Gacha? Gotcha.The 24th episode of Weekly Bites Z opened today with an announcement regarding a new card game from Bushiroad, Triple Monsters. Doctor O's special guest cohosts Sasaki Mikoi (voice of Okazaki Kumi in Vanguard G) and Katherine represented the "TriMon" franchise, which will be collaborating with Cardfight!! Vanguard; three associated music CDs releasing March 28th will come packaged with a set of promotional Vanguard cards featuring TriMon characters.
TriMon is a card game played on smartphones, which facilitates "digital cardfights." Its key art and character designs are done by Suzuhito Yasuda. (Devil Survivor, Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth, Durarara!!) Vanguard characters like Blaster Blade and Silver Thorn Dragon Tamer Luquier will be appearing in the game as playable cards, which begins its Japanese closed beta test on the 28th. The final game is planned to launch in April.
TriMon isn't the only smartphone game Bushiroad is pushing in 2018, as the company is also working on its Vanguard app Cardfight!! Vanguard Zero, due out this winter. This isn't the first time Vanguard's crossed over with a game like this either--previously Blaster Blade and Blaster Dark appeared in Bound Monster.
The TriMon cards are each grade 3 units with a base power of 333, and are hotstamped in gold foil with the autographs of the characters' respective voice actors. They each bear an accompanying quote from that character in place of flavor text, and pull directly from Suzuhito Yasuda's illustrations of the cast.
Doctor O also announced that new Supply Set for Vanguard will be available for purchase at this year's Great Vanguard Festival, consisting of 4000 yen (approx. $38) bundles of card sleeve sets and playmats. The sets are themed after teams from the anime. The Team Jaime Flowers set contains a Ranunculus of Phantasmic Blue Ahsha playmat with Battle Sister Florentine and One Who Proceeds Toward Daybreak Scharhrot sleeves; the Team Striders set contains a Dragabyss Luard playmat with Chronojet Dragon Z and Golden Holy Sword Gurguit sleeves; and the Fukuhara High Vanguard Club set consists of a Black Shock Gavrail Prim playmat accompanied by Higher Deity Knight Altmile and Dragonic Vanquisher “SPARKING” sleeves.
Fans in Japan will be able to preorder the items from 3:00 PM JST March 30th through 1:00 AM April 9th. These will be delivered in the latter half of June. Those outside Japan will have to work through an intermediary.
The next episode of Weekly Bites Z, #25 will air April 3rd at 9:00 PM JST. It will be the first episode of Weekly Bites to air after the end of the G era. The previous episode unveiled a color rerun of the first Cardfight!! Vanguard manga.