Digital TCGs: Fantasy and Expectations

3/24/2025

Note: This is more of an informal ramble style post. Don't say I didn't warn ya'!

I've recently found myself enjoying Yu-Gi-Oh: Master Duel again for the first time since its launch. I've never really disliked it or anything, but it wasn't that long after its initial release that I got into paper Digimon cards, and then after that, Pokémon became my primary focus. I have never been into paper Yu-Gi-Oh, with deck staples often being far too rich for my blood. It's still a game I admire, though, and Master Duel helps me play and engage with it far, far more easily.

Prior to that, in 2013, I had a long, enamored stint with Dueling Network, something that really taught me how to play the game as it featured no automation. It also featured frequent chat arguments about how something interacts or is supposed to work. We also had a school meta at this time, where we all played rogue decks on Dueling Network until somebody decided to bring Spellbooks.

Did I mention we would play in class? We had a cool teacher.

After that, competition got heated and fierce. I fondly recall my boards getting repeatedly reduced to atoms via Elemental HERO Absolute Zero and Acid. Some of my favorite decks at the time were Constellar, Evolzar, and right at the end of the semester, Battlin' Boxer. Because Dueling Network had access to every card in the game, it was easy to swap around, experiment, and goof off against my friends or online strangers.

These kinds of memories and experiences, where we all discover and explore a rich, complex card game together are the kind of thing that seem like total fantasy in the card game landscape. The kind of fantasy that exists in the original Yu-Gi-Oh manga, where somehow we all have a unique deck archetype that suits our character, representing us individually. The same fantasy exists in Destroy All Humans, They Can't Be Regenerated. A Magic The Gaterhing Manga (full title!), which takes place (at first?) in 1990's Japan during the TCG boom. Our heroes seem to magically get new cards, usually offscreen, that change up their decks and strategies.

So strong is this fantasy that there are still, nearly twenty years after Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Monster's anime debut in the United States, video essays, gags, and noted complaining that the game isn't like the series. This phenomena is well enough known in the community that it has a derogatory name, Yugiboomer. Partly, it's Yu-Gi-Oh's, fault the rules played in the official card game and shown in media have pretty much always been badly mismatched.

One of my best friends, a lifelong Magic: The Gathering player, has their own fantasy. Theirs is that we all open packs and just play with what we have, trading with each other. I don't know if "no secondary market" is exactly what she means, but there's certainly a purity I admire in building our own collections from scratch from randomized booster packs.

Digital games like Master Duel, Magic Arena, and Pokémon TCG Live make it really difficult to even approximate these kinds of ideals. It's a lot of cold, hard business, because in these games, trying to optimize your deck and card pool means optimizing your time as well.

Master Duel is one of the coldest, in my opinion. You better start with yourself with a meta deck, or something reasonably competitive, which you won't know how to get to or what to build without extensive outside research. You'll want one so you can get Gems and Crafting Points to faster build your next deck, or finish your current one if you had to make some budget cuts. There's a Battle Pass and... yadda yadda, you know. The actual gameplay of Yu-Gi-Oh I've best seen described as setting up a minefield while not depriving yourself of resources to disarm your opponent's mines. There's more to Yu-Gi-Oh than how many negates you set up and get through, but for those unfamiliar, watching your more experienced opponent negate and disable everything you try to do is understandably frustrating.

Spending money (eek!) in MD isn't always much help in the way of deckbuilding. First, you need to unlock the pack that has your archetype in it by crafting a card from it of a certain rarity (I believe it's SR or UR). Why you simply cannot browse these on the regular is something I don't quite understand. It would be overwhelming to a new player, sure. There are a zillion of these! But if your player got far enough to where they're willing to spend their gems (or cash) on packs, surely you'd trust them? Imagine walking into a game store and being forbidden from buying a pack of cards until you demonstrate that you know what's in it.

If you didn't get the cards you want from the packs, you'll be able to disenchant/dust them for the Crafting Points, typically at one-third of the value it would take to craft it. This sucks. Admittedly, it does preserve some of the thrill of opening a rare card in a pack that you might get in real life, but it's pretty badly skewed towards both grinding and luck.

Don't get me wrong, Master Duel is a fun game to play. But needing to quickly get up to speed on a metagame, dueling strategy, and the economy is tough. Is it any wonder why people of all skill and experience levels can come away with a bad taste in their mouths?

There might be one other upside to how tough this environment can be. That is, if you can cook something special, the results can feel amazing. The Yu-Gi-Oh card pool is wide and deep; who knows what you can discover? The design of the game and economy, and playing with strangers suggest a completely inverted experience from my time with friends on simulators.

Think about it. In Dueling Network and the like, my friends and I were fumbling through the card pool, choosing cards and effects we thought looked cool and fun. Slowly over the school semester, things got more and more competitive. In Master Duel, it's in your best interest to start by being as competitive and efficient with spending as possible, before you branch out into your less effective, but "fun" decks.

Which one of these seems more natural to you?

Does it have to be this way?

Does playing a digital TCG, or hell, any trading card game have to be a sobering, illusion shattering experience?

There are certain aspects to learning about any trading card game that can be seen as roadbumps. There are always going to be dominant strategies and a metagame formed around countering those strategies, or finding other effective ones. That will never go away. Especially in an online game where you can queue up for a match, you're going to see repeat decks, often card-for-card. It doesn't mean everyone is some kind of mindless automaton or sheep or whatever, it's just how gaming can be. Sometimes, your favorite Pokémon/archetype/Creature might not cut it against other players. I don't see any game getting around that initial abrasiveness; having to play against live humans is kind of tough in anything, no matter how good your tutorials are.

Pokémon TCG Live has its own issues, but it's far more generous with onboarding than Master Duel, giving players multiple fairly competitive decks as freebies. If brewing unique decks with unusual Pokémon is your style, you're going to get there in Live with much less resistance. How easy it is to craft specific cards has changed a little bit over time, but in Pokémon you usually have a ton of cards shared between decks, like all your Ball search and Item cards, generically good Supporters, etc. You also can't spend money directly in this game. It's expected that you'll buy packs in real life and redeem code cards that come inside them. At least, officially. In reality, you can purchase these code cards for pennies on third-party sites, and they are legit codes.

I have a suspicion that a lack of in-game credit card swiping is part of what lead to Pocket's creation, but that's a different topic...

TCG Live, while really lacking in presentation, content, and being buggy as hell, (it's getting better, though) probably has the smoothest curve for new players.

Magic The Gathering: Arena is the game I have the least experience with by far, and as of this writing, I have played one game of Commander in real life. For me, it's had the exact opposite problems of Pokémon TCG Live. Arena is overkill on the high budget presentation, causing my hipster bitch (as I was recently described) brain to send me warning signals. "Treat this with suspicion; this is pretty to deceive you!" my sweet mind says to me. It's a huge turn off for me to have this many flashy graphics, voiceovers, and flourishes begging me to spend money.

Arena is nearly incomprehensible to me, but I'll admit that's probably partly my inexperience with Magic in general. I had a hard time figuring out how to not be in a bot match. I'm not sure how to take a deck I construct online or how you would do so for one of the many formats the game supports. None of this is explained that well in-game, but Arena is more than happy to just throw a million packs at me (I have no idea why most of the time) and just pray that I'll want more.

Things seem standard otherwise. Not nice or kind particularly, but standard. There is a kind of battle pass in it. You buy Crystals/Gems/whatever for packs and cosmetics. You can craft specific cards with somewhat unintuitive "blank" cards that match a rarity. You are given starter decks for a starter deck format, and somehow I think you can progress into one of the other formats with enough cards and wit. I won't slag the game too hard for me not totally understanding it, but I will say having this much glitzy stuff in it doesn't exactly pull me away from Master Duel or Live.

I'm very thankful to have my friend who loves Magic. But imagine if one day I decided, "Hey, let's check out Magic," and they shoved a bunch of packs in my face and said "Isn't this cool? You got packs!" Uh, is it? That's what downloading Arena has felt like. The actual gameplay tutorial and starter deck bot matches and missions are something I can appreciate. It's possible for me to get a quick hit of low stakes Magic gameplay while I'm sitting at the computer.

I actually about this to that friend, who told me that they give you a ton of packs from different sets to hook you, but so you can't actual build a coherent deck until you buy more from a set you like. Tsk tsk.

Jane Parker's Guide For Trading Card Game Success

The point I'm trying to make here is that even the nicest digital TCGs are pretty much antithetical to the natural, friendly, perhaps in some ways fantastical experience that you might have in real life. The people I played Magic's Commander format with were so nice and so helpful in answering my questions that it actually makes me sick to think about if I had tried to play it alone in an online game.

Let's get one thing clear, it's not like opening booster packs in real life is good, or even fun. It's gambling, your odds of getting any particular card are usually pretty terrible, and it's only thanks to other people opening packs and selling cards that skirt the issue. I've bought a few Pokémon ETBs, and they are basically wastes of money. Buying a booster box for Digimon's very first set in the pandemic, with two friends is a fond memory, but it's also like 90 dollars I'll never get back and don't currently play with. Chase cards are ridiculous.

You might meet some asshole at your local game store (I really hope not!), or not even have a local game store nearby, depending on where you live. For the more shy or anxious among us, the idea of interacting with other humans for a few hours to play a game isn't an easy pill to swallow. I hope that doesn't sound belittling, I'm being completely serious, it's totally understandable to be anxious about it! I put visiting my game store on pause for a while as I transition, so I think I get it. Pokémon wouldn't be my favorite TCG in the world without all my experiences with local play.

Digital TCGs are a huge W in terms of being able to quickly and easily trial a game, get a basic feel for it, and decide what level you might be interested in. They also might be cheaper than, say, paper Yu-Gi-Oh or Magic staples.

I'm going to offer some tips to try and maximize your fun and enjoyment if you do get into a digital TCG that isn't a free, fanmade simulator, which are the best thing. So, as far as official games go...

• 1. Have friends.

The biggest differentiator you can possibly make in having a smoother TCG experience is to have a friend or two check it out with you. I guarantee you I wouldn't have fallen in love with Yu-Gi-Oh in high school without our little playgroup. No, Reddit posts are not your friends. Someone you can bounce ideas with, explore different things, and regularly play with. You will avoid frustration this way!

• 2. Take it slow.

I know I say that about everything, but it's true. No one is expecting you to know the card pool on your first boot-up. I think it's best to learn your own deck in and out first, and let other decks come into your mind as you are exposed to them. If your curiosity is high, try a few YouTube videos or online guides to watch and observe.

• 3. Someone will win and someone will lose. Don't stress.

Try to have a good attitude about this. It's not some show of domination when you're chilling in an online game. Don't assume your opponent is trying to humiliate you or be toxic. You have no idea (and probably never will know), so relax! You're always learning, and remember, in card games, sometimes you just don't have everything you need. Nobody cares about your rank either if your game has a ranked mode, so don't worry about that either!

• 4. Don't spend your actual money until you're comfortable.

I assume this is the natural instinct of many, but if you can get away with not paying, go for it! That's the ultimate victory~! If a game is too stingy, grindy, or constantly begging you for money, to the point of stress, you can drop it. What's the harm in that? The winning move with gambling, gacha, and card packs is to not play.

• 5. Allow yourself some personalization and taste.

You may want to add or remove cards from a decklist for something you personally want, or like, for whatever reason. Maybe it adds a certain utility, or it's just a creature/monster that you like. Just do it. This is a big part of the fun for trading card games as you get into one, so don't feel like you have to be locked in to one particular exact list. Explore, mess around, and have fun with it!

I love trading card games, but there are chances for frustration regardless if you play (or plan to play) primarily in paper, digital, or a kind of mix. I feel that the official digital games have more pain points, but I also feel that picking one up doesn't have to be a disorientating, aggravating "welcome to the real world!" kind of thing, either. If we can acknowledge our expectations, embrace some parts of our fantastic ideals, and identify these pain points, I'd like to think everyone can have a good time.

Now, go make some fun memories, and bond with your cards!

- Galaxy-Eyes Photon Jane