Battle Spirits is a two-player collectible card game (CCG) jointly developed by Bandai and Sunrise, Inc. and a franchise which also includes several anime series, manga serialisations, and other merchandise like toys and video games. The game was released in Japan in September 2008 where it quickly became one of the top selling trading card games of the year. Due to this popularity, it was released in the United States by Bandai of America on August 14, 2009. However, due to a lack of publicity and inaccurate translation from Japanese to English, only five sets were released. The game is now only available in Asia and only printed in Japanese.

How to Play

The game is set up by placing five core on each player's life and three on each player's reserve, plus 1 soul core. Each player draws four cards from their deck. The steps in a turn are as follows: Repeat until game ends. The game is won by reducing either the opponent's life or deck to 0. The game is won immediately when the life is at 0, but a deck must have 0 cards during the Start Step for the game to end.

Card Terminology

Card Types

Card Rarity

The card rarity in Battle Spirits is as follows:

Colours

The Battle Spirits world is set with six colours; Red (Ruby), Green (Emerald), Purple (Amethyst), White (Diamond), Blue (Sapphire), and Yellow (Topaz). Each colour stems from a different variety of precious gem.

Card Mechanics

These are keywords that help identify a spirit's effect. All details for the special effects are printed on the cards. Red's Specialty effects: Green's Specialty effects: Purple Specialty effects White's Specialty effects Yellow's Specialty effects Blue Specialty effects: And the following are Effects for that season. These effects are not specialty to any colour. They are designed through the seasons.

English Set Releases

A player must have at least 50 cards in their deck, with no more than 60 cards. Up to three cards of the same name are allowed in a deck. Players can purchase booster packs to increase the number of cards they have. Expansions are sets of cards that build upon the foundation laid out by the base set, the original set of cards released. There are currently a total of 40+ expansion sets and more than 30 starter decks available in Japan, as well as numerous other special sets and promotional cards. Special crossover cards even exist, such as those from Toho's Godzilla franchise.

Media

Anime

There are 299 episodes in the first six completed series. Each anime also has a manga serialisation.

Video games

There have been five video games released to date. None of them have been released outside of Japan.