Who Left This Corpse Out? - Musings of a Bygone Buddyfight Player

UPDATE: Since Buddyfight is dead and no actual human being is going to check this blog from now on, I'm turning on ads for the first time in 6 years so I can harvest money from the random bots that visit. A penny is a penny.

So I'm sitting at my desk, browsing Reddit and Discord servers and getting ready to play the new Genshin Impact event when I open up Twitch and see that the Bushiroad AO tournament is streaming. Thinking I should watch some gameplay to prepare for judging the NA tournament tomorrow, I open it up and start watching. Safe to say, I don't recognize any of the cards on screen, and it isn't just because the camera quality is garbage. But it's vaguely reminiscent of a Buddyfight that I once knew.

The game ends, the commentator's faces are revealed and who do I see but Krishiv! That's a name I haven't heard in years and a person I haven't talked to in just as long. I'm super excited and happy for him that he's casting this event, and I immediately try to contact him - only to realize that I'm no longer in any Discord groups with him, and we never added each other on Facebook since I was using another persona during my Buddyfight days (this one). I try to find other people like Hunter and Tim and I realize that, wow, I'm actually not connected to these guys anymore, mostly because all the interaction I had with them in the past was as Blaise and not as "me". It's a very mixed feeling.

So I'm combing through my options, and my roads lead back to here - the only outlet I have left. This now incredibly defunct blog that I built single-handedly in college, the place where I poured my passion for card games and Buddyfight for two years as best as I could. Five years ago, I had to make the difficult decision to move on from Buddyfight and pursue other things in life - career, community, other card games. And now, it is Buddyfight that is moving on from all of us.

I'm feeling nostalgic tonight, so I'll write something up. This time, it really is the end.

(Well, except for all the people that will continue to play kitchen top and stuff but I'm trying to get a mood going here).

Buddyfight was my...third? TCG that I picked up, after Pokemon and Cardfight Vanguard, and it was the first game that I took seriously and competitively. After getting past the weird name, I discovered a game that was interactive, exciting, well-balanced, and extensive. The foundation of the game was solidly built on principles of math and logic, which lead to concepts, tactics, and strategies that could be calculated. At the same time, the game had a great sense of capturing fun and designing unique and interesting gameplay that was interactive - something I took for granted then but now understand is sorely lacking in most Bushiroad card games.

A lot of people I know have been playing ever since the start. Perhaps we all saw the same potential the game had, that it could go places and become a great competitive game for years. Maybe some of it was the satisfaction of being the underdog, having discovered a gem of a game that others scorned at first glance, laughing at the name. Regardless, the game did progress in a positive direction, the community grew both online and offline, and people started giving the game the attention it deserved. I watched as the regionals in Southern California grow from a paltry 60 person start to a 200+ man tournament that beat out Weiss Schwarz numbers one 2017 (or was it 2018?) BCS. Even though I had moved on, I knew many who hadn't, and I was not expecting Buddyfight to. If I had paid closer attention, maybe I could've seen the writing on the wall. Was it Overturn/Overkill? Belost? The Bandori and CG Gekijou sets? Even as the power creep constantly crept itself, I didn't think the game was dying - and the numbers both stateside and in Japan were solid. It really is a mystery to me, one that I won't likely be solving anytime soon.

I started this blog 7 years ago (jeez thats a long time) because I had done the math in response to discussion about card advantage in the game and came up with something that I felt was concrete, solid, and backed up by both current and upcoming cards at the time. The reception to my first article was (I thought) extremely positive, which encouraged and motivated me to keep going. At the time I was getting a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science / Games Design, and this blog was a way to put into practice both my tech skills in coding and modifying the site as well as my game design knowledge that I was learning at university. It was by all means a project driven purely by motivation and passion, and I'm shocked that I kept up with it for 2 years. Since then I've definitely changed, grown, and matured; I've tried my best not to read my old articles because I'd kill myself from cringe. I've considered just taking the site down multiple times and erasing the evidence, but I think about all the people that (somehow) appreciated and benefited from the site, and I decide against it.

Speaking of which, why does this site have almost 450,000 views? What? When I retired it had like 300k something and it was already outdated, who the hell is coming back to this? But even 300,000 at the time was just an astronomical number to me, and I'm still so thankful to all the support I got back then. Really, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. I'm not worthy.

I chose Ikkyuu Tensai as an avatar because I really enjoyed her quirky personality. She was immature and bratty, but when it came to the case she was serious, capable, and always gave it her 100% - and I really related to that back then. Man, this was before I even knew light novels were a thing and that Ryuugajou Nanana no Maizoukin was originally a light novel - Tensai looks SO much better in light novel art.

Best girl.

Funny story, because I used her as my avatar and an apparently feminine-enough username, some readers thought I was female. No joke, I've received emails addressed to a "Ms. Blaise". That's kinda wild. Sorry, I guess. Blaise comes from an even older online username I used that had the word "Blaze" in it. I modified it to match the French mathematician Blaise Pascal, who is undoubtedly male.

As I'm closing out this article, I realize that even though I had retired as a blogwriter, I still very much kept up with Buddyfight all the way until the pandemic. After becoming a certified judge, I judged every Buddyfight event in California for three years straight - if you've played there, chances are you've seen me around. I think judging was a way for me to continue supporting and contributing to the community and the competitive scene, and I enjoy it very much. As I said, I will be judging for the BSFO NA event this weekend, so I hope to see some of you there.

This article has been just unfiltered rambling and reminiscing, so I'm sorry if this reads completely incoherent to many of you. I think part of me wants to recapture something I've lost since retiring the blog. Although I think I'm mainly writing out of frustration that all the friends I made back then don't actually know who I am, and this blogger persona has taken away a sizable portion of my TCG relationships away. But I also think I want to say that I was here from the start, that I'm here at the end, and that I've seen the ups and downs, the rise and fall of a game over the course of 7 years. 

And I want to say, standing at the end, that it was a good ride.

_________________________________________________________________

If you're going to read my other old articles, first of all don't, second of all please understand past me is very dumb and stupid and cringe and used words in dumb stupid cringe ways, past me is a mess that I want to die and has died, don't @ me about anything lalala.

Feel free to reach out to me if you knew me back then and don't know me now, I would love to get reconnected! This is not a signal for help I am not lonely and sad that Blaise Tensai has friends but I don't

The End of an Era - June 2016 Update

If it hasn't been very obvious already, I'm unable to keep up with Buddyfight any longer.

There are lots of reasons and excuses I can give.

• College has been more time-consuming than I had originally expected. This makes it very difficult for me to prioritize blogging at any given point during the school year.
• Being away from home means I'm far away from my locals, so I don't get to actually play Buddyfight at all anymore. That sucks.
• I can't find cards at reasonable pricing, and it's hard for me to buy decks that I'm passionate about playing.
• I can't afford to play this game because the market is atrocious. Because there is no market. And if I can't play card games physically, it really makes it hard for me to keep up passionately. Hearthstone excepted.

But ultimately, it's because I've lost passion for the game.

It's not that the game is bad. Far from it. I think Buddyfight is a great game with very good foundations. It's well balanced. There are meaningful tradeoffs with field positioning and weapons. Sideboarding exists. Valuation of cards has been consistent and intentional. It has the potential to be a fair and fun game.

The problem lies with, well, everything else. The lack of a stable market for cards, which means insanely high prices for an unpopular game. That means its harder to attract newcomers, which in turn makes it difficult to establish cheap prices. Older staples get harder and harder to find. The situation is bad, and unless something changes drastically it will not improve itself.

The problem also lies with me, too. I'm not really into Buddyfight from an aesthetic sense, in the same way I'm not really into Magic the Gathering or Yugioh. I play Weiss Schwarz because anime, and I like Vanguard and WIXOSS because anime-inspired. Pokemon is awesome and Hearthstone is free. That's basically how it goes.

So at this point, there are only two options for me:

1. Discontinue blogging
2. Attempt to catch-up

The problem with #1 is: I still love to blog. And write about card games. And talk about card games. It's fun, it's something I'm passionate about, it's something that I've given a lot of time and effort into. I don't want to just see it die, incomplete, neglected. I've gotten to know great people through this and it's been a meaningful chapter in my life.

But there's no way #2 will ever happen. It's impossible. I'm too far behind, and there's only going to be less time for me to give to the blog from here on out.

Here's where the final nail in the coffin comes in.

In about a week, I'm going to be leaving the US on a two-month missions program to Mongolia and China. During which I won't have reliable access to internet and my entire schedule will be packed with English teaching, evangelism, training, and all sorts of activities and events. I come back the week before I start school.

I'm out of time.

But I want to make a clean ending. And I managed to do so during this week.

If you go and check, every World Article should be updated for all of the Hundred Boosters, EBs and the very last Perfect Pack with the Inverse stuff. The last thing I need to do is to create a separate Demon Lord from Dungeon Enemy and I'll be finished with everything pre-Triple D. And that's as far as I'm going to go.

My first article was today, two years ago. June 9th. It was about card advantage, and how Buddyfight had a very strict system that encompassed every statline in the game. It's still something they continue to abide by today, which gives the game a fair standard and helps develop a stable metagame.

For the past two years I've continued to follow the growth and development with varying success. And personally I've grown a lot too, both in experience and knowledge. Looking back at some of the stuff I wrote in 2014, I shudder at my over-exaggerative language and my naive assumptions.

My greatest achievement, however, has been my foresight. I noted in my Impact article way back in September 2014 that Impacts were going to become cheaper, more utility-based and at higher numbers in decks. And they did, slowly but surely. And now we've got Impact monsers. Amazing. Maybe one day we'll get to see that 8 Impact per deck I envisioned back then.

I've taken a lot of inspiration from an old Vanguard site called V-Mundi. The writer there had great articles, many better than my own, but she also faded out of writing after about two...arcs? Defining periods of the game's development. I think I'm fated to go down the same path, having written for all of the original period and the Hundred era but not having the steam to continue this train.

So this is the last station. For Buddyfight, that is.

But if you're interested in joining me a bit farther...I'm going to start up a personal blog. One that isn't specifically about a single game, but rather about my experience and insight as a TCG player. Because frankly, Buddyfight is actually a game I have little experience in, but a game that I've done the most research for. Buddyfight Theory is the fruit of my research. But I'd like to talk about other games I enjoy, like Weiss Schwarz, ChaOS, WIXOSS, Pokemon, and even Hearthstone. I don't want to be limited to a single topic or game, especially not when I have so much diversity to offer. And I'd like to rant about anime occasionally too.

I'm still brainstorming for good blog names, so I'm open to suggestions.

Anyways, I'd like to take the time right now to thank everyone for supporting me throughout the years. It's been an absolute honor to write for you all, to hear your voices and to be a part of this amazing community. I remember how shocked and happy I was when I was 2nd on the poll for guest speakers for the livestream event we had, losing only to...John Cena, of course. I've had a really amazing time, met awesome people and made good friends. It's hard to put this feeling of gratitude into words...

Oh God no not Shirobako Episode 23 why are you coming now that episode was so sad please stop I don't want to cry

(I admit, it's getting a bit emotional for me to write this though. Nostalgia hit pretty hard and I'm feeling kinda sappy right now)

Huge shoutout to all the people who supported me on Patreon...and then refused to contact me so I couldn't send them any rewards. You can still claim them, you know. And the support really helped me get through a tough time, and without the support I don't think I would be where I am today.

Many thanks to HunterSerge and Austin Somers for being my main bros, also Damian, Tim, and the rest of the gang. You guys are awesome, wish I met more of you in real life, and I hope we can continue to be...buddies? Aha, ahahaha.

I guess I'll end on a Tensai quote.

 

これで全ての謎は解けたな

Now all the mysteries are solved

And with that~

Black Knight

With H-BT04, Black Knights become an exclusive archetype apart from Deep and it's time to give them their own page. Similarly to Deep, Black Knights rely on flooding the drop zone with cards to fuel their effects. There's also this weird mechanic with Buddy Monsters...we can get to that in a bit.

There's really not much to say about them just now, other than the fact that it's basically a Deep deck except you replace beefy Size 3 tanks with Black Knights.

January 2016 Update [H-EB04]

新年快乐！

I'll try to start the new year off with a better track record than 2015, but no promises or resolutions.

• Buddy Allstars+ have all been added to the blog except for Star Dragon World. I'll get around to those in a bit, sorry!

Deck Profile: Much Adil about Nothing

Here's the last one of the series! I really enjoyed going through these and received some great comments and criticisms. Just a quick reminder for all of you though:

That includes my own.

Let's get to the point regarding our 2015 North American Champion Kevin Cho's deck!