Big Box Big Update - Main Deck

Hello dear Patrons, thank you again and again for your generous support. Today we have for you a working copy of the main deck and in the following days I’ll have updates to several other playable decks. Because I go into depth on these posts, I’ll be breaking up the posts and releasing them over the holiday.

We wanted to smooth out some rough gameplay in Danmaku!! 1.0 and all of these decks have been updated with new cards and more variety of card types, as well as have had some unpopular cards removed or buffed. In addition, because of the popularity of the exchange mechanics of Lunatic Extra, we’ve made exchanging a base rule in the game and you can exchange 3 points to get a new main deck card.

Main Deck

Let’s start with the core of Danmaku!!, the blue main deck. Loaded with basic cards and the majority of the defense cards, this deck is the bread and butter of the game. Changing from 80 to 100 cards, the main deck now offers a huge variety beyond the basic Shoot/Graze/Power. In addition, where we imported cards from Lunatic Extra or Mutiny of Belittled Spirits, we made those cards work independently of their set’s deck. For instance, cards that referred to the lunatic deck now refer to any playable deck.

Shot Types

Danmaku!! 1.0 had a whopping 24 Shoot cards in it, leading to hands full of attacks and players not having enough Power cards to do anything with them. The biggest change is to Shoot itself. The number of Shoot cards is reduced to just eight cards and renamed Charge Shot. This change counterbalances the simplification of making its B side rangeless, and gives it a unique position among the new Danmaku cards. We have imported Erase Shot, Revenge Shot, Trick Shot, and Twin Shot into the main deck to massively increase the variety of shots.

Collectively known as the shot types, these will be the main deck Danmaku cards. There is also a new naming theme for the eight shot types.

• Shoot has become Charge Shot
• Seal Away has been replaced with Purification and renamed to Sealing Shot
• Last Word has become Wide Shot
• Laser Shot has become Homing Shot
• The Remilia artwork that used to grace Laser Shot has become the new Last Word, the ultimate Invocation card available in the Shop Deck.

Invocations

Danmaku!! wouldn’t be Touhou without Spell Cards. Danmaku!! Big Box brings more variety to the Invocation cards as well. Big Box brings two new invocation cards to the main deck that were originally add-ons from Lunatic Extra.

Occult Ball allows either drawing a card from any deck, or activation of your spell card. Spell Assist is an invocation card that you can give to an ally. You can give it to an enemy as well, providing “assistance” when your enemy is making a mistake is the yokai way.

Powers

Danmaku!! is Power!!

Like other card types, the Power card has more variety in importing cards from expansions. Full Power is duplicated from Lunatic Extra’s lunatic deck. True to the main Touhou games, this Powerup really helps you when you’re losing. It’s not nearly as good if you’ve already got a bunch of Power cards. The seasonal equipment, popular alternate powers from Mutiny of Belittled Spirits, also becomes part of the main deck.These powerups give you a benefit when you lose them, willingly or not.

Dodges

The Dodge card space is actually pretty difficult to design around. Graze is by far the most common still, with Jizou Statue coming in to allow you to face tank damage instead of avoiding it all together, and Erase Shot providing some fluidity in the danmaku/dodge ratio.

Defense

Wait a minute, what did we do to Focus? It’s now an on-board dodge card! You can break your focus at any time to quickly get out of the way of an attack. Don’t underestimate the chilling effect this can have on your opponents. Nimble Cloth comes from Lunatic Extra, it allows you to turn your extra cards into Dodge cards. Supernatural Border hasn’t changed, we expect it will remain as popular as ever.

Artifacts

With the main deck going from 80 to 100 cards, we needed at least one new artifact to add to it. Facing indecision we decided to add two, giving you a 5% chance to catch a “rare” card when drawing from the deck. In addition, all of the artifacts got a little buff to make them feel extra special.

Anti-Yokai Gohei finally gives Reimu some rep in the artifact collection. This stick gets bigger with every expansion and gives you Reimu’s passive. If someone steals it from you, you get a benefit from the available expansions.

Mini-Hakkero was a big target for upgrades, since it was derisively called the “Bigger Occult Ball.” Now it makes distance almost irrelevant, protects your Powerup cards, and makes activating your Spell Card super easy.

Stopwatch gained the ability to up and skip parts of your turn. Now you can conveniently disappear when incidents or mobs happen.

Seven Star Sword now allows you to draw on the same turn you place it, but you need to hit someone first. It also allows you to draw from any deck. With both Taoists and Buddhists represented in the main deck, 7SS takes on the aggressor role.

Sorcerer’s Sutra Scroll got a bit of a wording change, in addition you draw two cards at the start of the discard step instead of one when you play. With the majority of the defenses being in the main deck, and exchanging being a basic rule, this card is now very defensive.

Numbers

I've mentioned several times that these changes smooth out the main deck's card distribution. Not only is the variety much higher in the main deck, but thanks to so many cards pulling double duty, the percentage chance you'll get a card of a particular type has actually increased. 

I've uploaded the Tabletop Sim sheets for you to load into your game. That's probably easier than an additive save isn't it? The incident deck will be tomorrow, please wait warmly!