I was doing a little spring cleaning and I have a box of random unopened trading card packs. I think I was saving them for future blog posts at the time but honestly there isn’t really anything too interesting there. Still I did also find 3 packs of the Beyblade Trading Card Game. I am pretty sure I got them from repacks, back when they were interesting and fun to open.
I am actually a fan of Beyblade and I do have a bunch of tops and arenas. The card game seems interesting too. How can you make a collectible card game around battle tops? Beyblade TCG was made by Decipher and it is pretty obscure. Decipher made a ton of CCGs/ TCGs during the boom in the late 90’s and early 00’s but if I recall, none of them really had any staying power. Beyblade TCG only had one set come out for it. It is also designed for younger children which is an interesting decision.
Basically the two big mechanics of Beyblade is the battle edge and the color bar. The battle edge is how you resolve character or effects or see how much damage your attack would do. You basically compare your opponent and your cards and see if any of the six lanes match on the top of the card and that can be good or bad depending if you are the attacker or defender. The second mechanic, the color bar is you have to follow the colors red, yellow, green or blue so if you play a yellow card, to defend in battle your opponents needs to play a green card then you have to play a blue card and then it loops back in this chain until no players can play any more cards. It is pretty simple but unique for a trading card game.
I think this game fails mostly due to that it is more fun to play with actual Beyblades/ battle tops than to simulate them. It is a lot less work to setup too. Also younger children is not a good market for TCGs. They won’t understand the collecting and deck building side of things. It would have better as a self contained board game. Finally I think the cards are pretty ugly. I never like when games just use screenshots of a show.
Shot Not Taken 