Battle Spirits Saga, the latest entrant in the card game world, was launched on April 28th of this year, and, despite its recent debut, the game has rapidly amassed a significant following. At Dice Addiction alone, the gaming community has embraced it enthusiastically with players from multiple different gaming backgrounds entering our tournaments as well as other tournaments throughout the area. For those out of the loop, Battle Spirits Saga is a trading card game where "cores" function as both a resource for playing spirits, nexuses, and slinging magic cards while also serving as a life system. Utilizing these cores, players summon spirits to battle opponents while strategically employing a wide range of magic and nexus cards for support. Each player starts with 5 cores in their life area. If you take damage, you place one core from your life into your reserve, allowing you to use it for later. The objective is straightforward: reduce your opponent's life cores to zero, however, the strategic depth offered through core management, deciding between a defensive stance or permitting hits to bolster resources for subsequent turns, lends the game its charm. Combine all of this with the complexity of deckbuilding where colors can be mixed and playsets are at four cards each and you’re sure to never feel like you play the same game twice!
The question that has been fervently debated in our community is whether Battle Spirits Saga can accommodate sealed play. There are official tournament rules that provide guidelines for Sealed play, but ambiguities surrounding playset and color restrictions keep players from trying out a new way to play BSS. These gray areas notwithstanding, we here at Dice Addiction are eager to delve into sealed Battle Spirits Saga play, and we believe we've developed a promising approach.
A fundamental requirement for a sealed event is sealed products – in this case, booster packs. We propose that each participant receive six packs, providing a pool of 72 cards for deck construction, given each booster pack contains 12 cards. The optimal deck size for these events is another key consideration. For the main format of BSS, the deck size has a minimum of 50 cards, to a maximum of 60 cards. The official rules suggest a deck size of 40 to 60 cards, a little more than half of the maximum BSS deck size. However, we tested a 30-card deck for this 6-booster pack sealed format. Anything smaller could potentially lead to rapid deck exhaustion which could mean players losing sometimes without ever taking damage. For us to reach a card pool big enough for what the official rules suggest, we would either have to add more booster packs or supplement less booster packs with starter decks. With so many cards required for your deck in such a limited card pool, deck building becomes more complex and the necessity of having a decent color spread becomes all the more apparent.
Addressing the color and playset restrictions and how these will affect deckbuilding, we believe that the flexibility allowed in the main constructed format, permitting any color combination, should also be extended to sealed play. With such a small amount of cards to pick from anyway, most sealed decks should have a decent amount of cards representing multiple colors, so players will have to mix colors in their decks anyway. Regarding playset restrictions, we propose that players can use an unlimited amount of copies of cards. This proposal takes into account that players build decks from what they pull, which may contain more of one card than others, so, if you’re wanting to put eight copies of Pentan in your deck from your sealed pool, go for it!
We’re not sure if this is the ideal way for sealed play, but we're excited to explore this new format. Sealed, as well as draft settings, offer a refreshing contrast to the typical constructed format. To encourage you, we've shared a video on our TikTok channel, where we unbox six booster packs from BSS’s inaugural set, Dawn of History. We've also shared photographs of decks constructed following the guidelines we've outlined. We eagerly invite your thoughts on conducting a sealed event for Battle Spirits Saga. Until then, let the games begin!
TikTok Link: tiktok.com/@diceaddiction