Hey guys. There’s a brand new card game coming out from Bandai. I got to demo it at Origins and chat with the game’s designer. I’m here to give you all the details. Let’s get started.
Chrono Clash System
Publisher: Bandai
Designer: Ryan Miller
What do we know? Well, there’s a few things we can learn from the game’s official website, HERE.
It is a 2-4 player competitive card game. Primarily a 2 player game, but it’s nice to see there’s multiplayer as well. The multiplayer is elimination. Unknown if there will be a 2v2 rule set.
The game will be an Expandable Card Game, with complete playsets released together and no blind purchases. So you only have to buy a set one time to have a complete playset for a card. No multiple purchases just to have enough for a deck. A full playset for a card includes 3 copies. Maximum of 3x of a card per deck.
It will use popular IPs. The first set is based on Naruto. The second will be Godzilla. There has already been a fan survey for what people would want to see next. HERE is the survey. If you decide to fill out this survey, please select Ultraman and write in Gamera. You will have my undying gratitude.
There is going to be organized play support, with prize packs already being revealed. Prizes include foil cards and playmats. Nice to see the OP prizes not include exclusive new cards. If you want to bling your deck out with foils, these are great. And a playmat will be awesome. But the players that are able to attend events don’t have access to cards that other players might not.
It will not be tournament legal for cards from different IPs to be in a deck together. A Godzilla deck can play against a Naruto deck, but cards from each cannot be in the same deck. A lot of people are upset by this, but I think it’s ok. Ideally, I’d rather be able to mix IPs. But this just means that if I want to run the best Godzilla deck I can, I don’t need to purchase every other set that comes out because 1 or 2 of those cards might improve my deck. If this was the deal breaker as to whether or not the game was able to exist, I’ll gladly accept this restraint.
Gameplay
When you play a card in Chrono Clash System, it has a cost. This cost is paid for by moving a marker along an initiative track towards your opponent’s side. When the marker ends on a number greater than zero towards your opponent, they gain initiative, and begin their turn. You can play as many cards or take as many actions as you want during your turn, until the marker ends on your opponent’s side. So if you want to play an 8 cost character on the first turn you can, but you’re giving your opponent a lot of resources to work with.
The ideal strategy seems to be to play as much as you can and just barely creep over that 0 threshold. This forces your opponent to only play 1 or 2 cards before giving initiative back to you. However, in the demo game I played, I just went all out. I kept getting 5 cost and higher cards. I kept swinging the initiative track far on to my opponent’s side. My larger characters in play made it very difficult for my opponent to control the board state. I won my demo. I’m unofficially 1-0. Come at me.
There are characters and actions. As you can imagine, when characters are played, they stay on the board until an effect removes them. Actions are played directly to the discard pile as they resolve their effect. This game also has oversized characters called EX cards. These characters can swing the tide of battle heavily. They are not paid for with the cost mechanic described above. Their cost must be paid by sacrificing characters you already have in play that have a total cost equal to or greater than the EX card’s cost.
The game can end 2 ways:
- Whenever a player is attacked while they have no guardians, they are eliminated from the game. The last player standing wins.
- If you ever have 5 or more completed quests, you win.
How do you attack, and what are guardians and quests? I’m glad you asked. When you tap your character, they can attack your opponent, attack an opposing character, or go on a quest.
At the beginning of the game, each player will place 5 cards face down in front of them. These are their guardians.
If you attack your opponent, they flip one of their guardian cards face up. If that card has a guardian ability, resolve it. Then compare the strength of the two cards. The guardian card is discarded regardless. If the guardian’s strength is equal to or greater than that the strength of the attacker, then the attacker is knocked out and discarded.
If you attack an opposing character, you just compare strength values. The character with the greater strength survives, and both characters are knocked out if the strength is equal.
If you send your character on a quest, you will play a card face down on them to act as their guardian. If they begin your next turn with the face down card, move it to the side and that becomes a completed quest. If that character is attacked, you will flip the face down card and resolve it as if it were a guardian.
The abilities in this game are well thought out. Each ability is a series of icons that put together their effect. For example, if the card’s ability was “Whenever this character attacks, it gains +3 strength. Discard a card from your hand and draw an EX card.” The iconography on the character card would be:
There are plenty of reference cards to verify what icons mean. I think this will really help keep rules questions to a minimum. I’ve played games where a “comma” or “period” is the difference between two different effects. This should cut down on that kind of confusion.
One thing that’s worth noting is that these abilities are “all or nothing”. In the example above, if I don’t have any cards in my hand to discard, and I have that character attack, I do not get the +3 strength as a result of attacking.
One of the best things about this game is that it lets you do whatever you want. If you want to play an 8 cost character on turn 1, you can. There is no resource system like mana from Magic, or energy mechanic like Hearthstone. You get rewarded for having a good strategy and making tactical moves. But it allows you to play how you want. For someone who will be teaching this to 6 and 7 year old children, I love this feature. If they want to just play with high cost characters, they can. And games that let you do what you want instead of constantly saying “no” are more fun to play.
Availability and Updates
When will Chrono Clash System be available? There are 2 Naruto sets that will be released on June 28th. Each set will have 2 decks. The Godzilla set, which there is just 1 of but will contain 4 decks, is set to release sometime in September.
How can you stay up to date with news for this game? You can follow the game’s official Facebook page HERE. There are also some community pages and a Discord server if you’re wanting to connect with others who are interested.
So, why am I interested in this game? I’ve always been a fan of 2 player competitive card games. My gaming roots are tied to playing both Magic and Pokémon. I played Dice Masters competitively for a number of years. I recently competed in my first event for SRG SuperShow. I’m drawn to these kinds of games. And this one will have Godzilla. You may or may not realize this, but I’m a bit of a kaiju movie fan, and even recently wrote an article for Love Thy Nerd about my passion for kaiju movies. I am sure I will come to appreciate certain aspects of Naruto, just as I did with Yu-Gi-Oh in Dice Masters. But there’s no mistake: I’m here because this is a Godzilla card game.
I will follow up in the near future with everything we know about the Godzilla set, what characters are confirmed, and which ones we can expect to see. If you’re interested about this game, leave a comment below.
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