One of the things that really drive me crazy is when you play a game based on a cartoon, and when you actually play it they are nothing like the show. Things the characters do all the time are against the rules or the things you can do are nothing like what you saw. This season the rules are so different, it does not really feel like I am playing the same game anymore, so I had to do something about it. I went back and started watching the new episodes specifically to try and figure out the rules they play by. I want to figure out some nice simple rules that you can play by, and really feel like you are playing the same game. I would like this to be an open discussion of what the rules are on the show, and the best way to recreate them using the cards and marbles we have. I will put up what I think, and try to show specific examples from the show to back it up. If you have a better idea, I would love to hear it, I think together we can come up with a really fun and functional set of rules.
Life Gauge
One of the most obvious changes this season is the inclusion of a life gauge.
If you look closely at the life gauge you can see it is divided into 5 sections. When Dan fights Bolt's Verias in the first episode, it has 350Gs, Drago has 400. There is a 50 point difference, and after the attack Bolt's life bar drops 1/2 way down one section. Next Dan attacks Link's Flybeetle It has 350 Gs and Dan uses his "Burning Dragon"(+200g) ability card that boosts Drago to 600. That is a difference of 250Gs, and Mira comments that Link lost half of his life gauge. In the show they say "whatever power level you loose in battle your life gauge goes down as well, and when it hits zero you've lost.", but it is not very clear just what that means, what they show, is that you take the difference in power levels as damage to your life gauge. If each section of the life gauge is 100 points with a 500 point total, Bolt takes the 50 point difference in power as damage, and the life gauge drops 1/2 way down one section (to 450 points). Drago's 250 g difference above Link's Flybeetle takes Link's life gauge halfway (down to 250). In the second episode you can see it works the same way. When Dan looses to Percival's first attack there is a 50 point difference, and Dan's life gauge drops 1/2 way down the first section.
This is probably why they chose 500 points as the point difference where you loose your Bakugan, your life gauge would empty in one hit!
Ability cards
The next thing I want to talk about is ability cards. Dan very clearly uses "Burning Dragon" in almost every attack. When he was fighting Ace and Percival, he said he used it twice in one attack, though the animation showed a different attack the second time, so I will call that an error in the dialogue. It is not just Dan who does this, everyone seems to, and not just with one card either. It seems they can use the same set of ability cards each time a new gate card is played. They can also use the same Bakugan on each gate card as well. If you say, "After each battle, when a new gate card is played, move all used ability cards and Bakugan to the unused pile." that should cover that.
For the number of ability cards they have, Dan has called out 6 specific ability card names so far, though I suspect he has more cards than that. I would have to say each player has a maximum of 9 cards, 3 of each color. This is a guess; I have seen no indication that they have different colored ability cards like we do. (They do seem to be marked as Pyrus, Ventus, Darkus or whatever attribute they are for.)
For double or triple fusion abilities, I would say you can only use one card of each color in a fusion attack, that way you could at most with 9 cards do 3 triple fusion ability attacks in a turn. This would match what we have seen so far, and leave a bit of room open for really huge combo attacks in future episodes.
Gate Cards
There must be some really boring gate cards in new Vestroia, all they have mentioned is a "reactor" card for the different attributes: Pyrus reactor, Subterra reactor, and so on. It is also interesting to note that you can see a single Attribute symbol on the gate cards, and only one Bakugan gets the bonus from the gate card. I think this is really boring, and will probably ignore this when I am playing at home. Still to be thorough, we should still cover this. You could limit the Gate card to only giving a G power bonus to the highest attribute, or only the highlighted bonus, or only to the player who played the card.
Marucho mentioned a "3 attack" limit in a two player brawl (when Dan was fighting Ace in episode two); I think this could be an indication that you can collect 3 gate cards as an additional way to win.
Traps
The other really obvious difference in the way they play is the rules for trap Bakugan. Traps are treated as their own independent creatures, the first time we see one, it is used to battle Marucho and Elfin, and the trap was played first, without a Bakugan! If there are actually G power traps released here, they still would not be used the same way as in the show. I would propose these rules to use traps more like what we see. “Unless otherwise specified all traps have 350Gs. (This would let you use Traps with their own listed G power if they are ever released.) When a trap is in play (open) it is considered to have multiple attributes, allowing you to play ability cards that match the additional attribute symbols” For example, you play a Haos Zoak to support your Haos Nemus. The trap adds 350 G to your total, and you can now play Haos or Darkus ability cards on your Zoak.
Battling
There are some other differences in battles as well. They seem to be able to battle without activating a gate card, or can activate the gate card after attribute cards have been played. Only have the gate card flip after one of the players battling on the gate card calls “gate card open”.
Since the two primary players I battle with are my six and four year old boys, I find the next rule very helpful in having fast, enjoyable battles. You don’t have to roll your bakugan, just place them on the gate card where you want them to battle. Has anyone ever missed a card and not been able to battle in the show? Or even landed on the wrong gate card? I don’t think anyone has even come close to missing, but in real life it happens all the time. This just frustrates people, and makes things less fun in our house.
If there is a tie, no one takes damage, and the gate card remains on the field, and the ability cards go to the used pile.
It also seems one player can simply throw in another bakugan onto the gate card where they already had one, and have both battle, though this was frowned on. It was called “cheating” in the show, but it did work and more than one person has done it. Interestingly it was not called cheating if one was a trap and the other a normal bakugan. The advantage is you can have a higher point total, but you risk loosing both if you really get beaten.
It is also very easy to add a new player to the brawl, they simply added their bakugan to the gate card (even in the middle of a fight), or they could wait until there was no active gate card, and throw in their own gate card and attack.
Types of matches
So far we have seen one on one, two on one, and two on two, battles. There might be different ways that you count damage in the different matches, I don’t know. In the forst battle, Link places a gate card, and then stands his Bakugan, then Bolt throw his, then Dan. Dan has Drago attack just Bolt’s Verias, and then he plays an ability card, and attacks Link’s Atmos. There were two separate “attacks” with separate damage counts for each. Was this just creative license to make an interesting battle? Or can you specify what bakugan you want to attack first, and then battle again until all your opponents are defeated? This one I don’t know yet, it was the first battle in New Vestroia, and they do a lot of establishing the rules in the first few battles, so this could be significant, or it overanalyzing things and making them more complex than they need to be.
Let me know what you think, have I missed something? Is there a better way to play something I suggested? I want to hear it, let’s work out a solid understanding of the basics.
