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Tabletop Game / Weiss Schwarz

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Whose side are you on?*

Japanese Collectible Card Game primarily targeted towards the otaku market. Featuring various characters from all manner of anime and video games, the game essentially runs on Super Robot Wars logic, allowing players to pit their favourite characters and series in the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny against each other. It was made by Bushiroad, the same company who made cute detectives, dat new card game, and a school idol mobile game.

Put simply, Weiss Schwarz is the Super Smash Bros. of anime, but in a card game format. Players construct decks featuring their favorite anime or video game and pit them against each other in head to head combat, summoning Characters to a Stage to do battle with each other. The ultimate goal is to force your opponent to reach Level 4 by dealing damage, which thus wins the game. Decks are divided into two sides: Weiss, which generally tends to represent anime series and visual novels, and Schwarz, which largely consists of video games and some Darker and Edgier anime series.

More notably, the card game is better known for producing rare signed cards featuring signatures from popular Japanese voice actors and actresses, which also makes said cards highly-valued collector's items for fans.

The series available in each side (in no particular order):

    Weiss 
Sets in bold are exclusive to the English Edition

    Schwarz 
Sets in bold are exclusive to the English Edition

    Other 

    TBD 
Sets in bold are exclusive to the English Edition

In addition, there is an extensive list of rules for the game:

    Rules of Weiss Schwarz 
The types of cards in Weiss Schwarz goes as follows:
  • Character: A Character is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. It is a character from a series that a side has recruited that is used to battle against other Characters and deal your opponent damage, much like Monsters and Units. Characters may have an ability, which is categorised into:
    • CONT: Known as Continuous. These abilities remain active as long as the applicable character is onstage.
    • ACT: Known as Activated. These abilities can be activated by the player during the Main Phase only as long as the character is onstage and the player can pay the sufficient cost.
    • AUTO: These abilities activate under certain conditions, such as being placed on stage or when this character attacks.
  • Event: A non-Character card that functions much like a one-time ability. Much like a Character, they have a Level and a Cost, requiring the player to meet the play requirements in order to use them. However, they are single use and are discarded immediately afterwards.
  • Climax: A card that enhances the parameters of a character or characters for the duration of the turn. There are only eight of these cards in one deck, and must be played during the Climax Phase, after Main Phase. If a player draws into this card when taking damage, all damage is negated and all cards drawn prior are immediately discarded, including the Climax Card.

The various areas in Weiss Schwarz is as follows:

  • Deck: Contains 50 cards, no more, no less. Amongst those are up to 8 Climax Cards. No more than four of the same card can be in any given deck, unless the card possesses an ability that says otherwise. Unlike other card games, the game does not end if the Deck runs out of cards.
  • Waiting Room: The resident discard pile. Used Events, Counters, Climaxes, reversed Characters, and so on are moved here after use. If the Deck is depleted, a Refresh occurs, where the Waiting Room is shuffled and placed on the Deck area as the new Deck. Refreshing forces the player to take one damage that cannot be cancelled.
  • Stage: The resident battlefield. The Stage is split into two areas: the Center Stage, which supports three slots, and Back Stage, which supports two slots. Characters in Center Stage are attackers and can be attacked by the opponent's Characters in Center Stage, while Characters in Back Stage cannot be attacked. The Back Stage is generally reserved for Assist Characters that boost the parameters of Characters in Center Stage.
  • Stock: A resource that is required to pay for Costs, including Character Costs and certain abilities. When Stock is required to be paid, the top cards of the Stock Area are sent to the Waiting Room. The turn player earns one Stock when they attack with a Character, which results in the Triggered card being sent to Stock. A subset of Climax Cards can add one free Stock to the Stock Area.
  • Clock: Damage counters. When an opposing character attacks, you take damage equal to the total Soul of the attacking character, after abilities and Triggers. Damage is represented by cards from your deck, which are sent to the Clock if you take damage and are largely unusable until the cards are sent to the Waiting Room. Cards with the Shift ability and select effects can manipulate cards in the Clock.
  • Level: A representation of the player's Level. When seven or more cards enter the Clock, the player Levels Up. This requires the player to place one card from the bottom seven cards of the Clock into the Level Area, and send the rest to the Waiting Room. Many stronger Characters and Events require the player to be of a certain Level to be played. If the player is at Level 3 and reaches seven cards in the Clock, the player loses.
  • Memory: The removed-from-play area. Cards sent here cannot be interacted with for the rest of the duel. However, cards with the Memory ability trigger when the character is placed in the Memory Area. Additionally, a select few cards can also manipulate cards within Memory.

A turn in Weiss Schwarz consists of several phases, in the following order:

  • Stand Phase: The turn player moves all Rested Characters to Stand, if applicable.
  • Draw Phase: The active player draws a card from the top of her deck. Unlike most card games, this occurs even on the very first turn of the game.
  • Clock Phase: The player may choose to place one card from hand into their Clock to draw 2 additional cards.
  • Main Phase: The bulk of a turn, the Main Phase allows the turn player to manage his/her Stage, such as playing characters and shifting their placement, both of which can be done without limit. Most ACT abilities of Characters can be triggered during the Main Phase, and the player may also choose to play Events if there are any in the hand.
  • Climax Phase: The active player may play a Climax Card from her hand to her Climax Area to buff the Characters which are about to battle.
  • Attack Phase: Characters in the active player's stage which are standing can attack the opponent and deal damage to the opponent's Clocknote . The Attack Phase is further split into sub-phases called Steps, as follows:
    • Attack Declaration Step: The active player chooses one of his Character in the Center Stage, chooses the mode of attack and rotates it sideways into Rest. If your opponent has no Character in front of the attacking Character, a Direct Attack is performed. An additional 1 Soul is added to the Character's Soul. If there is an opposing Character in front of the attacking Character, the player may either choose to Front Attack and attacks head on and battles it out with the opponent's Character, or Side Attack to avoid confrontation with the opponent's Character and deals damage to Clock through other means. If the player chooses to Side Attack, the attacking Character's Soul is reduced by the Level of the opponent's Character.
    • Trigger Step: The player performs a Trigger Check by revealing the top card of his deck and checks for any Trigger Icons. Any effects from Trigger Icons are applied here, then put the card into the Stock face down. note 
    • Counter Step: Your opponent may play a card from his hand with a Counter icon and apply its effects. Event Counter cards must fulfil the Level and colour conditions to be played, while Assist Characters need to fulfil the Level conditions only. This step is skipped if the attacking Character perfoms a Direct Attack or Side Attack.
    • Damage Step: Your opponent now reveals cards from the top of his deck one by one, equivalent to the Soul of the attacking Character. If any time a Climax is revealed, your opponent stops revealing cards and places all revealed cards into his Waiting Room, Cancelling the damage done by the attacking Character.
    • Battle Step: If the attacking Character performed a Front Attack, both players compare the Power of the attacking Character and the opposing Character. The Character with the lower Power will be Reversed. Otherwise, this step is skipped and no battle will occur.
    • If the player has any other Characters in the Stand position, he may choose to attack with and begin a new attack starting from the Attack Declaration Step. Otherwise, the Attack Phase will proceed to the final Step.
    • Encore Step: Any reversed cards are now sent to the Waiting Room. However, if the player wishes to save any of his/her reversed Characters, they may Encore, which restores a reversed Character back to rest. Most Characters require the player to pay three Stock to Encore as a universal ability, but any cards with "[AUTO] Encore" effects can use an alternate means of payment to restore a Character.
  • End Phase: The end of the active player's turn. If a Climax Card is in play, it is sent to the Waiting Room. If the turn player has more than seven cards in hand, they must discard cards until their hand size is no greater than seven. All active effects for the current turn lose their effect at this point.

This game provides examples of

    open/close all folders 

    General tropes 
  • Actor Allusion: It happens mostly in series under Bushiroad's banner.
    • Three Mifune Shioriko cards have similar abilites with cards from Revue Starlight. Koizumi Moeka, the voice actress of Shioriko, also did Daiba Nana in Revue Starlight.
    • A Level 0 character voiced by Sora Tokui with the ability to pay 2 Stock to salvage a Milky Holmes character * with the Bond keyword ability for a Level 3 character voiced by Suzuko Mimori appears in both Tantei Opera Milky Holmes and BanG Dream!
  • Anti-Frustration Features: The new Idolmaster Cinderella Girls Trial Decks contains several powerful cards from the Cinderella Girls anime Booster cards to provide newer players access to those cards if they want to pick up the set without needing to be at the mercy of scalpers.
  • Anti-Regeneration: Downplayed. While there are no cards in existence that outright prevents cards to be removed from the clock, a soft anti-healing mechanic exists on some characters when they are in the Memory. Players will then have to either pay an additional 2 Stock or put the top card of the deck into the Clock.
  • Art Shift: Despite being known commonly as Anime: The Card Game, there are instances where real people are visualised in the card. Art shifts can also be seen in long running series like Da Capo, as a result of their native art shifts.
    • A Da Capo III special booster was advertised as the first set featuring real life actors. Specifically, the 5 stage actresses for the Da Capo III stage play in November 2021.
  • Ascended Extra: D4DJ started out as a few promotional cards which did not even have their own set number (instead the PRs uses SPR, for cards which sets are released exclusively as PR cards) until the announcement in September 2022 confirmed their debut for early 2023 with Groovy Mix.
  • Attack Backfire: Anytime a Counter is played can spell doom for the attacking character if the Counter involves a large boost to the defending character's Power.
  • Awesome, yet Impractical: White Day Gift, Wooser. A Level 3 that requires you to pay 14 Stock and has a Power of 20000 and 4 Soul. Once played, you can discard five cards from your hand to put it into your opponent's Level. It's so ridiculously impractical, in fact, that it's banned.note 
    • Deck build that require many specific characters, such as the "MY Mai TONIGHT" deck. These builds have very showy gameplay but suffers from dedicating a significant portion of the 50 card limit into putting specific characters, only to see lack of consistency and glaring weak points bordering Crippling Overspecialization.
    • "CEO of REVOCS, Ragyo". While in theory you can have a monster of a Character with 8 markers to buff her to Level 10 and 32000 Power, it requires extensive amounts of set up to reach that point. It takes at least 4 turns to feed all 4 copies of "Secretary to Ragyo, Hououmaru" to Ragyo, and each time you sacrifice a Hououmaru, an empty slot is left behind for your opponent to direct attack on his next turn. Furthermore, while sacrificing a "Ready-made Nui" to Ragyo gives her even more power, you have take one uncancellable damage as part of the cost to the resurrection. Doing it for 4 copies of Nui means 4 damage done in total. Since all these can only be done from Level 2 onwards, you can take up to 9 damage at most to fully build Ragyo up, but by then either Ragyo can just about overpower anything your opponent can throw, or the game has already ended. Furthermore, Ragyo is susceptible to cards that removes her from the stage and anti-Level abilities, turning all the setup to nothing.
    • "Rausch und/and Craziness" Sayo. Her Climax Combo burns the top 20 cards of your opponent's deck. Since Weiss Schwarz differs from other TCGs in that decking out your opponent is not an Instant-Win Condition, having 3 on stage will make your opponent refresh his deck once or twice, dealing up to two damage at most. Granted, the damage is uncacnellable as it comes from the penalty of refresh, so it is pretty much only lethal if your opponent is at Level 3 with 5 or 6 cards in Clock.
    • The Virtual Rare (VR) cards in the first Project SEKAI booster. While the cards look very pretty (They are essentially OFR cards without text, so that the whole illustration can be seen on the card), to play them in tournaments, you need to bring an extra copy of the card for easy reference by the player and the opponent. It's easier to just use a version with text to remove the hassle of needing to refer to the cards in the side "deck" for the VR cards. Furthermore, the SRs are cheaper than the VRs in the aftermarket, giving VRs even less reason to be actually used in the deck.
  • Back from the Dead: During the Encore Step, you can Encore to save any of your defeated Characters. This generally costs three Stock, although cards with the "Encore" effect are generally cheaper to Encore and may not require Stock. A select few cards can also prevent the opponent from Encoring a reversed character.
  • Beware the Silly Ones: Whether a series has more badass characters or is thematically darker is completely independent of its usefulness in Weiss. For example, To Love Ru, a manga/anime series which is basically known entirely for being extremely Fanservice-laden, is widely considered to be one of the strongest decks in a game.
  • "Blind Idiot" Translation: Some card sites that catalog Japanese cards can come off as this when translating the Japanese text. Averted with the English Weiss cards, whose translations are perfectly fine.
    • Translations in English Weiss do have it own share of issues, the most notable being "Trying On, Kurumi". Pre-errata, the cost for the ability to negate the penalty during a Side Attack calls for two cards to be shuffled back to the deck from the Waiting Room. An errata notice was quickly issued.*
  • Brick Joke: In 2014, a card from the Wooser set parodies a Kaiju attack, and the card's ability, triggered at the start of the player's Attack Phase, is to send all players' Characters into the Waiting Room, and until the end of the opponent's turn, gain 12000 Power, and if the damage done by this card is cancelled, deal the same amount of damage to the opponent again (card text says deal X damage, based on the card's Soul). Cue 2018, with the release of the Godzilla Netflix series, one of the abilities of the Level Godzilla card has the same effects, with the only change being the Power boost reduced to 2000.
  • Boring, but Practical: A lot of cards with above-average power for their level also don't have an ability. A lot of 3000 Power Level 0s and such fall into this category. They exist primarily to kill opposing characters.
    • Sure your Level 3s with high soul count and their big flashy combos will push damage and win the game, but when your opponent is at Level 3 with 6 cards in Clock a humble Level 0 character will be enough to finish him off. In fact, it is more feasible that way due to the risk of overswinging damage leading to a higher chance of revealing a Climax and cancelling the damage.
    • In a meta sense, Weiss only ever needs just a deck of 50 cards to play, as compared to most other contemporary TCGs that requires dice, counters or dedicated marker cards. Even the Going First/Going Second markers are optional, as the turn order can be decided with the time old Rock Paper Scissors.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: There are cards that check for real life conditions, like The Legendary Yamada Tae, which gains 10,000 power only on the 8th of March, and only if both the owner and the opponent are physically in Saga Prefecture, Japan. *
    • Keep in mind that while such cards are far and few in between, they are at least tournament legal. The Milky Holmes Fun Fun Parley Set, a joke set on the same vein as Magic's Unhinged set, has just about every card that pulls off such shenanigans
  • The Bus Came Back: English Disgaea did not receive another expansion after the Disgaea: Hour of Darkness Trial Deck in 2009 until the Disgaea D2 set printed in the West in Summer 2016.
    • THE iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls is slated for a new release set with new trial decks and all in June 2024. The last time Cinderella Girls was printed was in 2016, with the release of Season 2 of the anime.
  • The Cameo: Promotional cards exist for a variety of outside sources, such as Bushiroad's other popular CCG Cardfight!! Vanguard, The Anime of the Game Weiss Survive, and even things like Culture Japan and Weiss's own mascot. Since none of these cards belong to a set, they can only be played in formats that allow Standard or Advanced deck building.
  • Cannon Fodder: "Prinny Squad" is a reference to Prinnies basically being this; you can stack an unlimited number in your deck, and their main purpose is to be sacrificed to weaken an opposing Character.
  • Card Cycling: On top of the pre-game mulligan, the Clock rule allows the player to put one card into the Clock to draw 2 cards from the deck. Clocking is usually encouraged unless you are 1 damage away from losing the game (i.e. Level 3 with 6 Clock) or have such a massive hand size that you would be forced to discard cards from hand during the End Phase.
    • Most Level 0 characters have an ability or 2 with card cycling effects as well. The utility of such cards is prevalent even into the late game, as they can be used to set up the hand at any time.
  • Cast from Hit Points: The Accelerate keyword ability, where their costs involve putting cards (usually from the top of the deck) into the Clock. Abilities with putting cards into the Clock without the keyword exists as well, such as President of the Occult Research Club, Akane, paying 1 cost and putting the top card of the deck into the Clock to search the deck for a Level 1 or below Character.
  • CCG Importance Dissonance: The game is guilty of this in a narrativistic instead of mechanical way. This game runs on Rule of Cool versus Rule of Cute; it tries to replicate the awesome (or heartwarming, or sad) moment of the licensed anime in its cards. To do that, it allows itself to print several different version of the same characters, even if it's just a minor or situational variation. The downside of this, owing to the limit of cards in each expansion, is that characters whose appearances are few and far between gets less cards and decks built around them are less versatile (if building such deck is even possible)— even if they are far more capable in-story than the spotlight-hogging main characters.
    • The "Nanako in a Yukata" card is stronger than the "Naoto" card. Except Nanako is the main character's 6-year-old cousin, whereas Naoto is a detective with a gun, not to mention the latter is also a fully playable party member.
    • Silica is another example of this. While in the anime she barely appeared for more than a few episodes and only appearing as one of Kirito's possible love interests, there's a whole entire set of her in both volumes of the series' respective boosters, which has been shown in tournaments to be a Game-Breaker sometimes. Her signed card is priced at $75, and that's just her Level 0 variant!
  • Cherry Tapping: A common strategy is to strike with characters you know are going to deal only one point of damage before you strike with the heavy hitters. Reason being that due to the Climax Cancel mechanic, any damage value inflicted beyond two points becomes incredibly high risk/high reward, since a single Climax Card showing up anywhere in the mill invalidates the entire attack. By only inflicting a single point of damage, the odds of that hit landing are higher and if a Climax Cancel occurs, the loss is completely minimal and your opponent now has one less Climax they can use to potentially stop a massive hit.
  • Collectible Card Game: Heavy emphasis on the word "collectable". The game's unique claim to fame is its gold-foiled signed cards from characters and actors/actresses from popular anime and video game series. This makes them extraordinarily valuable collector's items and can fetch insane amounts of value on secondhand markets based on the individual popularity of each character.
  • Collective Identity: The so-called "boss combo" of a Titan-oriented deck involves summoning three Characters that are all simply different parts of the Colossal Titan.
  • Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Generally, each colour has certain abilities that are only present in that colour and all colours have certain themes. Yellow revolves around sending opponents to hand or Stock and own turn buffs, with many a search through Deck. Green revolves a lot around power, exchanging cards with Clock and maintaining or adding Stock. Red contains pick up abilities that allow retrieval of cards from Waiting Room and a lot of unique effects that are red exclusive. Blue has draw engines, heal spam mechanics, and normally buffs on opponent's turn.
  • Combat Medic: Some Level 3 Characters have the ability to restore one damage by sending the top card of your Waiting Room into your Clock.
  • Comeback Mechanic: The whole idea behind the Level system. As you Level Up, you gain the ability to play stronger cards and fight back harder, but every level you gain also puts you one step closer to defeat.
  • Competitive Balance: Cards with very high power for their level tend to have drawbacks, although how the drawback affects their usefulness tends to vary. 3500+ Power Level 0s, 7000+ Power Level 1s, and 9000+ Power Level 2s generally fall into this category.
  • Compilation Re-release: The Re:Edit sets, which reprints some of the old cards to be released with new ones. May also fall into Updated Re-release for the old cards as their abilities may be reworked.
  • Creator Cameo: Not any of the producers of Weiss, but the founder of Bushiroad himself, Kidani, is featured in a Climax Card to celebrate his 63rd birthday.
  • Crippling Overspecialization: Titan decks don't do much else besides buffing their Power. This means they suffer from a severe lack of support effects. Fittingly, as in Attack on Titan, you can beat a Titan deck if you're simply persistent enough.
    • Decks based on specific characters. Waifu Decks are built based on the characters the player likes in the series at the expense of cards with better effects.
    • The BanG Dream! set based on the second season of the anime has a problem of most cards in that set checking for the band specific trait instead of the common Music trait. At best, it is only viable for a Japanese exclusive event known as Band League, a tournament format where players are locked to using cards associated with one of the 8 bands in the series.
  • Crossover: A very tiny selection of cards are compatible with more than one deck in Neo-Standard, and are usually PR cards that are based on actual crossovers between two franchises. All of these cards are also exclusive to the Japanese version of the game.
    • "Costume Change!? Sharo and Yume" is a Milky Holmes card that can be used in Da Capo / Dal Segno decks. The artwork features Sharo from Milky Holmes and Yume Asakura from Da Capo II swapping outfits.
    • "Fantasic Mascot Suzuta Miyako" is a Key/Visual Arts card that can be used in Little Busters! decks. It features the titular character in Kudryavka Noumi's outfit.
    • "50cc Rider Tonokawa Yuuto" is a Key/Visual Arts card that can be used in Rewrite decks.
    • "Together with Puyo Rin" is a generic card that can be used in both Love Live! School Idol Project and Puyo Puyo sets. It is based on a real collaboration between the two franchises that has Rin Hoshizora dressing up as Arle from Puyo Puyo.
    • "Aqua and Haruhi" is a Sneaker Bunko card that is compatible with both KonoSuba and Haruhi Suzumiya sets. As the name implies, it features Aqua from KonoSuba and Haruhi Suzumiya together on one card.
    • "On the Summer-Blooming Hill Kanade & Hina & Nao" is a The Day I Became a God card that can be used in Angel Beats, Kud Wafter, and Charlotte decks. The card features artwork of Kanade from Angel Beats!, Hina from The Day I Became a God, and Nao from Charlotte.
    • "Poppin' Party x Tokino Sora". "Pastel Palettes x Minato Aqua", and "Hello, Happy World! x Shirakami Fubuki are designated as BanG Dream! cards that can be used in hololive decks.
  • Counter-Attack: The Counter cards, which give the defending player an advantage against the opposing character. Many of these involve boosting the defending Character's Power, but some, like "Compass" from the Kantai Collection set, enable other effects like Brainstorm.
    • Countering Soul damage also appears on a few cards, where you inflict the same amount of damage to your opponent when you take damage.
  • Death or Glory Attack: The gimmick behind Sayaka cards. Many of them have crazy Power and/or extremely strong effects, but if a Sayaka card is defeated, it's sent straight to Memory.
  • Difficulty by Region: English Weiss buffs and nerfs a handful of cards from Japanese Weiss, which can make some strategies that work in one version useless in the other, and open up new strategies that only work in one version and don't work in the other. English Weiss has a vastly different lineup compared to Japanese Weiss such that the same series can have lackluster representation in the Japanese format while topping in the English format.
  • Discard and Draw:
    • The Clock rule enables you to put one card from your hand into the Clock, thus incurring one point of damage, to draw two cards. It's generally highly recommended that you abuse the hell out of this rule to cycle bad cards for good cards and constantly mill your deck until you hit Level 3, when your damage actually begins to matter.
    • The "Brainstorm" effects, which require you to pay a cost to mill out (read: discard from deck to Waiting Room) four cards, and apply a certain effect (depending on the card) for every Climax Card sent to Waiting Room by this effect. While you lose four cards, and you lose Climaxes that you could potentially use or keep in the deck to Cancel damage, the effects of "Brainstorm" can potentially help you out in a tight spot.
  • Distaff Counterpart: Weiss Schwarz Blau, a Spin-Off of Weiss targeted towards the female audience, featuring series such as The Prince of Tennis, Uta No Prince-sama and Strawberry Prince, often with a focus on Bishōnen characters. On the Disney side of things, it has sets based on the Disney Animated Canon and, surprisingly,note  Twisted Wonderland.
  • Double Entendre: Climax Cards and Climax Area.
  • Draw Aggro: The Great Performance ability. When a character with that keyword ability is in the front row center slot, attacks done by the opponent's left and right characters are directed to that character instead and are regarded as front attacks.
  • Dub Name Change:
    • While some of the more liberal translations are left out by simply not bringing the card to English Edition, it's clear that English Edition Weiss borrows song names from the Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA series directly from their given Sega of America localizations, such as "Remote Control" becoming "Remote Controller", "Nijigen Dream Fever" being shortened to "2D Dream Fever", and so forth.
    • Curiously, the Overlord set is one of the only sets to have its entire title changed, presumably due to legal issues.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: On a meta level; the first English Weiss cards were from the Disgaea: Hour of Darkness set in 2009, but back then Weiss Schwarz had not actually started running in English, so the Disgaea Trial Deck was little more than a souvenir. Weiss would not start fully producing the English version until 2013.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: The Disgaea: Hour of Darkness and Kantai Collection Trial Decks look notably different from current cards due to the usage of different font and image prints. The current style of the cards stuck by the release of the Kantai booster set.
    • On the Japanese side of things, there exist mechanics that has pretty much fallen out in favour of more competitive gameplay.
      • Climaxes used to only come in +2 Soul and +1000 Power +1 Soul. Climaxes with more advanced abilites are added in later sets, such as adding a card into stock and giving +1 Soul to all characters.
      • The original game has 4 Special Triggers (Wind, Bag, Door, Book). Shot and Treasure were added in 2009 with Haruhi, Gate in 2013 with Prisma Ilya, Standby in 2017 with BanG Dream!, and Choice in 2020 with BanG Dream! Season 2. Shot and Treasure were in the game for so long it can be mistaken for being present since the start of the game.
      • There used to be +1000 Power +1 Soul climaxes with Double Soul triggers. +1000 Power +1 Soul climaxes are found exclusively with Special Triggers
      • Climaxes that add 1 stock and +1 Soul to all characters used to provide the stock straight from the deck. Now the source of the stock is a card from the waiting room that matches the climax's colour. These climaxes are also making less of an appearance.
      • Vanilla cards were held in higher regard in the past, where Level 1 Cost 0 vanillas can be considered a rare card. Vanillas in the current metagame are treated as booster fillers (although some of the more recent booster have vanillas that have some interaction with other cards).
      • Trial Decks used to contain mostly of cards that will later appear in the booster as commons and uncommons, and some TD exclusive cards will only have one copy in the deck. Trial Decks were later overhauled into Trial Deck+ in 2017 (until it got renamed as TD again in 2022, taking effect from Azur Lane onwards), where all the cards are exclusive to the TD+, and guranteed minimum 2 of each card in the deck.
  • Escape Battle Technique: Runners. These cards' effect activates duing the opponent's attack phase, where they can move into an empty slot in the front row. Free runners allow them to move without restriction while mill runners require the top card to be milled before they are allowed to run, and only if the milled card fits a certain trait.
    • "My Fate to Bear,Eren" and "Qualities of a Maiden, Eriri" allow the playet to return them from hand if they are front attack, provided that they have reversed the opponent characters during the turn prior with their respective climaxes played. Eriri's effect even extends to one other character to be returned to the hand.
    • Part of the effect of Anti-Titan Device "Omni-Directional Mobility Gear", a Level 1 event card from the Attack on Titan set, applies as well, which comes in two flavours. The first one is a Cost 0 event that has a similar effect as a runner. The second one returns the character bach to the hand for 1 cost.
  • Exact Words: Effects that affect character by name will state "with 'X' in name". In the Japanese version this applies not only to the character's name literally, but also the descriptive text in the full name of the card. A card that can searches for Tae in BanG Dream can not only search for Tae in Zombieland Saga (both Taes' name are in hiragana), it can also search for "Flustered, Eriri" from Saekano and "Flustered, Shion" from Milky Holmes (Flustered translates to urotaeru).
  • Expansion Pack: Some of the series only come in these, while some Boosters have these to increase the card count in a series.
  • First-Player Advantage Mitigation: The player that goes first is allowed to attack only once on their first turn. This rule not only prevents a very large damage gap before the players, but it will also reduce the number of Stock the player going first has.
  • Four Is Death: The goal of the game is to get your opponent to Level 4 while avoiding the same fate yourself.
  • Free Prize at the Bottom: Bushiroad began selling protein bars than contain Roselia PR cards beginning in September 2023, and MyGO!!!!!! and Ave Mujica protein bars in February 2024. Another series of protein bars will be sold in May 2024, and all these contain PR cards as well. These protein bars are also sold at certain events in limited quantites before their general release date. As for the PRs themselves, they are mostly reprints of existing card profiles with alternate artwork.
  • Fusion Dance: Used in a few sets such as Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Fairly weak on its own, characters with the Fusion ACT ability summons a more powerful character on stage from the player's deck, then both the character with the Fusion ability and one other specific character on the Stage will be put under the summoned character as markers.
  • Glass Cannon: "Bloodstained Devil, Chainsaw Man'', the cover card of the eponymous set. A 0/0 beater that can be played right away and reach 9000+ Power very easily — but only on your turn. If he stays on the Stage during your opponent's turn, he goes back to his baseline Power of 1000, and if he gets Reversed then you add one card to your Clock.
    • Characters with "During your turn, this card has +10000 Power" have pitiful base power of around 3000 Power, on a Level 2.
  • Gondor Calls for Aid: Essentially what Counters do. The Character under attack calls for another Character's support and they add Power to the Character.
  • Gratuitous German: The title, which means "White Black".
  • Hoist by His Own Petard:
    • "Clumsy Girl, Haruka" from Idolmaster does 1 damage to all players whenever she is put into Rest from Stand, which includes attacking. Problem is, in the rules, whenever anything happens to both players, the player that is currently having their turn will have the action taken against them first before their opponent. So if you are at 1 damage away from losing the game and only have Haruka left to attack...
    • The Level 3/1 Cost Counter in the Shiyoko set is a mill one from Deck to Waiting Room; if that card is Level 1 or higher, two of your opponent's Characters get +6 Soul. This ensures that their minimum damage floor is at least 7, which is extreme overkill for any form of attack and has an extremely high chance to hit a Climax Cancel on the way, which is the point of the Counter. However, if you wound up playing it while you're low on Climaxes...
    • Shortly before the release of hololive volume 2, there was a blog post detailing a potential combo with "#Sketcromancer, Uruha Rushia" and "STELLAR into the GALAXY, Hoshimachi Suisei". The strategy was to use Suisei's Climax Combo to send all opponent's Characters into the Memory, then put them in any slot as the player chooses. However, because Rushia's ability prevents the opponent's Character facing her to be sent to the memory, that Character will remain on the Stage, which will then be sent to the Waiting Room when the Characters return to the Stage by placing one returning Character over a Character already on the Stage. However, Suisei's ability states "You may send all of your opponent's Characters to the Memory", thus by official ruling, if you are unable to send any Character into the Memory (e.g. Rushia's ability), you cannot send any Characters to Memory at all.
  • Instant-Win Condition: "Sorceror Supreme, Dr. Strange" has an ability where you reveal the top 8 cards, and if the 8 cards are all climaxes, you win the game instantly. That said, the odds of that happening at the first player's turn is about 1 in 177 million, so the Avengers has a better chance at defeating Thanos in the Infinity War than you winning with Dr. Strange's ability.
  • Jack of All Trades: There's a reason as to why Kantai Collection was once regarded as one of the best sets in the game: in addition to having a lot of just plain good cards, Kantai has an answer to nearly every type of deck gimmick. This makes it extremely easy to put something together out of Kantai cards that will check practically any deck you want.
  • Joke Character: "Wooser Rares", a special type of rare card in the Wooser's Hand-to-Mouth Life set. These cards have absurd joke effects, such as "Shopping, Wooser", which requires the player to pay two Stock and go buy a booster pack to select a single Character from the booster pack and play it on the Stage. Due to their effects, Wooser Rares are tourney illegal.
    • The entire premise of the new Milky Holmes Extra Pack. With the exception of 6 cards in the pack of MR rarity, every card in it has absurd effects and just like the Wooser Rares, are tournament illegal. Some hilarious cards include:
      • Ahahahaha Sharo: A Level 3, Cost 2 character with 10000 Power and 15 Soul! The Climax she uses for CX Combo has a Wind, Shot and Door trigger all together, which its effect is to laugh like a maniac while the card is on the Climax Area. The combo lets Sharo front all characters simultaneously.
      • My Essay, Eri: Essentially a vanilla card, but has a QR code which brings you to the Milky Holmes Fanclub page.
      • The Great Police of Yokohama, Kokoro: A Level 4, Cost 3 character with 15000 Power and 2 Soul. If you know the game well then a Level 4 is unsummonable normally. (The card was meant to mimic a G-Unit from Cardfight Vanguard)
      • Impact Scene, Cordelia: A Level 1, Cost 0 Character with 5000 Power and 1 Soul. When the card is put into the stage you are supposed to mimic Cordelia, which after that this card gains a Marker. While this card has a Marker, if you or your opponent touches that card, that player takes 2 damage.
  • Late-Arrival Spoiler: Considering how the game is based on simulating the scenes of the anime, resistance is futile. It gets even more tragic is when you plan on watching your favorite Magical Girl series and this comes up.note 
  • Loads and Loads of Rules: The rules provided in the page above is a very simplified version of the comprehensive rulebook (a 21-page PDF document which as of 16th of February, 2024, is at version 1.103) to show the turn and attack order. Learning that is enough to appreciate basic gameplay, but the comprehensive rulebook contains a lot of rules regarding many things not included in the basic rulesheet bundled with Trial Decks, and contains advaned topics such as Check Timing, resolution of abilites etc. The rules are so comprehensive, each section of the rules have their own sub-section, which have their own sub-section, to the point that in the rulebook, there is a sub-section of the rule numbered 8.7.4.1.1.
  • Loophole Abuse: An enterprising way to fully utilise "Galaxy" Sumire is to cycle 2 characters with Clock Encore (Encore with the cost being placing the top card of the deck into the Clock). Since Encore can be activated as long as that character is placed into the Waiting Room regardless of timing, you can bump yourself to Level 3 with 6 cards in Clock to fulfill Sumire's effect requirement.
    • While there already exists a card with Clock Encore in the set ("1st Year Student" Hazuki Ren), "ShiroKuro Fes" Shiyoko is much preferred as she can be played for 0 cost. Not only does that particular Shiyoko belong to the universal set of cards that can be put in any set under the current deckbuilding rules, she also has the Music trait shared with the Love Live! Superstar!! set.
  • Luck-Based Mission: Not taking damage amounts to effectively praying that Climaxes show up when you want them to. Some hits you want to take, some hits you don't, so it's all about hoping that you get them at the right time. You can make this easier by using a strategy called "compression", in which you take out as many non-Climax Cards in your deck as possible to increase the odds of hitting a Climax on a damage check, but it's still fairly RNG. A common practice at the end of a game is to flip the next card after a game-ending damage check to see if it's a Climax. The odds of the next card actually being a Climax tends to be uncomfortably high.
  • Magikarp Power:
    • The Level 1 Yubari included in the first Kantai set. It has an incredibly lengthy effect description that includes both power boosting effects and a restriction, that which being that she can't be played if you have less than two damage on your Clock. Once on the field, she's a fairly bog standard Level 1, with 4500 Power and situational bonuses. However, she packs a nasty check against retrieval from Waiting Room, and if you play her from Level 2 onward, during which most of her effects can easily be activated, her base power nearly doubles to 8000, putting her on par with medium-high grade Level 2s, which can be further augmented if your opponent is foolish enough to salvage.
    • A PR Eren Jaeger card given away during Anime Expo 2015 is a Level 0 with a measly 2500 Power. Its sole effect? Add 2500 Power multiplied by the Level of the Character facing it. If it's opponent is a Level 3, this Level 0 suddenly has a base Power value of 10,000.
    • Some cards start out with a fairly weak base power but becomes stronger with each opponent character they reversed. As they gain more markers from battling they become beefy powerhouses necessating unconventional methods of removal.
  • Mana Meter: Stock, which is used to pay for Costs required to play a Character, Effect Costs, and standard Encores. Stock is largely gained by attacking, where the card used for a Trigger Check is placed face-down into Stock. However, some effects and Climax Cards can also throw extra cards into Stock to bolster your resources.
  • Manipulating the Opponent's Deck: Plenty.
    • "Accepting Feelings" Aoba Moca allows the player to look at the opponent's top 2 cards and can choose to put any of the cards in the waiting room, and return the rest to the top of the deck. Any climaxes unfortunate enough to appear in those two cards will usually be milled out, denying the opponent a chance to cancel.
    • Icy Tail Michiru discards the bottom 4 cards of the opponent's deck and deals damage to them based on how many climaxes were discarded that way.
  • Massive Multiplayer Crossover: You could more or less pitch Weiss to someone who's never heard of it as "Anime Fights Anime: The Card Game". Or, alternatively, "Star Wars Fights Anime: The Card Game".
    • Within the game, the three Bunko series (Kadokawa Sneaker, Fujimi Fantasia, Dengeki) are this as well, having cards from various titles with the only common point being having the same publisher for their respective light novels.
  • Me's a Crowd: Titans like to power themselves up by sharing a Center Stage with other cards of the same name. This encourages the player to build a deck around getting three of the same card on the field for maximum power.
  • Mundane Utility: The "Janken..." event from Gochiusa allows the user to choose 1 character to give +1000 Power, then both players play rock paper scissors, with the winner drawing once card from the deck. Some players use it to determine the turn order in a game instead.
  • Mutually Exclusive Party Members: How the banlist usually works in neo-standard.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • Some card effects reference characters or character relationships in their source material. For example, Kyoko cards are able to summon Sayaka cards, and Kitakami can swap herself out with Kitakami-Kai-Ni if the player also has an Ooi-Kai-Ni.
    • The Event card "Unfortunately, It Was a SAFE" is a reference to the SAFE designation in Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA, which is notorious for breaking combos and ruining Perfect runs. It's also one of the only cards that uses a non-standard font for text, opting to use the actual "SAFE" display from the game for the card's title.
    • "Today's Ultimate Ragnarok" Yoshiko Tsushima requires you to play rock-paper-scissors with your opponent; if you lose the game, all of your characters get +2000 Power. The effect on losing rock-paper-scissors refers to Yoshiko's notoriously bad luck at the game (since she always picks scissors).
    • Princess Connect Re:Dive, despite being based on the anime, makes references to the mobile game by translating their in-game abilities to the card game. For instance, Tamaki may choose to Front Attack a character in the Back Stage, referencing her Mage Killer Union Burst (although technically, Tamaki only appears in the anime in her Swimsuit variant, which has a different Union Burst).
    • The only SEC rarity character in Vento Aureo? It's none other than the equally secretive gang leader Diavolo.
    • "Aura the Guillotine" from Frieren has a Climax Combo where Aura chooses the Character in front of her to compare Power when the "Scales of Obedience" Climax is put into the Climax Zone. Whoever has the lower Power will be put into the owner's Clock Zone, emulating this game's version of "death". So far no Frieren cards that can add a massive amount of Power to No-Sell Aura's Climax Combo yet...
  • No-Sell: Some cards have the ability to become untargetable by your opponent's card effects. These intangibility effects are also usually temporary.
    • Some event cards negates all damage done to the player by that character, which includes any other damage done by that character's effects.
    • Happens any time a player draws a climax card for damage.
  • Not Completely Useless: A Step Towards the Future, Tsunomaki Watame has an ability which can send an opponent's Cost 0 Character into the Waiting Room, but the target Character must be either Green or have the Bell Pepper trait. At the time of release, literally no card has Bell Pepper trait (unless Hololive can somehow gain access to Hiyori, Thinking There from Lucky Star, or Provocation from King of Fighters, neither card legally playable in Standard format since June 2023 for other reasons.), until "Bell Pepper Gymnastics, Arima Kana", which does have the Bell Pepper trait, and is a Cost 0 as well. Subverted that Oshi no Ko does not have green cards, so Watame can only target that particular Kana, and no one else.
  • Obvious Rule Patch: Lucky Star has "Speedrunner" Miyuki, which on the turn she is summoned, gains 50 soul. A few enterprising players attempted to trigger an infinite loop by using her against a deck with no climaxes, creating an issue that causes refresh without any cards in the Waiting Room. The rules were eventually revised such that a player automatically loses if he has no cards in the Waiting Room if a Refresh is required. note 
    • While most cards in the Standard banlist are cards that are either Game Breakers or as part of an infinite loop, Kirche in her Overly Long Name form is banned in Standard to prevent 5 minutes of dispute arising from every "X in name" effect from other cards.
    • Recent sets have a condition tagged to abilities that sends that character into the Memory if they can be sent there without paying Stock or discarding cards from the hand (Usually if there are 2 or less cards already in the Memory area.) in an effort to curb excessive Memory compression playstyles.
    • Season Maintainence are minor updates to the banlist to curb Game-Breaker decks in the middle of Japan's major tourney season. Introduced in late 2021, the first build to fall victim is the Superstar deck described in Loophole Abuse.
    • The early Shiyoko promo cards (marked SI) are now only usable with the Card Game Shiyoko (marked CGS). Previously it wasn't restricted to any set, until people began to abuse the Encore ability of "Shirokuro Fes, Shiyoko", firstly with the abovementioned Sumire, then with all other decks to push themselves to Level 3 to use their finishers.
  • Original Generation: The Card Game Shiyoko set is the only Weiss Schwarz series not based on a pre-existing anime, manga, or video game franchise.
  • Painting the Medium: "Girl Who Loves Card Games, Man, Shiyoko" is actually a two-panel manga-style card where two characters discuss the effect of said card. The card's effect is even written vertically like in a manga. One of the characters notes this.
    • Two Shiyoko PR cards released for April Fools' 2023, "Mascot Girl, Shiyoko-chan" and "Shiyoko the Card Gamer", have their respective "year of release" as their power (1973 for "Mascot Girl," 1933 for "Card Gamer"), have the "TV Manga" and "Cartoon" trait for "Mascot Girl" and "Card Gamer" respectively. Both cards use the prototype card layout (the same ones as that in the Chronicle Set), and to paint it even further, "Card Gamer" loses all colour while she is in the Stage, and cannot gain any colour, since she was "created" during the era of black-and-white TV.
  • Poor, Predictable Rock: In competitive play, To Love Ru is simultaneously considered one of the best sets in the game and one of the worst sets. It's the best set because it has a good toolbox of options to work with that can pull off obscene Game-Breaker combos. It's the worst set because there are only so many Game-Breaker combos. In other words, To Love Ru is insanely strong, but because all competitively viable decks pretty much do only a handful of things and always in the exact same way, they're easy to hard counter.
    • Since 2017, newer sets have been favouring Climax combos for midgame and endgame. As such, you can make an educated guess on what your opponent's deck will have by looking at his Waiting Room in the mulligan, especially if he ditches a climax during that phase.
  • Powered by a Forsaken Child: The gimmick behind hololive 3rd Generation characters are sacrificing another hololive character as a cost to their effects.
  • Power Levels: Though Power Levels is used here, Soul determines the damage.
    • Meta seems to be going in this direction lately, with new series coming up with more ways to buff the Power of a Character.
  • The Power of Friendship: A Character with a Bond ability can use its effect to recover a specific card from the Waiting Room.
  • Power Up Letdown: Some Extra Boosters aren't particularly useful in terms of adding to what a deck can do, since they tend to consist of a bunch of bonus cards. For example, Kantai Collection: Fleet in the Deep Sea, Sighted! can only be really used as splashables; trying to build around them in an actual Kantai deck won't really work due to many of the effects calling on a main type that isn't Fleet Girl. For the record, that also works the other way around.
  • Promotional Powerless Piece of Garbage: Bushiroad handles shop tourneys by giving participants promo cards simply by playing. As a result, a fair number of them don't really do anything useful, such as "Prinny Squad", whose only purpose is to chuck Prinnies at a target to decrease its Power at the cost of sacrificing valuable deck space. Same goes for PR (Promo Rare) cards, which are typically just alt-art variants of regular cards and are thus no more powerful than the standard version.
    • Inverted with "Wishing for the Shine Kasumi". For sending one card into the Waiting room, this Kasumi searches the deck for one "Happy Christmas Kasumi" and one "Something in the Warehouse". Long story short: Shine Kasumi searches for Christmas Kasumi and Event > puts 3 Christmas Kasumi on the stage and play Event 3 times > Christmas Kasumi CX Combo retrieves Event from Waiting Room > Repeat for as long as you want. As the PR Kasumi is Level 0, one Event will always be able to retrieve 1 copy of it. It was limited to one copy for one season before fully banned in the following season.
  • Recursive Adaptation: Luck & Logic was originally another Bushiroad card game venture, but after its ill-fated demise its Lighter and Softer sequel HinaLogi became a Weiss Schwarz set.
  • Rocket-Tag Gameplay: The metagame has been slowly shifting towards this kind of playstyle around 2017, with a greater focus in Climax Combos at Level 1 and Level 3. Due to the increasing prevalence of Level 3 Combos providing extra damage, it is not uncommon to see the Clock Zone filled up suddenly towards the endgame.
  • Serious Business:
    • SP and SSPnote  cards are very highly valued among collectors due to being autographed in shiny gold foil and can go for potentially hundreds of dollars/tens of thousands of yen if sold, depending on the popularity of the character. SSP Shimakaze-Kai-Ni was once regaled as the most expensive Weiss card in the English TCG, only to be beaten by CSMR First Taste, Makima, which can go for well upwards of $1,000.
    • Professional players tend to count the number of climaxes that appear during their matches (both their own and their opponent's) so as to know when is a good time to push for damage.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Its an anime card game after all. Many characters from other series end up in a card, with their respective quotes from the series.
    • The card "'First Blood' Furious Shiyoko" features Shiyoko in a Rambo-esque outfit, but with boxes of Weiss Schwarz cards instead of assault rifles.
  • Squishy Wizard: Assist Characters and Counters are generally this. Both are largely useless in actual combat, as their Power is usually very low. However, Assist Characters can be placed in the Back Stage to grant the Center Stage cards buffs, such as Power boosts, and Counters can be used from the hand to turn a fight around when your Character isn't strong enough.
  • Suicide Attack: Even if you lose a battle, you still deal Soul Damage to Clock despite your character being defeated. In dire situations, this can be a legitimate strategy to push damage.
  • Summon Bigger Fish: The Change effect. Cards with Change can pay a cost and discard themselves to replace themselves with a stronger card, usually related to the initial character.
    • This is the whole point behind the KanColle set. Many Characters have "-Kai" or "-Kai-Ni" versions that are in some way stronger, and via card effects, those initial characters can trade up to their stronger versions.
    • The recently introduced Standby trigger. When such climaxes are triggered or played from the hand, the player may choose a character that is up to 1 level higher than their current level from their waiting room and play it onto the stage in Rest. Some cards that have climax combos that can bypass the summoning sickness, one type (e.g. "Sleepover Party" Kuro) pays a cost when the Standby climax is played from the hand to choose a chatacter to put it to Stand. The other type (e.g. "King of Beasts" Lion) pays a cost to restand itself when called onto the Stage by the climax's effect (This can be either the Standby played from hand or triggered during the Trigger Step)
  • Taking You with Me: Known to the metagame as "Suiciders", these cards are fairly weak, but have an effect that reverses the opposing Character when they themselves are reversed in combat, which can easily break down a wall of high-powered Characters or force the opponent to waste valuable Stock to Encore. These are commonly Level 0 cards, but there are also some Level 1s and 2s, alongside special cards.
  • The Anime of the Game: Weiß Survive, though due to copyright issues, only original cards are shown, which severely diminishes its draw. The plot is also non-existent.
  • Tier System: All cards are sorted into individual rarities, each of which are denoted by the letter code next to the card's card code. The basic rarities are Common/Climax Common, Uncommon, Rare/Climax Rare, RR (Double Rare), RR+ (Double Rare+, only in some sets), RRR (Triple Rare), and SR (Super Rare). Past this is where it starts getting interesting, as follows:
    • SP (Special): A Weiss Schwarz exclusive rarity used to denote cards with signatures on them. These cards are emblazoned with a signature from that character's voice actor/actress in brilliant gold foiling and carry extraordinary value. Certain sets have an upgrade of this rarity called SSP (Super Special Rare) which has an even more extravagant appearance than the base SP.
    • OFR (Over Frame Rare): A rarity that features cards without a card text border or Weiss/Schwarz wings at the bottom of the card, backed by a distinct foiling pattern across the entire card. Limited to some Trial Deck+ and specific sets. Rarity distribution is typically rarer than SP.
    • XR (Extra Rare): A parallel rarity to SP that has a rarity distribution of 1 guaranteed copy per box, making them significantly more common than SP. Their qualities are otherwise identical to a standard SP. This rarity was introduced by the Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA set and is exclusive to a very limited number of sets.
    • SEC (Secret): A special rarity above SP dedicated to specific sets. Specific appearance varies by the set, but they are generally about as rare as SSP. note 
    • Beyond those above, an innumerable number of sets have set-specific rarities that all have unique appearances and have the potential to be just as rare if not rarer than the base rarities. These include:
      • WR (Wooser Rare): Tournament-illegal cards with bizarre and impractical effects. Used in the Wooser's Hand to Mouth Life set.
      • GR (Gigant Rare): Special cards made of thicker-than-usual cardstock. Can be used in tournaments as long as the entire deck uses GR-rarity cards. Used in the Gigant Big-shot Tsukasa set.
      • PPR (Poppin' Rare): A variant rarity that features special artwork of the members of "Poppin' Party" and unique foil. Used in the BanG Dream! sets.
      • SPM (Special Member): Signed cards that come in two foil variants for each card. Used in the BanG Dream! Girls Band Party! sets.
      • HR (High Rare): A variant rarity that features glitter foil. Used in the BanG Dream! Girls Band Party! Special Pack.
      • BDR (BanG Dream! Rare): A Climax Card rarity that features one of the band's logos foil-stamped on the card. Used in the BanG Dream! Girls Band Party! Special Pack.
      • MR (Milky Rare): Designates cards that were released in the "Joke Booster: Mikly Holmes Fan Fan Parley Pack". Otherwise identical to standard cards, but cards with a "Joke" icon on them can't be used in tournaments and have strange effects, similar to Wooser Rares.
      • SWR (Star Wars Rare): A special Climax Card rarity that features illustrated versions of famous Star Wars movie scenes with lines from the movies foil-stamped on the card. Used in the Star Wars set.
      • FR (Friends Rare): A variant rarity to RR that features Super-Deformed versions of characters. Used in the Kemono Friends set.
      • FXR (FRANXX Rare): A variant rarity that features a FRANXX logo foil-stamped on the card. Used in the DARLING in the FRANXX set.
      • GGR (Gun Gale Rare): A variant rarity that features lines from Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online along with unique designs foil-stamped onto the card. Used in the Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online set.
      • STR (Starlight Rare): A variant rarity to regular SPs that features an image of the character's actress in-costume from the Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight stage production and alternate foil-stamp. Unique for its limited-production distribution, with just 99 copies of each of the eight cards in the rarity made. Used in the Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight set.
      • BNP (Brand New Parallel): A rarity similar to RR+ that features glitter foil variants of Common and Rare cards in The Idolm@ster: Million Live set.
      • FBR (Fujimi Fantasia Bunko Rare) / SBR (Sneaker Bunko Rare): Similar to a regular SP, but features the signature of the character's author instead of the character's voice actor/actress. Used in the Fujimi Fantasia Bunko and Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko sets respectively.
      • JJR (JoJo Rare): A unique rarity that features stills from the anime adaptation of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure with the series' signature sound effects or lines from the show foil-stamped onto the card. Unlike most card rarities, this rarity extends to some Climax Cards. Introduced in the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind set.
      • TGR (Teikokukagekidan Rare): A variant rarity to SSP that features the main characters of Sakura Wars (2019) alongside their mechs and signatures from the characters instead of the voice actors/actresses. Used in the Sakura Wars set.
      • HYR (Hanayome Rare): A variant rarity that features frameless cards of the five heroines of The Quintessential Quintuplets as they appear in the ED from the anime adaptation. Used in The Quintessential Quintuplets set.
      • SGNM (Suginami): A variant rarity featuring Recurring Extra Suginami. All four versions are parallels of each other. Used in the Circus 20th Anniversary set.
      • ACS (Alchemic Secret): A rarity featured in the Senki Zesshou Symphogear XV' set.
      • RTR (Round Table Rare): A rarity featured in the Fate/Grand Order: The Sacred Round Table Realm: Camelot set.
      • LL (Liella! Rare): A variant rarity to RR that uniquely features alt art for five specific cards in the Love Live! Superstar!! set. Each of the five cards has four LL variants that pair the girl with another Liella! character (such as the "Kanon Shibuya" card having "Kanon Shibuya & Tang Keke" and "Kanon Shibuya & Sumire Heanna" variants), making 20 different LL rarity cards.
      • HLP (Hololive Parallel): A rarity featured in the "Premium Booster hololive Production" special set sold at hololive SUPER EXPO 2022, as well as the Premium Booster hololive Production Summer Collection set sold at hololive SUPER EXPO 2024. These cards feature a gold-bordered text box and gold foil card elements paired with a silver shatterfoil border and a distinct holographic foiling pattern on the rest of the card. Every pack is guaranteed to have either an HLP or an SP in its 5th card slot, with the SPs in these sets having unique set-exclusive designs.
      • VR (Visual Rare): A variant rarity that features cards without text, the colored backplate at the bottom, or the black Schwarz wings. VR cards are treated by game rules as having the text of its regular counterpart card, but you must bring a copy of the regular card to legally use a VR rarity card. Featured in the Project SEKAI COLORFUL STAGE! feat. Hatsune Miku set.
      • MDR (Maid Dragon Rare): A rarity featured in the Ms. Kobayashi's Dragon Maid set.
      • TRV (Tokyo Revengers Rare): A variant rarity that features lines from the show foil-stamped onto the cards. Used in the Tokyo Revengers set.
      • FP (SchoolFes Parallel): A parallel rarity featured in certain Love Live! School idol festival sets. Design varies based on the specific box.
      • SCC (Spectacle Rare): A variant rarity to Climax Common/Climax Rare featured in the Revue Starlight: The Movie set.
      • LUXO: A special card that features artwork of Pixar's mascot Luxo and its iconic star-stamped rubber ball decorated with a special rainbow foiling. Comes in eight varieties. Featured in the Pixar Characters set.
      • PXR (Pixar Rare): A rarity that features the Pixar studio logo hot-stamped on the card. Featured in the Pixar Characters set.
      • KSC: A Climax Card rarity that features iconic lines from the games hot-stamped on the card. Featured in the Key all-stars set.
      • IFP (Infinity Parallel) / FOP (Force Parallel): A downgraded version of Special that features golden bordered windows and text. Featured in the Marvel and Star Wars Premium Boosters respectively.
      • LRR (LycoReco Rare): A rarity that features the insignia of the titular cafe hot-stamped on the card. Featured in the Lycoris Recoil set.
      • CSMR (Chainsaw Man Rare): A rarity featured in the Chainsaw Man set. Incredibly hard to pull, it combines the full-art printing and borderless text boxes of OFR's with the gold printed signatures of SP's and gold stamped name and stats. Limited to 1 in every 2 master cases — that is, 1 in every 12 cases.
      • OR (Origin Rare): A special rarity with borderless text boxes and rainbow foiled text. Featured on the ""Steamboat Willie" Mickey Mouse" card from the Disney 100 set.
      • OHR (One Hundred Rare): A Climax Card-exclusive rarity with the "Disney 100" insignia emblazoned on the card. Featured in the Disney 100 set.
      • SPYR (Spy Rare): A rarity that features new original illustrations, borderless windows and gold foiling with either a decorative border or text lines. Featured in the Spy X Family set.
      • DCP (Da Capo Parallel): A parallel rarity that features the Da Capo 20th Anniversary logo stamped on the card. Featured in the Da Capo 20th Anniversary set.
      • MAX (Rarity MAX): A rarity that comes in two forms: A character version that features the name of the character's signature move alongside its input command hot-stamped on the card, and a Climax Card/Event version that features a silver King of Fighters logo hot-stamped on the card. Featured in the The King of Fighters set.
      • KBR (Kessoku Band Rare): A variant rarity that features brand-new illustrations for Bocchi, Nijika, Ryou, and Ikuyo with a gold Kessoku Band logo hot-stamped on the card. Featured in the Bocchi the Rock! set.
      • SHP (Shana Parallel): A parallel rarity that features blazing red border foil on card elements and a gold foil name. The SP upgrade of these cards features signatures in the same red foil instead of the standard gold. Featured in the Shakugan no Shana Premium Booster Set.
      • BP (Box Parallel): A parallel rarity featured in the Project SEKAI COLORFUL STAGE! feat. Hatsune Miku Vol. 2 set. Functionally replaces Visual Rare. This rarity features the full-foil finish of Visual Rare, but with borderless foil interface elements on them, meaning they do not require special rules to be used.
      • DCR (DeCulture Rare): A rarity that features a full-foil finish and interface elements covered in iridescent sparkling foil. Featured in the Macross Delta Premium Booster.
      • IGP (Quintuplet Parallel): A parallel rarity that features borderless text and foil interface elements. Featured in the The Quintissential Quintuplets Premium Booster set.
      • ABR (AoButa Rare): An SSP-equivalent rarity that features borderless text and seasonal-themed gold foil patterning across the border of the card. Featured in the Rascal Does Not Dream set.
      • WIR (Wing Rare): A parallel rarity that features a glossy foil finish and a holographic wing imprint on the card. Featured in the The Idolmaster Shiny Colors Shine more! set.
      • PER (Persona Rare): A parallel rarity featured in the Persona 3 Reload set.
      • MSP (Mirror Special): A rarity featured in the Disney Mirrorverse set. In lieu of signatures, Mirror Special cards instead have borderless text and alternate artwork backed by silver foil. Unlike most set-exclusive rarities, this rarity replaces SP in the set.
      • MKS (Mickey Secret): An SCR-equivalent rarity featured in the Disney Mirrorverse set.
  • Too Long; Didn't Dub: Almost all cards in the Project DIVA F set use song lyrics ripped directly from the songs/modules depicted on the card... in Japanese. It can be assumed that the translators didn't want to test the waters potentially flubbing a song translation in a card game.
  • Uniqueness Decay: BanG Dream! Girls Band Party!!'s biggest selling point was the extraordinary number of SPs and SSPs introduced in one set alone, and the multiple themes that can be built within the set that comes with multiple TD releases. Since its release in 2017, other than BanG Dream! constantly one upping its previous record of SP count, Revue Starlight ReLive, The Idolmaster: Million Live, and The Idolmaster: Shiny Colours also boasts SP counts in the 20s. Meanwhile, Quintiplets, Shinymas, hololive have done multiple TD releases, with Project Sekai confirmed to join the list.
    • "Shimakaze-class Destroyer, Shimakaze" was considered the most useful Level 1 card in the entire game when it was released in early 2014. Most Level 1 Cost 0 characters with a Climax Combo before Shimakaze either require the player to pay 1 Stock to add a card to the hand, discard a card after adding the card to the hand, or provide other effects that does not add cards to the hand whatsoever. Then Shimakaze came along, and all she requires is Reversing the opponent to search the deck for 1 "Fleet Girl" character. It won't be until the following year with "Secured, Shiina Kokomi" that the next Shimakaze archetype will be printed. Fast forward to 2024, every set or expansion will have at least 2 or more Level 1 Climax Combos that would add cards to the hand for no stock at all, and also improving from Shimakaze, do not even require the opponent's character to be Reversed, or even if required, have an additional line including having no Characters in front of your Character as a condition in place of Reversing. Any character with Shimakaze's effect as it was in 2014, in today's metagame would be considered next to useless when compared to the Level 1 Climax Combos now.
  • Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: Saber vs. Nanoha vs Haruhi vs. Shana vs. Hitagi vs. Tenshi vs. Kyrie vs. Konata vs. Protagonist vs. Shu vs. Misaka Mikoto vs. Black★Rock Shooter vs. Kirito vs Silver Crow...
  • Unintentionally Unwinnable: This can happen if a player triggers an infinite loop with no way out, in which case nobody wins.
  • Weapon of X-Slaying: Several Level 2 Characters gain Power (and occasionally, Soul) when Attacking Level 3 or above Characters, usually in the range of +6000. There are also Level 1 Characters that have the same bonus, but against Level 2 Characters only.
  • When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Titans do little more than grow insanely powerful. Their answer to any and all comers is "add more Power". This wanders into Crippling Overspecialization, since, as Titans have very few other effects that don't increase Power, they have very little ways of evading, healing, or other whatnot support.

    Weiss Schwarz Portable 
  • Action Girl: Minami
  • Artificial Stupidity: The AI makes very poor moves most of the time.
  • Chick Magnet: The protagonist, who causes almost every single girl who meets him to fall for him. He has SEVEN (which becomes eight after the first playthrough) potential girls to choose from.
  • Childhood Friends: Suzuka. Going on her route results in a Childhood Friend Romance.
  • Class Representative: Suiko
  • Cash-Cow Franchise: Essentially the whole point of the development of the game. Though, it has a surprisingly deep plot.
  • Game-Breaking Bug: The game was not designed with true deck out in mind, as the +50 Soul Miyuki does not appear in the game. Nonetheless, it is still possible to have just about your entire deck in the stock * to achieve true deck out, which the game will freeze trying to do a Refresh but unable to to so because there is no Waiting Room to Refresh.
  • Twin Switch: In Suzuka's route, the player finds out near the end that the Suzuka the player has been interacting with is actually her twin sister, Honoka. When the real Suzuka returns, she's not exactly pleased to realise that her twin sister got a Relationship Upgrade with her old childhood friend
  • Visual Novel: The game is part this, part card game simulator.

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