What I Think Of The Digimon Card Game After Playing For Almost THREE YEARS. 

This is one of the best Digimon TCG videos that I've ever watched

The game itself? Great, easily top 3 of any card game ever conceived. The contents of sets? Also great, building a top tier deck is super efficient. Hopefully this holds out and buyouts don't keep happening as old cards suddenly slot into a deck that becomes viable at some point in time. This possibility forces people to watch the Japanese metagame so they don't spend extra money when they run into a buyout down the line. Promos? Typical of Japanese card games, but completely asinine. I don't care how much extra product you push as a result so third parties can sell it, making a mechanically unique card a promo is a bad practice. Even worse are cases where said promos are required for decks to keep up, and even worse than that are cases like Seadramon, where Aegis is a deck that should just suck less. Tournaments? See this entire video. I'd say they dropped the ball, but that implies they held it at some point in recent history. Bandai, for fuck's sake, just let Digimon have and keep something good for once.

The fact that Digimon is still going so strong despite how horrible the prizing for the game is and how unorganized the tournament scene is just speaks volumes on how great the game actually is. If Digimon received the same level of support that One Piece is getting then it would probably be a contender with the Big 3 of Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon and Magic (still likely the smallest of the 4 of course but just as talked about) as it's such a better game than One Piece is. Instead, we have to worry about the new kid on the block of Lorcana :/ As for the Nationals comment. The fact that Canada had no Nationals and we had to go to the States to take part literally stopped me from going to Nationals at all even though I earned my invite last year. I'd have loved to take part but I didn't feel like taking a couple days off work to spend over a thousand dollars to get to California. Sure, depending on where in Canada the Nationals ended up being held it might cost me around the same but at least I wouldn't have to worry about making sure I converted enough money to do everything. But lets face it, to Bandai, Canada doesn't exist (looking at you 1st Anniversary prizing :P)

Finance guy coming in - totally want to add some additional flavor to the TO and Organized play bit from a resource and Bandai strategic direction perspective. I apologize for the novel hehe. If you were to look at Bandai's shareholder documentation for Year End 2022 - their mantra was IP proliferation and improving their reach globally. To me that translates to - we are going to get as much market penetration we can with all of our crap and get peeps to buy it - whatever the medium is (games, TCGs, figures, etc). One of things Bandai has - is a lot of licensing with a lot of various IPs which are expensive. One of the things they have been trying, and this should be obvious, is how they deployed BSS in the west. Based on the amount of global marketing, branding, etc. they deployed, if they really do segregate resources by division (i.e. there's a card game division, broken down by IP or game, but they all pull from the same budget) they definitely moved dollars to BSS. Mostly because it failed in the West once already and they would be partially cannibalizing their other games in the attempt to get folks to jump ship. Based on how poorly set 2 did and general feedback from LGS' I believe we can paint a new strategic objective coming from Bandai. Originally in lets say abouts Q1 they were pushing resources for BSS and OP - one to get a cheaper IP to stick and the other because of popularity and the massive following the OP IP has. Sure DBS/DBZ is their largest IP - but the card game admittedly has been shrinking (now they are releasing a refreshed series - again another pivot). In order to support the first 2 - they had to cut corners somewhere - which was Digimon. I fully believe the powers that be believed that if they put their weight into the others Digimon would unwind on its own. I think after BSS released (with all that money being waved around) and it not sticking super well - I think bandai went back to the drawing board. Instead of BSS taking off as planned, it reasonably has super underperformed, yet Digimon remained incredibly popular. With that being the case, we started to see some innovation for the game with the new designs in BT14 and BT15 and the apparent shift in the design team (rumor mill a new team is in charge). We also saw a huge uptick in communication(s) from Bandai regarding product(s) and engagement with competitive tournament announcements. Unfortunately, since they probably didn't begin their pivot until April or mid year, there was significantly less opportunity to get TOs to organize appropriately for in person events. With 4 Bandai games, Lorcana, Pokemon, Yugioh, and MTG - it can be a lot to manage since there's quite a bit of cross over. My hunch - if BSS continues to underperform (I imagine set 3 will be significantly less bought by LGS' and will probably stagnate like DBS) - we will probably see them put more weight into DBS Fusions ( I think that's what it's called), One Piece, and Digimon. With Lorcana coming into the picture I am unsure how it will impact 2024 planning but I would imagine there will be more efforts to support those 3 games as they continue to perform well. This may mean more organized play, in person and web based. I think prizing support for stores and event packs in the most recent batch are significantly better than what we had the first half of the year which again I think supports my hunch they did a midyear pivot. I imagine if BT14 and BT15 sell well in the West (I think RB01 is too expensive and won't do well) - and the trends in BSS continue - we may see much better support next year for Digimon. My hope would be that they would add some more TOs and maybe take a page out of their One Piece Book with respect to prizing. Although - to circle back around, if they really did expect Digimon to unwind, it makes sense why prizing and support was so unimaginative/lazy earlier this year. Here's hoping to another 3 solid years of Digimon with a lot more of everything!

Hurts to hear it but completely agree man! The game is phenomenal, the people I've met for my first tcg have been unbelievably caring and fun, the artwork almost never misses but unfortunately tournament play has really been dropping the bag the last year! We're seeing 65 people regionals here in Australia at the moment because honestly the prizing is horrific! Just feels like so much more could be done at the moment if Bandai put more back into their already established game rather than trying to drag BSS's corpse out of the dirt. Thanks for sharing your views, I think we need more voices in the tcg to get more people playing, keep it up!

Some of us in asia a bit envious with some of EN's prizes 20:39 that batch of ordinemon is part of P-Bandai, costs around 50 USD (along with cool boy, merciful mode, etc) After seeing EN's OPCG prize, they do the same with DCG too, just different way of distibuting the cards (although for non Japan Asia, first year was rough, some promo is in competitive play, one of the icky thing i don't like with non-reprint PR cards, esp it's hard to get) Also EN had done special things too, having debut a new art first on EN side, then the JP distribute it in different way (such as P-Bandai, o yes, they love their P-Bandais) I hope they streamlined their bandai TCG+ experience outside Japan (recent ultimate cup on Japan strictly require Bandai TCG+ for the first time)

The real fix for “players cooking local results” would be to only give each sanctioned store 1 invite per season, then the stores could run a league series where the top player gets the invite at the end of the “League”

I agree with you! I love this game so much. I wonder if theres a survey we can fill out to help improve the game. I do want to see this community grow and this game to improve!

This was a fantastic video. I don't play the digimon TCG but I watched the entire thing. I always was interested in potentially checking it out because the game because I loved digimon frontier!

Fantastic job with this video 👏🏽👏🏽

We need more “opponents turn” interaction. I’ve been playing for a couple months and I’m already sick of WarGrey raiding with piercing for multiple checks or BloomLord passing turn then keeping turn then taking multiple checks then Quartz locking the entire board lol if the whole community is against hand traps then more decks beside X-Antibody archetypes need better protection options

Nice video, hope more old and new players could see it

Nothing but facts here, Jodobbi! 💯 I'm trying to get back into causal Digimon lol

Good and well presented points that i overall agree with! For me, the best Digimon Event i attended so far was the european championship this year in Bremen. With over 450 players in the main event, a great venue, multiple side events that, beside tournament packs and boosters, gave you tickets for a price wall (which included copys of Ultimate Cup Winner Paladin Mode, Omegamon and DC1 Cup Gallantmon, which all got bought after great effort of players combining and farming tickets). It was a big convention center right beside a train station in a big city and i meet so many cool people from different countries - england, greece, spain, poland, denmark, netherlands (and of course the german people that i mostly know already). I would give a lot to have two events of this level a year and maybe 2-3 a bit smaller, but still well organized in person events. The german community gone their way of organizing there own event with the Adventure Series, that goes into its third iteration from what i could hear next year. Over 200 Players, german voice actors of the Anime to get cards signed (Gommamon one in the first iteration, davis in the second one, as well as the biyomon/lalamon one that did recorded messages and a certain amount of cards to give out as she could not make it). I travel partly 10 hours and more for these events and i gladly do it again when i can, so please just give us the opportunity to do so Bandai!

My main gripe with the game so far is just the design direction bandai has taken, and that's their overfocus on "archetypes". With the direction they've designed the game towards, it really starts after a certain point start choking deckbuilding since you end up on this situation where "Archetypal" decks have miles and miles above of consistency and playability compared to, say, anything that isn't an archetype digimon line *cough*greymon*cough*. Black for example has no playable deck that isn't an archetype like alphamon, machinedramon, or alter B. I just hope they start creating more generic cards in general, while slowing down on the "Fan favorites" (I get it, they sell, but they need to slow down).

I started playing this year and the game is amazing, we have an amazing little community in Serbia and I've managed to stay on positive winrates at locals, we don't have any nationals or something close so playing the regionals it's useless because Ultimate Cups have better prizing, I really wish the competing aspect was easier, been struggling for almost a month to find a way to install a webcam in my pc so ai can compete, I just wish we had in person events on Europe

Personally I hate stamps on my cards. I'd much rather be able to see the beautiful art on my cards without needless obstructions blocking it that provide nothing of substance to the card. As for the event pack alts i'm a bit mixed on that front. On one hand I would like to see actual alt arts for event packs, but on the other I like the colored borders on some of the lesser rarity cards. As a Sakuyamon player getting the colored border versions of the plug-ins was super nice and if it wasn't for the event pack that likely never would've happened since its extremely rare that Option cards get alts of any kind. That said they really need to step it up with the locals tournament packs. They have had next to nothing worth chasing in the longest time and when they do they end up botching the foiling making them less desirable. It would be nice to get a winners pack for once that actually has cards worth chasing instead of non-foil alts for cards nobody actually uses.

fantastic video. It summarizes the current state of the game perfectly.

I think we need to rally the community and spam Bandai with our desire for more in person event support. As a JP company they aren't likely to see the internal conversations of players we gotta take the messages straight to them en masse.

Great video

This was a great take

As a former Yu-Gi-Oh player I miss regionals that were formatted that way. They were much more spread out to allow people a chance (or several) at an invite, meet players from outside locals and just generally fun. We had 1 small one near me and it was awesome, but it seems like it was just a one and done thing and that was super unfortunate.

Great video! Never played the OP for Digimon, so this was super informative Given more time, would you do a piece on other TCG op like with Grand Archive etc?

Love the video dont know how bit somehow left the discord and cant find my way back😢

I agree with majority of what was said but I'm just a bit confused. I don't think I've ever seen those foil event cards. I play in a country that uses the JP cards and for Tamer Battles, participation prize packs are almost always alt arts (unless I missed something) and the winner gets a foiled version of one of the alts. So does EN get different cards for tamer battles or is it a whole different structure over there?

Losing Nationals invites at Store Championships was a huge hit for my motivation to continue playing. One of our best players qualified last year from Store Champs, went and made it to the Top 32. He doesn't have the opportunity to play webcam Regionals as much this year and if he had qualified again, I know he would've at least been a Top 4 player this year at Nationals. It's just kinda maddening for me.

As a dtcg player from SEA, i totally agreed with you. i really like the game and looking at OPtcg and how success it is right now, why cant Dtcg get the same thing. DTCG have so much potential too. Wish that bandai can notice the problem and improve.

Keep doing you Dobbi! You were the first Digi-tuber I started watching not long after I got into the game and I appreciate the content. On this particular topic I agree 100% prizing is so bad, such a poor attempt to encourage people to even play in the small number of events there actually are. Also yes online tournaments are garbageo, I think a real standard needs to be introduced and policed appropriately. It's so easy to cheat your way to the top because I dunno about anyone else but usually on my turn I'm looking at my hand and board thinking about plays not micro checking my screen for my opponents already dodgy camera set up and suspicious activity. Would be good to get a change in organised play management to breath some fresh life into it

I'm gonna stick to this game this time. I played for a little then left dur to locals. The community isn't too large here, but i really want to play. A few shops i do have to play but so many people on One Piece now. I hope we get more players. So, i will give this another shot. Restarting my collection too. I'm playing Blue Flare finally and gonna play HeavyLeomon deck. I missed Nats, as i was coming from One Piece. Ended up leaving that be at it's not to affordable on the collectable part. Booster boxes are going for 400 dollars. In Digimon i can buy one boosters box for 80 and pull the best cards in the set in one box. Definitely better for collecting. You get your monies worth

Man i love this Game. It feels fresh and Artworks are beautiful. But i live in German and there is no Tournament. No Regional.... nothing. its hard to find some dudes to play. Online is a thing but i love the old Kitchetable flavour. Hopefully we get some Tournaments in 2024

"Nice" is subjective. Sadly, my locals are half d-bags, half decent people. Makes going to tournaments or organized play unappealing. Do you see Digimon on the decline as a whole? Excellent, video. Keep'em up.

My man didn’t miss, all points solid.

The organized play by Bandai blues. Even if I wanted to enter an online event, it’s almost impossible to get tickets. I barely have time to go to locals once every few months. Ygo I can just decide I have time and show up to a regional

To me Digimon was great but the way the game has progressed id say it has declined since bt9, personally from a competitive standpoint I prefer BSS's gameplay

It looks like the gold stamps are starting to have placements on them, because i know some of the 2023 store championship cards like cool boy have a participant stamp and a top 4 stamp

This is going to sound critical of your video, but I promise it's not. I'm not going to comment on what I agree with, because the slight critiques I have are only about two things you mentioned. The rest, I fully and wholeheartedly agree with. So, from the judge side of things I can tell you that many TOs have judges they prefer to work with because they have a proven track record and are known to be good at working with players, showing up, and making the TO look good. When TOs have a chance, they will almost always hire certain judges for those reasons, and because of that, it seems like there's a lot more judge overlap with games than there actually is. Each of these games (OP, Digi, DBS, BSS) have probably more than 100 certified judges in each game without any overlap. A lot of judges, however, enjoy multiple games and want to judge for them. So, when it comes down to it, a big Bandai multi-game event will fall more into what the TO is able to spend for their judge staff when it comes to overlap. That also falls into my second critique: Bandai makes no money from premier events. In fact, they oftentimes lose money. TOs are the ones who make the money from events like Ulti Cups and so on. For them to offer badges at conventions would just outright hemorrhage money. Most of the time, the TOs make enough money to pay their staff, ship the prizing, and have a little extra to make it worth covering those costs. Bandai doesn't receive much, other than maybe the cost of the tournament kits themselves. Where Bandai makes its money is off of pack and box sales. At least, as far as I've been told.

I've been playing since release and people say "wow, you must be really good" and I just cry internally

to note for the stamps on Ultimate Cups you mention around the 19 minute marker. Ultimate Cups are not main events. They are side events. Which is why they don't do the top cut numbers on the cards. Because technically it doesn't matter past a certain point. Japan doesn't have Ultimate Cups or even something akin to them. Not that you aren't making a valid point, but just that Bandai has reasoning for why they don't do more than a stamp.

Or they could run a “Nationals Open” along side the “Nationals Invitational”

I really want to see the community (or Bandai if they must) begin to develop a highlander/singleton format like Commander in Magic the Gathering, that supports casual, group play so that there can be a realistic alternative to organized competitive play. Something slower paced, because while I can understand you enjoyment of the speed of the game, I personally feel that the game is too fast and only seems to be getting faster. I don't want to see digimon go the way of pokemon and get rid of evolution mechanics because power creep makes playing bombs the ideal way of approaching the game.

19:28 the reason why the other Bandai tcg got better stuff then Digimon as far as price stuff Digimon is ones of better waves even better then dbs and naruto at the time it released then 3yrs later now dbs trying to get it foot in its door then as far as BSS and one piece. BSS that's there own IP they trying to get everyone on the ban wagon by they throw in some cash prizes and one piece it's because of the tv show so Bandai got big brains so they developed a card game and get everyone on this "used to be" over price game

7:39 ugh so fuckin true.

how is powercreep in the game

I've played this game on and off for about a year (?). But somehow this game still confuse me more than yugioh somehow.

Wait theres an onlije digimon tcg game?

Purple since BT1?

I think bandai needs to stop pushing greymon so hard. I’m over being screwed just because I don’t care for greymon and only play my favorite digimon.

LORCANA ❤😂

Today's gamers are getting spoiled. Why does EVERYTHING nowadays have to revolve around tournaments and prize support? Why can't people just enjoy playing the games of their choice around their own kitchen table with friends?