Digimon Card Game

Two players, five security cards each, and one shared memory gauge sitting between you. You raise Digimon from eggs, digivolve them into bigger Digimon, and attack. Break all five security cards, land one more attack, and you win.

The memory gauge is what makes this game special. It is a single slider shared by BOTH players. Everything you do pushes it toward your opponent, and the moment it crosses into their side, your turn ends and theirs begins with that much memory to spend. You are not managing your own resources, you are deciding how much of a turn to hand them.

• Turn length is elastic. A cheap turn gives your opponent almost nothing. A huge turn gives them a huge turn back.
• Digivolution stacks: you play the next Digimon on top of the current one and keep the whole pile, which carries inherited effects.
• Digivolving draws you a card, so the game rewards building upward rather than playing wide.
• Security is both your life total and a trap: your security cards fire their effects when they are flipped.

• Digimon: play cost, digivolve cost and requirement, Level (3 through 7), DP (its power in battle), and effects. This is the body on your field.
• Digi-Egg: lives in your separate egg deck, hatches into the breeding area, and is where most of your Digimon start their life.
• Tamer: a persistent card in play, usually giving memory each turn or supporting a colour. Tamers are not Digimon and cannot be attacked directly.
• Option: one-shot effects, some of which can also be played from security when flipped.

1. 1

   Active phase

   Unsuspend your suspended cards.

2. 2

   Draw phase

   Draw one card. The player going first skips their first draw.

3. 3

   Breeding phase

   Either hatch a Digi-Egg into your breeding area, or promote the Digimon in your breeding area onto your main field. This is a free engine that runs all game and new players forget it constantly.

4. 4

   Main phase

   Play Digimon, digivolve, play Tamers and Options, and attack. Every one of these costs memory and pushes the gauge toward your opponent.

5. 5

   Turn ends

   The moment memory crosses to your opponent's side, your turn is over. If you end your main phase voluntarily with memory still on your side, it is set to 3 for your opponent.

Attacking: suspend a Digimon and declare an attack on the opponent's Digimon or on their security. Attacking security flips the top security card and resolves it: if it is a Digimon, it fights yours immediately, and if it is an Option with a security effect, that effect fires.

• 50 cards in the main deck, exactly, plus up to 5 Digi-Eggs in a separate egg deck.
• Up to four copies of any card by name.
• Colour identity matters: cards have colours and digivolution requirements name them, so a two colour deck needs care.
• You need a curve of levels: Level 3 rookies to start, Level 4 champions, Level 5 and 6 for your payoffs.

The most common beginner mistake after memory is too few Level 3 Digimon. Your egg and your rookies are the foundation of every stack, and a hand full of Level 6 cards you cannot reach is a lost game.

• Standard constructed, with a banned and restricted list Bandai updates periodically.
• Sets are numbered BT (booster), ST (starter), EX (extra booster) and a few special products.
• Organised play runs at local shops with regular events and regional championships.
• Alternate art rares are the chase, and the secondary market cares a lot about them.

Digimon began in 1997 as a virtual pet and became an anime about children pulled into a Digital World, each partnered with a creature that grows alongside them. Digivolution, the thing the card game is built on, is the franchise's central image: a small creature becoming a bigger one when its partner needs it to.

• The evolution line (In-Training, Rookie, Champion, Ultimate, Mega) maps directly onto the card game's levels, which is why the stacks feel right to anyone who watched the show.
• Cards draw from every series: Adventure, Tamers, Frontier, and the modern entries. Tamer cards are the human partners.
• The Digital World is a place with real geography and politics across the series, and the card art assumes you might care.
• You do not need any of it to play. But the reason people cry over a card of Wargreymon is thirty years old and completely valid.

Digimon on this platform is collect-only: real cards from real sets, pulled through the apitcg feed, with BT1 New Evolution as the first shelf.

• Open packs from the card shop in Discord.
• Cards land in your public binder on the website.
• Duplicates feed trading and set completion.
• Bolts only. Nothing here costs real money.

• The official Digimon Card Game site hosts the rulebook, tutorials and the current banned list.
• The official card database for searching every printing and its rulings.
• Watch one recorded match before your first game. The memory gauge makes a lot more sense seen than read.
• Ask in our Discord if you want a stack checked.