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Lately I have gotten into Bakugan, and because I've been posting about it so much, and found it very confusing to sort out at first, I decided to write up a post I can send to people who might also be interested in this game (yes, it is a game!). This is all of the information I wish I had when I first got into it, so that you don't have to spend a lot of time on wikis or on Reddit trying to figure out what you're looking at.
Bakugan is a toy battling game, like you might think of something like Beyblade as being. Bakugan originally released in the late 2000s, a joint venture between Canadian toy company Spin Master and Sega Toys in Japan. So if you're thinking "wait, weren't those those toys from ages ago?" you are correct, they were. However, starting in 2018 Bakugan toys have come back into development, so while Bakugan were gone for quite a while, they are out there once again.
The basics of Bakugan as a toy are extremely simple: You have a small plastic ball, a little smaller than a golf ball, that has a magnet in the bottom. When you roll that ball onto a metal card, the magnet pulls down, undoes the latch, and the toy springs open into, say, a dragon or some other kind of monster.
Now, there is more to this, and there have been a lot of changes over time. But ultimately, Bakugan was designed, and still largely is, as a way to modernize marbles as a toy. They're big marbles that pop open into cool monsters when they hit their target, and you utilize this in a game--or games, as we'll get into.
I was broadly dismissive of Bakugan's game potential originally. It seemed fine for kids but not that interesting to me. I'm a big board game and TCG (trading card game) fan, and I'm in my 30s, so I wanted more mechanics than "roll a ball a few inches, look at some stats and compare". But, there are in fact more mechanics to Bakugan than this. The confusing amount of different rulesets is what led me to the impression that this was the whole game. Bakugan essentially markets this initially as the game, but then more or less treats this as the "basic" game, moreso for younger kids, and expands on those rules under various names like the "master" game or whatnot to give the complexity most adults are going to want to see. But if you simply see a commercial for it, or a Youtube introduction, that's most of the detail they give you at first glance.
Because of this, some rulesets are going to appeal to adults more than others. The TCG is going to offer the most crunch, but even if you just want to play it as a marble game (and thus a dexterity game), some rules are going to be more skill focused and more interesting than others. And as for its merits as a dexterity game? Something I didn't understand until I got them into my hands is that rolling a Bakugan onto the magnetic card/tile to get it to open is way, way harder than I expected. You really do have to get skilled at your roll. I guess I assumed they would be weighted more at the bottom to force them onto the magnet more, but for the most part they are not. So you are truly dealing with rolling a 3D object here, you don't just need your Bakugan to land on the card, you need it to land on the card with the bottom facing down. Bakugan typically have to be rolled from "two card lengths away", which is only a handful of inches, but because you have to get that magnet to land in the right place, and because most Bakugan are very light weight requiring you to not put too much spin on them, it's something that takes practice. You can even eventually learn how to roll them with a curved shot!
Basically, Bakugan, if you play the more fun rulesets, is a fun dexterity game with stats and with tactical choices to make, and if you are a TCG fan there is an entire TCG you can layer on top of it that I think is really snappy and interesting, as someone who has played a lot of TCGs (both good and bad). If you like dexterity games like crokinole or carrom, or maybe even old school marbles, Bakugan may be for you. If you like TCGs as well, Bakugan may be for you.
In the next part of this guide, we will go into what you need to play Bakugan, and why "how do you play?" is an interesting question.
Next: How Do You Play, And What Do I Need?