Tiger Talks Season 2
Episode 1: Failed Trading Card Games

Hey everyone. Kentaro here. And welcome back to Tiger Talks. Really glad you all responded so well to my first season, and here, there’s quite a few more to go over this time, and one’s I hope you’ll enjoy reading about. Starting this out, we’ll discuss a subject I’ve got a lot of experience with: Trading Card Games.

After Magic the Gathering hit the shelves in 1993, it led to the creation of an entirely new genre of tabletop game, which has been going on ever since. As of 2025, we seem to be in something of a TCG Renaissance. Alongside Magic, we have Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon forming the so-called “Big Three” TCGs, but there’s so much more out there. Disney and Ravensburger have Lorcana (a personal favorite of mine), Fantasy Flight Games has Star Wars Unlimited, Legend Story has Flesh and Blood, Bushiroad has Cardfight Vanguard, Weiss Schwarz, and Shadowverse Evolve, and Bandai has… a lot. Not to mention all the indie card games that folks are out there working on. Including me.

However, the card game landscape we find ourselves in nowadays wasn’t exactly built overnight. Rather, it was a long, arduous process of trial and error, like all things in this world. In order for the games we have now to exist, there had to be ones that didn’t quite make the mark. But first, here’s a quick list of games that won’t be part of this subject.

Duel Masters: It might have been badly mistreated by Wizards of the Coast with poor advertising and a cringy gag dub of the anime, but this is one of Japan’s top card games right now, and has been for years.

Battle Spirits: Bandai of America dropped the ball hard with this, (its anime wasn’t even dubbed) but it has thrived in Japan.

Future Card Buddyfight: With a multi-season anime, several manga, and a ruleset that still inspires years after it stopped print, I’d hardly call this one of Bushiroad’s flops. I’ll get to the actual flops later.

Digimon Hyper Colosseum: Again, it ended its run on it’s own terms, it played a major role in the Digimon Tamers anime, and it’s influence helped shape the current Digimon Card Game.

Chaotic: It was quite unique for TCG, in a number of ways, and if 4Kids hadn't gotten greedy, it would’ve probably have had a few more years. Plus, the creator has hinted at bringing it back, which could work with the digital card game landscape we have now.

So if anyone familiar with cards wonders why I’m not including these games, well, now you know. With that, time to get started. Though ironically, it starts with a game that’s sort of related to one of the games I said WASN’T on the list.

#1: Digimon Digi-Battle Card Game

I think I should say this. Despite the similar looking card design, this actually was its own game, and not an actual translation for Hyper Colosseum. First off, the ones behind this game were Upper Deck, primarily a maker of sports cards, and while they have some experience with card games nowadays, even being the original producers of the translated Yu-Gi-Oh TCG before they burnt the toast and Konami took over production in all regions, this wasn’t exactly the best first impression.

One of the biggest problems with this version of the game is the bizarre changes it made to the Japanese versions already existing rules. While the original version had a simple arrangement for the three attacks every Digimon had (A for their special move, B for a special ability, and C as a counter attack), here, they were all jumbled around willy-nilly. While the Japanese version had a limited amount of space to place Option cards, Digi-Battle had no limit to the amount you could set. Hyper Colosseum had a standard victory method of dropping your opponent’s Life Points from 100 to 0, Digi-Battle made it a race to reach 1000 Score first (kind of like Lorcana games racing to collect 20 Lore, only poorly done, since you had no way to lower your opponent’s Score in Digi-Battle). And the most baffling choice, while you drew your hand up to six cards per turn in Hyper Colosseum, in Digi-Battle… you drew up to ten cards per turn. With a thirty card deck.

Now, that wasn’t the only reason this game failed. The lack of any official events like what Magic and Pokemon were doing at the time didn’t do it any favors. In fact, this game was completely absent from hobby shops and local game stores, where TCGs are usually a major showing, even today. And when this inevitably fell off, Bandai of America tried two more times. First with the D-Tector Card Game, to try and connect to the dub of Digimon Frontier, and the Digimon Collectable Card Game, which… tried to copy Yu-Gi-Oh. And did it badly.

Since 2020, in spite of everything that went on then, we’ve had a rebuild and thriving Digimon Card Game internationally, its success really being boosted in 2024 from the success of the Digimon Liberator webcomic, and recently, there was an announcement of an official mobile client in the works. Though, we shouldn’t forget where it all began. The Japanese classic will always be hailed as an innovator. Digi-Battle… not so much.

#2: Luck & Logic

Now, I have to say, this game has an interesting premise behind it. In an alternate version of our world, special people known as “Logicalists” form pacts with entities from other parallel worlds known as “Foreigners”, with which they can combine, or Trance, into powerful warriors to protect their world from invading, hostile Foreigners. It also had two different anime attached to it, both lasting thirteen episodes, but they were completely different in tone. Luck & Logic the anime seemed more attuned to the premise of the card game, while Hina Logi was just a cute girl slice of life series. But despite everything this had going for it, and despite the media giant Bushiroad had become thanks to Vanguard and Weiss Schwarz, it didn’t last too long. But why?

Well, I think it might have come down to the fact that the game was very difficult to get to grips with. Now, I get that a lot of card games want to make themselves feel different from other card games so as not to feel like a clone, but there are better ways to go about it without making the game feel too complicated. In this case, it mashed up Weiss Schwarz’ Stock management and color system with Vanguard’s ability to use cards in your hand for power boosts and a pseudo Clan (or Nation nowadays) system all at once. And the Fusion was definitely not successful.

Not helping was its similarity to another, more successful card game with a much more compelling anime attached to it: WIXOSS. The cards typically feature cute anime girls on them. Both use two separate decks with either black or white card backs to determine how they fit in the game. Though another major issue is that this tended to reuse the same small pool of characters over and over again. Compare to Pokemon, where creatures and characters from all Generations are featured, or Lorcana, which is willing to pull characters from over 100 years of Disney history, no matter how obscure they are. And a small pool of characters and themes means that there’s not much variety in the kinds of decks you can build or the strategies you can pull off.

Needless to say, this was nowhere near the level of success that Bushiroad’s other card games had, and it’s been mostly forgotten by the company, except as an example of what not to do when creating a TCG. There’s one that ultimately failed even worse, but we’ll get to that.

#3: All pre-Unlimited Star Wars games

Before I talk about this topic, I want to state that Star Wars Unlimited is a pretty good game. Sure it pulls quite a few ideas from other games, but it does so while making sure it stays on brand with the themes, lore, and characters of the Star Wars franchise, even theming the sets on different eras (i.e. The first is based on the original trilogy, the second is based on Disney+ shows like The Mandalorian etc.). And while its Leader mechanic might choose the Attributes you’ll mainly use in your deck, there’s nothing stopping you from adding cards outside of your Leader’s attributes to your deck. They’ll just cost extra resources to play is all. This is the best Star Wars card game ever printed, but it was such a long, winding road to get to this point.

We’ve had the Customizable Card Game in 1995 and the Jedi Knights Collectable Card Game from 2001 by Decipher Inc, the Trading Card Game by Wizards of the Coast in 2002, and Fantasy Flight’s previous attempt in 2016 with Star Wars Destiny. All of these fell by the wayside for one big reason. An over reliance on sticking to the idea of Light vs Dark. This idea wasn’t TOO egregious for the 1995 game. This was two years after Magic had hit the market, and only a few people knew what they were doing. And to be fair, even though it’s been out of print since 2001, it’s kept a good, long-running community that still plays it to this day. The rest… not so much.

While later games weren’t strictly Light Side versus Dark Side, they still kind of wedged cards into being part of their own factions. That’s not exactly the best move with card games these days, especially when so many of them such as Magic, Lorcana, and Force of Will allow for mixing and matching. Yes, Vanguard has its Nation system, and both Shadowverse Evolve and Flesh & Blood have Class-based systems, but they have various ways around that limit, like Vanguard having various Archetypes to vary up the playstyle, and Shadowverse and FaB having a good amount of Neutral cards that can be slotted into any deck.

That being said, Star Wars Destiny did have a good few years, since Fantasy Flight seems to know how to make a good SW tabletop game. However, it all came crashing down in 2020, and the attempts at distributing an organized play kit based on a cancelled set were scrapped because… well… the planet was kinda shut down at the time. However, Fantasy Flight was given another chance with Unlimited, and it’s been doing well ever since. How long this will last is up in the air, especially with the volatility of the Star Wars brand and the ever present toxic fungus that is the Fandom Menace, but for now, the future looks bright for Unlimited.

#4: Dragobourne Rise to Supremacy

And here we are. Bushiroad’s first attempt at a Western-only TCG. And also their last. It barely lasted a year, and got very little advertising, save for the same advertisement that would be played alongside the episodes of Vanguard G and Buddyfight that were airing on YouTube in 2017, but it seemed as though advertising this new project through what had already proven successful didn’t do it any favors.

Now, one of the familiar things it did was implement a familiar five color system, similar to Magic. However, that isn’t exactly a bad thing. Duel Masters does it. WIXOSS does it. Force of Will does it. Even the card game I’ve been working on does it. If it works, it works. And in many ways, this game did work. To many, it felt as though it had improved on a few Duel Masters mechanics, such as all Creatures being able to block instead of having specific Creatures with the “Blocker” ability. The use of dice as a mechanic was also an interesting new addition, though probably having to rely on dice rolls probably wasn’t the best choice.

But despite the solid game system and unique mechanics, the North American TCG market that this was aiming for didn’t exactly take to it. The lack of solid advertising, like several other games I’ve brought up, was a factor in this, but it was also announced not too long after Bushiroad had announced the cancellation of Luck & Logic, which didn’t exactly leave people with a lot of confidence, and thus, this game met its end not too long after L&L did.

However, the biggest thing that led to Dragobourne’s demise was indeed the fact that it WAS an English only game. Some of the best card games in the North American market are the ones that have more recognition outside of North America. Many of them are from Japan, though there are those like Magic and Lorcana that started in North America, before being released internationally, though Lorcana has been international from the start, mainly since Disney’s publisher for the game, Ravensburger, is a European company.

I suppose that this is the reason Bushiroad no longer makes English original games. They’ll gladly print sets exclusive to the English Edition of Weiss Schwarz every now and then, but they know that keeping a game locked to one region will only lead to failure.

#5 Battle Spirits Saga

The most recent failed game on this list, which hurts to admit because I REALLY wanted this one to succeed, mainly in the hopes that the brand would get some more love here like it got in Japan. For context, Battle Spirits, much like Duel Masters, has been a long running, and very popular card game that has been active in Japan for a decade and a half. This tried to push that many years of history into such a short amount of time… and it didn’t work. So, why did this second attempt crash and burn?

Well, first of all, Bandai tried to sell this game solely to a more competitive audience, with multi-million dollar tournament prizes, which is always doomed to go horribly. If you want to get your game out there, no matter the format, you need to make sure it’s accessible by a wider audience. Second, the card frame designs were unappealing when compared to the original Battle Spirits. The artwork was nice, but that’s because it came straight from the original game, along with the short-lived game Zenonzard. Third, the lack of support with local game stores. If you want to make sure your card game has a shelf life, you need to make sure it walks before it runs. This is the strategy Disney has taken with Lorcana, distributing their new sets to smaller shops first, followed by wider releases. Plus, their game has better designed cards, and a community that is all about fun and inclusivity over competition.

In addition, the advertising for this game was, yet again, subpar. One thing that could’ve been done on Bandai’s end was making at least a couple seasons of the anime easy to watch, even with subtitles, which is what Bushiroad had done with Buddyfight, and continues to do with Vanguard. Sure, the classic Battle Spirits and Saga aren’t exactly the same, but it was better than doing basically nothing with the property they own.

Now, I am aware that Wizards of the Coast did something similar to this years ago, rebranding Duel Masters in the west as “Kaijudo”, with reskinned versions of cards from that game and some new inclusions of their own. But the difference here was that Hasbro and Wizards actually tried to get their game out there to a wider audience. The TV series might not have been the best, and their digital game shouldn’t have been a browser game, but we can at least say they tried to get the game out there. And it would have too, if not for the usual WotC problem of competing with itself.

And really, that’s the problem BSS ran into. A rebrand of a game that had been successful in Japan for over fifteen years, but was virtually unknown overseas, competing against games based on bigger franchises like Digimon, Dragon Ball, Gundam, and One Piece, that actually DO have large fanbases outside of the games. I really did want this game to be a success this time, but I guess it wasn’t meant to be.

In Conclusion:

And with that, I’ve made my last play for this episode. As someone who enjoys TCGs, it always hurts to know when one fumbles so much. The market can be quite the battlefield, but it’s always good to see when games manage to stand the test of time, and hold their own against the Big Three. I will continue to look at whenever new games are announced, and continue to watch indie card games like World Gates En Garde and Elestrals make their mark. Next time, I’ll talk about an interesting topic, and I’ll bring in a friend of mine to help. And so…

Stand. Bow. See you next time.