Gekiha Dan – Episode 16

Brief Notice:
Hey guys, I realize I haven’t posted in a little over an entire YEAR now, some of you may have lost hope that I will return to this some day. Here’s a brief update about it, the reason why it’s in the middle of the

I mentioned in another comment that I was having trouble putting these out due to the amount of time they require to write, and the amount of effort they require.

I mentioned a while ago in a comment reply that I had indeed moved house when I posted back in October 2023, I had moved in May of that year. The following month I had found myself in the care of 2 Guinea Pigs (Their names are Kiwi and Peach) which required I adjust my lifestyle and my time. Then, right after the last post, I got a dog that same month. As a result I’ve had to balance my life and my free time with my job (Game dev for the win!) and 3 pets (2 Guinea Pigs and a Goldendoodle-Bernedoodle Cross)

So I apologise that I haven’t been keeping up with these right after I said I was getting into a flow, so I’ll rehash the same comment I made then for everyone to read.

Without an official announcement of cancellation, I am still thinking about and working on these. And if I ever intend to stop, I will make a massive post about it. However long it takes, I will keep going.

With that aside, let’s begin.

Apparently we got slapped with a new year after this Episode 15…

But yep, this episode supposedly aired on the 3rd of January, 2010, just after the new year.

I imagine this will not be relevant to the episode in any way, shape, or form.

Other than replacing the typical “don’t sit too close to the god damn television or I’ll fight you in the back of the card shop parking lot ya fuckin’ delinquent” message.

Oh, I love trivia questions, it’s Otherworld King.

Seems we’re done bollocking around unrelated topics, it’s ACTUALLY time for a Tournament.

Battle Spirits is quite good at cementing tournaments inside it’s plotline, which is good because for a card game anime there’s nothing better than a tournament.

Shows like Yu-Gi-Oh! Will occasionally come up with odd rules for the “Tournament” so that we can continue following the main character but the whole point of tournament watching is seeing new or odd matchups, and for card games you absolutely want varied matchups to advertise yo cards.

This has apparently been happening for 3891 years?… It’s an annual tournament.

Well, we know Otherworlders can live a RIDICULOUSLY long time compared to humans.

But the fact of the matter is, Magisa is only 4029 years old… That means this first tournament happened when she was 138.

Also, really? 3900 years of Battle Spirits and we’re still only on Set 6? God dayum this game is SLOW.

That’s a lot of people and a LOT of tables, which can only mean one thing.

This, my good friends… is the Gunslinger.

Wait wait… I know this one, it’s uh… it’s uhh… It’s… Sexy?

Ah dammit, so close.

Dan’s expression here has an unusual amount of wrinkles in it.

Usually excessive wrinkles is done to either exaggerate details to the point of ridiculousness…

Or enhance emotions like fear or discomfort.

Look at Clackey, being a supportive friend, honestly it’s a crime we don’t see him battle in more serious settings.

I think the last actually stakesworthy battle was against that Blue girl, Mira was it? I barely remember the name.

Oh right, wasn’t that a lovely plot thread that was supposed to be resolved 2 episodes ago, got rehashed last episode, but then never got resolved at all in that episode

So instead we’re getting treated to a flashback of what happened, because of course we are.

Bitch.

Bitch.

I don’t, the whole thing would take only half an episode like it normally does, and she’s spent 2 and a half episodes wasting my fuckin’ time!

And she’s off

At least she can’t waste my time anymore if she’s not onscreen.

I’m not sure who I hate more, this indecisive character or Suiren.

If she hadn’t had her character established over the course of the past 15 episodes my hopeful ass would be hoping to whatever deity writes this series to please let her get Julian’d.

Just Gacha our way into a better Purple Lightbearer.

Clackey at least adds some Wisdom to the worry, noting that she’s going to, naturally, be herself first, and a lightbearer second.

Which naturally applies to these 2 as well, they’re not here because they’re Lightbearers, they’re here because they feel strongly about Otherworld King being a very naughty ruler.

Out goes one character, and in comes a new one, since each World seems to have it’s own monarch independant of Otherworld King, this is the Blue World’s King, Brustom. Though it’s spelt like that in the Subs, it seems evident his name is meant to resemble, at least phonetically, how the Japanese would say “Blue Storm”

I skipped the frame but the guy has Blue hair growing on his FOREARMS.

Alright, the episode title! This Episode promises not only a new card, but a Battle Featuring Blue, and a new Keyword.

The Red World featured the Cat-like Mimi Tribe and the Monkey-like Gurii Tribe, seems the Blue World’s main inhabitants are all Giants.

Granted, Brustom is not actually a member of the giants but we’ll get to that later.

Seems Magisa isn’t too fond of Brustom.

And the type of Otherworlder he is predisposes himself to that power, as would be evidenced in the next series.

It seems Suzuri is well-suited to being an assistant for gain, given he’s gone from supporting Dark Lord Jin to now being a personal fanner of Brustom.

Though Suzuri’s definitely getting more bang for his buck this time, Brustom’s handed him the X-Rare in the episode title!

What part of this is surprising? Suzuri would never work for free… or even for money, infact if your cards don’t have golden X’s printed on the card stock don’t even look in his general direction.

…Tell you what IS surprising, Suzuri’s holding that card with his bare hands.

And didn’t react to Brustom pulling that raw card out of his robe.

Seems my guy glorifies the rule of Otherworld King. Claiming his rule allows Brustom’s world to be peaceful.

Once again, rule re-hash, the stakes are thusly, the Champion gets a cool new brand-spanking fresh off the shelf vanilla flavoured chocolate coated X-Rare.

Oh and Otherworld King grants them a wish.

You’d think Brustom wouldn’t be the loudest in the room if he was.

It’s Gunslinger time!

The Gunslingers in Toppa seemed to be very specific with how they functioned.

If I recall correctly, the key pieces of Gunslinger is that you continually play for a set amount of time and record how often you win within that timespan. As such, decks that are not only consistent but fast are favoured, which means that stall tactics generally don’t get you very far… But cheese tactics will.

What I mean by a cheese tactic is that it’s a strategy that ultimately should not work when its prepared for being used to win a game quickly, an example in Battle Spirits would be the “Cost 0 rush” style of deck where you fill your deck with Cost 0 or Cost 1s with reduction in an attempt to accrue a hand of 5 spirits you can summon all at once and rush down the opponent.

Seems they’ll be taking a Top 16 for this one.

Also there are 2 familiar faces in this shot, the first and most obvious one is Dark Lord Jin’s presence here.

The second is the first opponent Mai had onscreen, Kousuke.

ah blast, I can’t make out the cards on this guy’s board, which makes me hella sad because I like seeing arbitrary cards.

ohhh, interesting, so while you can pick any opponent you want, any loss at all causes you to get eliminated, so it’s a single elimination with, effectively, no bracket.

And it’s not like you can refuse to battle because anyone refusing to battle will have low scores for the Gunslinger, rendering them removed anyway.

Also apparently the Otherworld King provided “Special core” for the event, but what that means has yet to be revealed.

Seems Dan does not have fond memories of the last time his core started shining.

Well, granted it got him flung here against his will so I suppose it makes sense.

Skipping ahead, Zungurii says the shine is pretty but Magisa seems concerned, believing that the Tournament was not held for the sake of granting wishes.

Hmm, a tournament with the pretense of whatever you want while using VERY SPECIFIC equipment to perform it.

Yeah no duh it wasn’t for granting wishes, next you’ll figure out the sky is blue, Toppa’s hair is orange and I’m writing a blog.

These are not great revelations.

It’s hard to tell if the guy is genuinely excited by the series of battlers or if he’s actually planning something sinister.

Hey, Brustom’s little overload gets interrupted by a couple familiar faces we haven’t seen in 2 (but really 3) episodes.

Well if anyone was in doubt before, Brustom answers to Yuuki despite being the King of the Blue World, so Bustom’s ultimately just a lackey in the end.

We interrupt this plotline to bring you a rival’s tension.

How Yuuki is not seething at this particular moment in time is anyone’s guess, Dan did damn near make Kajitsu pop like a balloon with all that energy surging out of her.

Nevermind, I suppose he IS seething.

…Wait, how? Wouldn’t this format prevent you from declaring one unless there were 16 members left?

Unless you’ve got one that eliminated half the entrants already, but then one less sends him packing his bags and off home so I’m not certain how that would work.

This Tournament isn’t doing very well to manage it’s own internal logic.

Again, How!?

It’s the 16 LONGEST SURVIVING BATTLERS, THEY CAN’T BE DECIDED ONE AT A TIME!

Yeah, one at a time in a system where they can only reasonably be chosen simultaeniously ya dumb bastard.

Welp, we apparently have our first pairing, for anyone who saw the episode preview, or the episode title, or had real keen eyes at the flow and direction of this episode, Suzuri will be battling… a random dude.

It is certainly odd, apparently the Light of a Core can leave a person, and it seems to have something to do with their will to fight, but Suzuri doesn’t seem to have ever shown anything beyond vanity, cleanliness and self interest so…

I will say, an elaborate sofa in a room filled with stone tiles is certainly a little bit jarring.

Dan comes over to wish Suzuri some good luck, but the guy’s face does what I’ve only seen introverts do.

Though that does remind me of one of the many sayings involving introverts, they’re predisposed to getting adopted by extraverts.

If Dan had the brains to write his own dictionary, subtletly would not be among the 10 or so words that would be in there.

Where my Battlers at employment age at? We got a relatable blue boy over here.

That’s a fairly good deal, for every odd job Suzuri does for Brustom he gets a singular card, and given Brustom’s status as King I imagine the cards are quite rare.

This is a fairly good question to ask, as far as we know, Dan and Clackey have the same wish, that is, to free the Otherworlders from the King’s rule.

But we don’t know much about what anyone else wants.

Suzuri apparently has a wish in mind but he won’t say what it is.

Not gonna lie I think this gets glossed over as well, I’m not sure we ever find out, but I’ll keep an eye out

There it is, the Rival-like stare, coupled with Suzuri’s signature intensity, it’s a beautiful shot.

Though we know how this is the case we’ve yet to see in what form this “Stronger” deck is.

Suzuri leaves and we now get Zungurii and Magisa, not sure what they’ve got to add to this scene.

I feel like it was at this moment the writers remembered that they needed to give Dan a specific card.

They couldn’t have done that, y’know, before the Gunslinger started? Maybe give Dan an even bigger leg up?

That’s 2 of our Corebearers getting BS07 cards.

Naw, it was from the fuckin’ tooth fairy.

Honestly who else would it be from?

I will point out that it is certainly a bit jarring when you note that Julian’s deck had almost zero reason to include a Meteorwurm as it was but a Watsonian explanation of this could very much easily be that Julian reconstructed his deck to not include Meteorwurm (hence the request to add it to his deck before the game started) but the obvious Doylist explanation for why it didn’t appear is because the card is evidently designed for Dan to wield and therefore Dan should be the one to debut.

But winning power by defeating power is a much cooler way to do things, granted having Dan take on Siegfrieden AND Meteorwurm might have been a bit of an ask.

And then failed to answer it like a disinterested cat.

I would have a hard time finding a card with the keyword attached to it that wanted to do literally anything else.

Welp, we’ve got a new Battlefield.

Notably this battlefield has Teal hills and a Blue sky as opposed to the Red World’s dark hills and pink sky.

I imagine there was a design similar to this for each of the other coloured worlds, after all, recolouring is easy.

I’m a fan of the colour blue and various shades of teal so this is probably my favourite Battlefield setting in this show.

The most appropriate way to show off this new field in the Blue World is certainly using the show’s designated Blue representative.

This person we’ll never see again is “Randel”, from a group of otherworlders called the “Ryuki” tribe. They’re natives of the White World and have… incredibly odd designs, I’m not even sure how this biology works.

This is the first time we’re seeing one of these weirdos, so since they hail from the White World, why not make him play White?

It seems easy to underestimate him but I’m fairly sure the Writers were banking on us remembering that these are all now High Rankers, so all the participants here must be at least on the level Dan was at the beginning of this series.

And we interrupt the start of this battle by introducing this random character, an Elementary Schooler with unusually green features.

Though notably, it’s really hard to tell if this character is a boy or a girl, they’re seemingly androgynous.

But I’ll at least let you know that this character is very much Male.

That do be his name, don’t wear it out.

Dan’s surprise here seems, odd, he was a known High Ranker back in the tournament he was playing at the beginning of the show.

Granted, now I feel like I’m misremembering, as the only one who referred to him and remembered him by his title was Yuuki.

This kid is, in a word, tactless, that’s just rude.

But also, having a reputation as a powerful underdog is it’s own kind of cool, people like an underdog.

Ah once again, the age old indicative problem people point out with Dan, despite his ability, he isn’t the strongest, and ultimately he’s rather predictable and straightforward.

Dan seems to regress to a 3-year old before asking this question.

Also, quite a lot, given he just summed up your competitive history in a few seconds.

I have no idea what this “Core League” is, so we’ll need some credentials that are a little more… relevant?

Like that, winning the 3890th Otherworld Championship is fairly relevant credentials.

So he’s held the title of Core League Champion for 2 years at this point.

Finally put a name to the face, this is Hyoudo Kenzo, we’ll just call him Hyoudo.

To put things into perspective for anyone who either can’t do maths, can’t remember, or lives in the UK where we don’t HAVE elementary school as a concept.

Hyoudo is 9, and has been a Core League Champion for 2 years straight starting at the age of 7, and won last year’s championship at 8.

Dan certainly asks the most pressing question, where are this kid’s PARENTS!?

You don’t leave 9 year olds, much less 7 year olds, unattended.

Yeah that question was liable to be swiss cheese, Clackey gallavanting by himself at 15 makes some sense but Dan is 12, barely hitting high school age here in the UK, some parents don’t leave their kids unattended til 13.

Trust me the Batosupi is more interesting than the setting it takes place in, kid.

Finally, back to something I’m interested in.

I will mention Randel’s voice is INCREDIBLY irritating, it’s like if a rubber duck could talk.

And no, the Ryuki tribe aren’t all this… emphatic, there’s actually a pair in a different piece of material who have rather tasteful voices and mannerisms.

Well, a grand opening, Randel plays Berserker-Magnum at Lv2, clocking in at 4000 BP.

Good preventative measure against early attacks I suppose.

Also the theme playing here is new-ish.

Incase you missed what Dan’s referring to, Suzuri’s still handling his cards carefully, in Dan’s last battle with Suzuri it caused no shortage of frustration because the battle moved slowly as a result.

I’m not sure if I brought this up before, but in Tournaments you’re typically expected to play at a specific pace, what pace that is intended to be is contextual based on what decks are being played at the time and how complex the current board state is.

You’ll see no shortage of Yu-Gi-Oh! Horror stories of people getting warnings, and even being disqualified for not matching the “expected pace of the game”, Games where both decks tend to play a lot of cards do not tend to leave much time between individual cards and expecting an opponent to sit there while you obsess over which individual card to play in this one particular instance out of 500 isn’t very considerate.

In Battle Spirits however, you can get away with relatively slow pacing, you have fewer options available at a given time unlike Yu-Gi-Oh! And your opponent does not have many instances with which to respond with a card in their hand.

So Suzuri here is… somewhat pushing it a little, but the Battlefield handling his Core for him probably helps accommodate it.

ooo, Suzuri’s dropped a card I don’t believe we’ve seen in this series yet, might as well go over it.

I’m fairly sure we saw this in Bashin, but in any case, this is Collapse of the Battle Line, a rather powerful nexus that supports Demolish strategies.

I’m not sure I’ve been accurately able to keep up with the wording I’m using, if you’ve spotted me saying “Crush” instead, I also mean Demolish, its due to the way the effect was translated in the English version and it’s easy to get my wires crossed. The English translations for the cards in the Battle Spirits Discord that adds new updates to Vassal also maintain some of the english translations, Crush being one of them. I prefer to use the appropriate translated word because giving Wizards of the Coast any kind of respect for ruining the English release of this game feels like I’m condoning it.

but anyway, back to the card, it came out alongside the Blue Color in BS03, and it’s effects are twofold, from Level 1 it adds 2 to the number of cards discarded by Demolish, and at Level 2 it makes all your Demolish Spirits maximum level.

Upgrading Levels is considered to be a Blue trait due in part to the relation to how Demolish works by discarding cards equivalent to the Spirit’s level. Collapse of the Battle Line upgrading levels led to quite a few Blue cards later down the line also upgrading levels for purposes other than deck destruction, and it’s a recognized Blue property now.

But the reason this Nexus is deadly is because by committing 4 core, all your Demolish Spirits are not only at their strongest but more than likely to be discarding 5 cards from the opposing deck at a time.

Given that you start with 4 cards in your hand, and draw every turn in a deck likely consisting of 40 cards, 7 such attacks simply being made wins you the game, and that’s if those attacks are the only ones being made, the other nightmarish part of this Nexus is that it’s first effect stacks and it’s Lv2 effect doesn’t so you don’t need to redundantly level multiple copies of this while still reaping the benefits of having the Nexuses available.

Getting all 3 copies of these with one at Lv2 means every Demolish Spirit is discarding 8-9 cards from the top of the enemy deck, that’s quite nasty.

No Cost 1 or 0 spirits in hand? Or leaving himself open to prompt an attack?

Who knows.

It’s a perfectly reasonable first move, no spirits shouldn’t be particularly “Oh boy!” for a White player of all people.

Also the tune playing over this section of the battle is registered in the Gekiha Dan OST as “Core Boost”

Not sure if that’s suggestive of what Suzuri’s opening move means.

Keyword: Basic strategy of battle.

Apparently this is just the battle of the 1 card plays, now we’ve levelled down the Magnum for a Droiden.

I imagine that Randel will use the opportunity to attack given the empty board.

Seems Dan is reminiscing about his losses to Yuuki after seeing Droiden.

Remembering… Yuuki only used 3 spirits against Dan, Droiden, Berserker-Gun and Yggdrasil.

And of course, Randel went “No spirits? OH BOY” and full attacked in a White Deck.

Well, White cards tend to have above average stats, so I suppose it’s possible to use them aggressively, in Battle Spirits Saga, “White Aggro” is a deck type.

Suzuri isn’t blocking this, and definitely doesn’t have any core to respond, so he’s taking both, dropping him to 3 lives.

Magisa points out that Suzuri picked a weird time to play the nexus he chose to play.

So I find this to be a bit weird, opening with a Nexus is usually not a problem but there are a few quirks about this situation specifically.

Firstly, opening with a Nexus on the first move of the game when you can’t attack is fine, your opponent has the minimum core allowed with which to wage attacks, making it the safest time to do so.

Suzuri went second, after the opponent had already played a Spirit, and then deployed a Nexus that doesn’t function unless he has spirits, then ended his turn without playing any.

So either Suzuri was inviting an attack, or he had a very poor hand.

What, your life total?

Also it may be the only 2 attacks of the game so far but keep in mind, Suzuri does not like pain.

He’s got the equivalent of a negative constitution stat modifier in a game of Dungeons and Dragons.

My guy just endured pain he does not like, in a situation that is otherwise bad for him.

And he’s smiling

Also Suzuri’s design leads to INCREDIBLY good confident smiles.

Now we’re cooking with Gas, 2 Rock-Golem’s, one at Level 2!

What? It’s Turn FOUR. Now’s an excellent time to be summoning Spirits, even better, thanks to the Extra Core gained from the damage YOU otherwise dealt him.

Suzuri uses the remaining 2 core, gained only from the damage dealt to him last turn mind you, to play Blitz.

An old Blue card from BS03, a Semi-Core boosting card for Demolish strategies. Now anytime Suzuri swings he’ll add Core to his Trash.

This is why the early nexus acted as decent attack bait, Suzuri was playing the long game, he opens the Nexus because it’s a Symbol that can’t defend in the face of a Spirit, Randel gets prompted to full attack the empty board, Suzuri now plays 2 Spirits and plays a card that can core boost when they attack, and Suzuri will not lose a Rock-Golem because none of Randel’s Spirits can Block.

Amazing strategy, though a full attack here means Randel’s 1 Spirit away from his own full attack being a winner.

Righto, if you’re noticing a difference between the sub appearance here and the obvious change in resolution, that’s because a certain thing happened between when I last updated this post and me writing now. That is that a number of sites that streamed anime have been torn down, and naturally as a resident of the incredibly british United Kingdom, I don’t currently have any ways of consuming Battle Spirits normally.

I also got a new PC between then and now so keeping resolution samey is gonna be difficult, sucks but it’s what we got.

Anyhow, yes, it’s really compatible with demolish… possibly because its a DEMOLISH SUPPORT CARD YOU FISH!

Suzuri attacks with his Level 2 Rock-Golem

Thanks to Blitz, Suzuri puts a core in his trash, he can’t use it now, but he’ll have more Core on his next turn.

That’s a bit early, with what Core are you-

Ah of course, Mist Curtain.

Mist Curtain has the incredibly useful property of being a Cost 2 Magic with 2 White reductions, Randel has 2 White Symbols on his field, so his able to use Mist Curtain for absolutely free.

Mist Curtain’s effect prevents a Spirit from reducing your life total for that turn. So Rock Golem’s unable to reduce Randel’s life, this also informs Randel’s rather aggressive approach when playing White, he had a Mist Curtain to keep himself defended.

Slight issue, he’s playing against a Demolish deck…

No it wasn’t.

Rock-Golem’s Demolish removes 2 cards from Randel’s deck. Given his 2 draw steps earlier from a 36 card deck, he’s sitting on 32 cards at the moment.

Suzuri obtained 3 benefits from that attack, even without Mist Curtain, he was able to gain a Core, Take 2 cards out of your deck, and threaten a life, and he has a deck capable of capitalizing on all of these things.

The only thing that Mist Curtain changed was exchanging a card in his hand for the life he would have lost (and therefore, a Core Randel could have used).

Good job, you’ve reduced your options needlessly.

C-C-C-C-COMBOoOo…

Notably the effect of Collapse of the Battle Line is rendered as this strange, Ghastly blue-eyed giant thing that just kind of falls on you, which is a little weird.

The effect of the Nexus is that it increases the number of cards “Demolished” by 2, so now Randel’s sitting on a 30 card deck.

Suzuri passes the turn to Randel, who’s less than happy about losing all of… 4 cards.

You still got 30 more… er… 29 more, given this turn’s Draw Step.

Randel summons the Cost 4 ShieldSoldier Baldar at Level 1 (3000 BP).

Card’s not very notable but apparently it comes complete with a Summon animation and a comment from Dan, let’s hab a look!

A Cost 4 White Spirit from BS06, it gains 1000 BP whenever it blocks for every exhausted Spirit you control.

This seems to synergize with Randel’s rather aggressive playstyle, as you can build up exhausted spirits from attacking. With a card that can allow Balder to block while exhausted it could be a potent wall.

Randel ends his turn. One might comment that Suzuri only has one Blocker and Randel can swing, but Randel can’t win this turn, and additionally, none of his Spirits actually beats the refreshed Lv2 Rock-Golem on Suzuri’s board, only Berserker-Magnum can maybe match it, and if Suzuri chooses not to block that’s even more core.

Randel doesn’t have a lot of time though, Blue Deck Destruction loves a long game.

It’s Suzuri’s turn, and we’re getting MORE Collapse of the Battle Line.

One is already rather nasty, a second one is incredibly painful to deal with, now each of Suzuri’s Lv2 Rock-Golems will each mill 6 cards from Randel’s deck.

Scratch that, they’ll each mill 7 cards.

When I first watched this I found this play strange, as he moves precisely 4 core to Level up both his Golems which is something he could use to level up his Collapse of the Battle Line, which would count them both as Lv3 during his attack step.

Thing is, it’s only on his Attack Step, and given he ends his turn right after, the Rock-Golems wouldn’t have their monstrous 7000 BP available.

For why he didn’t attack, well Randel is clearly intimidated by 4000 BP Rock-Golems enough to not attack, 7000 BP Rock-Golems should keep him off long enough for Suzuri to build resources.

Time is Core in Battle Spirits, so if Core is your aim, Time is your friend.

Randel’s turn, his deck has 28 cards now.

Droiden and Balder are brought to level 2, Droiden’s now at 5000 BP and Balder’s at 4000 BP

But due to Droiden’s Lv2 effect to boost all White Spirits by 1000 BP, they’re at 6000 and 5000 respectively.

So that explains what all that core nonsense was for, It seems the specialized Core provided by Otherworld King transmits it’s power toward Mother Core.

And that’s having an adverse affect on Kajitsu’s body specifically.

But why would Mother Core be having an affect on Kajitsu specifically, doesn’t she only bear the Green Light?

I’m being incredibly sarcastic here, it’s very clear that Kajitsu’s a little different to the others.

Yeah Randel’s situation hasn’t changed much from earlier, his Spirits are beefier but he held off on attacking when only ONE Rock-Golem was waiting for him, and he could at least draw with that one.

This time? No chance.

Suzuri’s building himself a wall… comprised of Rock-Golems.

He could take out roughly 20 cards with this formation now, which would leave Randel with a measly 8 cards left. But that isn’t enough, and Suzuri would lose the game immediately after.

It’s amusing that attacking is too risky for either of them, so they just have to keep passing.

Victory.

Randel has 27 cards remaining, summons a 2nd Droiden, and ends his turn.

Due to reducing Droiden to Lv1 his formation actually weakens, his strongest Spirit is now the 4000 BP Balder.

This could be intentional however, as next turn Suzuri will have 2 core to raise Rock-Golem to Lv3, and it may invite him to attack now that Randel can’t beat any of his golems.

Instead however, Suzuri passes.

I suppose it makes sense, his aim isn’t Randel’s life, but his deck, and it won’t matter if he falls short as long as that deck count hits 0.

Randel loses a card every turn simply by virtue of playing the god damn game. So Suzuri needs to wait to get that slowly diminishing number of remaining cards within range of extermination.

Randel in the meantime, needs to figure out how to crack Suzuri’s wall in time before he obtains that win condition.

More defenses, Randel? You’ve got 26 cards remaining.

Randel seems to have failed to recognise which player has inevitability in this situation.

If I haven’t talked about it before, Inevitability is: Which deck will eventually win if given infinite time? In this case, it’s Suzuri, as eventually he will have a game state where his number of cards milled surpasses the number of cards in Randel’s ever-shrinking deck, once that happens, Suzuri simply wins and there’s no ifs, ands or buts about it.

The deck that lacks Inevitability must therefore become the beatdown, as its in their interest to win the game before the inevitable, applied to this situation, Randel needs to beat Suzuri before Suzuri can destroy Randel’s deck. Against any other kind of deck, Randel would probably be able to take as much time as needed, as White has a high inevitability in general, just not as much as Blue Deck Destruction. (More curated deck types notwithstanding obviously)

Yep, Randel’s lost the plot, you’re not trying to protect your life!

Suzuri’s turn, he brings the Rock-Golem’s down to Lv1, giving him a total of apparently 9 core to use as he sees fit.

Suzuri’s playing a completely new X-Rare!

Let’s take a look!

A Cost 6 X-Rare from BS07.

At any Level, it can refresh itself by exhausting any of your available Nexuses. This means with good set up, Alexander can attack 3 times per turn.

Additionally, at Level 2 (which it’s currently at), Alexander can destroy an opposing Cost 4 or less Spirit, and then destroy cards from the opposing deck equal to the cost of said Spirit.

This card is, in a word, bonkers. It’s a Rush of attacks, Deck destruction and Board control all wrapped up into one card, and it’s relatively cheap for an X-Rare to boot.

Plus it’s a damn cool looking card.

More specifically, Suzuri was waiting to be able to summon it under favourable conditions.

Okay, let’s do some math.

Alexander has 2 nexuses to refresh itself, and Randel has 3 Cost 4 Spirits, 3 x 4 is 12.

Additionally, with Collapse of the Battle Line, each Rock-Golem takes out 5 cards, save for the last one which takes out 6. 5 + 5 + 6 = 16

16 + 12 = 28.

28 is more than the number of cards that exist in Randel’s deck.

He’s cooked.

With Alexander’s Lv2 effect, the precisely Cost 4 Balder is destroyed.

4 cards are pelted from Randel’s Deck.

22 remain.

Suzuri activates Assault, now by exhausting his Nexus, Alexander can refresh.

Notably, Nexuses being exhausted actually does nothing concerning their effects, it works simply as if it were refreshed, naturally the only downside is that you can’t exhaust it again.

I do find it amusing that Zungurii comments on the weirdness of the idea that a Nexus, a Card type that represents a place, or a monument, can be “Exhausted”

Magisa just brushes it off however, “I guess it can be tired if you say it is.”

Despite all that sequence of effects, Alexander’s attack still needs addressing, Randel activates Blizzard Wall in Flash Timing.

Which is… well, a valiant effort to say the least, now Randel’s life can only be reduced once this turn due to Spirit attacks.

Once again, the Life is not what he’s supposed to be defending.

Randel takes the attack, he’s now at 4 life, and thanks to Blizzard Wall, he won’t lose any more this turn.

The muppet’s so used to his life being the be-all-end-all that he’s just assumed that the inability to take lives means that the turn must end.

Nope, this is why Attack Step enders are king, and Randel hasn’t ended Suzuri’s attack step.

Suzuri explains to Randel that even though Blizzard Wall stops Spirits from diminishing the life, it doesn’t actually end the turn, and so Suzuri is still free to make moves to further his position in spite of not actually being able to reduce any more lives.

…You know, because it’s deck destruction.

Alexander attacks again, the last Balder is destroyed.

4 more cards gone, leaving Randel with 18.

Alexander is refreshed, Suzuri attacks once more.

Droiden is destroyed this time, and 4 more cards are sapped away, leaving Randel with 14.

I do find it interesting that Suzuri, a card collector who likes to accumulate masses of cards, especially rare ones like X-Rares, favours a strategy that takes them away from an opponent.

I suppose it’s a very dark outlook on it, but essentially every X-Rare he obtains is one copy of an X-Rare no one else can have. And he’s willing to commit any atrocities necessary if it means obtaining them, including stealing them from others.

If Dan’s major defining trait is “Determination” and Ray’s is “Kindness”, Suzuri’s would be probably be “Greed”

As calculated before, Suzuri can still remove 16 cards from Randel’s 14 card deck.

I’m glad they did us a favour and skipped ahead for this one.

With that, Randel’s deck is completely wiped out.

That is probably an accurate portrayal of the “I fucked up” expression.

As Randel had no cards in his deck during the Start Step of his turn, Suzuri is the winner.

Brustrom here seems to be rather loaded with X-Rares if he’s giving them to Suzuri for odd tasks, I suppose he and Suzuri are birds of a feather in a way.

Granted, I’m not sure Suzuri would wield it as currency like Brustrom does.

Hyoudo comments that Decking out the opponent must mean the battler’s quite skilled, but in actual practice, Blue Deck Destruction is actually one of the simpler tactics in Blue’s Arsenal. I might be jaded by recency but Deck Destruction has never been a particularly difficult strategy due to it’s simplicity: use cards that remove cards from the opposing deck.

When Alexander was released I believe it was one of the few viable decks of the time as well.

At the very least now, Deck out has never been easier… Resulting in hilarious moments in the Extreme Game (a series where Battle Spirits is played commercially on the official Battle Spirits Youtube Channel) where the Blue Guardian asked their opponent how many cards were left in their deck on something like Turn 3, got an answer of 30, and proceeded to destroy every last one on that very turn.

Suzuri was practically handed their Deck out victory anyway because Randel was so focused on protecting his own life in the face of several Demolish activations.

Muppet.

The Episode ends with Dan now motivated by Suzuri’s battle, declaring that his first match in the tournament will be his new X-Rare’s first battle.

Would be a real shame if Dan for some reason couldn’t draw it.

Naturally, the card o’ the day is The GiantEmperor Alexander.

I’ve not got much to say on this card that I haven’t already, the card on a good turn can take out 3 spirits, a maximum of 12 cards from the opposing deck, and 3 lives, provided 2 nexuses exist and you have the requisite core. The main downside of Alexander it’s the whopping 5 cores it needs to be at Level 2, which is required for it to destroy just about anything.

At a minimum payment of 3 core, you’ll need about 8 available to pull that off on it’s summon turn, which isn’t too hard with a bit of set up.

I’d talk about it’s appearances across BS07 but unfortunately that information isn’t currently available on the Battle Spirits website, and I’m unable to refer to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine because at time of writing, it’s currently being DDoS’d (Distributed Denial of Service, essentially a Hacker’s preventing the site from functioning properly by overloading the server with traffic)

Citing from Memory (so take with a grain of salt), the reason Alexander was any kind of potent was because of this card, The Victory Stand of Glory. A Cost 4 Nexus you could play turn 1 which allowed you to mill cards in place of paying cost for Nexuses. And at Lv2 anytime you deployed a Nexus you gained a Core. So what you could do is play this turn 1, Pass, then play any and all Nexuses you wanted, gain enough Core and play Alexander incredibly early with all his Nexuses available. Naturally there was another card that could abuse this:

That being this Promo X-Rare card, The DinoDeity Gundinos, which had similar properties to Alexander, and could even be used in Blue decks thanks to it’s Blue Cost Reduction. That being board control via it’s BP destruction effect, and awarding you a card rather than destroying the opposing deck, even better still, it didn’t need a level up to achieve this. Meaning you only needed about 6 core to drop this under favourable conditions unlike Alexander’s 8…

…Which Victory Stand of Glory could grant you on your following turn as long as you played a single Nexus.

The process is essentially this:
1. Turn 1, play Victory Stand of Glory, pass.
2. Opponent goes, unlikely they kill you here.
3. You should have 5 core available, level up Victory Stand of Glory, play any Nexus, then Level down Victory Stand of Glory, you’ll now have 6 Core, assuming you played a Blue or a Red Nexus, you can now summon Gundinos at Level 1 and attack your opponent 3 times while melting any 5000 BP or less Spirit and drawing a card for each, given your opponent has only had 1 turn, the likelihood they’ll have anything surpassing 5000 BP if they even played a Spirit is low, and if they don’t have any Spirits, they’re likely to lose 3 lives.

Thankfully, this kind of broken set up won’t be seen in the anime, and Victory Stand of Glory has been LONG banned for a while now. Free symbols tend to result in nonsense.

anyway, that’s all I got for the moment! I’ll see you all next time! Hopefully soon.