At the end of the last Digimon Card Game Diary, I mentioned that I would go further into discussing my collection of decks. However I still haven’t unboxed my RB-01: Resurgence Booster box. So I’ll be providing an overview on my competitive experiences with the Digimon Card Game.
Local Card Shop Experiences
When available, I try to support my local card shop, Perfect Rares, by attending pre-release events or weekly store tournaments. But pre-release events are a more fun way to purchase additional packs of the game whenever a new main booster set is released, while also receiving pre-release packs containing random 2 prints of the new cards with a pre-release stamp on them (potentially upping the value of such a card). And the nature of the pre-release events is that of a “sealed format” where all participants are playing with cards that were sealed at the beginning of the event. In other words, players are given boosters that they then use to construct a deck for the tournament. It’s a fun way to familiarize oneself with the new cards of the format, as well as having a reset from whatever the meta or dominant decks have been at the time.
On the other hand, weekly store tournaments are more similar to what most people probably imagine when talking about card game tournaments. Participants come with preconstructed decks, play best out of 3 games until there is a clear first place winner (usually undefeated), and prizing is offered as well as a possible participation prize.
However, when it comes to the rest of my competitive experiences with the Digimon Card Game, I suppose I’ll highlight the online events I’ve entered, which include major events as well as smaller scale ones hosted by Dorkaholics friend Yoshi Sudarso.
BT9 Creator Cup – July 2022
I believe my first online tournament was Yoshi’s BT9 Creator Cup that was essentially a pre-release event, which meant that it followed a slightly different ruleset, particularly the ability to ignore color when digivolving, since requiring the colors for digivolutions in a sealed format would really slow down the pace of the game or result in a too many hard plays of Digimon straight to the board back and forth without much else in terms of moves.
Unfortunately, at the time, my internet situation was very challenging which resulted in a terrible experience for my opponents so don’t try looking for me in the recorded stream above.
DC-1 Tournament – October 2022
Following that experience, my next event would be Play!TCG’s DC-1 tournament where I entered with my Alphamon deck. I don’t quite remember how well I did. I’m positive I did not break into the Top 128 as I would have remembered that much especially if I had won the prize for Top 128 which was one copy of the ST7-05 WarGrowlmon Alternate Art card. It was my first event that had hundreds of participants, meaning I would have had to be ready to play 9-10 rounds for the whole day. It was a fun experience overall and I’m glad I was able to get a taste of it then which prepared me for my future experiences.
Emerald Dragon 2 – April 2023
My next online event would be another one hosted by Yoshi, his Emerald Dragon Cup 2. There would be 7 participants and I would end up placing 5th with a newly constructed Purple/Red Imperialdramon at the time. I learned exactly how janky and consistent such a deck was.
Ultimate Cup – September 2023
My most recent event was the Ultimate Cup hosted by Carta Magica this past September. Note, an Ultimate Cup is another type of alternate gameplay format, which requires all cards in the deck to contain one consistent color throughout, which limits the amount of variation. For instance, multicolored decks are now restricted only allowing multicolor cards that have at least one color that matches the rest of the deck. While I was tempted to follow up with an updated Alphamon list, I had played so many other decks since BT9, I felt more comfortable trying a new one, this time entering with the new MirageGaogamon deck. I would end up placing 118th, losing my first 4 matches before finding my rhythm and getting 2 wins in each of my last 4 matches.
Next time, I’ll provide an overview on my collection of Digimon Card Game decks throughout each release of new booster sets as well as how I’ve updated them over time.
