confused about the concept of the game

SoulFighter17 said:
Also, what determines what a buster card is, and also what determines what lives are shot triggers or the purple skull things? If they are just random then wouldn’t that just mean that they always just have less lives than it looks like making the whole purple skull thing (forgot the name) useless?

Sterben0022 said:

Buster cards have a Skull icon in the top right hand corner. In episode 1 Sakura mentioned you can only have 12 in your whole deck. Shot triggers have a Star icon in the top right hand corner and you can have up to 12 in your deck. The purple skull thing is the anime's way of visually showing you that particular life was a Buster. All Busters have the same effect when checked in the life zone: take 1 additional damage.

SoulFighter17 said:
but what relates the buster cards to losing an extra life and which life gets taken away?

Sterben0022 said:
The concept of the game revolves around opening a territory which has some kind of gimmick that helps your deck's win condition. In Sakura's case it's typically copying commands for free to get 2x the effect, whatever it may be. Iora is the Ace of her deck and Aces are the main kind of unit that opens the territory. In this particular episode, Sakura didn't use her usual territory but a new kind of territory called Assault Territory. This territory actually turns into a unit you can attack the opponent with as you saw. However, one thing that's unique to this territory is that when the unit dies, instead of going to the graveyard it becomes a closed territory. So the only way to open it again is by playing another copy of Iora to re-open the Assault Territory. You're allowed to run 4 of the same card and of course you are encouraged to run 4 of your main Ace. In this case you really need 4 Aces because you'll have to keep re-opening your Assault Territory as opposed to just opening it the first time and having it stay open for the whole duel.

LeonLanford said:


Thanks for the explanation. I thought this was like WIXOSS at first.

1. So when Bloom was defeated, in the next turn he just pulled another bloom from the deck, not resummon her from graveyard?

2. When running out of Ace, Territory can't be opened anymore?

3. Is it possible for the player to have multiple bursts lined up when said player took damage, then the player will be defeated instantly? (safety mechanism)
Vice versa, if player has shot trigger lined up when taking damage, the opponent will be having hard time to proceed further?

I thought this was just a virtual game, seeing game seems to rely heavily on RNG than strategy and the ability to attack directly on player made the units useless(defeat all units on field first is one of basic card game mechanics).

Ammokkx said:


1: Bloom isn't some kind of unique card, you can run four of her like you would any other. So yes, he just summons another bloom that he drew from the deck.

2: Not exactly. Certain cards can force open a territory even if they're not an Ace.

3: That player will instantly lose, yes. It's not that likely of a scenario, though. Shot triggers are just cards that activate their effect for free if they're hit in the life. If that shot trigger happens to get rid of the attacking unit, and that unit still had damage to deal, the remaining damage is nullified.

As for your last point: Getting rid of every unit on the board isn't a universal mechanic. Magic, the grandfather of all TCGs, doesn't require you to punch through every single creature before being allowed to hit the opposing life. In fact, Yu-Gi-Oh was the one to popularize that concept of "get rid of everything else first" because it didn't have a "rest" mechanic for its cards, and even in YGO you have cards to bypass that and allow for direct attacking. Games like Hearthstone, Shadowverse, Force of Will all allow direct attacking regardless of how many units are on the board. In Build Divide, if you leave your units unrested, they can still block your opponent's attacks. If they have Decoy, the opponent is also forced to go through them. You can't just blindly attack the life all the time.

LeonLanford said:


Hi, thanks for the explanation!

I'm sorry I know only few TCG and all of them need to have units of field to block attack. Yes YGO have direct attack but they have drawback like low attack or effects while in Build Divide players just casually use the direct attacks to each other. This and the territory effects/Aces are not explained clearly from what I get by watching the anime.