Future Card Buddyfight is a Japanese Collectible Card Game made by Bushiroad, tied-in with the anime of the same name. The game was first released worldwide on January 24, 2014.
Future Card Buddyfight includes six types of cards. All the cards (excluding some Generic cards) belong to a world, and only cards from a single world (barring Generics and a few exceptions) can be used together. These six types of cards are:
- Flag, an individual card set up at the start of the game which declares the world the player is using. Cards not from the flag's world can be included in the player's deck, but they cannot be used.
- Monster, which can be called to the field, use abilities, and attack the opponent and their monsters.
- Item, which can be equipped (placed on the flag card) as well as perform attacks (if there's no monster in the player's center monster zone) and use abilities.
- Spell, which have abilities that activate when they're used; some spells have the "Set" keyword that lets them stay on the field and continuously apply their effects.
- Impact, a special type of card that can only be played in the final phase of a turn. They have powerful abilities that can often immediately win the game when played.
- Impact Monster, a special type of Impact card that acts like a combination of Monster and Impact cards. They are called in the final phase and can also attack during said phase.
In game, both players (or "fighters") start with 10 life, and the objective of the game is to reduce the opponent's life to 0. At the start of the game, both players place one flag card and one monster card, known as a Buddy, on their side of the field (these two cards are not considered to be a part of the deck). Players also put two cards from the top of their deck to the gauge zone, a mana analogue that some cards require as a cost. At the start of every turn, players will draw 1 card. Afterwards, they may put 1 card to the gauge zone, and draw another card if they do. Players can call any amount of monster cards, as long as the sum of the size stat (usually 0-3) of the monsters on the field does not exceed the limit (default 3) and places them on either the left position, right position, or center position.
When calling a monster with the same name as the Buddy, the player can perform a Buddy Call (moving the Buddy onto the field and putting the called card into the Buddy Zone; costs are paid normally) and gain 1 life as a result of "Buddy Gift". Buddy Gift is usually the only feature of the Buddy mechanic, though some cards have more interactions with the Buddy mechanic. Players are generally limited to one Buddy Call per game, since it can only be performed when the Buddy is standing (placed vertically), and the new Buddy after the Buddy Call is placed resting (placed horizontally).
After the Main Phase where the player sets up their formation, players move to the Battle Phase. When attacking, a monster or player with an item (and no monster in their center position) can declare an attack on the left, right, or center positions by resting the attacking card. When attacking another monster, you compare your monster's attack stat to their monster's defense stat, if the attack stat of one monster is over the defense stat of the other, that monster is destroyed, if it's lower, than the attack simply fails. To aid in the battle, the player may choose to perform a Link Attack, resting more than one monster and/or the item combining their stats to make one big attack. If the center position is open, the player can choose to directly attack the player. If the attack is successful, the defending player loses life equal to the critical score of the monster or item.
After the Battle Phase, one more attempt to defeat your opponent comes in the form of the Final Phase, where, if all the conditions are met, the player can activate an Impact Card to make one last attempt to claim victory or set up for a massive advantage before the end of the turn.
In 2020, Bushiroad announced that the entire Buddyfight franchise would be discontinued due to declining sales. The final set of the card game was released in September 15, 2020, with official events and support for the game continuing until June 30, 2021.
However, the game was revived in Thailand in 2023 under the moniker of Buddyfight: New Drive.
This card game provides examples of:
- Armored Dragons: The Armordragon class of Monsters includes both standard and human-like dragons that wear armor.
- Competitive Balance: The Flag mechanic of Buddyfight allows for players to use specific cards pertaining to their respective worlds. For the most part, each flag allows for a specific play style with variations based on attributes. Note that not all attributes are listed below, mainly ones featured prominently in the anime and manga.
- Dragon World: A generally balanced world that favors high offense with its monsters and items and a strong defense with its various counter abilities.
- Armordragons are the epitome of this tactic often favoring the "Gao Formation", two monsters on the sides and an item with various counter cards to protect themselves.
- Jackknife Dragon is typically in a deck to himself upgrading him by calling other forms on top of the previous form.
- Dragon Knights are a combo-centric series of cards that attempt to rush down the opponent by getting extra gauge to use for spells and impacts.
- Blue Sky Knights are a series of Armordragons that specialize in life gain and on play abilities. They also include effects to send themselves back to the hand to reuse their on play effects.
- The Fifth Omni Calvary are a series of Armordragons that serve the Fifth Omni Dragon Lord, Tenbu and Drum and have effects that punish the opponent by countering any type of damage inflicted on the player, even if the player inflicts damage upon himself.
- Crimson Battlers are brawlers with high aggro, however the player must also have a Fist weapon.
- The Sun Dragons either have Penetrate or gain an effect if the opponent's center is empty, so they focus on attempting to pry the center open. It also has incredible synergy with Impact Monsters.
- Shadow Dragons use a Zerg Rush style of play to throw as many of the Size 0 Shadow Dragons, which can be played beyond the standard 4 copies, into play or the drop zone only to form into a much more powerful Shadow Dragon.
- Dragonblood Sect has a strong focus on the Counterattack ability supplemented with abilities to both force attacks on the monsters and put them in a situation where the opponent's attacks fail and remove monsters during their opponent's turn to give them an opening.
- Dimension Dragons have one goal in mind find the Lost World flag and play it. When they do, they gain additional effects that power the effects itself or kickstart their win condition.
- Magic World: A world that focuses on weaker monsters, but compensates with powerful effects and spells.
- Wizards allow for easy access to their respective spells as well as very powerful spells depending on how many Wizards are in the drop zone and creating powerful combos.
- 72 Pillars are extremely weak monsters but most of them have a lot of on call effects and its supporting spells allows them to be called quickly and from drop zone as well to reactivate it's effects.
- Shadow Shade monsters, instead of having spells simply sent to the drop zone, can build a strong defense in the center by putting spells in the soul of monsters for special effects and repeated use, rewarding players for casting as many spells as they can.
- Plague cards focus on loading cards into the souls of other cards for powerful effects and easy access. Their spells also have a theme of hard controlling the opponents cards. It's ultimate goal is to unleash Ultimate Great Spell, World Pandemic which "closes" the flag by flipping down, preventing the player from using their world cards.
- Mystic Knight monsters buff themselves with Fire attribute spells and abilities to unlock extra abilities by exceeding a certain amount of power.
- Drago Phantom Thieves are able to have Sky Castle of Phantom Drago Thief, "Lebla Maurice" as their chosen buddy which allows them to convert their opponent's cards into "Magic Treasure" and use that as an extra resource for their effects.
- Danger World: A strong flag with overwhelming offensive power at the cost of defense either by playing on the edge of defeat or an explosive offense with a tendency to blow out.
- Armorknights best show off this kind of playstyle having a lot of power both in its monsters and its items.
- The "A" units can put themselves into the soul of a weapon to give it additional abilities if the player's life is low enough.
- Duel Dragons have impressively high stats and take advantage of the power through Soulguard and Counterattack in their attempt to brute force their way to victory.
- Tyrant attributes play around with their life by using it as a resource for some of their spells and abilities. In return, some spells allow them to regain just as much life.
- Duel Golems, much like Duel Dragons, have very high statistics, but includes powerful effects to disrupt their opponent's field. However Duel Golems will destroy themselves as soon as they finish attacking unless the player pays a cost (usually a gauge).
- Godpunks Plunder ability allows the player to steal life, monsters, and gauge from their opponent and use them as their own to pay for costs and effects for Godpunk monsters and effects. They also have on-hit effects to further their gameplay
- Dangerous Veggies are a series of small monsters that often destroy themselves to enable effects, which will allow them to gather together for stronger monsters.
- Katana World: A world based on Japanese mythology utilizing a trick play style that focus on defense while chipping away at the opponent either through direct attacks or heavy control with effect damage.
- The Ninja line has abilities to control the flow of battle, but it's utterly reliant on the owner predicting the actions of their opponent.
- The Skull Warriors line has abilities that require its monsters to be in the Drop Zone or be destroyed, which is a good thing seeing that most of them are destroyed at the end of the turn.
- Japanese Blade items work together with Blade Beast monsters by gathering and dropping them to the drop zone to gain offensive power.
- Oni Assasins utilize the Ambush ability, allowing them to be called and activate effects by leaving the soul of another card.
- Using the item Kagura-bell of Worship, Size 3 Electrodeities can "possess" the player via equipping them as an item during the turn. In addition, each of the Size 3 Electrodeities have one of two effects to choose from usually optimizing one for offense and the other for defense.
- Bladedancers work in tandem with Excelblade items in order to trigger effects, but the Excelblade item itself must remain standing to activate these effects and to prepare for powerful counter effects.
- Ancient World: This flag inclues extremely powerful monsters, normally size 3 monsters, with incredible stats and abilities but but inflict damage upon their owner when destroyed and some of their cards use the player's lifepoints as resource since they live or die by these monsters. These monsters are often supported with Size 0 monsters and items.
- Dragon Lord cards require the player to have a Size 3 monster on the field and have effects that activate from the hand. Often an overwhelming monster that can evolve upon it's destruction, making it more and more dangerous as your opponent tries to remove the threat.
- Wild Dragons often want to discard other Wild Dragons to trigger powerful effects. And the Wild Dragons that do get discarded can also trigger additional effects.
- The Raging Spirits' Size 3 monsters force the opponent to attack them, allowing the player to safely play them to the left or right and use item cards. Their lifelink can be negated with the Size 0 Dragon Kid Ricky and other Size 0 Dragon Kids can help their Size 3 brothers.
- Dragon Chief Emperor monsters are a defensive variant of the Dragon Lord attribute usually by stuffing their soul with a lot of cards to capitalize on their Soulguard abilities.
- Link Dragon Order uses the D-Share abilities to gives Link Dragon Order monsters and items each other's abilities allowing multiple effects and advantages. Spiral D-Share, a variation on the effect, gives the monster effects from D-Share monsters in its soul.
- MAX Dragons has the ability Against All Odds to allow MAX Dragon monsters to grow more powerful and to protect its own cards as long as the MAX Dragon in question is the only one on the field. In addition, the spell Overcrest increases the size limit to 6 and bring out monsters with sizes higher than 3, mainly by evolving them.
- Genesis Dragons are all about protecting its center through any means, meanwhile they are slowly gaining advantage by chipping away at their opponent.
- Dungeon World: A tribute to role-playing games — both in video game and tabletop form — as well as the fantasy genre overall, their decks incorporate RPG elements for both of the players' sides, even coming down to effects that rely on RNG.
- Adventurers are individually weak, but gain power in combination, resulting on a reliance on link attacks and a Zerg Rush strategy. In addition, their Mission Card series of spells have effects that go off after fulfilling specific actions.
- As a side note, Adventurers are often card versions of the anime characters themselves. When Dual World cards were introduced, character cards were changed to have a version of the character that could be incorporated into their signature deck, for example a Gao monster would be a Dragon/Dungeon World card.
- Knights are a more straightforward attribute and supplement duel-wielding to allow the player to attack more than once.
- Dungeon Enemies typically have a more beatdown strategy, utilizing either decent stats to pummel on opponents or annoying effects. They also synergize well with other attributes within the Dungeon World flag.
- Demon Lord are strong cards with powerful effects and game changing spells, if they can pull it off. Though they do have Lifelink to counteract their strong abilities, they almost always have Soulguard ready to defend themselves.
- Folktale utilize on destruction effects with support cards destroying monsters to forcefully proc these effects. When used with Illusions Folktale, Echt Biblio, they are able to send it to its soul after destruction to play it out again.
- Legend World: A tribute to myths, legends and fairy tales, this flag features a cornucopia of styles depending on the attribute, but they typically share a similar element of discarding to gain resources.
- Heroes typically involves effects with link attacks with both the monster and item, the Hero items theselves have the Equipment Change ability to allow them to trade weapons from the field and their hand without overplaying them.
- In X they have changed to become a weapon exclusive deck utilizing "Demonic Descent Sword of the King" Laevateinn allowing the player to equip as many items as possible, but has no monsters to set up a defense relying solely on defensive spells to stay alive.
- The Wyder Sarkal units usually have high power but low defense or restrictions.
- Asgard focuses on combining card effects but they require a lot of gauge as well as specific cards to be in the drop zone or the field.
- Cards of the Star attribute focus on a lockdown strategy, setting up a formation that limits your opponent's actions while increasing your offensive power
- Fairies are extremely weak but have a lot of abilities that mill cards to activate powerful spells and effects depending on the number of fairies in the drop zone.
- Empyreal Corps have a similar playstyle to the Fifth Omni Calvary. Advent allows Empyreal Corps monsters to be called during the opponent's turn either to defend against an attack or to set yourself up for your next turn. They also punish the opponent if damage is dealt to them, regardless of who caused the damage.
- Legend Dragons are given the Double Buddy ability giving them two buddy monsters which can give the player extra life. They work in tandem to provide a strong offense. Later, this is upgraded with the Triple Buddy ability allowing for even more power with a third buddy monster.
- Darkness Dragon World: An dark variant of Dragon World, their cards involve heavy offense and strong control to cripple their opponent.
- Black Dragons utilize the Spectral Strike ability to deal the opponent damage when they destroy a monster with their high attack, and though they have low defense, they have spells to capitalize on their destruction.
- In Triple D, they changed their strategy to focus more on field control and added an element of deck destruction gaining advantage whenever the opponent has a lot of cards in their drop zone.
- In X, they now focus on powerful Set cards to strengthen their field and stopping the opponent's and in turn, protecting these set spells. Most important of these in the Set Impact card Death Count, Requiem, which puts the player behind in life, but automatically wins the game if the card manages to acquire at least 3 soul cards at the end of the turn.
- Death monsters have weak stats but they can attack the fighter even if they have a monster in the center thanks to their Shadow Dive ability.
- Purgatory Knights, which happen to have the Armordragon and White Dragon attributes to help distinguish them, have high aggro, but need you to sacrifice your own monsters to use their abilities. Supporting cards allows you to recycle them or gain effects for sacrificing them.
- The Purgatory Knights Reborn are a variant of Purgatory Knights but these monsters are also affiliated with the normal Dragon World. These monsters can be sent to the soul to help recycle the cards destroyed and have additional effects while in the soul. As they are associated with Dragon World and Darkness Dragon World, they can either utilize the previous generation of Purgatory Knights, or create combos with Dragon World's pool of cards.
- Curse Dragons activate effects when your opponent has cards under their flag, like if they use additional flags, like Dragon Drei, or if it's forced upon them by the effects of the Curse Dragon themselves. It's primary win condition is Sentence of Curse which wins the player the game if they can get up to 15 cards under the opponent's flag by the start of their turn.
- Venom Dragons work similar to Triple D style Black Dragons in which the goal is to mill your opponent's deck. How this is done is primarily with Venom Swamps which accelerates how fast the opponent's deck is being milled as well as having the option to play as many copies as the player wants, thus increasing how fast the deck is being destroyed.
- Evil Demonic Dragons are all about survivng to the last point. They will utilize abilities and even drain their own life to get to the brink of death. When they can get to 1 life, they become incredibly dangerous activating some of the strongest effects in the game.
- Hero World: A flag based on superheroes, giant mechs, aliens, and even the police and military. Almost all of them share the same mechanic of equipping a monster as an item. This comes with the benefit of a defensive stat to the player allowing them to block attacks that are less powerful. Note that depending on the attribute, this ability will be represented as different keywords.
- Superheroes utilize Transform as their equipping keyword. Monsters who do not have Transform may support the Transformed player and are typically utilized together for a strong offense.
- Superheroines all have the Move ability along side many on-call effects and effects when they leave the field. However, they typically do not have high defense so cards like Bandage Warrior, Masked Vantage can rescue his heroines by transforming at the last second and recover them back to their hand cards, which also wastes one of their opponent's attacks.
- Brave Machines utilize Ride as their equipping keyword. Brave Machines can either come in the form of either a series of strong mecha, or a set of weaker mechs that combine to make an extremely powerful one.
- Battleships utilize Station as their equipping keyword. With it, the Battleship can load Crew Trooper monsters into its soul to launch out at a moment's notice for extra attacks or to build a board.
- Dark Heroes are powerful and have good come into play effects that allow them to open the center and cards to increase their card draws, however they return to the player's hand after they attack, leaving the player open.
- The Zetta and Gemclone archetypes all revolve around Impact Monsters with the Zetta cards allowing for Impact Transformations and the Gemclone cards allowing players to use other Impact Monsters that do not have to come from Hero World. Because of this, their entire turn will often take place during Final Phase allowing players to call and attack without changing phases.
- Galaxy Exalt are powerful transformable monsters who have high statistics and comes in with several cards in soul, usually buffing themselves with them. However, they will attempt to bounce back to hand at the end of the player's turn requiring Soulguard to remain on the field. They are also supported by Galaxy Defense Team cards.
- Star Dragon World: A futuristic variant of Dragon World, their style relies on field and soul manipulation to maintain a strong defense.
- Neodragons utilize their soul to equip Dragonarms either by their own effects or through the Dragonarms' Crossnize ability to go from the field to the soul of another monster, namely the specified Neodragon.
- Prism Dragons focus on both a Damage Over Time and a Stone Wall strategy, having high defense monsters with soulguard and items that gradually chip away at life or maintain their already high defense.
- Cosmo Dragons are a combo oriented attribute that can rearrange and control their deck to get their desired result.
- Astrodragons use the keyword Galaxy F to unlock abilities if there is an Astrodragon monster in the center, left and an Astrodragon item is equipped. Some monsters can also unlock a different version of the ability by having a monster in the right instead.
- Oppress literally invades the opposing field by having Drametal monsters take over an unoccupied left or right space on the board as their own (the monsters you own still must adhere to size limitations despite one or two of them moving to your opponent's side of the board).
- Unassociated Flags: Some flags are not associated with the world flags listed above, these flags are instead associated with a specific attribute with abilities only activating if you utilize the flag. Note that these cards can come from any of the worlds above or none of them and only associate itself with the flag.
- The Dragon Ein flag allows one to use any Dragon attribute card from any world and start with 12 Life, but in exchange the player using the flag starts behind with only a 4 card starting hand. Because of the massive pool of cards the Dragon attribute has between all of the worlds, the Dragon Ein deck can be extremely versatile, but its main goal is to support the monster Azi Dahaka and its multiple forms.
- Its counterpart, the Dragon Zwei flag, allows one to use any Dragon attribute monsters from any world (and only monsters) and starts with a whopping 20 Life. Like Dragon Ein, the player starts with a 4 card starting hand and the strategy is similar to its support towards Azi Dahaka and his different forms. However, because you can only use monsters in the deck, items, spells and impacts (unless it's a Dragon attribute Impact Monster) cannot be utilized to respond to your opponent and thus monster abilities must be used to compensate. That being said, you can respond with one card...
- Dragon Drei, the third flag of this type and like Dragon Zwei, you can only play Dragon attribute monsters from any world. Unique to all other flags, you cannot start with this flag and can only be in a deck with the Dragon Zwei flag. When your life points hit 0, you can place the Dragon Drei flag on top of Dragon Zwei and your life goes up by 5. In exchange for this second wind, you must send all other cards on the field to the drop zone.
- The Parade of Hundred Demons flag allows one to use any Hundred Demons attribute card from any world, Hundred Demons specialize in restricting the opponents options with their Thunder Mine ability, dealing damage whenever the player does a specific action. In addition, Yamigeddo is often utilized for this deck, an extremely strong monster with very powerful Thunder Mine abilities depending on what form you are using.
- The Divine Guardians flag allows cards with the Guardians attribute and starts the player with 12 Life but 1 Gauge. Guardians specialize in gaining life and returning cards back to the deck while attempting to maintain a near empty drop zone.
- The Searing Executioners flag allows cards with the Executioners attribute and starts the player with 4 Gauge but 8 Life. Executioners specialize in milling themselves for powerful effects.
- The Chaos flag only allows usage of Chaos Attribute cards but the player must start with 4 cards in hand. However, it also increases that player's size limit from 3 to 99, thus it allows for massive size cards with powerful effects and stats to flood the field. In fact, any monster with size 30 or more are protected under this flag by preventing these cards from being destroyed and their abilities cannot be nullified. Its primary support is to Geargod and its different forms. The Geargod monsters themselves come with two abilities, the first is CHAOS Drain allows it to destroy a monster in its place to keep it on the field. The second is CHAOS Territory which allows another monster to occupy the center position, forcing the player to blow through two monsters before attacking the player (though Penetrate still works on the extra monster). Finally, several Chaos attribute monsters come with the keyword Overkill, a once per Buddyfight ability that can overpower your opponent.
- In addition, just like with Dragon Zwei, The Chaos can be upgraded to Infinity The Chaos if you have ten or more cards in your drop zone. It brings back five of those cards to your hand and removes the size cap completely. What makes it special though is that the flag itself is designed with stats, meaning it can attack, deal damage, and block weak attacks. That being said, the main purpose of the infinite size cap is to call the Size 1000 monster Ultimate CHAOS, Geargod COMPLETE also providing the upgraded keyword Overkill:REBØØT.
- Thunder Emperor's Fangs flag allows usage of all Thunder Empire attribute cards with 7 starting cards in hand and 11 life, but you only have 1 gauge to start with. Originally a Dragon World exclusive attribute, the Thunder Empire deck have an extremely explosive offense, most cards dealing multiple attacks and high power. However, many of these abilities are activated when the player is at low life. In addition, some ace monsters have the Overturn keyword, a once per Buddyfight ability that can turn the tide of the game. Taken one step further with the Overthrow keyword, another once per Buddyfight ability given to ascended monsters like Turbulent Warlord Dragon, Barlbatzz Dragoroyale.
- Lost World is much like Dragon Drei in which you play the flag in a deck. But once you "Cover the Flag", you now have an entirely new deck for the remainder of the fight (it replaces your existing deck and has a different back to it). What's important about Lost World are that the monsters have no size (not Size 0, but an unprinted size), thus the remainder of your monsters can squeeze into the battlefield. Finally, it only replaces your deck, not your hand, gauge or drop zone enabling many possibilities. Thus your strategy with Lost World goes one of two ways; either search for the flag while setting up your offense thus explode once Lost World is in play, or fix a match up issue that the Lost World deck can fix.
- The Godclock flag actually consists of 4 different flag cards that combine together. The flag itself allows the player to use Time Dragon cards. Once per turn on each player's turn, you can activate one of three of your "Horary Domination" which allows you to Reverse the side that you activated by flipping it over. Once the three sides are Reversed, you can flip the Godclock portion of the flag over at the end of your opponent's turn by sending Time Ruler Dragon to the drop zone to reveal Perfected Deity of Eon, The Endruler Dragon. Much like Infinity The Chaos, this is a flag that can declare attacks against the opponent, even with a monster in the center position. However, one thing that separates these cards from all others is its ability to "stop time" when it attacks, meaning you cannot directly respond to this card's attacks and all other abilities on the field are nullified while it's attacking. As for the Time Dragons themself, they are able to control the field utilizing effects that send cards to deck and hand where it bypasses most protection effects as well as gain extra effects based on how much of your flag has been reversed.
- Much like Dragon Drei, the Time Dragons have one more flag they can utilize. You can Reverse Endruler Dragon one last time to rearrange the flag to a new image and place Overgod, "0" in the middle of the image. Unlike the previous flag, Overgod, "0" has 0 power and defense but 12 critical. Most importantly, the flag can now stop time by dropping 6 gauge and 6 cards in hand, or simply another copy of this flag, which lasts for the remainder of the turn and also drops power and defense of your opponents cards to 0, meaning you can play out the rest of your turn nearly uncontested.
- Unassociated Cards: Cards that can be used in multiple flags.
- Generic cards are not affiliated with any world and as such, can be used in any deck. Usually, they are splashed into decks or side decks to prevent specific strategies or contain an effect that the attribute or flag in general does not have.
- Omni-Lord monsters are similar to generic cards where they can be used in any deck but are affiliated with a specific world. In that respect, if they are used outside of their natural world, the deck may only have one copy of that monster. They also have supporting cards that can be used outside of its natural world as well. In addition, the Omni-Lords can all convene in a single deck, one in Dragon World which uses the existing Fifth-Omni Calvary, and one in Dungeon World which utilizes Omni Lords' Loyal Knight, El-Quixote, Wind Blade Joker, and several Miseria cards to discard Omni-Lords to trigger effects.
- Multi-World cards are cards associated to two or three worlds that have effects that are based off the worlds it is attributed to.
- Gargantua Dragon and the cards that are associated with the Dragod and Dragon Deity Tribe type are supports to his G-Evo mechanic which allows him to change forms mid battle to attack with extra abilities. What's notable about Gargantua Dragon is that his base forms are not associated with any world, but his different forms and the Dragon Deity Tribe are, thus his playstyle revolves around what world you want to use him in. They also have their own Deity Gargantua Punisher with their own conditions. (You can only form decks with Dragon World, Katana World, and Magic World, but Garga has access to a form from every world which can be used by Deity Gargantua Dragon)
- Later, Dragods would get their own keyword and, like Omni-Lords, are monsters that can be assigned to any flag. While there are several cards with this keyword, we are specifically focusing on Garga once more and his new keyword G•BOOST which focuses on increasing battle power with further aid when a Dragon Deity Tribe is around. These are then separated into three types depending on which form of Garga you are using. Gargantua Knight Dragon uses G•BOOST -Base- which focuses on pure offensive power by increasing critical, Gargantua Bladecentar uses G•BOOST -Craft- which emphasizes extra attacks, and Gargantua Slash Wyvern uses G•BOOST -Will- which focuses on effect damage and recovery. This culminates to Ultimate Garga which combines all three types to G•BOOST -EX-.
- Dragon World: A generally balanced world that favors high offense with its monsters and items and a strong defense with its various counter abilities.
- Finishing Move: Impact cards are designed as such, having powerful abilities that are activated at advanced game states and used to win their user the game. They are also literally named Finishing Move in Japanese.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: Unlike other card game media, the lore of the game is taken directly from the anime and manga. As such you will see cards with the character in the card art itself. Probably the best example of this is with the card Gargantua Punisher. The card originally belonged to Tasuku, thus it has him depicted on the card, but after their first Buddyfight, Tasuku passes the card onto Gao, which changes the caster from Tasuku to Gao. In the real world card game, Gargantua Punisher is printed with one user or the other with the Tasuku version being made harder to acquire normally.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: That being said, there are some cards in the anime and manga that have the original caster on it despite the user being a different character. The card Clear Serenity will always have Zanya depicted on it, even though its use in Buddyfight Ace would imply that its user should be one of the two Katana World fighters, mainly Miko.
- Guest Fighter: After the anime run of Buddyfight Ace, to make up for the show becoming manga only, they collaborated with several anime titles as one off flags. In order, these collaborations would include Detective Conan/Case Closed, BanG Dream! Girls Band Pico, THE iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls Theater, GeGeGe no Kitaro (Japan only), SSSS.Gridman, Sword Art Online (Japan only), and Medabots (Japan only).
- Mechanically Unusual Fighter:
- Dragon Zwei is one that changes a core composition of your deck. While Dragon Ein may restrict you to Dragon attribute cards only, you can still use spells, items, and impacts. Dragon Zwei does not, forcing you to play nothing but Monsters for the entire game and relying on their abilities to defend yourself.
- Lost World is definitely seen as this. You don't start off using a Lost World deck and most importantly Lost World cards have a black card back. This is because you use two decks. You start off with a normal world deck and need to use the Lost World Flag card from the deck much like Dragon Drei. Once you use it you swap to your Lost World Deck. Nevermind the fact that all of the Lost World monsters lack a size, and the fact that only the deck changes. Thus depending on how your deck works, you can have Lost World cards alongside the cards you have or have used.
- The two alternate win conditions for Darkness Dragon World can be seen as such. Death Count Requiem already forces you to fight with three less life due to the cost to cast it, but you also have to ensure that it does not leave the field and protecting yourself before it has fulfilled its condition. Sentence of Curse can at least be played later as the win condition only requires that the card sees 15 cards under the flag at the start of your opponents turn, though the draw back here is that you don't get that free card under the flag each turn. That being said, prepare for long turns while you try to fulfill that 15 card requirement.
- The Colab sets obviously utilizes this trope, mainly that they cannot use generic cards. Two of the flags though take an extra step.
- The BanG Dream! Girls Band Pico flag tries to emulate the BanG Dream! Girls Band Party mobile game to allow 5 members in a band thus opens another spot on the Left and Right positions.
- In the complete opposite to the above, The iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls Theater flag has you focus on your buddy character which, much like the games themselves, focuses on a single girl who develops and gets more powerful as the game continues. If the character is on the field at the end of turn, you gain a life, draw a card, and most importantly you put the top card of the deck under the buddy card increasing the Attack and Defense points for each card.
- Obvious Rule Patch: Three rules have been updated upon going to Buddyfight Ace:
- The first turn play can now draw on their first turn. But they still can only attack once with one card.
- Counters can be played more than once per battle. For example, if you use Dragoenergy to increase your monster's stats, you may use another Dragoenergy to increase it further.
- If a player earns an extra turn, they will be moved to their extra turn after ending their primary turn. If they earn any more extra turns after their initial one no matter where they gain it, they will not move to any additional extra turns and will go to the opponent's turn. For example, if a player uses Great Spell, Grandfather Clock to get an extra turn and they meet the cost to cast another one, they will not gain another extra turn and the next turn will go to the opponent.
- Undying Warrior: The Purgatory Knights were legendary heroes of Dragon World who willingly trapped themselves in Darkness Dragon World to stop a demonic invasion, while at the same time using a black magic to make themselves immortal so they could keep fighting. However, said magic, alongside endless fighting and being exposed to Darkness Dragon World's toxic environment for thousands of years, ended up distorting their appearances and caused them to go insane, making them shells of their former selves. Later support has some of their members become the Purgatory Knights Reborn, having regained their sanity and fight for Dragon World once more, represented by them being Dual cards that can be used in Dragon World or Darkness Dragon World decks.
