Digimon Card Game (2020)

Digimon Card Game (デジモンカードゲーム) is an upcoming card game developed by Bandai Namco. It is expected to be released in April 2020.

Mechanics
<!--rewrite with encyclopedic tone, once released, and without speculation

Chrono Clash System
The Digimon Card Game uses what is called the Chrono Clash Gauge system. using a similar system from the Bandai card game “Chrono Clash”

How the system works is that each card has a cost. Playing a card will costs Time and will move the marker towards your opponents gauge. You can play as many cards as you’d like, but the moment the marker crosses the “0” and enters the enemy’s gauge, your turn ends. In the example above, I currently have 2 Time. I then play a 5 cost card, which would end my turn and my enemy would start his turn with 3 Time. Using the same example, I have 2 Time and I choose to play multiple smaller costing cards. I could play two 1-cost cards, which would leave the marker at exactly 0. It would still be my turn, and I am free to play another card. I play a 4-cost card and my turn ends with the enemy having 4 Time.

To win the game, you have to either attack the enemy while he has no Guardians or complete 5 Quests. Each player starts with 5 face down cards, which act as Guardians. You can declare attacks at the enemy’s cards or attack them directly. If they have a Guardian, the Guardian will flip over, protect them and fight your character to the death. If you attack an enemy while he has no Guardians, you win the game.

To complete Quests, you can place facedown cards under a character you control. While in this position, that character is Questing and cannot attack. The enemy can disrupt you by attacking the face-down card as though it were a Guardian. At the start of your next turn, if the character was undisturbed, you take the face-down card underneath your Questing character and you gain a Quest Point. If you have 5, you win the game.

When you evolve a Digimon, you stack their abilities as shown in this image above. In this case, you would have WarGreymon’s ability and MetalGreymon’s ability. WarGreymon’s text says “[On your turn] along with the evolution base, this Digimon gains [Security Attack +1] When this Digimon {attacks} a {security} turn over +1 cards”. This likely shows that Security cards will replace Guardians in DCG, and when WarGreymon attacks a Security, he flips over 2 of them instead of 1. MetalGreymon’s ability says “[Once per turn] when this digimon eliminates an opponent’s digimon, place this Digimon in the attack state.” If you’re familiar with card games, this would be the Rested/Active/Untapped state, which means MetalGreymon could destroy an enemy Digimon and then attack again.

Digivolution
Here, it describes Red (Agumon) as an aggressive color that has abilities that raises it’s DP (attack stat). As we can see from MetalGreymon and WarGreymon’s abilities, they are indeed very aggressive. Red has primarily Dinosaur and Dragon-type Digimon.

Yellow (Patamon) is able to manipulate the battlefield by reducing the enemy’s DP. They have Holy Beast, Fairy and Angel-types.

Blue (Gabumon) is said to control the fight by discarding enemy cards. It has primarily Beast, Beastman and Knight-types.

From the description, it seems that you can Digivolve as you please into higher forms, as long as they are the same color! If this is true, that would be very unique! This is fascinating because this means that you can sort of…craft a Digimon that has all kinds of different passives based on what choices you’ve made when Digivolving. For example, a Gabumon -> Seadramon -> WereGarurumon would have different passives than using Garurumon for the Champion stage (this assumes that Seadramon and WereGarurumon would be Blue cards). -->