Bandai doesn't know how to make purple cards that are balanced. They're either busted or trash and purple doesn't follow the same archetypal restrictions most of the other decks have.
Argument against not doing the combined banlist. Other games have 1 global banlist and do just fine with global play. Games like magic. The issue isint global banlists. Its japans favoritism. They need global product releases like other games yugioh and digimon haveing releases seperate ruin global play and make world events a joke
I recently started playing (casually due to availability, but still doing my best to check out the meta and try decks out) and I was personally shocked when I learned that the ban/restricted list is shared while releases aren't. I've never been a fan of staggered releases (or really Bandai in general, but Digimon is so cheap I decided to try it) but usually the playstyle difference and separate ban/restricted lists like Yugioh has between the OCG and TCG keep things interesting despite the spoilers being known way in advance for US players. I think Digimon struggles a lot with the current way they handle the game on a global scale and while I don't have time to compete, I think it'll benefit the Digimon TCG community to figure out a better solution for how the game is handled
I feel like Bandai's whole issue is how badly they treat the Digimon franchise. It gives massive "We didn't expect this game to do well, we still don't expect it to do well." Vibes recently. They push Battle Spirits so hard and genuinely no one cares about it. Digimon is a major franchise and Bandai needs to treat it as such.
I've always hated how Bandai has neglected Digimon for decades. I've always loved the franchise ever since I was a kid in the 90s, and I am absolutely in love with the card game. I wish they would do more with it bc there is so much potential there that just gets ignored.
I'm with you on this one. I'm sorry for the folks who enjoyed BSS but I am genuinely glad it failed because it should be a harsh lesson to Bandai: "You can't expect your players to drop everything and play what you want them to." People are invested in the both the Digimon IP and the card game. It was such a spit in the face to leave it on life support while trying to establish BSS.
Saying no one cares about bss is crazy when Battle Spirits is Bandai’s biggest IP in JP and saga is still going into set 3-4. Not sure what you mean about them pushing bss hard when I’ve barely seen any advertisement for the game after it’s first initial release.
It's really a shame that Bandai Namco refuses to let Digimon succeed. It quickly climbed to be the 4th or 5th top selling tcg in only a few years, and then they release One Piece and all of a sudden they abandon it. They refuse to unify set releases, which means the west (a major market for the game) gets cards that are months old, and gets banlists that are only relevant for the Japanese format.
no, trust me, Japanese players are the guinea pigs. We had to surrender multiple Evolution Cups to Shoutmon X4 lol. currently, we had to deal with Apokari bullshit. probably when it hits the west later Garuru X would be banned already. another proof is Tommy. it was never a problem in Japan and survived like 5 sets? but when the west cried out lol they str8 limited it.
@@knightartorias1825 OP IP is in a completely different galaxy from Digi. BSS is the best playing TCG they have but its not doing well bc of it having 0 IP recognition.
Sadly Digimon died in my area. I was forced to quit because NO ONE plays it here anymore. The obvious bias Bandai has for the One Piece game over Digimon didn’t help either.
I really wish the Digimon TCG community was actually a thing where I live. I have been struggling to find anyone near where I live to play it with. I absolutely love Digimon and would love to see it grow more. I hope that I can find more people to play the game with and try to grow it on a personal level at least.
@@apsamplifier Yeah it makes it extremely difficult and with how many card games there are it limits how many people are going to be willing to try a new card game out because they are just generally expensive to get into already. There are quite a few MTG players etc around where I live and talking to them its all the same. They are hesitant to get into another card game because its impossible to financially sustain more than 1 at a time for most people. That is why I liked the point about how it is really interesting that Bandai released multiple card games to all compete against each other.
As a fan who's been playing since the first format, I never really noticed the ban list thing until cross Hearts came out and nobody being able to play the deck at full power for more than a few weeks. at this point if they're not going to keep the game synced up where each region is playing the same format, each region needs to have a separate ban list.
Always love seeing these discussion videos for Digimon and other card games! You bring up a great point that a shared banlist makes no sense when the JP region is several sets ahead of the Western players. Would also enjoy seeing more matches of Digimon in the future as well! Keep on with the great work!
The Digimon TCG is my favorite card game. I've been playing it since before it even came out in the west. When I first saw "I hate this" in the thumbnail, my heart sunk. After watching the full video though, I have to say I agree with every one of your points. I'll leave a Like to support the video, hopefully Bandai can see this so they can work towards remedying at least the banlist issue. I don't want them to drive away players, nor to get you to stop playing, Alec. As for my most wanted change, I'd love to have an official online client. I have 5 friends who won't touch the game unless it has an online client. It's really holding back my own experience.. It's also really saddening to see how Bandai treats the Digimon tcg compared to the One Piece one. There's official Bandai card shops in Japan that FOCUS on selling bandai card games, and yet those shops don't even sell Digimon cards from what I've seen. That's F'd up. There was also the case of the Draconic Roar set having like half the cards mistranslated back when they were starting to release One Piece. The final straw to me would be if they released a One Piece client before releasing a Digimon one. That would surely tick me off.
In response to your banlist comments. While I do understand your frustrations of not being able to play decks at full power. There is the argument that it's for the best that we as the English format don't have to deal with these decks at full power. It has definitely been Bandai's MO to hit cards preemptively in English that created problems in JP since the beginning of the banlist with cards like Hidden Potential and Mega Digimon Fusion hit. I think Bandai see the English format as a way to fix mistakes they made using the Japanese format as evidence. And like you said, our formats aren't exactly the same, but they're pretty damn close. The reason Alphamon was king in JP and Melga was king in English was because of the promo garurumon cards not being legal in some or most JP tournaments due to distribution issues in other countries that follow JP format. And hitting Dorugrey wasn't necessarily exclusively because Alphamon was a good deck, but the fact that the OTK potential that card gave Alphamon limited Bandai's ability to design balanced cards for the Alphamon archetype, which is pretty much the other reason Bandai hits cards on the banlist, like Calling from the Darkness, Blossomon, Weregarurumon. I don't think you're wrong in thinking Bandai jumps the gun on hitting some decks. I feel they do that for their Ulti Cup alt format. I just think that sometimes hitting cards preemptively is for the best to avoid tier 0 formats.
I agree I also like that they preemptively hit cards for English as it makes it so that we don’t have to deal with the OP decks like how Apoclymon is rn in JP. I feel like the gabumon stuff was a good hit cause it makes do that both decks are still playable just not broken but it is kinda annoying that they have spaced out releases for the promo stuff specifically cause I play commandramon and the promo AA blocker commandramon hasn’t released yet in English but by bt14 it’ll be irrelevant
@@grist836the main issue I have with the recent announcement is that there's a promo Eyesmon SM coming for us soon, and we only just got reprints of BT02 Gabumon under a month ago and especially the latter he was the backbone of many purple strategies, for as long as I can remember. ST06 I completely understand that thing would be obnoxious with all the unsuspending Garurumon decks tend to do. But like APS suggested, why not make our B&R list take effect only once a certain set releases?
2 things i've learned about bandai: 1. bandai doesn't respect it's IPs. they only exist to make them money 2. bandai is japan first. they do NOT care about an international market, even with it's ripe potential bandai is overall, not smart. they could do better in a multitude of ways but they choose not to. no matter how much the US branch may try to do for us, they will never be allowed by the parent company to accomplish enough
It's such a fun game and Bandai is letting it slip through their fingers with the lack of support. I get that One Piece is where they make their money, but Digimon has the potential to get there if they'd put the proper care into it. I have a hard time finding locals to play in, so i just build silly theme decks that my friends and I can grab and play and we end up having more fun that way.
Bandai needs an online client. I would love to play digimon, but I don't have a scene in my town, and i don't drive. But I still like to buy a set I'm interested in once a year
If you mean table top simulator than I heard but my friend ain't into digimon sadly I was hoping for something like master duel or a ygo pro unofficial but I doubt digimon is that big to warrant it in the west and it unnecessary in the east cause of the difference in availability
100% agreed, I myself am simply way too busy most of the time to go to locals and am too tired on my days off. Master Duel, Duel Links, hell even fan made ones like Dueling Book and EDOPro let me constantly engage with the game. Digimon absolutely needs an emulator, even if it's an unofficial one. Just so outsiders can easily get into it without needing to dedicate the time to head to a local that may not even have a scene for it in the first place. I know my local at least is heavily YGO and MTG with a lil bit of One Piece
It's incredibly silly we share a banlist with the Japanese format. As far as I understand the purple hits barely even matter to the real terror decks in JP, so nothing of note is actually gonna change with what's happening in the JP meta. So in NA, we lose multiple playable cards that were absolutely not remotely relevant at a meta level and just kills a bunch of casual decks, but JP just continues to be held hostage by Apoc, Anubis, and Melga because they won't hit cards that aren't out in NA yet. Really hoping this isn't becoming a YGO thing where we get to see a dozen different cards die in Apoclymon's place and obliterate a ton of decks rather then actually hit the problem card.
For me the ugliest part about Digimon is just the absolute lack of interactivity. The game turns into such a shit show with training options you won't even believe it. Players will deadass camp behind their trainings and tamers and only come out when they have their OTK ready. Training just allows you to absolutely camp in raising instead of being forced to promote out of raising for your effects. Shinegrey can actually just run like 4 red trainings and 2 yellow and the game just becomes a race if you can finish them before they find their stuff first.
The one thing you never hit on is how the absurd the number of erratas and mistranslations is. How can a game be accessible for new players if they need to look up the effects, if they can't be confident the card is usable as printed I know this is a problem in other games but Bandai's quality control is basically non-existent.
EX03 was honestly the biggest joke I've ever seen in any TCG. Over 1/3 of the entire set has errata!?! At that point apologise, recall the entire product and provide everyone with replacement packs. I know BSS had major issues with no rare packs in sets 1 and 2 which goes to show they weren't distracted focusing on that game instead...
I got into Digimon a couple of months ago, I'm lucky my locals have a healthy population. I'm too new to understand/ have a experienced a lot of the grievances yet, but I hope bandai keeps the game going for a long time.
You will find out very fast all the big events are mostly online. Bandai has a prommis to a couple to organize these large events its not like in other games where game stores can grow and hold bigger events so locals will be always locals that gets boring very fast.
Ive been trying to voice opinions like these at my LGS but I keep getting shut down but I don’t think my players realize how much better we have it our area compared to others. More than half of my friends have quit the game to move to One piece or Lorcana and if I’m being honest I’m having a hard time holding on myself… I love the video and am glad that I’m not the only one that holds some of these opinions out there.
I really love the Digimon tcg and just Digimon in general, I can't play it where I live because I don't know anyone else that wants to play it. I hope the tcg keeps getting bigger because all the major stores (Walmart, Target, etc) stopped carrying the cards and the only shop I've found with them has a pretty bad up charge (normally like 6:50 per pack and unpopular starters are 25)
Belphe has topped/won multiple regionals and the gabu was hit for apoc. We really dont want apoc to exist at full power here. No one wants to deal with that. I understand it might be annoying to see stuff get hit there before it pops off here, but it will, we have nearly the exact same card pool.
I get where people come from but whenever I hear the argument that "we should let it prove it's a problem" sounds terrible to me. If some strategies are just overpowered then it should rightfully get hit before it just muddies the meta for 4 months
The dorugrey restriction for Alphamon back in bt9 was 100% needed. If you digivolved into him and were able to go to oryuken, keep turn with 2 memory, then play konguo your stuck became immune to all security bombs. I do agree that the restriction list should be separated by region ie. Japan vs everyone else. I have heard that Bandai develops 2-3 sets in advance from what is currently released and somethings like Apoclymon are busted with the purple draw/trash engine which is why it needed to be hit. You have made very valid points and hopefully our feedback will continue to help improve the game
I'm from asia , and we're playing the Japanese version. What I don't like about bandai's banlist is : 1. They won't hit anything sr and sec rarity cards. 2. They won't hit anything that were not in the west yet . 3. Thry won't hit cards that supports a new deck that hasn't release on west. Right now the problem in our meta is apocalymon and the trio dogs ( anubis , garuru and looga ). The problem is these 4 decks have not released in the west yet. So they cannot ban any of them right now. We're not okay right now , meta is super fast , the three dogs can go otk turn 2 or 3 and if you play a slow deck you will get milled by apocalymon. And what we got is this jokelike banlist , shine and mirage is not a thing anymore here in japanese format and this eyesmon engine is alrdy been replaced by garuru engine. It's sad to look that bandai is overprotective of their sales.
I agree 1,000% that we need to have seperate ban lists for the U.S. and J.P. in this game. Decks getting hit before wr even really get a chance to play them feels awful every time. I also agree that bandai competing with itself for space at the tcg table is a bad look because it can cause bandai games to cannibalise eachother, even though it hasnt really affected my locals too much, in fact digimon is growing in my locals. But you never know what itll take for some players to drop one game for another.
I can't believe "I come from a Yu-Gi-Oh background and I dont like sharing the list" Yu-Gi-Oh enables some of the most toxic OP cards to be played for months on end and regularly kills off its player base while waiting for these things to be hit. Preemptive strike from the OCG is way better and would give a much better format. Digmon got it spot on
Honestly you should know better when jumping into a Bandai card game. They'll kill off their own game to sell a new one. I used to play Naruto CCG and I LOVED that game. I think the reason they stopped was simply they didn't wanna renew the IP and wanted to make other games. Naruto CCG was probably the only game they were consistent with and every game since Bandai has been running them into the ground. It's very sad and I hope they do better with their current games.
Welcome to Bushiroad running Vanguard, Weiss Schwarz, and Shadowverse. Thankfully, a lot of players in these communities do play the other games. Bandai could definitely learn a thing or two from them. Something like the "Bandai TCG Championship Series". Regarding tournament sign up, 2 months in advance is ridiculous. You might not even know if you're going to be available. 1-2 weeks is reasonable.
Welcome to the dying card game party Digimon fans. Us DBSCCG saved you a seat. Dragon ball crawled so digimon could walk, digimon walked so one piece could run. Now welcome to having no more fans. lol
Neither DBS nor Digimon are dying. Are they hurting from their parent company making strange decisions? Sure but guess what? It's also going on with One Piece...
DBS is actually rebounding rn, regional turnout looks pretty stellar and our local scene has really bolstered in the last few months. Digimon is definitely on the fast track to DBS' low point tho lmao
I agree so hard about the ban list!! I never really paid it attention like that but yeah we should have different list. I never got to use greymon x before it got limited to 1.
Yeah that's definitely a bummer. Hoping to see the game grow and improve since I recently got into it and am having a great time so far. Also hoping to see more content on the game from you guys, we really need more creators for the game to reach more people.
I'm pretty new to digimon. I wasn't aware this was hitting both Japan and us simultaneously. I was really confused at some of the restrictions released and now it makes sense. The only way a simultaneous ban or restriction makes sense is if all regions were at the same set, but we're not.
Yeah I was really pissed off with the banlist bc it tells me that we're not only their aftermarket but also at the mercy of JP players whims and complaints.
The ACE box toppers were a way to tease the new Blast Digivolve mechanic. From the start Bandai has been trying to catch the overseas players up to the Japanese cards.
I did the same, and agree 100%. It's cheap, it's Digimon (child nostalgia from me watching it as a kid) and i love the gameplay (playing Beelzemo now and will get into Digipolice soon).
*sorry this is long, but it is a lot to unpack* Tbh, I think it's a combination of the two different formats using the same list and the large increase in card games in general. Last year and this year, we got roughly 6? People can barely afford one card game even if Digimon is relatively budget cost wise to play. We used to have locals at 20+. Lately, after everything else came out, we are lucky to fire a tournament. Granted, One Piece and Lorcana are starting to hit those levels, too, so I'm wondering if it's card game burn out this time of year. But next year, I think we have another 6 promising looking TCGs and 1 honestly sketchy looking one that has a cool concept but feels like a scam almost. It's concerning for a lot of card games rn. Star Wars Unlimited has a great real back and forth evolution to its gameplay, great comic styled art, and a great bulk pack layout. The only concern is that this is the 4th or 5th time a TCG has been made for Star Wars, and the company making it has had distribution issues before. Even if this is the most promising build for a star wars tcg, I'm hesitant to say it will pop off. Even if someone isn't a Star Wars fan, I highly recommend checking out the gameplay. Then there are things like Grand Archive, I think we already got Shadowverse, and the scam looking one called Altered TCG, too. It sucks to say but there is likely to be a shift in the TCG world and some card games may die. I HOPE, it's some of the big 3 tbh. Yugioh feels unplayable even though I grew up on it and love it. MTG feels like it's trying to sell before it dies by making a product for every month almost. And Pokémon? Well, that's always had its collector market, so it's likely gonna live, tbh even if tournaments die. Lorcana still has a lawsuit going on, and people are quitting due to no product or just realizing the game is really nothing super exciting, just the most barebones level of MTG without interaction. There's no hate from me on it, but that's not what a lot of card game vets want. Digimon feels like it's iffy rn, which sucks. I've been calling for a soft reboot by rotating older blocks out personally. Idk. It just feels like some card games may die in the next couple of years.
glad someone mentioned the lackluster performance of Battle Spirits. beyond the "caSh PriZeS" hype i haven't seen any real interest. feels like bandai was trying to copy paste MTG onto something that was supposed to feel original, which may have been possible if Bandai wasnt cannibalizing their market. we need casuals in order to build interest in the tcgs we enjoy (like it or not) and as a general tcg casual myself, this over saturation is intimidating; makes me feel like "why focus on collecting for this game i really like when people are distracted by DBZ, OP, and BSS", not to mention the well-established tcgs.
I have yet to play a game of digimon tcg but I have been collecting them because I love the world of digimon. I would love to play a game one day though.
I've been trying to set up a one piece community at my locals and i used to play digimon. My digi locals on thursday had 7 players and the one piece had 8. 4 of the players in both events were the same and the main interest i get in trying the one piece card game comes from digimon players (yugioh is probably second). The digimon locals scene has been declining for a while and the same people i can't get into digi/ don't want to come back are the people who are trying one piece. I was gonna get back into digimon with the garu starter thinking i could make a janky garu deck outta the old cards i had and then most of my rookie line got hit in the ban so I kinda just bailed on it. I hadn't bought the pieces yet, but it does feel bad to spend my evening hunting through my collection trying to build a deck through what I have with minimal spending only to have it banned out from under me but maybe that i just a part of playing card games. I have had similar issues in every card game i have played, but i was at least making tier one decks in those and not a janky off meta deck i didn't expect to do much. One piece definitely has the same issue with tournaments being sparse and always over subscribed. I don't think Bandai seems that interested in running a card game that is designed with competitive play in mind, especially in the English tournaments. They just want to put out there sets and support the locals scenes but aren't super interested in giving mass support to the actual tournaments. I don't love this but I don't mind the games being designed with a locals environment at the forefront of thought. However, when they do this and then make it so these rare major tournaments are the only places to get mechanically unique promo cards its an issue. There are decks i have wanted to play in bandai games on several occasions that i just can't afford to play because of one 4 of promo card that costs 100/200 dollars + for a playset of on its own. I think the main 4 things most people want are 1 - get rid of mechanically unique tournament promos or at least ensure they are released in the following box toppers/starter decks 2 - more consistent large scale tournament 3 - More frequent more appropriate ban lists (though nobody can quite agree on what this should look like so this one is prolly a pipe dream xD) 4 - Consistent print runs on sets, no more random delays for certain areas (I play in the UK and we had one Digimon set just not available to us for a month and when it finally did come out our lgs couldn't sell it as everyone had bought from europe) and no more extrememly low print run sets that dry up fast and are impossible to find think 3/4 are hard to guarantee but the first 2 should be very achievable and would do so much for Bandai games on there own.
Digimon does not exist where i live however in contrast where i live the one piece card game is thriving and actually starting to outshine even pokemon and yugioh locals! So i personally have been enjoying the One Piece Card Game
The alphamon ban is a bad example. I played multiple big tournaments with it at full power and it was oppressive. I think the ban for jesmon is a better point. It was a bricky mess that didn't hold up to our bo3 format vs the JP b01
Its not just you... totally agree and love how you explained it. I mean Bandai has just nuked purple from just doing what purple is suppose to do, and what's worst is that there is no suitable replaces for the cards they hit.
@@itsMARTIKAI if the same few cards are NEEDED for a majority of single color decks to work, then that's a problem. Its unfortunate what happened, but I see it as ripping off the bandaid. I am a Purple player, but my fav deck is Beelzemon. Even when he got nerfed I understood why it was done even if I didn't fully agree with the choice. honestly the main things that could ease this would be to have regional banlists, but I still think those purple cards would have been banned eventually.
@@JDReC100 I'm ok with those cards getting hit eventually but like Alex said its being hit because of the Japanese meta not because of our meta. It's ok to have staples in a color allows one to experiment with decks that are not archetype heavy, where you need something working for that archetype in each slot and there isn't much room for anything else. I personally experiment with Beelstarmon and it needs help to get those 7 cost options in the trash quickly to keep up.
Surprise, the current top purple deck isn't even using the recently hit 3 purple cards. The thing with draw-discard engine, it will always be a problem sooner or later because you have the ability to choose, and effectively for purple Scatter Mode is like a +5. They released decent, more fair replacements such as Raremon, BlueMeramon, and Bakemon.
I dropped the game after i heared that the training cards do not go into the starter decks. They put it as box toppers. It will be very hard to get a playset.
I too quit Digimon for the same banlist reasoning. Jesmon, Alphamon, Beelzemon And the one that truly got me to quit was Xros Hearts X4 being hit to 1 in America and that deck too only got to be enjoyed for 3 weeks. Japan got X4 at full power for a few months.
Same here when Xros came out i gave the game a second chance and then once again i felt the sting of the banlist making my new paid for deck unplayable so i shelved it and i will not play again until x4 shoutmon comes off the banlist and seeing as it didnt happen and they unbanned only like 3 cards i guess i will never play the Digimon moneysink tcg again.
Bandai knows that they can treat the Digimon community like shit and people will still buy product because of how starved we are for it. What pisses me off the most though is the treatment vs OP. Their card quality is better, their prizing is better, they even started with a mulligan and we had to wait 8 sets before we got one in Digimon.
The increase in tcg games is need an overall issue, locals ain't gonna find room for all the tcgs nor can players invest in all of them at once most people can only financially keep up with 1 or 2 tcgs. Curiously most of these new tcgs' playerbases come from people quitting the og 3 tcgs.
I'm a magic player and recently ventured into One Piece tcg because I'm a manga fan and the game is actually pretty good but speaking from my local community I can see that the Bandai games are indeed cannibalizing each other. There's Digimon players which also play Battle Spirits and some former Battle Spirit players dropped that game when One Piece hit the shelfs. The thing is many players leaving out of Bandai's supposed flagship game is concerning and they are really forcing that game on stores from what I've seen either by forcing stores to buy product or run tournaments. Their collaboration with Evangelion might be a boom or bust situation for the game as intrest in it is declining and nothing is worth a dime.
The major issue here sounds like they're not using a ban list correctly; you only ban or restrict if something is so badly meta warping that it makes it unfun to play.
Digimons borderline dying at our locals. They juggle One Piece and Digi, but now they're reviving their vanguard community. In addition, the store owner strongly dislikes Digimon, and wont be stocking product following BT14 pre release
I think it's better for them to be pre-banned in the west. Giving people access and then banning on a predictable timeline would be really annoying and would cause weird markets
They need to split restriction lists for regions ... you tell me i got to get Eyesmon out of Belphe to slow it in a massive way , when he already has a bunch of counters (RaidGmon) (Security) (Blue Flare) everything of blue in general ... Just cause Apocalymon and Leviamon 2 sets away is demolishing everything in another region .... Agree with everything you said could not said it better myself , keep up the great work .
On the big time between tournament sign ups and then actually happening, I actually quite like that, rather than not knowing what I'll be doing in 2 months, it means I have 2 months to plan the trip, especially since being from Ireland I have to plan trips over to mainland UK
Great video. And this is coming from someone who plays one piece more than digimon. I did not like how they ban some of the cards from the wolf of friendship starter deck. In my opinion I feel the prize support could be better in digimon as well.
one of the big problems with the last restriction list is that you are forced to buy garurumon structures in order to keep playing purple, since we lost our main purple discard engine and we are now locked into getting st16 gabumon and garurumons for discard mechanics
Argument against not doing the combined banlist. Other games have 1 global banlist and do just fine with global play. Games like magic. The issue isint global banlists. Its japans favoritism. They need global product releases like other games yugioh and digimon haveing releases seperate ruin global play and make world events a joke
I get the feelsbad when we haven't gotten to use a deck and it gets hit "early" because we share the banlist with JP but every time its happened so far we've also gotten like 2 weeks to use those cards, which people at my locals always do, and the games are miserable, like the cards got banned for a reason, y'know?
Yeah like, if the card is broken, it's broken. Why "give us time" to suffer through it when we all know it's getting banned eventually anyway? I'm fine with early bans.
I love and will (hopefully) always love the digimon TCG. I do think bandai does alot well. However, i 100% agree that they have some grave issues (specifically with dealing with Eng format, products, and tournaments) that i really wish theyd fix. Recently (starting bt14) they got new designers for the game to reinvigorate it because of how well its doing in ENG (as they called out in an earnings report earlier this year) and that has been great and you can see the impact and i have loved it. But at the same time we are like 20 or so promo cards behind JPN and like 6months-ish behind in sets and that SUCKS. We really shouldnt be more than 3 months behind. Also wanna know something fun. LM01 will be IN bt15. This will make bt15 cards ever so slightly harder to get (which will be annoying) and even more egregious is that JPN got LM01 2 months before bt15 released. It sucks i have to say this but i do really really love the digimon TCG and again i acknowledge all the great things bandai has done, just have some issues that i hope get addressed. (honestly i would love it if they just made an ENG headquarters to deal with these things instead of leaving it up to ppl in JPN to figure out while they are also figuring stuff out for their own community)
I had almost the cards needed for a Purple Melga X-Antibody deck. Then I checked the new ban list. Now that's gone up in smoke. Not to mention they also killed my MaloMyotismon deck with those hits (despite the fact I don't play it anymore). Almost makes me want to fall and make my Blue Melga X-Antibody deck, though I doubt it'd do the same amount of destruction it used to do.
Can't really say the same myself here in México. Product always gets delayed, there are very few shops, and cards get scarce even if it's just been 2 days. There really isn't enough product to go around, and promo cards MUST get a decent reprint. These are good cards that help so many decks and that is what makes 0 sense to me. They should not be this hard to get.
The people here in the Southeast has a whole discord server dedicated to Digimon and going to Locals. The people are very nice. Its a shame that Digimon isn't picking up like that, but here it is slowly growing more.
Yeah the ban list is interesting, having cards out perform in japan mean that the local players in that meta determine what the other countries ban list is. Especially like when the cards are staggered in release schedule. The local players in japan have way more input on their card shop owners and send direct feedback to the design teams. That's definitely the environment I get from them, they have a smaller pool of players, but a larger impact on those card shops operating in those areas. I'd be interested in checking it out, thanks for sharing your experience.
The biggest thing that annoys me is the promos. It's honestly the one thing that's killing it for me. 3rd anniversary pack promos were supposed to release in BT13, but we're getting them in EX5, 3 sets and 2 structure decks later than the Japanese players had them. It's bad enough the promos are for fun decks that won't perform with the current format, let alone the new stuff coming out. Red Birds, Examon, Galacticmon. But don't worry, we got the black/purple aces which are just released later in the year anyway. Like????
Honestly you said what most of us have been thinking or saying. I agrree really hard on the ban list as well as the whole promo releases abd tying key cards to weird releases or tournament prizes. Honestly id vote for no more promo cards. Everything set releases and tournament packs / prices can be fun reprints or stamps
I am not gonna lie, I was ready to fight back with whatever you were gonna say but listening to everything, yeah I cannot argue with what you brought up because I too have those same feelings. I think the issue for big tournaments is 1, location, 2 timing to match with jobs/lives, and 3 the cost. To run Digimon tournaments isn't as profitable unless you have the people consistently coming to your locals spot; took a year to turn 2 stores into gold status where I am. I also agree that there are too many card games released by the same company at once. Like great, Digimon got past the 2 year trial mark where most card games fail, but then other card games were released and then reintroduced and honestly, it's a little much. Towards another topic you mentioned, the delayed ban list would be amazing. Like, these cards will be hit for the BTXX setting when it's released in your area. So basically we could play the power up to the point where Japan got to play it and then get hit with it like they did, that seems much more fare and more powerful cards could be hit. And on a final note, I am also registered for the regional in November so I hope I get to see you there and maybe even challenge you. That would be super exciting.
A few additions to add as someone that works in a shop that tries to hold events for all card games.. last month was our cut off for events to be ran in MARCH!! Events need to be planned 4-6 months ahead of time and if you forget (because you signed up to host it almost half a year ago) our rep does not remind us.. and if it doesn't ship on time, we don't get the support for the event because they wont ship it after, even if we try to reschedule. I do wish that they gave stores more options to host bigger events, not a regionals but more like regional qualifiers - Stores run events and the winners of those events get invited to regionals - it would add more pull and accessibility to playing in more competitive formats, and a more casual way to try and get into more serious competition. Making events easier for stores will never happen with Bandai tho 😞
I kind of agree with the ban list cause i'm using an eyesmon and gobumon In my red Purple Imperialdragon A deck plagued with consistency issues And the only reason to restrict those cards is for a deck That doesn't exist yet
You're speaking a lot of truth here. Bandai releasing multiple games that will compete with their already established games was an odd choice, and in person tournaments have been lacking. I have to wonder how much comes from LGS' though. Maybe this isn't a universal experience, I had to watch as my LGS actively destroyed the Digimon TCG scene, before it had a chance to fully establish itself, through a series of blatantly bad calls that effectively forced players to go elsewhere if they wanted to play the game. And while I live in a major city it's not one with many game stores easily accessible, so it got a lot harder to play the game
It's not just you bud. The most recent banlist has been very controversial. I agree with eyesmon and greymon, but the other restrictions seemed unnecessary. I get that they have issues with the cards in japan, but I havent even gotten the chance to try them and now I have several decks that need to be changed because of a limit that didnt need to take place in the first place. I quit magic and yugioh because they were ridiculously expensive and not fun to play, so seeing several of my decks now needing revision is disheartening. Regardless, I am not going back to those games. Im in the process of selling thousands of dollars worth of magic and yugioh to buy into digimon. As frustrating as this banlist was, its not as bad as wizards and konami.
They also need to work on the release schedule. Having EX sets release so close to BT sets is a major impact on many players and collectors pockets for sets that rarely impact the meta. Some promos being hard to obtain even when buying a full case and going to 1 (or even 2) locals a week is CRAZY, specially if you are putting what is effectively common cards (Wargrey and Melga) as box topers.
You definitely said some good points and I hope bandai can catch us up to Japan so we can be playing the same format at the same time. I do agree they should just either delay ban list or give us a different one. Also I hope I see you at the regional at pasadena
I remember when I was so excited to build a Xros Heart deck when they first dropped, and then they immediately hit it before I could use it with it full potential and I spent money on cards I couldn't even use legally anymore.
@@apsamplifiermeasured pace... We're 6 months behind! If anything, they need to release a bunch of stuff quickly to catch up, then that solves the banlist issue as well because we'd be current with Japan.
I would love to see a video about the One Piece TCG and your thoughts. It seems OP is getting alot of attention and tournaments and due to the popularity of the anime in my region (EU) it really grows fast!
There are several companies that make multiple card games. Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast pretty frequently has more than just Magic on their slate (in the 90s/early 00s they distributed Pokémon as well). FFG always is producing multiple card games. Upper Deck has multiple TCGs under its banner for a while. While tournament scenes are definitely important and open up the space for a card game by quite a bit in terms of audience, typically the kitchen table/casual players make up the bulk of players for card games as opposed to competitive players.
When my favourite tcg shop closed, I lost the ability to play DBSCG masters and I loved that game. The community was small, and the prize support was so trash that the top players would call before a tourny just to confirm there was prizing. It never got better, and the promo's made some decks function. In some ways, it was the gateway for them to make the games we love today, but they're just not trying/ aren't able to keep up with demand, and I hate that. Then the ban lists thing they still haven't figured out?! Yikes. At least they aren't printing silver bullet cards in any cardgames right now... that will always be a nightmare.
Yeah, I had that when Shoutmon x4 came out. Couldn't even play the deck at full power because of the limits one week in after JP got 6 months of play... I definitly feel ya
I agree in some respects with what you're getting at, but I don't necessarily agree with the solutions you're presenting. Most of the issues you described with the game as it exists right now - outside of Bandai flooding the scene with other card games - could be entirely solved by us just getting cards sooner. There are these cool, meta impacting promos, but we get them a year late for no reason. At least with the Training cards we're getting them CLOSE to on time, but that's basically an exception. Banlist issues? I feel like the banlist updates they've presented have been good, but they're in an awkward place because they have to resolve problems with the Japanese meta, but it seems like Bandai refuses to hit cards that haven't been released in the west yet, so the JP format gets screwed and sometimes the English format gets weird hits. This, again, could be solved by our getting cards sooner. We're two core sets behind Japan at this point, and that's just presenting all sorts of problems. Even if they don't just merge the formats like they clearly should, they should work to get us CLOSER to the Japanese format (I think two months behind would be fine, basically one product release behind Japan) and make sure that we get promos or limited card sets on time. Really, that's the real issue here. It's not us using the same banlist as Japan, it's not necessarily us getting promos late even though that is a factor, it's that we're just REALLY far behind Japan in terms of product releases and it's causing a lot of unnecessary tension.
i honestly prefer having/seeing different formats in different countries/regions but a shared banlist would make it hard or maybe awkward to play when the release rate in the japan and maybe some other asian countries are not on par with us here in the eu and usa. example from me is pretty much with cardfight vanguard with BRO and how every region had a different 'meta' so to say or what i like to say is that i like seeing what clans/nations are favored more in each region rather than just look at japan and get conclusions from there.
It sounds like the Digimon TCG is having all the same issues as the Dragon Ball Super TCG the last couple years. DBS had every point you mentioned when Digimon and then One Piece released and now they are rebooting it. It is just Bandai churning and burning the TCGs until they aren't at maximum profit and then creating a new one. Digimon still looks like it is in a good place, Bandai just needs to focus some resources on it to prevent misprints, have better prizing, and more tourneys.
I legit think they do this with TCGs due licencing, same as fox has to make an awful fantastic 4 movie every few years or the roght will revert to Marvel. I iamgine when bandai got the video game rights to these anime IPs it probably came with TCG rights as well and they need to keep producing them or Shueisha or whichever company owns One Peice will simply give the TCG licence to someone else. Just in case its not clear, this is a guess, not me saying "i know this for a fact"
My biggest issue with the game is the balance. The memory gauge was such a great balancing design that really felt like your opponent and you are going back and forth. However, Bandai has completely broken that by creating cards that ignore the memory gauge by granting free resources like Tamers, Digimon, Digivolutions, and even memory. The speed of the game is ridiculous and really has been powercrept so much so shortly.
This is why I really hated the introduction of One Piece. It really split the player base a lot and from what I'm seeing, they are focusing on One Piece more than Digimon, prizing at least. Digmon tournaments used to have such good prizing for both local and online but it's all gone downhill. Id even argue that it started near the time One Piece was introduced. Also with Lorcana coming out does not help.
By far the best part of Battle Spirits Saga is that there’s 1 single format. Everything comes out at the same time, the meta develops globally. They’re also very quick and accurate with ban lists.
Digimons banlist being shared would be fine if we had unified releases. But were 4-5 months behind Japan and they also play a best of 1 format for the most part so decks like Alphamon that only need to see their pieces once per match make them look much more consistent.
Man good video, only thing id say is that Alphamon in BT9 was a threat. It had a huge amount of tops and was definitely teir 1. The only reason it wasn't everywhere was because as soon as the banlist in Japan dropped people started dropping the deck. As far as OTK style went people just swapped to Garurumon because the game plan was the same and there were no hits announced for the deck. People couldn't be assed putting hours into a deck that was going to go in bt9.
I don't get why they don't just catch us up to Japan releases... It would be in tune with MTG which releases globally (more or less) and makes running regional and international events soooooo much easier
Digimon definitely died out in my local store. It sucks because we were enjoying it, but then a bunch of players from other ships came through just to play digimon and all they wanted to do was scalp. When they went able to do that, they all just brought whatever the most toxic control decks were and no one had fun. Eventually, everyone stopped coming and it was only those players left playing mirror matches against each other until the shop just flat out stopped having tournaments. Now my friends and i just play casually with each other. I don't see us honestly getting back into it that deep, kinda sucks
the ban list stuff DEFINITELY was the last straw when I was wavering on continue playing, I was so excited for eyesmon as a card and it got banned before release, while yeah it was probably too strong to be unrestricted, the ideal solution would be at least a change in what the card is in the TCG compared to the OCG but obviously thats resourced they didnt want to put into the game. knowing your release of the game is an afterthought that way kinda makes it really hard to want to invest. (the other thing throwing me off was just general power creep seeming out of control)
Iv wanted to get into digimon but the lack of locals in my area for it and the same stuff you said has made me stay clear even tho i grew up watching digimon and was so excited to see the card game make a new appearance
As someone whose done major events for this game since release, Digimon has a few issues for me personally that you didn't mention. 1st: You mentioned the lack of regional or ability to play in them, which everything mentioned is ABSOLUTELY TRUE. But it fails to bring up one of the biggest things they miss, which are the very real lack of "IN-PERSON events". Currently it's not an exaggeration to say that over 80-90% of Bandai sanctioned high level events are only through Discord servers. And while that's a great "hold-over" style event, there being so little BIG EVENTS that can convince players to travel, doesn't do a lot to push confidence. (Semi-related, but even for those events the prizing isn't attractive. Since it heavily depends on if the card is playable/a fan favorite.) 2: I know this is can be an issue in every card game, but I feel in Digimon the balance is worse then a lot of others, with the T1 decks being on a whole different level then a lot of T3 or even T2 decks. The best decks right now grab pieces, remove board presence, and hit much harder and faster then non-meta decks. Things like BWG, Bloom, Shine, and Belphe just get setup and hit their wincon well before T2 decks like Beelze, Imperial, and Gallantmon.
Do you guys think this is an issue with the Digimon Card Game? Not a big fan myself.
Yes, it is killing the game.
I have already stopped playing because of all the hits to Purple.
Bandai doesn't know how to make purple cards that are balanced. They're either busted or trash and purple doesn't follow the same archetypal restrictions most of the other decks have.
Argument against not doing the combined banlist. Other games have 1 global banlist and do just fine with global play. Games like magic. The issue isint global banlists. Its japans favoritism. They need global product releases like other games yugioh and digimon haveing releases seperate ruin global play and make world events a joke
I recently started playing (casually due to availability, but still doing my best to check out the meta and try decks out) and I was personally shocked when I learned that the ban/restricted list is shared while releases aren't. I've never been a fan of staggered releases (or really Bandai in general, but Digimon is so cheap I decided to try it) but usually the playstyle difference and separate ban/restricted lists like Yugioh has between the OCG and TCG keep things interesting despite the spoilers being known way in advance for US players. I think Digimon struggles a lot with the current way they handle the game on a global scale and while I don't have time to compete, I think it'll benefit the Digimon TCG community to figure out a better solution for how the game is handled
Project Drasil. The Dueling Book of Digimon TCG
I feel like Bandai's whole issue is how badly they treat the Digimon franchise. It gives massive "We didn't expect this game to do well, we still don't expect it to do well." Vibes recently. They push Battle Spirits so hard and genuinely no one cares about it. Digimon is a major franchise and Bandai needs to treat it as such.
I've always hated how Bandai has neglected Digimon for decades. I've always loved the franchise ever since I was a kid in the 90s, and I am absolutely in love with the card game. I wish they would do more with it bc there is so much potential there that just gets ignored.
I fucking hate bandai for exactly this, digimon is too good for them
Unfortunately this isn't just exclusively a Digimon problem, it's a problem that Bandai has with their other IP's that aren't Anime licences
I'm with you on this one. I'm sorry for the folks who enjoyed BSS but I am genuinely glad it failed because it should be a harsh lesson to Bandai: "You can't expect your players to drop everything and play what you want them to." People are invested in the both the Digimon IP and the card game. It was such a spit in the face to leave it on life support while trying to establish BSS.
Saying no one cares about bss is crazy when Battle Spirits is Bandai’s biggest IP in JP and saga is still going into set 3-4. Not sure what you mean about them pushing bss hard when I’ve barely seen any advertisement for the game after it’s first initial release.
The Digimon TCG really needs a good online automated simulator. I think that will get more people into the game.
Google Project Drasil
There's an unofficial one in development called project drasil
There used to be a fan-made one a while ago, but then Bandai took legal action against it.
@matthewelisha8797 "We're going to shut down this thing while not giving any equivalent alternatives. That's not going to cause problems at all."
@@nmr7203 I know, it is very stupid. At least Konami allows fan-made Yu-Gi-Oh simulators despite Master Duel existing.
It's really a shame that Bandai Namco refuses to let Digimon succeed. It quickly climbed to be the 4th or 5th top selling tcg in only a few years, and then they release One Piece and all of a sudden they abandon it. They refuse to unify set releases, which means the west (a major market for the game) gets cards that are months old, and gets banlists that are only relevant for the Japanese format.
no, trust me, Japanese players are the guinea pigs. We had to surrender multiple Evolution Cups to Shoutmon X4 lol. currently, we had to deal with Apokari bullshit. probably when it hits the west later Garuru X would be banned already. another proof is Tommy. it was never a problem in Japan and survived like 5 sets? but when the west cried out lol they str8 limited it.
And I really don't get it because the one piece TCG, in my opinion, is far less interesting.
@@knightartorias1825 OP IP is in a completely different galaxy from Digi. BSS is the best playing TCG they have but its not doing well bc of it having 0 IP recognition.
@@blkvicePU BSS?
@@knightartorias1825 battle spirits saga, Bandai's competitive oriented TCG. It's a lot of fun if you like interactive gameplay and wild cash prizing.
Sadly Digimon died in my area. I was forced to quit because NO ONE plays it here anymore. The obvious bias Bandai has for the One Piece game over Digimon didn’t help either.
There are tons of online communities to play with and multiple nights a week you can play in events. You weren't forced to quit.
@@Panzerkuh I was forced to quit because going to locals is superior over playing on camera.
@@Panzerkuhno he definitely was forced. Not everyone wants to play online.
Gotta do what you gotta do. Nobody likes a quitter.
yeah that isn't being forced, that is just refusing the options
I really wish the Digimon TCG community was actually a thing where I live. I have been struggling to find anyone near where I live to play it with. I absolutely love Digimon and would love to see it grow more. I hope that I can find more people to play the game with and try to grow it on a personal level at least.
Alec: That's the roughest part with cardgames. You can't just pick one up because you're interested if no one around you also plays
@@apsamplifier Yeah it makes it extremely difficult and with how many card games there are it limits how many people are going to be willing to try a new card game out because they are just generally expensive to get into already. There are quite a few MTG players etc around where I live and talking to them its all the same. They are hesitant to get into another card game because its impossible to financially sustain more than 1 at a time for most people.
That is why I liked the point about how it is really interesting that Bandai released multiple card games to all compete against each other.
google "project drasil"
Bandai: I sacrifice DBS and DCG to tribute summon, ONE PIECE CARD GAME
As a fan who's been playing since the first format, I never really noticed the ban list thing until cross Hearts came out and nobody being able to play the deck at full power for more than a few weeks. at this point if they're not going to keep the game synced up where each region is playing the same format, each region needs to have a separate ban list.
AGREED
Always love seeing these discussion videos for Digimon and other card games! You bring up a great point that a shared banlist makes no sense when the JP region is several sets ahead of the Western players. Would also enjoy seeing more matches of Digimon in the future as well! Keep on with the great work!
Alec: I've been slacking on Digimon videos, but there will be more soon!
The Digimon TCG is my favorite card game. I've been playing it since before it even came out in the west. When I first saw "I hate this" in the thumbnail, my heart sunk. After watching the full video though, I have to say I agree with every one of your points. I'll leave a Like to support the video, hopefully Bandai can see this so they can work towards remedying at least the banlist issue. I don't want them to drive away players, nor to get you to stop playing, Alec.
As for my most wanted change, I'd love to have an official online client. I have 5 friends who won't touch the game unless it has an online client. It's really holding back my own experience.. It's also really saddening to see how Bandai treats the Digimon tcg compared to the One Piece one. There's official Bandai card shops in Japan that FOCUS on selling bandai card games, and yet those shops don't even sell Digimon cards from what I've seen. That's F'd up. There was also the case of the Draconic Roar set having like half the cards mistranslated back when they were starting to release One Piece. The final straw to me would be if they released a One Piece client before releasing a Digimon one. That would surely tick me off.
Alec: I remember when there were rumblings of an official simulator, but that was before BSS or One Piece came out 😔
DB FW's success will determine if Digi or BSS get a client.
In response to your banlist comments. While I do understand your frustrations of not being able to play decks at full power. There is the argument that it's for the best that we as the English format don't have to deal with these decks at full power. It has definitely been Bandai's MO to hit cards preemptively in English that created problems in JP since the beginning of the banlist with cards like Hidden Potential and Mega Digimon Fusion hit. I think Bandai see the English format as a way to fix mistakes they made using the Japanese format as evidence. And like you said, our formats aren't exactly the same, but they're pretty damn close. The reason Alphamon was king in JP and Melga was king in English was because of the promo garurumon cards not being legal in some or most JP tournaments due to distribution issues in other countries that follow JP format. And hitting Dorugrey wasn't necessarily exclusively because Alphamon was a good deck, but the fact that the OTK potential that card gave Alphamon limited Bandai's ability to design balanced cards for the Alphamon archetype, which is pretty much the other reason Bandai hits cards on the banlist, like Calling from the Darkness, Blossomon, Weregarurumon. I don't think you're wrong in thinking Bandai jumps the gun on hitting some decks. I feel they do that for their Ulti Cup alt format. I just think that sometimes hitting cards preemptively is for the best to avoid tier 0 formats.
well said.
I agree I also like that they preemptively hit cards for English as it makes it so that we don’t have to deal with the OP decks like how Apoclymon is rn in JP. I feel like the gabumon stuff was a good hit cause it makes do that both decks are still playable just not broken but it is kinda annoying that they have spaced out releases for the promo stuff specifically cause I play commandramon and the promo AA blocker commandramon hasn’t released yet in English but by bt14 it’ll be irrelevant
@@grist836the main issue I have with the recent announcement is that there's a promo Eyesmon SM coming for us soon, and we only just got reprints of BT02 Gabumon under a month ago and especially the latter he was the backbone of many purple strategies, for as long as I can remember. ST06 I completely understand that thing would be obnoxious with all the unsuspending Garurumon decks tend to do. But like APS suggested, why not make our B&R list take effect only once a certain set releases?
2 things i've learned about bandai:
1. bandai doesn't respect it's IPs. they only exist to make them money
2. bandai is japan first. they do NOT care about an international market, even with it's ripe potential
bandai is overall, not smart. they could do better in a multitude of ways but they choose not to. no matter how much the US branch may try to do for us, they will never be allowed by the parent company to accomplish enough
good points, that is why i avoid bandai TCG (physical card) , what do you think to bushiroad and takara tomy ?
It's such a fun game and Bandai is letting it slip through their fingers with the lack of support. I get that One Piece is where they make their money, but Digimon has the potential to get there if they'd put the proper care into it. I have a hard time finding locals to play in, so i just build silly theme decks that my friends and I can grab and play and we end up having more fun that way.
Digi doesn't even have 1/100th of the fanbase of DB or OP
silly theme decks>>>>
@@blkvicePU oof shots fired
Bandai needs an online client. I would love to play digimon, but I don't have a scene in my town, and i don't drive. But I still like to buy a set I'm interested in once a year
they dont have one themself but theres some out there. sadly you need most often then not a friend you know to play those
If you mean table top simulator than I heard but my friend ain't into digimon sadly I was hoping for something like master duel or a ygo pro unofficial but I doubt digimon is that big to warrant it in the west and it unnecessary in the east cause of the difference in availability
Look into project drasil. It just came out a few weeks ago. Works very well.
@@JphantomXIII na theres others dont know the names on top of my head atm
100% agreed, I myself am simply way too busy most of the time to go to locals and am too tired on my days off. Master Duel, Duel Links, hell even fan made ones like Dueling Book and EDOPro let me constantly engage with the game.
Digimon absolutely needs an emulator, even if it's an unofficial one. Just so outsiders can easily get into it without needing to dedicate the time to head to a local that may not even have a scene for it in the first place. I know my local at least is heavily YGO and MTG with a lil bit of One Piece
It's incredibly silly we share a banlist with the Japanese format. As far as I understand the purple hits barely even matter to the real terror decks in JP, so nothing of note is actually gonna change with what's happening in the JP meta. So in NA, we lose multiple playable cards that were absolutely not remotely relevant at a meta level and just kills a bunch of casual decks, but JP just continues to be held hostage by Apoc, Anubis, and Melga because they won't hit cards that aren't out in NA yet.
Really hoping this isn't becoming a YGO thing where we get to see a dozen different cards die in Apoclymon's place and obliterate a ton of decks rather then actually hit the problem card.
Digimon died at my locals because almost everyone jumped ship to OP. I like the game but I prefer Digimon a lot more so it sucks to see.
For me the ugliest part about Digimon is just the absolute lack of interactivity. The game turns into such a shit show with training options you won't even believe it. Players will deadass camp behind their trainings and tamers and only come out when they have their OTK ready. Training just allows you to absolutely camp in raising instead of being forced to promote out of raising for your effects. Shinegrey can actually just run like 4 red trainings and 2 yellow and the game just becomes a race if you can finish them before they find their stuff first.
yea i think so too!! and i am sad about it :/ training cards are just wrong
The one thing you never hit on is how the absurd the number of erratas and mistranslations is.
How can a game be accessible for new players if they need to look up the effects, if they can't be confident the card is usable as printed
I know this is a problem in other games but Bandai's quality control is basically non-existent.
EX03 was honestly the biggest joke I've ever seen in any TCG. Over 1/3 of the entire set has errata!?!
At that point apologise, recall the entire product and provide everyone with replacement packs.
I know BSS had major issues with no rare packs in sets 1 and 2 which goes to show they weren't distracted focusing on that game instead...
I got into Digimon a couple of months ago, I'm lucky my locals have a healthy population. I'm too new to understand/ have a experienced a lot of the grievances yet, but I hope bandai keeps the game going for a long time.
You will find out very fast all the big events are mostly online. Bandai has a prommis to a couple to organize these large events its not like in other games where game stores can grow and hold bigger events so locals will be always locals that gets boring very fast.
A healthy locals is such a fortunate thing to have! I wish you guys all the best
Ive been trying to voice opinions like these at my LGS but I keep getting shut down but I don’t think my players realize how much better we have it our area compared to others. More than half of my friends have quit the game to move to One piece or Lorcana and if I’m being honest I’m having a hard time holding on myself… I love the video and am glad that I’m not the only one that holds some of these opinions out there.
I really love the Digimon tcg and just Digimon in general, I can't play it where I live because I don't know anyone else that wants to play it. I hope the tcg keeps getting bigger because all the major stores (Walmart, Target, etc) stopped carrying the cards and the only shop I've found with them has a pretty bad up charge (normally like 6:50 per pack and unpopular starters are 25)
Belphe has topped/won multiple regionals and the gabu was hit for apoc. We really dont want apoc to exist at full power here. No one wants to deal with that. I understand it might be annoying to see stuff get hit there before it pops off here, but it will, we have nearly the exact same card pool.
I get where people come from but whenever I hear the argument that "we should let it prove it's a problem" sounds terrible to me. If some strategies are just overpowered then it should rightfully get hit before it just muddies the meta for 4 months
The dorugrey restriction for Alphamon back in bt9 was 100% needed. If you digivolved into him and were able to go to oryuken, keep turn with 2 memory, then play konguo your stuck became immune to all security bombs. I do agree that the restriction list should be separated by region ie. Japan vs everyone else. I have heard that Bandai develops 2-3 sets in advance from what is currently released and somethings like Apoclymon are busted with the purple draw/trash engine which is why it needed to be hit. You have made very valid points and hopefully our feedback will continue to help improve the game
I'm from asia , and we're playing the Japanese version. What I don't like about bandai's banlist is :
1. They won't hit anything sr and sec rarity cards.
2. They won't hit anything that were not in the west yet .
3. Thry won't hit cards that supports a new deck that hasn't release on west.
Right now the problem in our meta is apocalymon and the trio dogs ( anubis , garuru and looga ). The problem is these 4 decks have not released in the west yet. So they cannot ban any of them right now. We're not okay right now , meta is super fast , the three dogs can go otk turn 2 or 3 and if you play a slow deck you will get milled by apocalymon. And what we got is this jokelike banlist , shine and mirage is not a thing anymore here in japanese format and this eyesmon engine is alrdy been replaced by garuru engine.
It's sad to look that bandai is overprotective of their sales.
Thanks for sharing! I didn't realize you guys were having a rough time with the TCG too
I agree 1,000% that we need to have seperate ban lists for the U.S. and J.P. in this game. Decks getting hit before wr even really get a chance to play them feels awful every time.
I also agree that bandai competing with itself for space at the tcg table is a bad look because it can cause bandai games to cannibalise eachother, even though it hasnt really affected my locals too much, in fact digimon is growing in my locals. But you never know what itll take for some players to drop one game for another.
Alec: I want to visit your locals 😭
Yeah sharing banlist is insane we are so behind, last banlist they hit beelze and we only had it for a few weeks and they had it for MONTHS
That was ultimate cup only iirc
I can't believe "I come from a Yu-Gi-Oh background and I dont like sharing the list" Yu-Gi-Oh enables some of the most toxic OP cards to be played for months on end and regularly kills off its player base while waiting for these things to be hit. Preemptive strike from the OCG is way better and would give a much better format. Digmon got it spot on
Honestly you should know better when jumping into a Bandai card game. They'll kill off their own game to sell a new one. I used to play Naruto CCG and I LOVED that game. I think the reason they stopped was simply they didn't wanna renew the IP and wanted to make other games. Naruto CCG was probably the only game they were consistent with and every game since Bandai has been running them into the ground. It's very sad and I hope they do better with their current games.
The real problem is there's no app to play digital
Welcome to Bushiroad running Vanguard, Weiss Schwarz, and Shadowverse. Thankfully, a lot of players in these communities do play the other games. Bandai could definitely learn a thing or two from them. Something like the "Bandai TCG Championship Series".
Regarding tournament sign up, 2 months in advance is ridiculous. You might not even know if you're going to be available. 1-2 weeks is reasonable.
Welcome to the dying card game party Digimon fans. Us DBSCCG saved you a seat. Dragon ball crawled so digimon could walk, digimon walked so one piece could run. Now welcome to having no more fans. lol
The game is not dying
Naw Digimon tcg better than One Piece tcg easy lol.
Neither DBS nor Digimon are dying. Are they hurting from their parent company making strange decisions? Sure but guess what? It's also going on with One Piece...
DBS is actually rebounding rn, regional turnout looks pretty stellar and our local scene has really bolstered in the last few months. Digimon is definitely on the fast track to DBS' low point tho lmao
I agree so hard about the ban list!! I never really paid it attention like that but yeah we should have different list. I never got to use greymon x before it got limited to 1.
There is def a lack of care from the jp side too. This meta is so disgusting I dont think NA players will be too excited when this sht hits them,
Yeah that's definitely a bummer. Hoping to see the game grow and improve since I recently got into it and am having a great time so far. Also hoping to see more content on the game from you guys, we really need more creators for the game to reach more people.
Alec: Yeah I've been slacking in that regard
I'm pretty new to digimon. I wasn't aware this was hitting both Japan and us simultaneously. I was really confused at some of the restrictions released and now it makes sense. The only way a simultaneous ban or restriction makes sense is if all regions were at the same set, but we're not.
I thought it was unique the first time they did it, but now I can't stand it
Yeah I was really pissed off with the banlist bc it tells me that we're not only their aftermarket but also at the mercy of JP players whims and complaints.
The ACE box toppers were a way to tease the new Blast Digivolve mechanic. From the start Bandai has been trying to catch the overseas players up to the Japanese cards.
I get that. It just feels like the result was a bit underwhelming
I stopped playing MTG to play Digimon. And for me its the best thing I've done. 20+y player here...
Digimon is fun and affordable
Agreed. Mechanic wise for me it's the best and simplest. The only downside is the bad management.
I did the same, and agree 100%. It's cheap, it's Digimon (child nostalgia from me watching it as a kid) and i love the gameplay (playing Beelzemo now and will get into Digipolice soon).
*sorry this is long, but it is a lot to unpack* Tbh, I think it's a combination of the two different formats using the same list and the large increase in card games in general. Last year and this year, we got roughly 6? People can barely afford one card game even if Digimon is relatively budget cost wise to play. We used to have locals at 20+. Lately, after everything else came out, we are lucky to fire a tournament. Granted, One Piece and Lorcana are starting to hit those levels, too, so I'm wondering if it's card game burn out this time of year. But next year, I think we have another 6 promising looking TCGs and 1 honestly sketchy looking one that has a cool concept but feels like a scam almost. It's concerning for a lot of card games rn.
Star Wars Unlimited has a great real back and forth evolution to its gameplay, great comic styled art, and a great bulk pack layout. The only concern is that this is the 4th or 5th time a TCG has been made for Star Wars, and the company making it has had distribution issues before. Even if this is the most promising build for a star wars tcg, I'm hesitant to say it will pop off. Even if someone isn't a Star Wars fan, I highly recommend checking out the gameplay.
Then there are things like Grand Archive, I think we already got Shadowverse, and the scam looking one called Altered TCG, too. It sucks to say but there is likely to be a shift in the TCG world and some card games may die. I HOPE, it's some of the big 3 tbh. Yugioh feels unplayable even though I grew up on it and love it. MTG feels like it's trying to sell before it dies by making a product for every month almost. And Pokémon? Well, that's always had its collector market, so it's likely gonna live, tbh even if tournaments die. Lorcana still has a lawsuit going on, and people are quitting due to no product or just realizing the game is really nothing super exciting, just the most barebones level of MTG without interaction. There's no hate from me on it, but that's not what a lot of card game vets want. Digimon feels like it's iffy rn, which sucks. I've been calling for a soft reboot by rotating older blocks out personally. Idk. It just feels like some card games may die in the next couple of years.
glad someone mentioned the lackluster performance of Battle Spirits. beyond the "caSh PriZeS" hype i haven't seen any real interest. feels like bandai was trying to copy paste MTG onto something that was supposed to feel original, which may have been possible if Bandai wasnt cannibalizing their market. we need casuals in order to build interest in the tcgs we enjoy (like it or not) and as a general tcg casual myself, this over saturation is intimidating; makes me feel like "why focus on collecting for this game i really like when people are distracted by DBZ, OP, and BSS", not to mention the well-established tcgs.
I have yet to play a game of digimon tcg but I have been collecting them because I love the world of digimon. I would love to play a game one day though.
I've been trying to set up a one piece community at my locals and i used to play digimon. My digi locals on thursday had 7 players and the one piece had 8. 4 of the players in both events were the same and the main interest i get in trying the one piece card game comes from digimon players (yugioh is probably second). The digimon locals scene has been declining for a while and the same people i can't get into digi/ don't want to come back are the people who are trying one piece.
I was gonna get back into digimon with the garu starter thinking i could make a janky garu deck outta the old cards i had and then most of my rookie line got hit in the ban so I kinda just bailed on it. I hadn't bought the pieces yet, but it does feel bad to spend my evening hunting through my collection trying to build a deck through what I have with minimal spending only to have it banned out from under me but maybe that i just a part of playing card games. I have had similar issues in every card game i have played, but i was at least making tier one decks in those and not a janky off meta deck i didn't expect to do much.
One piece definitely has the same issue with tournaments being sparse and always over subscribed. I don't think Bandai seems that interested in running a card game that is designed with competitive play in mind, especially in the English tournaments. They just want to put out there sets and support the locals scenes but aren't super interested in giving mass support to the actual tournaments. I don't love this but I don't mind the games being designed with a locals environment at the forefront of thought. However, when they do this and then make it so these rare major tournaments are the only places to get mechanically unique promo cards its an issue. There are decks i have wanted to play in bandai games on several occasions that i just can't afford to play because of one 4 of promo card that costs 100/200 dollars + for a playset of on its own.
I think the main 4 things most people want are
1 - get rid of mechanically unique tournament promos or at least ensure they are released in the following box toppers/starter decks
2 - more consistent large scale tournament
3 - More frequent more appropriate ban lists (though nobody can quite agree on what this should look like so this one is prolly a pipe dream xD)
4 - Consistent print runs on sets, no more random delays for certain areas (I play in the UK and we had one Digimon set just not available to us for a month and when it finally did come out our lgs couldn't sell it as everyone had bought from europe) and no more extrememly low print run sets that dry up fast and are impossible to find
think 3/4 are hard to guarantee but the first 2 should be very achievable and would do so much for Bandai games on there own.
You are right. These are all real problems with this TCG. The ban list in particular makes all of this sting a lot harder right now to.
Digimon does not exist where i live however in contrast where i live the one piece card game is thriving and actually starting to outshine even pokemon and yugioh locals! So i personally have been enjoying the One Piece Card Game
The alphamon ban is a bad example. I played multiple big tournaments with it at full power and it was oppressive.
I think the ban for jesmon is a better point. It was a bricky mess that didn't hold up to our bo3 format vs the JP b01
Its not just you... totally agree and love how you explained it. I mean Bandai has just nuked purple from just doing what purple is suppose to do, and what's worst is that there is no suitable replaces for the cards they hit.
There's a billion other cards to play that isnt literally graceful charity
@@captingamer29 Well looking through a "Billion" cards there isn't a suitable replacement that allows purple to keep pace with other decks.
@@itsMARTIKAI if the same few cards are NEEDED for a majority of single color decks to work, then that's a problem. Its unfortunate what happened, but I see it as ripping off the bandaid. I am a Purple player, but my fav deck is Beelzemon. Even when he got nerfed I understood why it was done even if I didn't fully agree with the choice.
honestly the main things that could ease this would be to have regional banlists, but I still think those purple cards would have been banned eventually.
@@JDReC100 I'm ok with those cards getting hit eventually but like Alex said its being hit because of the Japanese meta not because of our meta. It's ok to have staples in a color allows one to experiment with decks that are not archetype heavy, where you need something working for that archetype in each slot and there isn't much room for anything else.
I personally experiment with Beelstarmon and it needs help to get those 7 cost options in the trash quickly to keep up.
Surprise, the current top purple deck isn't even using the recently hit 3 purple cards. The thing with draw-discard engine, it will always be a problem sooner or later because you have the ability to choose, and effectively for purple Scatter Mode is like a +5. They released decent, more fair replacements such as Raremon, BlueMeramon, and Bakemon.
Can we start a petition for seperate ban lists?
I dropped the game after i heared that the training cards do not go into the starter decks. They put it as box toppers. It will be very hard to get a playset.
I too quit Digimon for the same banlist reasoning. Jesmon, Alphamon, Beelzemon
And the one that truly got me to quit was Xros Hearts X4 being hit to 1 in America and that deck too only got to be enjoyed for 3 weeks. Japan got X4 at full power for a few months.
Same here when Xros came out i gave the game a second chance and then once again i felt the sting of the banlist making my new paid for deck unplayable so i shelved it and i will not play again until x4 shoutmon comes off the banlist and seeing as it didnt happen and they unbanned only like 3 cards i guess i will never play the Digimon moneysink tcg again.
Bandai knows that they can treat the Digimon community like shit and people will still buy product because of how starved we are for it. What pisses me off the most though is the treatment vs OP. Their card quality is better, their prizing is better, they even started with a mulligan and we had to wait 8 sets before we got one in Digimon.
The increase in tcg games is need an overall issue, locals ain't gonna find room for all the tcgs nor can players invest in all of them at once most people can only financially keep up with 1 or 2 tcgs.
Curiously most of these new tcgs' playerbases come from people quitting the og 3 tcgs.
I'm a magic player and recently ventured into One Piece tcg because I'm a manga fan and the game is actually pretty good but speaking from my local community I can see that the Bandai games are indeed cannibalizing each other. There's Digimon players which also play Battle Spirits and some former Battle Spirit players dropped that game when One Piece hit the shelfs. The thing is many players leaving out of Bandai's supposed flagship game is concerning and they are really forcing that game on stores from what I've seen either by forcing stores to buy product or run tournaments. Their collaboration with Evangelion might be a boom or bust situation for the game as intrest in it is declining and nothing is worth a dime.
The major issue here sounds like they're not using a ban list correctly; you only ban or restrict if something is so badly meta warping that it makes it unfun to play.
Digimons borderline dying at our locals. They juggle One Piece and Digi, but now they're reviving their vanguard community. In addition, the store owner strongly dislikes Digimon, and wont be stocking product following BT14 pre release
Why the store owner biased like that? 😂
I think it's better for them to be pre-banned in the west. Giving people access and then banning on a predictable timeline would be really annoying and would cause weird markets
the one second, slow fade in of "Jackus of All Tradus" has me dying 😭
They need to split restriction lists for regions ... you tell me i got to get Eyesmon out of Belphe to slow it in a massive way , when he already has a bunch of counters (RaidGmon) (Security) (Blue Flare) everything of blue in general ... Just cause Apocalymon and Leviamon 2 sets away is demolishing everything in another region .... Agree with everything you said could not said it better myself , keep up the great work .
On the big time between tournament sign ups and then actually happening, I actually quite like that, rather than not knowing what I'll be doing in 2 months, it means I have 2 months to plan the trip, especially since being from Ireland I have to plan trips over to mainland UK
Great video. And this is coming from someone who plays one piece more than digimon. I did not like how they ban some of the cards from the wolf of friendship starter deck. In my opinion I feel the prize support could be better in digimon as well.
one of the big problems with the last restriction list is that you are forced to buy garurumon structures in order to keep playing purple, since we lost our main purple discard engine and we are now locked into getting st16 gabumon and garurumons for discard mechanics
Argument against not doing the combined banlist. Other games have 1 global banlist and do just fine with global play. Games like magic. The issue isint global banlists. Its japans favoritism. They need global product releases like other games yugioh and digimon haveing releases seperate ruin global play and make world events a joke
I get the feelsbad when we haven't gotten to use a deck and it gets hit "early" because we share the banlist with JP but every time its happened so far we've also gotten like 2 weeks to use those cards, which people at my locals always do, and the games are miserable, like the cards got banned for a reason, y'know?
Yeah like, if the card is broken, it's broken. Why "give us time" to suffer through it when we all know it's getting banned eventually anyway? I'm fine with early bans.
I love and will (hopefully) always love the digimon TCG. I do think bandai does alot well.
However, i 100% agree that they have some grave issues (specifically with dealing with Eng format, products, and tournaments) that i really wish theyd fix.
Recently (starting bt14) they got new designers for the game to reinvigorate it because of how well its doing in ENG (as they called out in an earnings report earlier this year) and that has been great and you can see the impact and i have loved it. But at the same time we are like 20 or so promo cards behind JPN and like 6months-ish behind in sets and that SUCKS. We really shouldnt be more than 3 months behind.
Also wanna know something fun. LM01 will be IN bt15. This will make bt15 cards ever so slightly harder to get (which will be annoying) and even more egregious is that JPN got LM01 2 months before bt15 released.
It sucks i have to say this but i do really really love the digimon TCG and again i acknowledge all the great things bandai has done, just have some issues that i hope get addressed.
(honestly i would love it if they just made an ENG headquarters to deal with these things instead of leaving it up to ppl in JPN to figure out while they are also figuring stuff out for their own community)
I had almost the cards needed for a Purple Melga X-Antibody deck. Then I checked the new ban list. Now that's gone up in smoke. Not to mention they also killed my MaloMyotismon deck with those hits (despite the fact I don't play it anymore). Almost makes me want to fall and make my Blue Melga X-Antibody deck, though I doubt it'd do the same amount of destruction it used to do.
Can't really say the same myself here in México. Product always gets delayed, there are very few shops, and cards get scarce even if it's just been 2 days. There really isn't enough product to go around, and promo cards MUST get a decent reprint. These are good cards that help so many decks and that is what makes 0 sense to me. They should not be this hard to get.
The people here in the Southeast has a whole discord server dedicated to Digimon and going to Locals. The people are very nice. Its a shame that Digimon isn't picking up like that, but here it is slowly growing more.
Happy to see the game struggling. It's just Vanguard 2 and will slowly die except for the devout speds who enjoy the IP, it is what it is.
Yeah the ban list is interesting, having cards out perform in japan mean that the local players in that meta determine what the other countries ban list is. Especially like when the cards are staggered in release schedule. The local players in japan have way more input on their card shop owners and send direct feedback to the design teams. That's definitely the environment I get from them, they have a smaller pool of players, but a larger impact on those card shops operating in those areas. I'd be interested in checking it out, thanks for sharing your experience.
Most of the weird course correcting bans come from the testing pools of japan as they would have had those card before.
The biggest thing that annoys me is the promos. It's honestly the one thing that's killing it for me. 3rd anniversary pack promos were supposed to release in BT13, but we're getting them in EX5, 3 sets and 2 structure decks later than the Japanese players had them. It's bad enough the promos are for fun decks that won't perform with the current format, let alone the new stuff coming out. Red Birds, Examon, Galacticmon. But don't worry, we got the black/purple aces which are just released later in the year anyway. Like????
Honestly you said what most of us have been thinking or saying. I agrree really hard on the ban list as well as the whole promo releases abd tying key cards to weird releases or tournament prizes. Honestly id vote for no more promo cards. Everything set releases and tournament packs / prices can be fun reprints or stamps
I am not gonna lie, I was ready to fight back with whatever you were gonna say but listening to everything, yeah I cannot argue with what you brought up because I too have those same feelings. I think the issue for big tournaments is 1, location, 2 timing to match with jobs/lives, and 3 the cost. To run Digimon tournaments isn't as profitable unless you have the people consistently coming to your locals spot; took a year to turn 2 stores into gold status where I am. I also agree that there are too many card games released by the same company at once. Like great, Digimon got past the 2 year trial mark where most card games fail, but then other card games were released and then reintroduced and honestly, it's a little much. Towards another topic you mentioned, the delayed ban list would be amazing. Like, these cards will be hit for the BTXX setting when it's released in your area. So basically we could play the power up to the point where Japan got to play it and then get hit with it like they did, that seems much more fare and more powerful cards could be hit.
And on a final note, I am also registered for the regional in November so I hope I get to see you there and maybe even challenge you. That would be super exciting.
A few additions to add as someone that works in a shop that tries to hold events for all card games.. last month was our cut off for events to be ran in MARCH!! Events need to be planned 4-6 months ahead of time and if you forget (because you signed up to host it almost half a year ago) our rep does not remind us.. and if it doesn't ship on time, we don't get the support for the event because they wont ship it after, even if we try to reschedule.
I do wish that they gave stores more options to host bigger events, not a regionals but more like regional qualifiers - Stores run events and the winners of those events get invited to regionals - it would add more pull and accessibility to playing in more competitive formats, and a more casual way to try and get into more serious competition.
Making events easier for stores will never happen with Bandai tho 😞
I kind of agree with the ban list cause i'm using an eyesmon and gobumon In my red Purple Imperialdragon A deck plagued with consistency issues And the only reason to restrict those cards is for a deck That doesn't exist yet
Bandai has the worst track record with TCGs. Thats why I'd never support them.
You're speaking a lot of truth here. Bandai releasing multiple games that will compete with their already established games was an odd choice, and in person tournaments have been lacking. I have to wonder how much comes from LGS' though. Maybe this isn't a universal experience, I had to watch as my LGS actively destroyed the Digimon TCG scene, before it had a chance to fully establish itself, through a series of blatantly bad calls that effectively forced players to go elsewhere if they wanted to play the game. And while I live in a major city it's not one with many game stores easily accessible, so it got a lot harder to play the game
It's not just you bud. The most recent banlist has been very controversial. I agree with eyesmon and greymon, but the other restrictions seemed unnecessary. I get that they have issues with the cards in japan, but I havent even gotten the chance to try them and now I have several decks that need to be changed because of a limit that didnt need to take place in the first place. I quit magic and yugioh because they were ridiculously expensive and not fun to play, so seeing several of my decks now needing revision is disheartening. Regardless, I am not going back to those games. Im in the process of selling thousands of dollars worth of magic and yugioh to buy into digimon. As frustrating as this banlist was, its not as bad as wizards and konami.
They also need to work on the release schedule. Having EX sets release so close to BT sets is a major impact on many players and collectors pockets for sets that rarely impact the meta.
Some promos being hard to obtain even when buying a full case and going to 1 (or even 2) locals a week is CRAZY, specially if you are putting what is effectively common cards (Wargrey and Melga) as box topers.
You definitely said some good points and I hope bandai can catch us up to Japan so we can be playing the same format at the same time. I do agree they should just either delay ban list or give us a different one. Also I hope I see you at the regional at pasadena
I remember when I was so excited to build a Xros Heart deck when they first dropped, and then they immediately hit it before I could use it with it full potential and I spent money on cards I couldn't even use legally anymore.
The launch hurt it so much for my group but we loved the memory mechanic. Then it released boosters every few weeks and we couldn't keep up.
Yeah launching during the pandemic was a horrible start for the game they have a much more measured pace now
@@apsamplifiermeasured pace... We're 6 months behind! If anything, they need to release a bunch of stuff quickly to catch up, then that solves the banlist issue as well because we'd be current with Japan.
I would love to see a video about the One Piece TCG and your thoughts. It seems OP is getting alot of attention and tournaments and due to the popularity of the anime in my region (EU) it really grows fast!
There are several companies that make multiple card games. Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast pretty frequently has more than just Magic on their slate (in the 90s/early 00s they distributed Pokémon as well). FFG always is producing multiple card games. Upper Deck has multiple TCGs under its banner for a while. While tournament scenes are definitely important and open up the space for a card game by quite a bit in terms of audience, typically the kitchen table/casual players make up the bulk of players for card games as opposed to competitive players.
When my favourite tcg shop closed, I lost the ability to play DBSCG masters and I loved that game. The community was small, and the prize support was so trash that the top players would call before a tourny just to confirm there was prizing. It never got better, and the promo's made some decks function. In some ways, it was the gateway for them to make the games we love today, but they're just not trying/ aren't able to keep up with demand, and I hate that. Then the ban lists thing they still haven't figured out?! Yikes. At least they aren't printing silver bullet cards in any cardgames right now... that will always be a nightmare.
Yeah, I had that when Shoutmon x4 came out. Couldn't even play the deck at full power because of the limits one week in after JP got 6 months of play... I definitly feel ya
I agree in some respects with what you're getting at, but I don't necessarily agree with the solutions you're presenting. Most of the issues you described with the game as it exists right now - outside of Bandai flooding the scene with other card games - could be entirely solved by us just getting cards sooner. There are these cool, meta impacting promos, but we get them a year late for no reason. At least with the Training cards we're getting them CLOSE to on time, but that's basically an exception. Banlist issues? I feel like the banlist updates they've presented have been good, but they're in an awkward place because they have to resolve problems with the Japanese meta, but it seems like Bandai refuses to hit cards that haven't been released in the west yet, so the JP format gets screwed and sometimes the English format gets weird hits. This, again, could be solved by our getting cards sooner. We're two core sets behind Japan at this point, and that's just presenting all sorts of problems. Even if they don't just merge the formats like they clearly should, they should work to get us CLOSER to the Japanese format (I think two months behind would be fine, basically one product release behind Japan) and make sure that we get promos or limited card sets on time.
Really, that's the real issue here. It's not us using the same banlist as Japan, it's not necessarily us getting promos late even though that is a factor, it's that we're just REALLY far behind Japan in terms of product releases and it's causing a lot of unnecessary tension.
i honestly prefer having/seeing different formats in different countries/regions but a shared banlist would make it hard or maybe awkward to play when the release rate in the japan and maybe some other asian countries are not on par with us here in the eu and usa.
example from me is pretty much with cardfight vanguard with BRO and how every region had a different 'meta' so to say or what i like to say is that i like seeing what clans/nations are favored more in each region rather than just look at japan and get conclusions from there.
It sounds like the Digimon TCG is having all the same issues as the Dragon Ball Super TCG the last couple years. DBS had every point you mentioned when Digimon and then One Piece released and now they are rebooting it. It is just Bandai churning and burning the TCGs until they aren't at maximum profit and then creating a new one. Digimon still looks like it is in a good place, Bandai just needs to focus some resources on it to prevent misprints, have better prizing, and more tourneys.
I legit think they do this with TCGs due licencing, same as fox has to make an awful fantastic 4 movie every few years or the roght will revert to Marvel. I iamgine when bandai got the video game rights to these anime IPs it probably came with TCG rights as well and they need to keep producing them or Shueisha or whichever company owns One Peice will simply give the TCG licence to someone else. Just in case its not clear, this is a guess, not me saying "i know this for a fact"
My biggest issue with the game is the balance. The memory gauge was such a great balancing design that really felt like your opponent and you are going back and forth. However, Bandai has completely broken that by creating cards that ignore the memory gauge by granting free resources like Tamers, Digimon, Digivolutions, and even memory. The speed of the game is ridiculous and really has been powercrept so much so shortly.
This is why I really hated the introduction of One Piece. It really split the player base a lot and from what I'm seeing, they are focusing on One Piece more than Digimon, prizing at least. Digmon tournaments used to have such good prizing for both local and online but it's all gone downhill. Id even argue that it started near the time One Piece was introduced. Also with Lorcana coming out does not help.
One issue that bandai has is not a lot of in person regonals mostly online that's rampant with cheating
I didn’t even know the TCG for Digimon was still around. I miss my old cards.
By far the best part of Battle Spirits Saga is that there’s 1 single format. Everything comes out at the same time, the meta develops globally. They’re also very quick and accurate with ban lists.
Digimons banlist being shared would be fine if we had unified releases. But were 4-5 months behind Japan and they also play a best of 1 format for the most part so decks like Alphamon that only need to see their pieces once per match make them look much more consistent.
Man good video, only thing id say is that Alphamon in BT9 was a threat. It had a huge amount of tops and was definitely teir 1.
The only reason it wasn't everywhere was because as soon as the banlist in Japan dropped people started dropping the deck.
As far as OTK style went people just swapped to Garurumon because the game plan was the same and there were no hits announced for the deck.
People couldn't be assed putting hours into a deck that was going to go in bt9.
I don't get why they don't just catch us up to Japan releases... It would be in tune with MTG which releases globally (more or less) and makes running regional and international events soooooo much easier
Digimon definitely died out in my local store. It sucks because we were enjoying it, but then a bunch of players from other ships came through just to play digimon and all they wanted to do was scalp. When they went able to do that, they all just brought whatever the most toxic control decks were and no one had fun. Eventually, everyone stopped coming and it was only those players left playing mirror matches against each other until the shop just flat out stopped having tournaments. Now my friends and i just play casually with each other. I don't see us honestly getting back into it that deep, kinda sucks
the ban list stuff DEFINITELY was the last straw when I was wavering on continue playing, I was so excited for eyesmon as a card and it got banned before release, while yeah it was probably too strong to be unrestricted, the ideal solution would be at least a change in what the card is in the TCG compared to the OCG but obviously thats resourced they didnt want to put into the game. knowing your release of the game is an afterthought that way kinda makes it really hard to want to invest. (the other thing throwing me off was just general power creep seeming out of control)
Iv wanted to get into digimon but the lack of locals in my area for it and the same stuff you said has made me stay clear even tho i grew up watching digimon and was so excited to see the card game make a new appearance
As someone whose done major events for this game since release, Digimon has a few issues for me personally that you didn't mention.
1st: You mentioned the lack of regional or ability to play in them, which everything mentioned is ABSOLUTELY TRUE. But it fails to bring up one of the biggest things they miss, which are the very real lack of "IN-PERSON events". Currently it's not an exaggeration to say that over 80-90% of Bandai sanctioned high level events are only through Discord servers. And while that's a great "hold-over" style event, there being so little BIG EVENTS that can convince players to travel, doesn't do a lot to push confidence. (Semi-related, but even for those events the prizing isn't attractive. Since it heavily depends on if the card is playable/a fan favorite.)
2: I know this is can be an issue in every card game, but I feel in Digimon the balance is worse then a lot of others, with the T1 decks being on a whole different level then a lot of T3 or even T2 decks. The best decks right now grab pieces, remove board presence, and hit much harder and faster then non-meta decks. Things like BWG, Bloom, Shine, and Belphe just get setup and hit their wincon well before T2 decks like Beelze, Imperial, and Gallantmon.