How Much Does it Really Cost to Compete in Trading Card Games? 

Actually ridiculous how pricey English VG has gotten, I always hear about it but didn't think it has gotten to that level. At least things will hopefully improve with both Messiah and Gandiva, and hopefully the FesBooster reprints tank prices as hard in English as they did here in Japan.

Amazing video! The only thing I feel is somewhat missed here is that YuGiOh's formats actually shift much much faster than any other card game and so while your snapshot of "the best deck" might've been accurate 2 weeks ago, it suddenly stops being accurate a week later. You might think this is because of banlists or set releases (and this definitely plays a huge role too, adding to this issue even more) but it goes far beyond that. A major YCS might happen where the pros started using strat X and thus everyone starts accounting for it in their side the week after. This makes it so you might go like "oh, staple 1 2 3 are this much, so this is how much yugioh costs" but it doesn't account for the fact that 2 weeks later, you had to buy new staples cuz the whole format shifted. (until you own every single staple lol...) The easiest example is Kurikara. Pre-YCS London it wasn't played all that much. Then we saw the card dominating and everyone started running 3 copies. The card shot from 15$ to 40$. One week everyone might be doing arise pass and you need kaijus, but the week after, everyone might do wide kash combos and now you need 3 nibiru... The list goes on and on, but essentially; snapshots are not a great way to fully capture YuGiOh's price. Keeping up with YuGiOh is almost a monthly subscription. If I wanted to play a top deck in Vanguard Premium, starting from last october, I'd be playing highlander premium, and in january I'd still be playing highlander premium and right now in may, I'm still playing highlander premium. Do it for YuGiOh and starting in october, I'm playing runick spright. Then in DABL I'm playing Tear Bystial. Then in MAMA I'm playing Ishizu Tear, then in PHHY post banlist I'm playing Kashtira. Then in CYAC post banlist (everyone hopes), you're playing SHS or something... You not only have been buying new staples every other week, but you've also bought a new deck every couple months. Other games won't necessarily have that issue quite as badly.

Its pretty insane how cheap and affordable pokemon is

It's kinda wild that when D-series first dropped, Standard Vanguard was the cheapest card game on the market. Now prices have gone up a LOT.

Jesus Christ, Vanguard being that expensive despite being a niche game compared to the rest of the field makes no sense. Even spending money on FAB is worth it because competing gives you actual prize support - Vanguard only gives free trips to Japan to Champions in every BCS ONCE per year Bushi really needs to step up their game or players will be priced out of Vanguard eventually

I always love these kinds of in-depth analysis, plus this is a great resource for anyone trying to find a competitive scene to get into!

Loved the video! I would say the one thing would be good to do is keep the same type of format from game to game (which I know is hard to do). You mentioned it somewhat when discussing games like Digimon, Swartz, and even Flesh and Blood. But I think your analysis and something cool may be to do TCG rotating formats and non-rotating formats. For example, you compared Flesh and Blood Classic Constructed to Standard Magic. Flesh and Blood has a non-rotating format. So that X amount you spend on staples or generic cards will be everlasting, saving you more money in the future as you play the game competitively. Whereas in Magic those prices listed will have to be rebought eventually.

Hey mate, what website do you use to find these top decks for each game?

This is really interesting! Great video to describe the differences in TCGs and what people are spending for the top meta decks. I saw a huge difference between what I've spent for Vanguard vs what I've spent for Pokémon. Pretty crazy!

Very good video! Of course, there’s definitely always more nuance to be given, but you definitely covered the essential aspects!

Unrelated question, where should i be looking for local tournament scenes. Im in lower michigan, westland for a little more accuracy, and my closest stores have stopped vanguard since the pandemic. Im not opposed to a little more travel time, but i have idea how to find a place, or help startup a new scene.

This is one of those times I'm glad I play in SEA & EN Vanguard here is cheaper but depends on a person to person basis.

Shoutout to Pokémon for actually being affordable for a regular human !!

The saddest part of this is, so far, CFV doing reprints hasn't reduced prices at all. It got shafted by people not opening many boxes of a few earlier sets and the PR distribution in the west and people just accepting the scalped prices, encouraging more people to buy in to CFV just to make a quick profit. I do think having "splashable cards" isn't necessarily a good indication of how cheap a game is...just use FaB as an example. I played that game for a bit but never had a competitive deck because it was prohibitively expensive to build one deck because of how awful its rarity system is. You cannot open boxes of FaB with a deck in mind and make any progress, you HAVE to spend $200 on a card you'll use once a game. Honestly the reason I main CFV is I can open a case and know what I'm getting, I don't think any of these other games have the guaranteed ratios that CFV does which makes me just...not want to buy a box. Spending $80 on a BSS box just to get absolutely nothing of any value is not a good feeling.

TLDR digimon has gotten more expensive to change decks. Digimon was more color based until recently so staples were very color locked but you could still move between decks in a color but now we’re getting more archetypal synergies and generic staples are played at lower quantities. Also alt arts tend to keep deck costs relatively lower.

FAB is still fairly new albeit not the newest in the list, but so far there is no rotating cards and currently it's like yugioh where there is no rotation per say. and the bulk of the price are on equipment - see Fyendal's fighting spirit

Interesting video. About flesh and blood, you have equipment cards and the actual deck itself. Equipment cards is where things get expensive, but something like a spring tunic can be used in a multitude of decks as it is a generic and isn't class restricted. Just wanted to highlight that nuance

i feel like if we consider all the popular and commonly played formats of any tcg, the pauper format in MTG would be considered the cheapest as it still does have a huge playerbase

Would be interesting to see Force of Will into this list, I believe it's probably one of the healthiest second market I've seen on TCGs

Hey, did the Oldhim and Iyslander decks you evaluated both use Heart of Fyendal? I'm curious because that card is like $500 or something bucks now and you can only ever run 1 copy in a deck. It's also not a necessary card for high level play like Tunic is, but that's a whole nother discussion

Interesting video! The Oldhim deck price looks very skewed tho, what decklist did you use for the pricing? The latest big tournament winning Oldhim (Micheal Feng) costs about 1080$, including a 1 of fabled card costing around 500$ (which is absolutely not vital to play). A realistic price for that deck would be between 500 and 600$.

Modern would've probably been the better format for Magic, since that's much more popular than MtG's Standard. Also worth noting is that in MtG, cards are only Standard-legal for a limited time.

A very nice vid. I agree with others that america market for vg does overprice cards bit too much while deck oversea can push prices down by good amount. Spending bit under 60 on first deck in pokmon did feel good and it being gardevoir

Funny enough, you can actually cut down the cost of pokemon even further. Precon decks are available in the form of League Battle Decks at the price of $30, and include a lot of the core cards you need for deck building and are in varrying archtypes and would need a few upgrades. The Mew Vmax deck has most of the cards and about half the mews and genesect and the post rotation Lugia tends to use stuff from the Single Strike Urshifu battle deck. Doesn't really help with most of the cards for lost box or Gardevoir though. Also, kinda curious why you chose the control box deck instead of something like Arceus Duraludon or Single Strike Urshifu/Inteleon as both those decks tend to rank higher.

A few things to note on Pokemon is the recent shake on meta with the rotation, battle decks that came out and the amazing job of reprinting staples and ofc the trainer toolbox. On the other hand with Digimon, I'm amazed it is still one of the cheapest. One thing to note with the B.Wargreymon package is how that tribal works, you can argue it is 3 decks in one...As most of their base remains the same for Black/Red Wargreymon, Black Wargreymon and Gaiomon variants. Really just changes the top-end and 1-2 tamers.

I would really like a follow-up for this where you look at the changes in top decks over time and look at the cost of continuing to compete in over a year. The results may be interesting.

Not super familiar with all these games except MtG and FaB, the issue with magic is that standard rotates, so that cost is going to be constantly reoccurring. Flesh and Blood however has the opposite issue, nearly all cards stay viable and never rotate out. Typically the more expensive cards in FaB are equipment (Tunic for example) is generic and can be used for any hero and doesn’t rotate out of play. So you buy 1 of them and your good to use it basically forever.

Since you did your research Battle Spirits has calmed down a lot. I built Siegwurm for about $120. The game is extremely affordable.

Nice vid! Always wondered how expensive other card games were.

Digimon is my main game. Yes you really don't have much opportunity to re use cards for decks. There are some exceptions like option cards but you hardly ever use full playsets anyways, Tamers can see overlap but there are also archetypal specific tamers that take priority, and Lv7 digimon which can typically evolve off at least 2 colors and are more generic in their effects. That said it is pretty darn cheap, and they aren't really stingy about printing pivotal cards at the highest rarities but instead its typically the lvl7s that are normally only ran at 2 or 3 copies. The latest set BT12 has its 2 secret rares at around $6/2 though this isn't the norm and has been reflected in the Super rare prices with things like Hunters Arresterdramon/Quartzmon at $9/5 or Beelze X at $6.

Wow I’m glad your making videos again man this was great 🎉

Loved the video and the content you make overall, I´m always waiting for a banger of a video. Also, I really like how you try to make things in a budget for Vanguard because I always think you can play the game in a cheap way. P.S. Hope you make soon another video of premium on a budget

I think, despite buy ins, the best investment for tcg is Yu-Gi-Oh, Digimon, and BSS. Atleast, at the moment, those 3 doesn't implement Set Rotation. Those 3 allow "mixing of color" as you call it, it might just hamper optimization and deck performance "at the moment".

Wixoss is really affordable, especially if you're not playing white. Most of the value is in the alternate art cards, getting a playable deck at base rarity is pretty easy.

Without digging into the specifics of each game, I feel like this isn't the best way to ask "How much does it really cost to compete in TCGs?" because I don't think anyone is building all 5 of the top 5 decks at the same time for any of these card games. I can mainly speak on Vanguard and there's plenty of viability in Chronojet out of box at a fraction of the price. It's preconstructed to begin with, and the main thing screwing with it are effect triggers that have reprints on the way and Swirler which may not be an auto-include just because a lot of decks may run it. Whether Meta means popular, good, or both is a different discussion. Youthberk is a major outlier that skews the numbers a good bit (especially considering the competitive viability of the deck at the current moment) and Eva has been out since June 2022, so some of those cards still being viable in May 2023 aren't going to "cost" as much as buying them now or say a new Yugioh deck depending on how the ban list turns out every 4 months or so, or more specifically Minerva which came out in Feb 2023 and has all its support mostly in one box like the Digimon decks do. This data basically just shows which games have the strongest overlap of good cards more than anything, which is a good argument that I apply to Brandt Gate. If more people only bought their single playset of anythng they wanted without feeling compelled to buy for each deck separately, I'd be curious to see what the market would look like. Nevertheless, to treat this as a primer for competing period is a little misleading.

Explain Minerva? Did you add it to the list due to its high valued cards in it? Is it Meta?

Nice vid! Would be interesting to see where SVE or Grand Archive fits into this list at some point.

Could you do the same for other formats? Like Expanded/Premium/Legacy/Living Legends/Modern, etc. Pioneer/V-Premium/Speed Duels

i would love if you do this as tri monthly's thing just to keep up with how fast things can change.Also why didn't you do one for MHA/UFS?

On the Digimon Tcg ishue, is more like Yugioh where your deck gets support as time goes by getting rid of some old pieces but there are cards that still remain In Beelzemon's example Ex2 impmon and Beelzemon, Bt2 Impmon, Death Slinger, Wizardmon promo and (sometimes) Bt10 Baalmon still remain after they have come out specially the first ones that have been around for a year Greymon is also an example of this with Wargreymon X for example So if you invest in a fan favorite deck you are garanteed support like the Hero situation Cheers mate! Great video

In this video are you doing lowers rarity for the cards or the highest? You just said minimum rarity cards.

I knew D series would jump up in price gradually as meta decks get more and more RR and RRR cards to replace prior C and R staples but wow this really puts it into perspective. I think a huge culprit is how staple certain promo cards are and how they aren’t distributed well here in English. They need to just do alt rarity promos and put promos in actual sets. It’s getting tiring to see a great staple for your mediocre deck and it goes for $20 a copy simply because it’s a promo, especially as half the C cards in a given set are just bulk.

Digimon player here! Yea, the game is fairly cheap to play (I quit ygo and switched to this instead lol). The lack of overlap for staples isn't that big of an issue since most staples for each color are both fairly cheap and accessible. Omnimon being expensive is a result of it kinda being this franchises biggest seller in general, so it gets a ton of stuff in high rarity. Beelzemon is a pretty self-contained deck (it generally sticks to its own lineup of cards) and chaosdramon price can kind of be associated with how the deck itself functions.

Your analysis of DBS is spot on. Well done! The nice thing is that there are a TON of rogue options that frequently top like the Yellow Set 1 Golden Frieza or Supreme Kai of time. Even Red Android 13 has topped a couple of times.

Vwry good analysis, good methodology. The other big factor, which is difficult to quantify, is the stability of the meta game, that is, how often would you want to switch decks to remain competitive. Perhaps looking at top decks over a longer period of time, at different times.

Really cool video, appreciate it! Myself as a yugioh Player know how expensive this Game can be. But i also feel like it's getting is price of its popularity. As far as my current Knowledge goes yugioh and magic are the 2 most played games (not 100% sure but i think in total worldwide yugioh is Number 1 i think) This obviously can shoot up prices as well. But i never expected flesh and blood to be this crazy high

FYI your FaB prices is incorrect. Briar no longer runs Arcanite Skullcap, she's on Crown Of Providence instead, which runs a nice sweet $220 added to both prices.

I want to say something about BattleSpirits: Absolute Ice Shield, in the Japanese version of the game, is STILL being heavily played, even though it's a VERY old card, and there are modern equivalents that people also like to use. Once you buy your Playset of Absolute Ice Shield, you can expect to still be using it for the next 5 to 10 years.

Is it possible to do this type of video every 3 months or so. I want to see how meta shift change the ranking of the price. Especially English VG is getting set 10 soon. And yugioh had a constant change of meta. (the only 2 tcg I keep up).

Damn now I Really wished we had a Digimon scene here, didn't know it was so much cheaper

I'd love to see a video like this but more broken apart to compare the actual cost of the game instead of just competition. Maybe compare the top x amount of "staple" cards and maybe even add how many to add typically of those cards. I dunno how reasonable it would be to make this but id watch the hell out of it

For Magic the gathering specifically, it could have been reasonable to also include pioneer, modern (and maybe even legacy) separately, as there are lots of magic players that don't play that much standard, and also a lot of magic players that play multiple formats. I do agree with the decision to not use commander, as that is more of a casual multiplayer format in a video otherwise only featuring competitive 1v1 formats. As for duplicates, instead of collecting a full playset, I think the best way to do it would be to cound duplicates as extra copies beyond the highest number played in any of the 5 decks. So if there's a card played at 3, 2, 2, 1 in 4 of the decks and 4 is the maximum amount of copies, I would argue it's more accurate to say that you have 5 duplicates and not 4. Lastly, for the conclusions, I think the average of the top 5 (without subtracting for duplicates) is better than sum, as that more accurately represents the price a new player would have to pay for 1 new deck. And the average of the top 5 (after subtracting for duplicates) is also better than the sum, as this more accurately reflects how much it would cost to buy a new deck after you've gotten invested in the game.

Digimon actually does have some staples across its color system, it just happened to be that non of those staples (oddly enough) were relevant across any of the current meta decks right now. Weird, really.

8:37 Extra points for putting Nino as the cover card. Great video, absolutely.

TCG Player secondary market for VG sucks, the price gouging is ridiculous in the US. Youthberk for example is nowhere near 700 euro or gbp by comparison. Decks like Eva and Overlord suffer in US pricing because of the Promo shitstorm bushiroad has refused to address and scalpers who push these ridiculously overpriced cards they have control over the supply of because it all gets printed and ground zero'd in Singapore. I would be fascinated to see a comparison for Eu/UK prices.

I still remember the pro tour winning deck mono blue tempo during guilds of ravnica??? Or ravnica allegiance??? Was only around $70-80 and now almost all magic top decks are $150+ despite all the products WoTC are pushing, that just doesn't make sense

For the time stamp you put white shorts instead of Weiss Shwartz also I don't really understand how you got your numbers on weiss. Cause the game is a lot cheaper than what you say it is. The list you placed for you Holo live deck has a sp vs a base rarity card. Which would make the deck 50-70 dollars cheaper. Also did you use tcg player or where did you base the prices off from. As well Touney lists where did you base the decks from?

Holy crap I never realized how cheap pokemon was 👀

I still actively play 5 TCGs on that list (yes I know that's a bit excessive to be honest lol) notably FAB, Vanguard, 2 of the Bandai TCG (One Piece and Digimon) and Pokemon, I can give some thoughts from my view: 1) Flesh and Blood You pretty much got it on point, the real gatekeeper from a fully tuned deck are the legendary equipments and the Big 3 Generic Majestics from the 1st set you mentioned (C&C, Art of War and EStrike) and yes, they can basically go into most decks and some heroes straight up needs them. Oldhim is the most expensive because he literally needs at least 4 Legendary equipments (2 L shields, 1 L helmet and 1 L armor) to be max tuned, however some other heroes can get away with much less legendary equipments as you can see, for example Dash only needs her own L armor, a generic L helmet and that's it, resulting in cheaper deck overall. However, if you just wanna start playing with basic core decks and non-legendary equipments, the costs are actually far way more cheaper and you can most likely get away with under $150 but don't get me wrong, you definitely CAN still win games and weeklies with it due to the nature of the game. it is at the highest competitive level like ProTour or Calling that getting your deck fully tuned and paying that extra 1 grand really matter. 2) Vanguard I don't play the EN version and so it's most likely caused by what others mentioned but the version I play is tad more affordable due to reprints and stuff. one thing I like from this TCG is that old archetypes will most likely get support and all nations are viable so you get to play what you like. 3) One Piece I'm playing the JP version up to OP03 and OP04 soon so I can say that the game state right now is really really good. promos are straight up staple reprints and the exclusive ones are really easy to get and prize supports are amazing, a lot of people opening boxes and cartons so the low rarity cards are abundant and cheap, making decks really cheap as well. Bandai straight up banhammered a problematic archetypes and the meta fairly varies now (with exception of purple and green kinda getting the short end of the stick but I hope they'll get more supports soon) 4) Digimon Also playing the JP version and oh boy, I have so much gripes with the state of the game atm. The game is fairly cheap yes, but it is also the most rampant with power creep I have ever played. archetypes rarely lasted over 1-3 sets and main set usually brings a whole new archetype that's on different power level than previous set. any archetypes that lasted more than 3 sets are usually very dominant/near broken and most likely will get a banhammer when new set comes (which happened to Jesmon, Xros Hearts, Alphamon etc). Not to mention staples rarely overlaps with each deck aside from like Memory Boost and memory tamers as new archetypes usually comes with their own suite of digimon and tamers to function, so it's almost always you're buying a full price when you're going for the new thing, probably ended up being more expensive than you think in the long run. They also keep spamming some janky archetypes that virtually will never be competitive viable that wastes slot on a set, instead of giving support for old archetypes. Also my biggest gripe is Bandai seems to not care about JP version competitive scene anymore, Evolution Cup prize stays the same for a freaking 2 years, previous world championship are webcam events (lol), weeklies promos are utter trash and has near no value so there's no incentives to go into weeklies anymore. I kinda stopped playing right now and probably will only come back once the new mechanic arrives here with ACE cards and until they fixes the promos. 5) Pokemon Pokemon is kinda the same vein as digimon but at least it's one of the Big 3 so competitive scene will always be really big. again no archetype rarely lasted more than few sets and if they do, they'll keep printing the hell out of the tech card that specifically shuts down that deck (looking at you Mew VMAX). If you wanna keep up with the highest competitive level, you'll most likely gonna have to keep buying new decks, however the staples overlaps more than Digimon so all the Balls, Professor Research, Radiant Greninja etc can go into a lot of your deck. so getting new decks isn't all that expensive once you gotten all the staples. Sorry for the long post but hope at least it's a fun read haha.

Another intresting factor id be curious about would be entry prices for the official tourdaments. Vanguard's official regional and higher tournaments are free entry most of the time. I know magic and digimon have a price to entey for store events but id be curious to know what they are for regionals and above.

In Flesh and Blood's defense, there is no reason to have 3 Fyendal's Spring Tunics. It's an equipment piece that you can only use one of. That's another $460 off the total putting it at third. Other games might have something similar, would have been cool to see special cases.

Would be great if you made a video comparing the average deck price of TCG and OCG decks for yugioh

I really like your analysis however, magic is only for standard format and the common competitive formats are also Modern and Pioneer. Currently the Qualifiers are played in the Pioneer which the decks are averaging a bit higher than standard decks. Modern decks are closer $1000 to $2000 each. Often large tournaments will force their players to play mulitple formats including draft which are $15 each for paper events and closer to a $3 each online So practicing limited scales up as you play opposed to a large initial investment.

Great job on the video! Going from Flesh and Blood to Bandai games overall has certainly been an eye opening experience

Great video. Earned yourself a sub

Where does the Final Fantasy TCG fall on this? Also I’m curious where Lorcana will land once they start having competitive events.

Answer: A fuck ton of money

The biggest thing is Battle spirit saga competitive wise has the biggest payout to competing competitively with them doing cash price tournaments

Digimon has some duplicates across decks. Veemon and Davis tamer will be used across Veemon armor, Imperialdramon and Ulforceveedramon decks. Then there are some basic stuff like the color memory boost cards.

Outside of competitive, I love you can make casual/playable decks in Yugioh for less than $100. Makes it very beginner friendly & I introduced all my friends to easier formats to ease them into the game :) No luck reliant stuff that just instantly makes them lose the game so its great & friendly between friends. Already made at least 40 decks for them.

This needs to be a quarterly video. You got a sub 💪

Its funny the 60-70% of vanguards cost is halbe and youthberk. With halbe being reprinted and youthberk probably gonna be replaced by gandiva, vanguards placing might be lower in the future. Hopefully

I would say modern would have been the thing to look at for magic, as its the most played competitively for MTG while everything els you mentioned would be the most played for the card games. So should have looked at modern instead, other than that awesome video !

Thanks for taking the time n effort to accumulate the data . Definitely an interesting video. I play dbs and would say outside the optional SCRs or the 1 of the deck, the price drops 100-300$ for a deck and would push dbs in the bottom 4 games of the list of most expensive. Just putting that out there.

Wish I watched this before I started YGO. But at least I am somewhat having fun 😂

Digimon is super cheap because most of the money comes from the alternate arts. There are exceptions in the secret rare slot, so if any of those are meta the price shoots up, but that's often saved for either a super generic card that goes in a ton of decks or a super niche card maybe one deck uses. There's also a slow overlap as archetypes are becoming more prominent. The game started offf as generic goodstuff so powercreep made it so that new cards had to be better, but now that archetypes are a thing most of the prices are from random old cards getting really good. Wargreymon doesn't really have new card that goes over 15, but older cards drive up the price a ton. Honestly tho a full maxed out deck in digimon is crazy because alt arts are abound and are often like 2x times the price at least

I feel like a lot of the prices for the Digimom decks are high. Even a day after the vid was published the greymon deck is nowhere near 210.

Uusually we buy 2-4 decks when competing. Also, knowing the average price of each top 5 deck and compare with the average price of each top 5 from other games may show us more about the entry point and the maintenance cost for the game. You can play cheap and buy a 270$ Minerva deck, 150$ Red deck wins, 55$ Ylvetal deck; 260$ Mathmech deck; or a 380$ Dash deck. In which case, premiation + gameplay/enjoyability may influence in your decision making: Pokemon > Prizes are amazing. You can even get a free internship to learn a new language, but it has a motionless playstyle; Vanguard > Not even worldwide, exclusive to Japan, with few badly distributed and manufactured exceptions that the company is doing out of a huuuuuge favor to the fans. Also, prizes are awful; MTG> good luck with Wizards of the Greed; Yugioh> Konami doesn't care about the overseas, only about how much money it can retrieve from the overseas. So, your game will be filled with raarity bumps, poorly designed banlists and overpriced products when compared to their japanese version. Also, you receive a playmat and a unique card from tournaments; FAB> Money, Money, Money, Money, Money, Monery, Money. You'll win prizes in both MONEY and cards, which can be traded for MONEY.

As someone who recently got into Flesh and Blood, I definitely feel this

How did you get 100$ for Lost Box? But to be fair instead of control there should've been Arceus/Giratina which costs a bit more than control box. And you can only play 1 Radiant Pokemon per Deck so Radiant Greninja should've been on the duplicate list. It is very sad to see the state of vanguard standard right now. There is definetly something wrong when I could get steam maidens in premium cheaper than the average price of a standard deck. The two main reasons are the shitty promo distribution (especially for a european) which feeds everyone's fomo and the greedy set designs. We started with 10 RRRs per set and now 16. Ns and Rs are mostly unplayable or get replaced by Promos or RR / RRRs in the next set and good generics for a nation are mostly RR/RRR or are short printed Rs. And the Masque in Set 11 is the biggest joke of them all right before Dragon tree markers (imagine any game where a marker in a common slot is 5€. That's some serious konami shit)

Ya, playing ECGs is SO much cheaper than TCGs, even compared to Pokémon.

So ur saying I should keep playing and wait another year to see if I should get into vanguard again hahaha

Look at "Pokémon Trading Card Game" man. So inspirational!

Nobody buys 3 Fyendal's Spring Tunic 😂

judging magic by the current standard is kind of an outlier, formats in magic balloon in price as they gain popularity and current standard has been hit by the double gut punch of the pandemic and magic messing around with organized play/protour/official tournament support. If you look at modern or pioneer as examples I think you'd see a more accurate picture of how much a deck costs.

Damn vanguard promo out here like "don't worry I'll gate keep" 😂.

Instead of the playset rule for the total, why not just take the max number used for any of the decks, so e.g. if a card is played at 2/1/0/0/0 across the decks it would be 2

Daaang It's gotten even worse since I quit

It’s a good thing that there are some card games that have online simulators. Like Yugioh master Duel, Pokemon, magic the gathering, vanguard, and (coming soon) dragon ball super. It’s just a more inviting way to get into card games withought abusing your wallet.

great video, thank you for making it!

DBS is a bit of a weird spot because the price is driven up extremely high by the SCR of any given deck. Most of which do have budget options and won't compromise your build too hard. They are also able to be slotted into pretty much any deck of the same color which should lower the cost in the duplicate section.

Awesome video

Damn near spat my drink out at those VG prices. The difference between optimal/not optimal and playing a Keiter/Dark States vs not is staggering.

3:30 well, factoring rotation on that, you will be paying MORE on a long term.

TIL: CFV is expensive (looking at you Youthberk). FAB is even more expensive for a game that's to be played irl.

Why is Dragonic overlord expensive?

Great now try adjusting those prices without factoring in market inflation and decks would probably be slightly cheaper in cost than they are right now.

It's kind of unfortunate this analysis is done here when Youth is in meta for Vanguard, same for Overlord. If we wait a month, Youth and Overlord can easily be replaced by Messiah and Gandiva and that may knock like $500 off the price tag. I never understood why Tempest is still $70 to this date. To me Cairbre is from the same set, with the same rarity, and is used in way more decks but is a lot cheaper.

For vanguard I somehow did build a good deck for about $30-$40

BSS has gone crazy with that shield. I just hope they have a good reprints policy, because apart of this, the game is the best I tried in years, and still very cheap. Still Absolute Ice Shield has gone down to 21 dollars at this moment, so fortunately the game is getting even cheaper.