YGOPRO Forum

Last update: 2020-04-02 (BCOT1.2 - Ta-Koro Update)
Target YGOPro version: Links Beta 1 (BCOT1.1+), 1.033.D (BCOT1.0, BCOR, BBTS)
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GitHub

The short version:
Swedish toy robots meet chinese cartoon card games.
Full download
Includes:

• Expansion "Coming of the Toa" (60 cards) (Version 1.0)
• Expansion "Challenge of the Rahi"(60 cards)
• Expansion "Beware the Swarm" (57 cards)
• Readme with instructions
• Sample decks for all expansions

Does not include partial releases of expansion "Coming of the Toa" Version 1.1 and beyond. Downloads for that, as well as separate downloads for each individual released expansion, can be found below.

The long version:
A project to translate every part of the Bionicle universe into playable custom cards. If everything goes well, it might even get done before we all die of old age, but I'm not making any promises.

Not familiar with LEGO® BIONICLE® (so®®y) and it's ludicrously expansive universe? I'd still be happy if you could take a look and tell me what you think. Lore plays a big role in my design process, but you don't need to know the background behind each card to give useful feedback on things like fun gameplay and balance. If you're interested in finding out what the cards are supposed to represent, feel free to take a look at the Bionicle wiki, where you will find comprehensive information on just about everything. Just make sure you don't get lost in the rabbit hole.

Progress Overview
Organized by story year because that's the order I'm working in.


Released Cards
2001
Coming of the Toa (60 cards):

Challenge of the Rahi (60 cards):

2002
Beware the Swarm (57 cards):


Any feedback is greatly appreciated

Edited by user Thursday, April 02, 2020 9:41:07 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Add info on BCOT1.1+

Thanks for pointing that out, seems like I didn't pay attention when I wrote it. I'll probably change the script and not the card text, but would the correct PSCT in that case just be having a comma instead of the colon?


Is it? The Konami blog post (from 2012, so it might be outdated, but I don't think so) literally says:

https://yugiohblog.konami.com/articles/?p=4514

Assuming this is correct, the answer is simple: By unequipping the old Kanohi before even starting to equip the new one, the condition never gets to be a problem.


I agree that the self-chaining is annoying, but stopping it didn't seem worth an extra line in all the effects to me. Making them hard OPT is something I considered, but ultimately, it would make it too easy to kill your setup in an anticlimatic way (e.g. making you cycle through them all to dodge MSTs) if you have only a few Kanohi, while running more than a few wastes so much deckspace (remember, they're almost always dead) that you'll probably lose before collecting enough to avoid that kind of scenario.

Interesting cards and the images also, keep it work up!!

He said, and then proceeded to make a bunch of huge changes.
It also took him an entire year for some reason.
He isn't making it seem like he knows what he is doing.

But whatever, at least it's finally done:
http://imgur.com/a/V3EhS

Like with the previous expansion, everything can be found in the Imgur gallery. Enjoy!

Awesome cards, I love the Bionicles and seing them in action in ygopro kinda brings a happy tear to my eye. Thanks for your hard work, you made at least one person happy with that

Ladies and Gentlemen, I had a brilliant idea. Instead of releasing a bunch of cards at once, vanishing from the face of the earth for years, and then reappearing to release another bunch of cards at once, I could just vanish for shorter lengths of time and release parts of the expansion as they get done. Unplanned interactions with future cards can always be accounted for through further updates, and it becomes much easier for people to read through and try out each release like this.

What, you say that's not particularly brilliant and just a fairly normal way of doing it? Well, it took me forever to figure out so it's clearly brilliant by my standards

Jokes about my idiocy aside, here's the first of these mini-updates for "Beware the Swarm", the upcoming third expansion. This one features everyone's favourite colorful balls of doom, the Bohrok.



Download here, readme inside

As usual, I could go on and on about the various reasons why each card is what it is, but I think I'll save that for the final release and keep it at a quick overview here.

The Bohrok are swarms of insectoid machines with elemental powers stored deep beneath the island of Mata Nui. Once awakened, their mission is to completely destroy anything on the island to prepare for the Great Spirit's rising. Some of the keywords here that influenced my design:

• "swarms" - All six Bohrok have a shared Flip effect that summons more of them. In addition, I avoided overly powerful effects that require a hard OPT, meaning the more you swarm the more you can spam effects.
  
• "insectoid machines" - I normally decide the monster types for the biomechanical creatures of the Bionicle universe based on their non-mechanical parts and real-life inspirations, but this doesn't apply to the fully mechanical Bohrok. They're obviously Machine-Type.
  
• "once awakened" - The awakening of the Bohrok is simulated by them being Flip monsters and summoning each other in face-down Defense Position.
  
• "their mission is to completely destroy" - Each Bohrok's unique effect aims to destroy or otherwise remove cards from the field.

And just because I can't stop talking, here's what future updates will add in relation to this archetype:

• S/T support - Obviously. These will probably be focused on searching and summoning Bohrok from various locations and protecting them while face-down so that you can reliably get the swarming started. Maybe some other things depending on what seems necessary during testing. Oh, and a fusion spell for ...
  
• Bohrok Kaita - Two fusion boss monsters. As can be seen in the arrangement of the cards above, I've already taken the division into Kaita Ja (Tahnok + Nuhvok + Pahrak) and Kaita Za (Gahlok + Kohrak + Lehvak) into consideration when creating the component monsters. The Ja Bohrok focus on straightforward targeting destruction, while the Za Bohrok have more versatile, but also more restricted effects. There's also benefit to be had in mixing both groups, but this will make summoning the Kaita harder.
  
• Krana - The organic "brains" of the Bohrok. They provide additional effects that allow for more strategy than "destroy everything" and also have the ability to steal opponent's monsters through battle with Bohrok (Bionicle villains really love the brainwashing stuff, huh?).
  
• Bohrok Va - In short, S/T support turned monsters. They also help recycle Krana, and some or all of them will be Tuners for ...
  
• Bahrag - The twin queens of the Bohrok are Synchro monsters and the deck's ultimate bosses. When you have both, they massively buff each other, and they also have effects to help bring the other out as quickly as possible.
  
• Bohrok Va Kaita - Last on the list because I'm not sure what to do with them. This expansion is still designed around pre-Link rules because that's when I came up with all the ideas, but I'm thinking I could make the Va Kaita Link monsters so that the archetype can somewhat work with the new rules as well. On the other hand, that might not be possible without massively restructuring other parts of the expansion, in which case I'll scrap the idea and just make these support-ish fusions.

More stuff getting done, here's some Bohrok Va.



And a first support spell card for the Bohrok archetype, because fetching a specific monster right when you need it is starting to become important.


Download here, readme inside

The core strength of the Bohrok Va is that you get to summon them for free if you have the corresponding Bohrok out already. They provide minor utility effects on the field, can be used as tuners, and let you add a banished Krana straight to your hand after going to the graveyard. In an ideal and actually not too uncommon scenario, you get to make use of all those abilities in a single turn, so they're pretty handy.

A downside is that the additional deck space required and the focus on specific Bohrok names make it harder to use many different breeds of Bohrok in one deck, but I've found that 2-3 is still a perfectly manageable number. It's particularly important that 3 still works, because that's how many are needed for Bohrok Kaita, the boss monsters that don't exist yet.


From a technical perspective, this release introduces something new: Expansion-specific utility functions, defined in util-bbts.lua. The large amount of reused effects between cards (which is totally an intentional commentary on the fact that Bohrok are clone sets and not at all because I'm lazy and uncreative ) was causing a lot of extra work, so I wanted to put them in a central script. But the list of non-card scripts that the program loads is hardcoded and there's no way to change it with a simple expansion, so I used the little trick of just having the cards themselves load the file when they need it.

So if a card is throwing some strange error about not finding a file (or simply doesn't work, if you have error messages turned off), that's probably the reason. Please leave a comment here if something like that happens so that I can figure out what's wrong and fix the issue before I do it wrong on more cards.

It's been a while, but after some busy months and a few much needed updates to the development process, there's some new cards ready to release. This time, the Bohrok family of archetypes will reach completion by receiving its boss monsters.

Bohrok (Va) Kaita
Bahrag

Download here, readme inside

Aside from the new cards, I've also changed the equip effect of the Krana a bit because I forgot that they were supposed to work with the Kaita as well when I designed the first version. They can now equip to "Bohrok" higher than Level 4 as well, and their effects as equip cards are active when equipped to a "Bohrok" monster by any means, not just their own effect. The images in the expansion and the opening post have been updated to reflect this.

And one last thing before I go: My recreation of an official Bohrok promo video from 2002

Since the Krana's brainwashing abilities felt a bit underutilized so far, I made a few more cards based on that concept:

• Bohrok Servant removes monsters from the opponent's GY to conveniently give you a beatstick of appropriate size.
  
• Matoran of The Swarm helps with stealing Xyz Monsters via Krana.
  
• Turaga of The Swarm has an utterly hilarious effect that, with the right timing and a bit of luck, basically steals Synchro Monsters straight from the opponent's Extra Deck.
  
• Toa of The Swarm adds Tributing to the Bohrok's list of removal options, while also being easy to steal back with Krana.
  

Servants of The Swarm
Download here, readme inside
An updated Krana Deck featuring the new cards is included, although they're placed in the side deck since their usefulness depends on the opponent.

Boom, barely over a month since the last update and there's more again. Gotta go fast. Yeah, I hurried up a bit since I want as much time as possible for the next step (more on that later).

Anyway, this update contains the final wave of new cards for BBTS, and all of them are full-on LORE cards depicting the final stretch of the fight against the Bohrok.
First of all, we have a Final Battle and a Last Stand: With the former being based on the illusion powers of the Bahrag and the latter on Takua protecting Ga-Koro from the swarms in the final part of the Bohrok animations.

Victory and Salvation: Meaning the power the Toa used to defeat the Bahrag and the resulting destruction of Bohrok all over the island. Don't worry if the effect on that second one doesn't seem to make any sense, it contains heavy doses of FORESHADOWING.

And lastly, the Aftermath and the Root Cause: The aftermath is the disposal of Krana in pits (it's Bohrok support and anti-support at the same time!) and the root cause is, who else could it be, Makuta. Parallels with this older card fully intended.

Download here, readme inside

And with that, the preliminary release of BBTS is complete. Why preliminary? Because every few months I realize past me was a moron, which in this case means I feel the need to change a bunch of things about older cards. Here's a full list:
https://imgur.com/a/57Zr9eo
Opinions on this list and additional suggestions are all very much welcome.

And I'd also like to say thanks to anyone who ever gave feedback on any of the various platforms I post updates on. I'd probably keep doing this even if it was just a secret private project no one ever gets to see, but getting helpful input from you all makes uploading worth it and certainly helps the quality of the product.