New trading card game enters the scene.
Every year there are new TCG coming out. And the existing ones come out with expansions, add-ons, new seasons and so on. It is a very crowded market. Many games can’t compete with the Goliath that is Magic: The gathering. It had it’s recent 30 years celebration which was totally mismanaged by the owner of the Original company that brought it to market, Hasbro.
I have seen many come and go, but nothing could dethrone MTG. And I don’t think it will happen. It is the Bitcoin of TCG and the rest are the altcoins, shitcoins and memecoins. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no fun to be had with any of the games that live in the shadow of MTG.
Actually for me, MTG lost it’s shine over a decade ago, I played it for over a decade and life happened and it didn’t bring me any joy. Even during that reign of MTG I dabbled with other TCG’s that arrived to the scene in those years. Nothing stuck with me like MTG did. Later on after I had quit MTG for years I found an other game that could give me that smile and joy I once found in MTG.
To no surprise the game finds it origin in the Japanese TCG market, which is totally different from the English/US/EUR scene. They gave us the Pokemon TCG, which is know widely but there’s a whole slew of games that found it’s way to the English scene, such as, cardfight Vanguard, Weiss/Schwarz and YU-Gi-Oh!
And for me Weiss/Schwarz had the artworks that I enjoy, many stills form Anime series and movies and the fun of deck building and the social part of meeting people who also like Anime or Japanese stuff. But Weiss/Schwarz is not the game I am talking about in the title.
New to the scene, from the same company (Bushiroad) that publishes Weiss/Schwarz, Shadowverse: Evolve, with Advent of Genesis as the first set to kick it off. It is actually a game not developed by Bushiroad, but only published. Which could be good as the developer, Cygames has other interests than Bushiroad, so the should keep each other in check.
This new game gives me the same vibes as MTG did back in the day, back is the wonder the theory crafting, deck building, meta shaping and curve optimizations for strategy and tempo. I like W/S a lot but there are some MTG aspects that I don’t see in W/S. And I do see them in Shadowverse: Evolve. And what I like about it that it is not MTG, it not being made by some WOKE/PC company that fumbles and stumbles their releases just to appease to some loud minority. It has good looking cards, nice flair cards e.g. alternate art and foiling for your favorite characters or theme. Good amount of strategy and deck building. Games don’t take too long and are easy to pick up. And it has a lot of Japanese influences in art style, although the art is varied, even within the different “colors“.
As the game in just out, now is a good chance to get in early before you cannot get the staples you need to be compettitive.
