When developing a new gimmick, the team’s biggest challenge was to let battlers enjoy the game, while letting new or recent battlers enjoy the battling environment. As such, we had the need to simplify the game after “Rebirth Card” made the game more complicated.

Decks revolving “GranWalker Nexus Card” from the “Grand Radiant Descent Saga” still maintains a high popularity, we feel that a new series would also need cards that are the base to a deck and simple to play. On the other hand, the weakness of a “GranWalker Nexus” deck is that one has to deploy a “GranWalker Nexus Card” on the field, the importance of the deck would be leaning towards the “GodSeeker” Spirit Cards that can help find your “GranWalker Nexus Card”. “Deploying a GranWalker Nexus” at the start of the battle became a standard opening, resulting in a similar early game development regardless of the deck’s color.

Hence, we came up with a card that could be a base of the new series, the gimmick also allows you to add the card directly into your hand at the early stage of the game. Adding a specific card directly into your hand avoids the factor of luck (Although we feel that luck is both a weakness and strength of a card game), at the same time, when the chosen card is revealed, a battler can consider a brand-new battling strategy and thus, this would provide a brand-new battling experience as well.

Additionally, to coexist with the powerful cards from “Rebirth Saga”, we used the “Counter Zone” in order to restrict the number of times a player can <Rebirth> . The counters would only increase when one <Rebirth> during the “Rebirth Era” and other than Counter break there was no other way to reduce the number of counters. We feel that the use of counters have been introduced to the players in the “Rebirth Saga” and as such, we decided to introduce effects that would increase counters, expanding the knowledge of effects which involves counters.

After repeated tests with the abovementioned considerations, the new gimmick “Contract Card” was born. To make “Contract Card” even more interesting, we also included <Contract Descent> to evolve your partner Spirit Card. <Contract Descent> which supports the [Soul State], gets its true strength through effects like [OC(Over Counter)], creating the “Contract Saga”.

In addition, something that we took note of from the “Rebirth Saga” was the pack ratio being too low, resulting in battlers being unable to draw the cards needed to build their decks. As such, we increased the pack ratio for Contract Saga Vol.1 First Partner in hopes for all battlers to enjoy the game. We featured 1 of each “Contract Card” for every color in the volume apart from increasing the pack ratio, this is so that all colors could form a contract card deck. Battlers can choose to form their favorite partner deck without being restricted as the decks formed are very similar to a starter deck. We hope that the players could enjoy the battles with a contract formed with their favorite partner.

As we are about to enter the “Contract Saga”, we observed appearance rates of cards in events like Kaihousai. As mentioned above, the battling environment allows the addition of counters, which made cards game changing, which was out of our expectations during the development, as well as cards that are being widely used due to them being strengthened in this environment. We will continue to observe some cards, and also taking into consideration the number of times they are used in events, to come up with a new banned and restricted list in July.

A promotional video was released before the sales of “Contract Saga Vol.1 First Partner”. The commercial showcased a breathtaking battle from [The ArcAngelia Mikafar] which is the enemy of “Wanderer Dan” and “Partner Dragon, Gurova”

Till now, the BS anime depicts the story of the main characters battling in ‘Battle Spirits’, but this time it is in the views of the cards, a new animation with “Wanderer Dan” fighting alongside the spirits. The Spirit Cards are not CG, but hand drawn. Are the battle scenes as refreshening? Till now, the promotional video has its focus on introducing the cards and effects, but in this promotional video “Contract Card”, [Soul State], <Contract Descent> was also presented. This promotional video was released without prior announcement, was it a surprise? We hope that everybody liked it.

Battle Spirits Dash Deck Bonds of Infinity and BS Premium Card Set Ian/Choco was released together on 25 June. Releasing the new dash deck after the booster pack could not only allow the fans of [Battle Spirits Ultimate Saikyo Ginga] to know of Contract Card, but there is also the appearance of 3 different contact spirit cards with different effects from what was released in “Contract Saga Vol.1”. We hope that battlers that have already tried Contract Card would also be interested in these. The packaging used was referenced to Ultimate Decks where there is a space in the middle where the actual card could be seen. The promotional slogan was also used, which might let veteran battlers feel nostalgic

“BS Premium Card Set Ian/Choco” includes 8 cards in a small folder. The cards included are all premium textured, apart from being practical, they could also be collected

In addition, “Contract Saga Vol.2 Liberation of God” scheduled to be on sale 27 August would strengthen the decks from the products in June and would also include a “certain” Ultimate card. Please look forward to it!