Anime Shop Simulator Card Battles: Arcanis Decks & Leagues

Where card battles happen

Arcanis is the trading card game inside Anime Shop Simulator. You sell its boosters in your shop, and you can also play it. Once you own the game table (it appeared at shop level 3 in the demo), you sit down at it and get these options:

• PvP tournament: play other players.
• Rankings: the leagues listed below.
• Quick battle: a short game to test your deck.
• Practice rounds.

NPC customers sit at your tables and play each other too, which is part of the shop’s atmosphere.

The deck rules

These come from the in-game rules screen, read out in two separate demo videos:

• A deck is nine cards, built from your own card collection.
• Card power determines both damage and health. Stronger cards raise your overall deck power.
• When a card attacks, both cards deal damage to each other.
• Cards with ranged attack take no damage back. That makes ranged cards valuable.
• Some cards have special abilities, such as buffs.
• The rules also mention an attack bonus for biome advantage. The demo screens did not show how biomes are assigned.

The card faces show rarity, a small buff icon (a “+2” next to a heart on one Ultra card), an attack-type icon and a number, which is the card’s power.

Leagues from Common to Diamond

The achievements give the full ladder. The rates show how few players have climbed it so far (Steam, September 14):

Achievements were not unlocking properly until Hotfix 1.0.3, so real numbers are somewhat higher. The full list is on the achievements page.

Building a better deck

• Keep your best pulls. A launch tips video’s advice is to save rare cards for the PvP deck instead of selling every hit. Selling rares pays for stock, but a deck of commons stalls in the higher leagues.
• Prioritise ranged cards. They deal damage without taking any back, so they last longer.
• Rarity is a rough guide. Labels in the videos include common, silver, rare, epic and ultra, with foil versions on top. Check the power number on each card, not only the label.
• Open higher-tier boosters when you can. Rarer packs appear as your licenses go up; see cards and boosters.

Why play if you just want to run a shop?

Two reasons. Card wins are part of the objective chain that players say unlocks the bat, the only real defence against thieves; see the thieves guide. And the six league achievements are part of 100%. One player on the forums said they skipped the tournament and found the bat blocked until they went back and got five wins.

Known card battle bugs

The demo patch notes fixed cases where players got stuck in a card battle and could not leave, and card duplication when placing cards on the display stand. In the launch build, one player reports crashes after adding a card display case to a friends-only co-op game. Check the known issues page before you blame your deck.