DRAGON BALL SUPER CARD GAME

BOOSTER PACKMIRACULOUS REVIVAL

About the Design Concept for Series 5 –Miraculous Revival- <DBS-B05>

Thank you for your continued support of the Dragon Ball Super Card Game.

Series 5 releases in November, marking the start of a new block. It also has different release timing for starter decks and booster packs. Two types of starter decks will be available on November 2nd, while booster packs and a special pack set will be released on November 9th, and a gift box will be released on November 23rd.

Events like starter-only tournaments and releases tournaments will provide new and exciting ways to participate in the release. We hope you’ll look forward to it.

Before we explain the underlying game design concepts for the set, there are three points to go over:

①Game Speed (Kill Turns)

Following the release of series 1, by observing play at events, we realized that players were playing more carefully and with far more tactical deliberation than we had anticipated.

We here on the development team were raised on Japanese card games, and it seems there may be a slight difference between our play preferences and strategic thought processes compared to that of the player base, which was predominantly raised on western card games.

Feedback from players around the time series 1 was released tended to center around the long length of games, and we heard a fair bit in particular about tournaments going longer than expected.

We took this into consideration, developing aggressive cards for series 3 (and the Over Realm Block) with the intent of reducing the number of turns required to win (referred to as the “kill turn”).

But experienced players quickly grew used to this speedier pace, and the amount of time required per game gradually shortened in comparison to series 1, resulting in an even greater reduction in overall playtime.

Play time is not our only concern in game design, of course. However, we think the changes described above are what resulted in series 3’s speed outstripping our expectations.

We receive feedback from players around the world every day, both directly at tournaments and online. You’ve told us about your experiences playing the game, your thoughts on the environment, and what you want to see going forward. We’re listening to all of it.

Recently, we’ve been receiving a particularly large amount of feedback about game speed, and looking at actual tournaments, we’ve seen more than a few games end extremely quickly.

We don’t think there’s anything wrong with aggro decks being able to win quickly, but series 5 features defensive cards and Leader Cards with new effects (which we’ll talk about shortly) that attempt to bring the overall game speed to a more reasonable pace.

Here’s an example of some of the new defensive effects you’ll find on cards:
[Permanent] During your opponent's turn, if your Leader Card is “COLOR” and this card is in Rest Mode, your opponent's cards can't attack Leader Cards, and this card gets -5000 power.

Series 5 has cards with effects like these in every color.

One of the goals for series 5 is to return the game speed to a more appropriate level without placing any restrictions on existing cards.

②Deck Archetypes

The environment up to series 4 saw aggro decks dominating, something we suspect the fast kill turn was responsible for. We think delaying the kill turn will allow more deck archetypes to compete.

We’re rebuilding the kinds of deck archetypes players can construct from the ground up, with the hope that this will result in a diverse play environment with even more variety than before.

Series 5 introduces new deck archetypes and rebalances the old ones. We’re designing series 6 to continue this trend, and will be establishing even more archetypes in series 6.

③Interactivity

Up to this point, we haven’t designed many effects that can be played instantly to counter/respond to your opponent’s actions for the following reasons:

• ・They have the potential to slow down the game.
• ・(Related to the above) We wanted to convey the feeling of Dragon Ball’s fierce and fast-paced battles.
• ・New players may get the impression that the game is difficult to play if counter/reactive cards become commonplace.

However, what we’ve heard from the player base at large is that you want more interactivity in the game.
With that in mind, we’ve created cards in series 5 with effects that do not resolve immediately but by paying specified costs, allowing you to indirectly respond to your opponent’s actions.

Here are a few examples:
[Activate : Main], your opponent has 4 or more Battle Cards in play : Choose all of your and your opponent's Battle Cards with energy costs of 4 or less ignoring [Barrier] and KO them.

[Activate : Main], place this card in your Drop Area : If your opponent placed a card in their energy using a skill during this game, choose 1 of your opponent's energy and place it in its owner's Drop Area.

These aren’t interactive cards, per se, but by attaching costs to the activation of these effects, players will be forced to take risks (by paying the cost), instead of simply resolving effects without interference.

Our intent is to maintain the elements that we mentioned earlier while still printing cards to meet our players’ needs going forward.

Whew. That ended up taking a little longer than expected. Well, with those explanations out of the way, let’s talk about the design concepts for series 5!

The two core concepts we want to introduce here are:
1) Expanding tactical options with the new Wish skill on Leader Cards.
2) Adding deck types that tie each color’s unique qualities to character flavor.