It’s time for four new Japanese TCG packs I obtained on my summer trip to Japan. None of these are particularly new games, but as far as I can tell they are all the latest expansion for their respective games.
Kaiun Collosseum is a kid-friendly TCG with cute art and games that use only 10 card decks. This is the latest expansion (called ‘Great Poop Battle’?) and is one of the very inexpensive (<¥200) types of booster packs.
The cards feature colorful and cute art, but they’re somewhat flimsy and slightly curved right out of the pack. I got a single foil – the card at lower right – but the foiling effect is unremarkable. I’ve actually got a few promo cards for this game in Japanese magazines over the years and they have much prettier foiling and effects.
The cardback is ok, but overall this product betrays its (probably) budget origin and I expect this will be another game that will have a lifespan measured in a handful of years.
Staying with Bandai, here’s the latest expansion in the official Dragonball card game. This game has been going for almost a decade and while it isn’t amongst the most popular in Japan it must still have a devoted fanbase to have survived so long.
The six cards in my pack are above, and while the rare card (middle bottom) is foil the effect is subtle and unimpressive. As is typical of Bandai card games, this one has some incredibly rare and amazingly fancy cards covered in textures and multiple metallic foil effects that go for thousands of dollars on the secondary market. If you’re buying these cards just to collect them, it must be a frustrating prospect.
Here’s the cardback and a bonus card included in the pack. Feel free to use the code 🙂
While this isn’t for me – I’m not anywhere near enough of a fan of the series – this is probably fun for the diehard fans even if just to collect.
Osica is a TCG based around licensed products, and therefore would appeal to the same market as games such as Weiss and Union Divide. This was the latest expansion when I was in Japan, based on the game Atelier Ryza.
The cards are nice enough for fans, and the quality seems higher than both Bandai games. While I’ve played many Atelier games I still haven’t got to the Ryza series so I don’t know who any of these characters are. The foil card is at the lowest right, and the foil effect is so subtle it’s easy to miss.
The cardback is pretty! Probably the best yet in this series. But this is clearly a game marketed at collectors and therefore dependent on the card front design. Is it better than Weiss? I think not.
Lastly we end this post with Divine Cross, (yet) another game with cards based on licensed products. In this case the series seem to be fanservice heavy games and/or anime, and the dozens of expansions have been frequent and fairly small, with only a few dozen cards in each.
I don’t know what this expansion is based on since info is difficult to find online and my translator has trouble with the text on the front of the pack, but it looks to be a Five Nights At Freddy-like horror game (anime?) based around girls hiding from monsters. The cards are dark and frankly boring, and the foil kuchisake-onna (slit-mouth woman) card is repulsive.
If I were to base my evaluation of the game entirely on this pack it would be a strong thumbs-down, but from what I can tell cards in other expansions look wildly different and in some cases are very pretty. An unusual game, this one.