Section 1A: The Non-deck Stuff
I'm going to keep it real here. The sword is cool. However, it inflates the price a good bit. This set could easily have gone for about $40 (at least on TCGeneration), but the inflatable Gargantua Punisher added at least $5 or $10 to the base price. It's cool and all, but the ability to buy just the decks for a lower price would have been nice. Plus, the hilt of the sword is a little flimsy. I do like Bushiroad deciding to have a little bit of fun with their products, though. 2-player paper mat's a 2-player paper mat. There are two life counters included with nothing special on them, which I found disappointing but understandable. I'd have liked 3 with different Gargas on them, but including just 2 does make it clearer that 3 people can't play Buddyfight simultaneously without performing a satanic ritual. The box art is, as always for a Bushiroad product, top tier and makes me actually want to use it for storage. It's also designed for such a purpose (looking at you, YGO Legendary Decks).
Section 1B: Dragon World
I figure I'll start with Dragon World, seeing as it's the most interesting case to review in my opinion. Seeing as this product was advertised as being able to combat lost world, the Dragon World gimmick is lifegain and pretty decent aggro. Almost squarely in midrange, the Dragon World deck has a lot of rather high quality cards, such as Gar-Segen. Tempest Mode is a really crazy card that, much like the other aggro Garga modes, can end games on its own. Return Mode could be excellent or underwhelming, depending on your mills. Overall, the deck is just a pile of goodstuff with a little lifegain seasoning. Certainly not a bad deck -- quite good, in fact -- just a little boring in my opinion. On paper, it looks like the worst, but the implicit power of good cards immediately fixes that, with the aforementioned cards and the number of negates provided in the precon.
Section 1C: Katana World
The Katana World deck was frankly a little less effective than I expected. Don't get me wrong, the negates/pseudo-negates and Gargantua forms provided are pretty decent. Tokens are cool and being able to search an attack negation while dealing damage and gaining health is really good. The problem, however, is that there aren't enough copies of the quality cards. The Dragon World deck benefits from its cards all being rather independent and their worst cards being at least solid. The Katana deck, however, is designed with synergies and various 2-card combos in mind, meaning that you have to get rather specific cards in your hand. The only really decent way to trip your on-discard effects is the negate, which is only a 4-of. The Nincat and Ninbird included can kick stuff off, but they're at 2 each. Essentially, the Katana deck looks like the smoothest but suffers from the old Bushiroad parable of requiring 2 copies of the precon it comes from or several singles needing to be ordered. In addition to this, the Katana deck lacks the finishing power the other two have, which is tough for sealed games.
Section 1D: Magic World
Magic World Garga might honestly be one of my new favorite decks from this special set alone. The deck out of the box suffers a tiny bit from some deck building balance issues. There are a lot of monsters and rather few spells that you really need to be able to activate a lot of effects. In the games I played, I found myself able to manage at least one spell in the drop, but unable to activate Wararior at almost every point of the game. In the same vein, the included non-Punisher impact is rather useless most games out of the box. The attack negate is really good, though, and the inclusion of Nice One! is really nice, even if the card's not all that expensive anymore. Just like the others, the Garga forms included are rather good, being able to draw you a card and gain 5 life or just kill your opponent. Both forms having move, 6000 defense, and getting the bonus from the included means the deck has really strong defensive options. Magidog is one of the best cards in even full builds, so being included here is rather nice. Magibird is also deceptively strong against more casual decks and a very effective attack magnet.
Section 1E: Other Words About the Decks
Overall, these decks are pretty decent. However, all 3 suffer from some underwhelming filler, such as the non-Garga size 2s in Katana and Magic (not that they're bad cards. You just shouldn't be playing non-Garga 2s in the first place) and the impacts. The impacts are all essentially boneless Deity Punishers, which makes me question their inclusion. I will say, though, the Katana one is searchable, which is interesting. The cores provided, however, are all rather high quality. 9 Daybreak Roar (which is a really good card) is plain funny. Same with 12 copies of original Gargantua Dragon. The foiling in this set is some of my favorite of all time in any game. Overall, the decks are rather well built, aside from the classic "buy 2" Bushiroad mentality.
Section 2: Casual Value
These decks are frankly some of the best I've seen in a long time, casually. Against other Start and Trial deck-level decks, they'll be right at home. Against budget decks, I'm sure there's a fun and rather balanced time to be had there. One thing that I noticed in my test games was that there was a bit of luck involved with all 3 decks, which might lead to some salty losses (3 base form Gargas and a Flare Mage against a deck with like 4 total negates), but that's just how Buddyfight is sometimes. Pitting the decks against each other, I found that the Katana deck was rather lacking against the others, seeing as it lacks the explosiveness and comeback potential the others have, which I'm sorry to say. The games I played between Magic and Dragon felt rather balanced, though, and I'm sure that the Katana deck could succeed in the hands of a better player or with better openings.
Section 3: Competitive Value
There's a lot of value here. The Dragon deck is full of good cards and really just needs more good cards to be viable, seeing as Tempest is a house and a half and Gar-segen is also rather immense. Taking this route would almost guarantee future support, along with the really good cards that have already been released such as Gargantua Buster Break. You'd need some pricey stuff like Sonic Mode and Gar-Oracle, though, so keep that in mind if you decide to upgrade Dragon Garga. Katana Garga is probably the cheapest and easiest to upgrade of the 3, aside from Nincat being impossible to find. Magic Garga has the opportunity to take that throne, but it's too early to tell, at the time of writing this. Blade Mage is a really good card, being able to board wipe on your opponent's turn. The deck also has a rather small core of cards, so you could probably cook up some cool memes like the Plague Garga build Chang's working on.
In Closing
This is just a really good product. You won't regret buying it, but be aware that there'll be some hiccups that you might not realize are there at first glance. Despite the flaws, I think this is one of the best preconstructed products Buddyfight has spawned in a long time, with the perfect blend of novelty, aesthetic appeal, and that ever-so-delicate balance between competitive, casual, and collector fans. If you have the money and don't have anything else on your list, you might as well pick this special set up. Parents, if you don't know what to get your kid, this is pretty much the perfect product. For the more competitively-minded players out there, be aware that you'll want to pick up 2 of this box, or at least extra copies of the cards for the deck(s) you want to run in a tournament setting. As always, stay frosty.
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