Buddyfight Math - Vanilla Flavored

Who likes vanilla ice cream?

I know that the word "vanilla" itself has a lot of different meanings in different contexts and that some people don't like using the word in TCG for various reasons. Unfortunately, habit is hard to overcome and the term has firmly stuck around multiple TCGs and even other games in general. Especially for me. I'm particularly fond of the term because it sounds kinda fluffy. Don't judge.

Basically, we'll take the time to revisit my calculations for vanilla stats in Buddyfight because there's a better way to do them that also sheds some light on Bushiroad's philosophy regarding the game. Ready for another math journey?

Base Stat Totals

Check out my base stats!

Let's introduce a new concept into Buddyfight. I'm a borrower at heart, so I'll borrow this concept from Pokemon. In Pokemon, every Pokemon has certain base stat values that determine the maximum power a Pokemon's stat can be. There's a base stat value for HP, Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, and Speed. Base Stat Total or BST is the total of all these separate base stat values. The total is usually helpful to determine what kind of Pokemon these stats are for. For example, a majority of Legendary Pokemon have a 600 BST delegated for all six stats.

Buddyfight actually has something awfully similar to this. Every Buddyfight monster has 3 stats: Power, Defense, and Critical. If there was some way we could weigh all three stats equally and then add them up to determine the result...

Oh, why don't we use the card advantage scale that I've calculated before? By this point, I've more or less patented it. I mean, we've already determined multiple times over that 1 damage = 0.5 advantage = 2000 permanent power/defense. Since crit is damage, we can assume that 1 crit = 2000 power/defense and calculate from there. I mean, there's no way my advantage scale is wrong, right?

Ha. Ahahaha.

Double Trouble

Anyways, by that logic, Thousand Rapier Dragon is 5000/2/1000. 5000 power + 1000 defense + 2 crit * 2000 = 10000. So we can expect Size 1 Dragon World monsters to have 10K BST. Let's try it with another monster...umm, Systemic Dagger Dragon. 3000 power + 3000 power + 2 crit * 2000 = 10000. Right on the dot. Perfect. One more...umm, Double Sword Dragon. 5000/1/4000 would mean 5000 power + 4000 defense + 1 crit * 2000 = 11000...

...umm...wait...let me check another monster. Blade Chakram Dragon? 6000/1/3000 = 6000 power + 3000 defense + 1 crit * 2000 = 11000...ummm, wow. That's not looking good.

So at this point, it's safe to say that I've messed up in some regard. What was my mistake? I assumed something. People, never assume. It just makes an ass with u and me. What I had assumed from the beginning was that crit = damage. You can look back at my earlier articles and see my mistake. I simply made a very circumstantial assumption to get my math working, similar to what I did with direct damage. The problem was that I knew direct damage was calculated differently and went back to fix it later. But I never realized I made the same assumption with crits.

When you think about it rationally, my logic at the beginning was flawed too. I can actually quote myself: 

When you place a card on the field, the transaction is a wash because you lose a card from hand and gain a card on the field. It now has the ability to exchange it's standing condition for an attack for damage. So every card you place on the field should, on average, be able to inflict 2 damage to your opponent. So it would be technically more correct to say that 1 Attack = 2 Damage. Of course, since cards (monsters) give you the ability to attack, it ends up being 1 card = 2 damage. Ish.

I said that myself in the very first article I wrote. These very fingers typed those words. And yet while I realized that direct damage was different, I never really thought that crit would be different. When it really is.

All the crits!

Crit is a stat that sticks on a monster for as long as that monster is alive. Which means that while 1 attack = 2 damage, 1 card can possibly do more than 1 attack in a given game. If crit was directly balanced with damage, then that means that having a monster attack more than once would grant way too much advantage. Field control and field presence would be superiorly weighted, and the game would end up being a slaughterfest, kinda like the Systemic Dagger experiment I ran to prove that going first sucks.

Bushiroad is a smart company. They saw this coming and decided to weight crit a bit higher. Not high enough to make a huge difference, but enough to matter. In other words, not high enough to be noticed casually, but when the math is done, it's large enough to make a 1000 point difference in the calculations.

If 1 crit = 2000 is too low, and 1 crit = 4000 would equate 1 damage to 1 entire card, which is too much, then naturally we'd assume that 1 crit should be 3000 power/defense, or base stat points. Armed with this new information, let's try the calculations all over again.

Your stats don't get more
suck than Generic

Thousand Rapier Dragon. 5000/2/1000. 5000 power + 1000 power + 2 crit * 3000 = 12000. So we're trying to aim for 12000 BST for Dragon World Size 1's. Systemic Dagger Dragon, 3000/2/3000. 3000 power + 3000 defense + 2 crit * 3000 = 12000. Okay. Double Sword Dragon, 5000/1/4000. 5000 power + 4000 defense + 1 crit * 3000 = 12000. Yes! Last check, Blade Chakram Dragon, 6000/1/3000. 6000 power + 3000 defense + 1 crit * 3000 = 12000. That's four for four. I say that's a passing grade (I've also done more than twenty others on my own time to check).

The craziest thing is that this works even with abilities. You can use BST calculations to prove that Penetrate is weighted 2000 BST per crit, Move is weighted 2000 BST, Soulguard is weighted 4000 BST (or should be). For example, Sniping Ninja, Yoichi's "snipe" ability is weighted at 1000 BST.

Here's a quick little list of the BST values for each world and each Size.

• Dragon World: 8000 (Size 0), 12000 (Size 1), 18000 (Size 2), 22000 (Size 3)
• Danger World: 8000 (Size 0), 14000 (Size 1), 19000 (Size 2), 23000 (Size 3)
• Magic World: 11000 (Size 1), 16000 (Size 2), 20000 (Size 3)
• Katana World: 8000 (Size 0), 11000 (Size 1), 16000 (Size 2), 21000 (Size 3)
• Ancient World: 8000 (Size 0), 11000 (Size 1), 17000 (Size 2), TOO AWESOME (Size 3)
• Dungeon World: 9000 (Size 0), 12000 (Size 1), 17000 (Size 2), 24000 (Size 3)
• Legend World: 9000 (Size 0), 12000 (Size 1), 17000 (Size 2), 25000 (Size 3)
• Darkness Dragon World: 8000 (Size 0), 12000 (Size 1), 17000 (Size 2), 22000 (Size 3)
• Generic: 7000 (Size 0), 9000 (Size 1), 13000 (Size 2), 18000 (Size 3)
• Hero World: 13000 (Size 1), 18000 (Size 2), 22000 (Size 3)

Of course, there's certain monsters that break the scale. Like Drum Bunker Dragon. And Nanomachine Ninja, Tsukikage. But the thing is, these monsters break the scale no matter how you decide to math them. They're just a little too good to exist in Buddyfight, but this was probably done on purpose because they're the "avatars" of the anime. If you expect any Blaster Blade deck or Dragonic Overlord deck to get some seriously heavy buffs, then expect this sort of thing to happen in Buddyfight as well.

I could spend the rest of this article just showing of Algebra skills, but I find that would be really boring. Basically, try calculating the BSTs of all the cards in your deck and find which ones stand out. It might put another perspective on what's good mathematically and help you fine tune a deck.

Huge shoutout to my editor Silent Tom for figuring this out and drafting a big portion of this article!

- updated to H-BT01, CP01, H-EB01, TD07, PP01 -

All images used obtained from the official Bushiroad website and used here solely for reference purposes. Future Card Buddyfight!, logos, and respective content belong to Bushiroad. Large images belong to the Buddyfight! Wikia.