Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG Lookback Review
The Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG is a card game based on the amazing animated series.
These are my thoughts on it.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game is a collectable card game based on the hit TV series’ own collectable card game.
Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG Game Play
So you need to bring a deck as is the way with a TCG and it should have 40-60 cards with no more than 3 copies of a card. Players have 8000 life points so you need a way to track that.
Players take turns playing 6 phases, lets look at them.
1 – Draw Phase
Draw 1 card from your deck…
2 – Standby
Some cards activate in this phase, mostly asking that you pay a cost to keep a card in play or something.
3 – Main Phase 1
This is the main bit where you play all your cards n stuff.
You can summon or set a monster once per turn. You have 5 slots to play monsters and summoned ones are placed face up and set monsters are played face down for secrecy and horizontal to show they are in the defence position.
There are several special ways some monsters are summoned with a “tribute summon” the most common. Here, if a monster is level 5 or 6 you need to sacrifice a monster to summon them, 2 for Level 7+ monsters.
As well as monsters, you can also play and set spell cards. You have 5 separate slots to play spells, even if they are resolved and discarded you need to have a free slot to play them.
You can also set spell and trap cards face down if you wish allowing you to flip them later to activate them outside of your turn.
4 – Battle Phase
Choose an available monster, choose a target monster an opponent controls and attack. If your opponent doesn’t control any monsters you can attack your opponent directly.
But if you attack a monster in the attack position, they deal damage to each other equal to their attack. If the damage taken exceeds their attack stat, they are discarded. When attacking, additional damage is then dealt to the defending player.
If attacking a defending monster and the attack doesn’t exceed their defence, nothing happens.
5 – Main Phase 2
Like main phase 1, a chance to play some stuff.
6 – End Phase
Activate any cards that do their thing “during the end phase” and discard down to 6 cards.
Winning
You both have 8000 life points, get your opponent to 0 first to win. If any player runs out of cards in their deck and can’t draw, they lose.
Theme
So the theme is a load of nonsense if you don’t take the Yu-Gi-Oh! animated series into account where they play this game if you haven’t seen it. That is great and I love playing cards in the game that I’ve seen on TV. I always wanted to make a Toon World deck work but never could.
Setup & Rulebook
Build a deck and you’re good setup wise.
The rulebook is decent enough. If you’ve played any games similar to this, it’s very easy to pick up. The rulebook is clear with flow charts and things to help you get through it.
Components & Artwork
The cards are fine but are annoyingly quite slim which means you couldn’t use standard size deck protectors.
The art is fine… It’s Japanese anime style and while I like the cute stuff, most of it isn’t my style.
Ease of Teaching & Accessibility
Very easy. As with any CCG, you can play with hands face up to help new players. You can always build a deck with cards that are easier to understand to help new players play the game themselves.
Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG Summary
I like this game but I don’t have as fond memories of playing it as I did Magic the Gathering and Buffy the Vampire Slayer CCG. I did run local tournaments for a bit and they were fun but playing? Not so much.
In fact of the 4 CCGs I played a lot, this is the only one where I don’t have any decks so I can play it again should I wish. I haven’t for Dice Masters either if you want to throw that into the mix.
Looking back, I think this is because it didn’t have the flexibility of these other games. The decks, while different, are not as different in playstyle as the other games.
As I mentioned with Toon World, some cards were nowhere near as powerful as they are in the cartoon. OK, the cartoon didn’t exactly follow the rules of the card game in the beginning and made their own very weird rules.
So while it’s not as good as these other CCGs, I do have good memories of playing this game.
Jesta ThaRogue
