So "have" refers to having 4 (or more, that is, 5, a full field) Sisters cards in play.

[commandercool]

Sisters' third ability allows you to have more than the usual 4 maximum in your deck. So "have" refers to having 4 (or more, that is, 5, a full field) Sisters cards in play.

Oh, does Sisters count itself? Eveything that counts cards in play that I've seen so far doesn't count itself ("X or more other") so I overlooked that. That sort of makes sense.

Edit: Hmm, no, unless the translation I have is wrong Sisters does not count itself. It looks for four or more other Sisters, and as far as I know having more than four others is impossible. Not that it matters that much, the answer to my question is the same either way.

I guess it's just worded for consistency and in case a weird scenario comes up involving future rules or cards or something. Or are static abilities like that active in zones other than the stage? I guess that could matter.

[commandercool]

My roommate got his Persona box this morning. He also pulled a chase (signed Naoto), although he didn't get a triple rare like I did. Apparently not all sets are like Kill La Kill where all of the level threes are double rare and there are only a few in the set, which makes building decks a lot more viable for him. It seems like the Persona set has a million different ways to effortlessly take out my high level guys outside of combat, which I don't really understand how to play against at this point. They've got a ton of removal, I have none, and that's kind of troubling.

I shopped all around the internet and ordered a few singles. I don't think I have quite the resources to make two separate decks that completely work, but I'm fine with them being kind of junky I guess. Probably going to sell my chase Ryuko this weekend to recoup part of my expenses, and I might pick up another trial deck to get some more filler level threes.

[PX]

Yeah, power balance in Weiss is a bit of a thing. Outside of a few exceptions (BanColle) the popular series with multiple sets (LoveLive, Persona, im@s) have a lot more power and flexibility due to much more resources

[commandercool]

We both technically have access to, card for card, exactly the same number of things. One trial deck, one booster box, and five loose packs. So it's not that he has all the Persona sets to pull from at this point, just that he seems to have a lot of powerful events that I can't match.

The deck I was using only has one event in it, the blue Juneketsu (level one, zero cost, look at the top for cards and put a character in hand and the rest into the graveyard) and the one time I used it I fucked myself by getting a level zero and discarding three climaxes. Compared to "search your deck for anything" and "bury any of your opponent's characters in the stock so they'll never be seen again" there seems to be a power level disparity.

To be fair my characters were mostly able to overpower his, but after a point he just didn't care about combat any more because he could kill all of the characters I went way out of my way to get markers on instantly with no chance for me to fight back. I had card and stock advantage for the entire game because I was running combat, but his endgame card quality was way too much for me to handle.

I think my climaxes were kind of goofy though, I didn't really have anything that boosted my whole team's soul so I never had the chance to take advantage of my early domination of the board by just clobbering him for like fifteen damage in one turn. Of course doing that is just begging for my entire turn to be cancelled out by his climaxes, so yeah... Not really sure what I'm supposed to do. But having a problem to solve is fine, I'll figure it out.

I did learn that the level one Inumuta who gives characters in front of him +500 power and +1 level ("Inumuta, Genius Hacker") is amazing though. Since the Kill La Kill characters tend to be so overwhelming in combat people seem to just stop fighting me and go for all side attacks toward the end of the game, which means all my backups are wasted. Inumuta makes my guys much harder to get around, so my opponent has to fight my characters to get at me, and then I can just crush them in combat. And he even draws cards. Seems like a definite three-of, and I've only got one right now.