We’re back to Weiss Schwarz today… it’s been awhile, hasn’t it? I thought I’d put down another piece of advice for new players, since that seems to always be welcomed by you guys. You definitely remember the thrill of when you got your hands on your very first trial deck, don’t you? The excitement takes over and you’re determined to play it right away, simply skimming through card text and abilities, or reading them as the games goes on.

I know it’s hard to resist trying out new cards as soon as possible, but it might not always be the best idea – hear me out on this one, okay? I remember a few months back, when one of my friends got a new Fairy Tail deck. I happened to be over at his place when he received it in the mail; he opened the box right away, sleeved the cards with super speed and then challenged my Madoka deck. He said he’d be just fine reading his cards as we go, and I didn’t really have any objectives to that back then.

So we started playing, and a card of his I found particularly interesting was an event called S-Class Quest, with the following ability:

Choose up to two of your characters, and they get the following ability until end of turn. “[AUTO] [(1)] When this card’s battle opponent becomes [REVERSE], you may pay the cost. If you do, choose a character in your waiting room, and return it to your hand.”

Now, in this transcription from Big Orbit Cards, the word REVERSE is in all caps and spelled out entirely, but as all of you players know, positions on actual cards are marked with a little arrow icon. The event in question therefore looks like this:

Naturally, small markings like these are extremely easy to miss, especially when reading the card text on the go. So as you might expect, my friend misread the ability. Upon getting the card to his hand, he looked at it quickly, then said to me: “Ah, this one’s nice, I choose 2 of my characters and when they die, I can pay to get a character back from the waiting room.”

And that’s how we played it that round… and all the rounds to ever follow. I haven’t yet played FT at the time, so I didn’t even think about the possibility that we were playing with the wrong card ability. He hasn’t noticed either, since you know how it goes… once you get familiar with your cards, you don’t read them out anymore. So over and over again, he would put this ability on his characters, but more than less, it would take over one round for those characters to die; as a result, he barely ever got the characters from the waiting room back when he needed them, and not a round or two later.

Seems like only a minor mistake, but it can make a HUGE difference in actual game play. We didn’t figure it out until I got my own hands on the event and actually read the ability. In hindsight, not reading his card text properly cost him many victories.

That’s precisely why one of the most important pieces of advice I’d give to new players, above getting all the rules into your head and whatever else, take time to read your cards. Really – sit down and read them all in peace. You’ll get a much better understanding of the new deck in front of you, and you’ll already be aware of possible synergies you have before you start playing! Not to mention that by doing this, you’ll avoid misreading any important bits of text!

Keep this in mind: if you’ve remembered a rule incorrectly, chances are the opposing player will correct you straight away. But as far as card text goes, especially among beginners and non-tournament style matches, opposing players won’t look at all your cards and an incorrectly remembered card text will stick with you for a while.