Digi-battle common sense rules and tips

Digi-battle: Rules and pointers to make the game actually playable; agree to this or resolve the conflictive points with your opponent before playing so there are no dispute or problems during a match, way too many things are not explained in the official rules.

Flow of the game
Set up phase - Digivolve phase - Battle phase - Regroup phase - Preliminary phase - Digivolve phase - ...

-Deck cannot have duplicate cards, meaning the number/code in them cannot be identical (ie st-34, bo-34) (but you can have st-44 and st-44s cards in the same deck)
-Deck must contain 30 cards


SET UP PHASE

 Both players must:
 -Chooses a rookie from their deck and place it face down on duel zone
 -Shuffle their decks, draw 10 cards
 -Reveal their rookies


DIGIVOLVE PHASE

 -The "Make preparations to digivolve" phase (only exists on the first round, its replaced by preliminary phase in later rounds, they work exactly the same way)
   You can only digivolve one level per round (each round ends when the preliminary phase starts)
  Digivolving is not mandatory, if you want to do so place a digimon card face down on the digivolve zone this card MUST have your active digimon name on its digivolve requirements box (or the word "ULTIMATE" if your active digimon is an ultimate level), if a support card like a digivice is needed for the evolution to happen obey what that card says, it will tell you if you have to place it on the power port face down right now. If you are DNA evolving you dont need to show your other digimon of the recipe yet.
 Not covered in the rules: Because placing a card face down first gives you a disadvantage because it tells your rival you are going to evolve or try to, an order must be set, either toss a coin or play janken to determine it, or a method I like is to compare digimon power of your rookies and whoever is at a disadvantage goes second (Your rookie uses the attack that appears in your opponents card top left corner: red, green or yellow), for future rounds whoever won the last battle goes first.

-Main Digivolve phase
  Whoever went first in the phase above also goes first here.
 If the evolution is rookie to champion the player reveals the card on his digivolve zone, places it on top of his current digimon, then discards from his deck the number of cards indicated in the champion card. ALWAYS DISCARD CARDS FACE DOWN FROM YOUR DECK TO YOUR DISCARD PILE (called offline zone) You dont get to see what cards you discarded, when sending cards offline at any point in the game remember to place them face down on your offline pile
  If the evolution requires a digivice or another option card, the option card was likely placed at the same time as the digimon you are evolving into in the previous phase, again read each card but all digivices work this way. The player reveals the digivice and waits a couple of seconds to see if the opponent is going to send the digivice offline with a card like "power freeze", this is the only opportunity the opponent has to ruin your evolution, you can also void his "power freeze" with an "option eater" or other cards/digimon effects but you have to counter right after he does his move.
 Note that just voiding a digivice does nothing, the card/effect your opponent uses must send it offline to ruin your evolution, the only requirement for you to evolve is that the digivice must be present, the card says "use it when you evolve" not that its effect is to let you evolve. Digieggs work the same way. "Using" in this case is turning the option card face up.
 If he sends the option card you needed to digivolve offline the evolution is cancelled and the card you had facedown on your digivolve zone goes offline face down, the opponent does not get to see it.
 If you are paranoid you can place face down two digivices in the preparation to digivolve phase, so he would have to send both of them offline. Digivices stay on the power port until the end of the battle phase.
If the evolution is a success place the digimon card on your evolution zone on top of your current active digimon.
DNA evolution: reveal the card in your digivolve zone and place it on top of your current active digimon, then place the digimon card needed to complete the DNA formula on the power port, that digimon card will stay on the power port for as long as your newly active digimon is active.

Now is the turn of the second player to evolve, he has the option to refuse to do so, even if he has placed face down some cards, in that case all those cards go offline right away.

Note: ultra-digivolve DOES NOT let you evolve any digimon into any digimon, you can only place a card on the digivolve zone if the name of your active digimon is in its requirements, the card says "ignore all digivolve requirements" but that applies once the card is activated, the card is not active in the digivolve preparation/preliminary phase so you cannot ignore the requirements yet, its when you use it on the main digivolve phase that you get to ignore the other requirements not yet fulfilled like a digivice, a specific digimon to DNA evolve or discarding cards from your online deck.


-BATTLE PHASE

-Whoever went first in the previous phase also goes first in this one.
-Each Digimon will use the attack that appears in their opponents top left corner, so if opponent has yellow my digimon will use the yellow attack against it, usually it goes like this RED defeats YELLOW, YELLOW defeats GREEN, GREEN defeats RED.
-Players take turns playing power option cards or saying pass and not playing any.
-Take note of how the digimon power changes as you play the cards, arithmetic operations to the attack number happen in the order the cards are played in, so yes playing the same cards in a different order could give you different results.
-Remember the order of operations in case a card gets voided later, in that case its taken out of it  (blackgears + counter attack = (base + 100) x2) if blackgears are voided: base x 2 then again who wouldnt void counter attack instead in that situation.
-You can void an opponent´s void card/effect with your own void card/effect and your original card will stay safe, but you must do it as a direct response to his card, not in later turns, because the card will be gone then as they say "go offline after use"
-When both players say pass consecutively the battle phase is over
-Compare digimon power, the highest is the winner
-Winner gets as many points as their digimon card says, look down on the score tab, you will usually get more points the higher level your opponent active digimon was
-First player to get 1000 points win
-Loser sends all digimon cards offline except the rookie
-All option cards from both players are sent offline unless the cards says otherwise.
-Cards that say "Effect applies until voided by opponent or sent offline by you" stay on the power port, these cards you can offline at any moment you want.
-Cards that say "send this card offline after use" and its use is still ongoing, stay on the power port. (bo-305, bo-318 and others)
-Cards that say "this card stays on power port until...." obviously stay as well until the moment one of the conditions for it to go offline is met.

IMPORTANT the card even steven sends all option cards offline even those just mentioned above that would normally stay, unless even steven gets voided that is.

About digimon effects: the effects get reset at the start of the preliminary phase, so accumulated digimon power gained through them vanishes and effects that can only be used a certain number of times can be used again. Effects that say "when" cannot be used at will, only when the conditions are met. Most effects force you to use them, you dont have a choice.

About BROKEN digimon effects: Two effects in the game are totally broken.
 -"Special effect: Void opponent's special effects and any Power Option cards" The opponent stops playing the game: the effect. Your opponent cannot play any option cards ever and its digimon effect is also voided. He cant do anything.
 -"Special effect: Void opponent's special effects. Send opponent's entire hand Offline."  I win: the effect. Like all effects it resets at every preliminary phase so your opponent has no hand, ever. Or rather he goes through the effort of discarding then drawing new cards (more on that below) only to lose its entire hand right away, painful.

If we allow these cards as is the game becomes a race to see who evolves to the broken digimon card first, whoever does has pretty much won the game.
Instead of banning cards with those effects I suggest making a slight change: The second part of their effect DOES NOT RESET, so they only void all option cards and send the hand offline on the first round they are the active digimon, once the next preliminary phase starts they dont get to use them again. Their first effect "Void opponent's special effects" would remain as normal. This way the cards are still powerful and worth using but not broken. You could also agree to let the full effects be used in two rounds if you think only once is too weak, though I think once is enough.


-REGROUP PHASE

Both players, not really taking turns:
 -Can discard any number of cards from their hands
 -Then they MUST draw from their deck until their hands have 10 cards

If at ANY point during the game your online deck has no cards (even if you dont need to draw more cards, as soon as its empty this applies) you have to send all option cards offline ("Effect applies until voided by opponent or sent offline by you" cards stay) ("Send this card offline after use" if its use is still ongoing stay) also all your digimon on the duel zone except your rookie go offline, then shuffle your offline pile and place it online.
If the above happens while drawing cards you must send all the cards you drew offline, then draw again after shuffling. (Yes this means that you will never get to have in your hand the last card of your current online deck)
You can partially avoid this with the card st-120 resist downgrade.

The Japanese version of the game calls the online deck the digimon lifespan. Maybe now you understand better why he goes back to rookie when it runs out. (Shouldnt he die though?)


-PRELIMINARY PHASE

  -All digimon effects are reset.
  -Players can now change rookies if their active digimon is a rookie, again taking turns the winner of the round goes first if it was a tie then whoever went first in the digivolve phase goes first.
 -If the player that goes first wants to change rookies he will place the new rookie face down on top of the old one, then he can set up an evolution like in the preparations to digivolve phase, the new rookie even if still face down cannot be sent offline so your evolution must be from the new rookie
 -Second player can place a new rookie and/or set up evolution
 -First player reveals new rookie and/or evolves its current digimon
 -Second player must change rookies if he set up a change but can cancel its evolution, sending the face down card on the evolution box offline.
Old rookies go offline when the new rookie evolves, otherwise they stay below the active one.
Rookies from booster 6 dont like company, they say "This card stays on duel zone until replaced with another rookie card" these go offline the moment you change it for another rookie, they are also immune to being send offline by bo-306 digital gate.



After this a new evolution phase starts in the "main digivolve" part and the cycle continues from there.

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OTHER

-Cards that say "double your score...when you win the duel" means the score you would get by winning the duel gets doubled not the score you have right now
-Bo-306 digital gate is kinda bullshit, you might want to agree that if you dont have 2 rookies your rookie cannot be sent offline, otherwise if one player has no active digimon at all he hasnt lost, no points can be gained by the opponent if he has nothing to fight, keep playing as normal and just act like battle phases end in a tie. The player will have to draw a rookie and then place it on the next preliminary phase in order to properly continue the game.
-"This card stays on power port until opponent voids by power option cards" This indicates that just voiding it with a card is enough to send it offline, voiding it with a digimon power doesnt, but as its voided its effect wont be applied that round.
-Some cards need of you or your opponent to have certain cards in their hand in order to activate, but at the same time you are not allowed to see your opponent´s hand. Well just be honest and hope your opponent is also honest, or you can agree to be able to see whatever hand is needed to be seen when these cards come around.
-st-55 "to champion", the champion card you place on the digivolve zone, must be able to evolve from your active digimon´s rookie card thats below it, downgraded cards go offline.


Game variants, experiment and have fun.
 -Play for a higher score
 -HP mode, give you 1000 hp and reduce it when you lose
 -Allow more than 30 cards in a deck
 -Change hand size (I found that making it too small is no fun, the game really benefits from the 10 hand card rule)
 -Allow to digivolve more than one level per round
 -Allow duplicate cards (I wouldnt play this as no duplicates is my favorite rule of this game)


I tried to summarize as best as I could the steps anyone would need to play a game, trying to clear up the usual points of conflict that usually arise between players along the way so that the game can be played naturally and streamlined, I understand if some things you might disagree on for a lack of an in depth explanation, I wanted this to be a quick reference guide, even if it ended being longer than I anticipated.
For a really in depth read about the rules visit http://digitalindex.ultimatedigimon.com/digibattle/articles.php I agree with almost everything the author says.

Any doubts about specific cards or anything else you can ask me about, I always have /digi/ open in a tab and Im also on the discord group.
Have a good one.

--Wizardmon