We're back with another review of Kayou My Little Pony cards, but not just pretty cards to look at this time! The new Friendships Begin series is the start of the long awaited TCG (Trading Card Game) that was announced just over a year ago, and with thanks to Kayou we got a bundle of cards to unbox and review.
Unboxing
We received starter decks of Rainbow Dash and Rarity and two random promo cards. The decks not only contain a full set of cards that you can use to directly start the game with, but also contains a sheet with rules/playmat and three booster packs with random cards.
Each deck box is made of plastified cardboard. It's not as sturdy as a regular plastic deck box, but can certainly be re-used to travel around with your deck if you so desire. The outside box is fully themed around the main character of each deck, and on the back you'll find information about the general contents and appearance rates of the different card rarities in the booster packs (Pokémon, are you listening?).
Every character of the mane 6 has their own starter deck, which are now available. Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Rarity and Twilight Sparkle decks can all be found on Amazon.
Closer Look at the Cards
Just like the collectible Friendship Eternal cards, the TCG cards all have a glossy finish and either a holographic or texture effect. Even the common cards and your regular consumable cards have detailed finishes that made us hesitant to hold them in your bare hands.
There are different kinds of cards (more on that later), each with their own layout. For example, your main character is one big illustration with the name, while regular character, event and item cards contain more information and icons used in play. The backs of the card also have some differences based on the type of cards.
The decks, just like most structured TCG decks of other games, contain a basic set of cards that can be used to play the game, with a large amount of duplicates. Aside from 20 cards of different types, the main decks contain 50 cards, but only 15 unique designs. So the decks are really meant to get you ready to play, not to complete your collection.
Aside from the pre-constructed decks we have some surprises left with the included booster packs and the additional promotion cards we received. The booster packs contain 5 cards each, with 2 guaranteed commons, but the other rarities can differ per pack. In our 6 packs we got a few duplicates, but plenty of new cards. We even got 2 gold rares in our packs, which are beautiful to look at and the Fluttershy would be a very powerful option in the late game. Other cards could be of any type, so it's not just characters: items, events and scene cards are also an option. According to the card rarity variation there is also a chance to pull a Main Character card. All of these cards we'll briefly explain later on in our review.
The promotion packs contain a single card from a special set. These don't seem to be able for purchase at the moment, but might be handed out at events or tournaments. We got pretty cards of Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie with a textured finish. Very pretty to look at but not incredibly powerful, so these will end up in our card binder rather than our decks.
Quick Game Rule Summary
Before we dive into our experience with the game, let's quickly explain the rules with common TCG terms. The included rule sheet explains the rules from initial start to finish, but we'll start with the main objective and how to achieve that.
The goal of this TCG is to advance your main character across 4 story chapters. Before you can move your main character, you must first intervene that chapter number of your opponent's story (so basically you have to advance 8 times).
These actions can be performed when one of your characters attacks ("contact") an empty space of the opponent. Both have room for 3 characters, so in theory you can attack 3x per turn. If your opponent has a character in that slot, the contact phase will determine which card gets discarded ("retire"), based on the power ("inspiration") of both character cards. There are character, item and event cards that can be played to alter the inspiration of a character and give you the advantage to win a confrontation.
Playing a card from your hand isn't free, but costs energy ("Force of Harmony"). Every turn you add one regular card to your hand and add one scene card to your playing field (these scene cards are your energy counter). The total amount of scene cards determine how many energy you have available to perform actions during your turn, and optionally your opponents next turn. When your next turn starts your energy is refreshed.
Playing the Game
When you start a round of the Trading Card Game, the first step is to layout the main character card and story cards, shuffle your decks and decide who plays first. This directly shows a big downside of the bare cards: glossy cards on glossy (unfolded) paper causes a lot of sliding around. We had to flat our playmat several times to properly use it. We also recommend to sleeve the cards before playing to both protect them, and make them less slippery when playing.
The first player to start has an advantage to start the contact phase first (from the second turn) and a disadvantage with the first scene card being face down (meaning the effect can't be used, but it's still valid as an energy counter). Personally I think the pro outweigh the con, so starting first has my preference.
We played the game with the Rarity (played by Ilona) and Rainbow Dash (played by me) decks without addition of cards from the booster packs. One tip we can give you is to first read the rules front to back, and be sure that both players understand them completely. While the playmat contains a short summary of the actions per phase, the full rules are on the backside of the playmat, so you would have to flip the mat to read them.
During play you build up your collection of scene cards, meaning that the first few rounds you don't have much Force of Harmony to spend and you can only play 1 or maybe 2 cards per turn. Later, when you get towards 8+ scene cards, you can more easily combine character cards and boost them with other characters, items and events in the same turn. Keep this in mind when starting a game, as it can feel a bit dull to only perform a single action during the early game.
When a few rounds passed we started to notice the differences between the decks: it's not just the same cards with different characters, there is an underlying technique for each deck. My deck relies mainly on boosting your played Rainbow Dash cards, where Tank and event cards allow you to temporarily increase the inspiration.
The Rarity deck has a different ace up it's sleeve: characters with a base inspiration of 7, where Rainbow Dash only has 6 inspiration as a maximum. Once we figured this out, the competitive side of the game started: I tried to keep my defenses up and boost a Rainbow Dash to 8+ inspiration to retire the Rarity characters with 7, while Ilona tried to fill her character area with solely high inspiration characters.
While I reached the second story chapter during the early game, Ilona eventually managed to get 3 powerful Rarity characters on her side of the field, and all I could do is block direct contact by placing lower inspiration characters. Since you only get one new card per turn, I quickly ran out of playable cards and had no defense left. She advanced multiple story chapters quickly and won in her 10th turn.
Improving Your Deck
As you read in our experience above, there are different play styles that you can achieve with your deck. Building one also requires you to think about both the early and late game: a deck with powerful cards could be perfect for the late game, but you won't be able to perform any actions during the first few rounds. And lower inspiration cards can do the opposite: a quick start, but not enough power when you run out of cards. There are also several cards that focus on hindering your opponent rather than boosting your side of the field.
While the booster packs contain cards from the existing decks, you can combine several cards in every deck. You are also free to mix different characters in a single deck, but there doesn't seem to be a big advantage on doing so (unless there is a meta we're unaware of).
The biggest advantage can be reached by restructuring a starter deck with cards matching the main character and optimize for a certain play style. From our booster packs we got some great gold and silver rares, but no rainbow rares. We're not sure how powerful or useful these chase cards are, but we assume they're high cost, but with an even better inspiration value or effect.
Verdict
At first we were afraid that the game would be a copy of the Enterplay card game, and while there are some similarities, there are just as many differences. The game flow is easy enough to get started with within 15 minutes and the low amount of text per card ensures that each turn is executed fairly quick. With the low amount of unique cards we weren't able to pivot away from our core decks, but this can be solved with more booster packs and booster boxes (probably more expansions to come soon as well).
After playing our first round, we directly wanted to play more and figure out more strategies to play with our decks. We found it fun as a standalone game, and are planning on getting more booster packs to see how this will alter our decks. We're not the types of persons to enter the competitive scene, but as collectors and fans of casual games we appreciate the beautiful cards and accessibility of the game.
Aside from the fun, there are some points of attention regarding the decks and cards. First of all the glossiness of the cards, which is pretty, but also makes the cards slippery when playing without sleeves. And the combination of playmat and rules saves on paper, but makes it hard to quickly peek at the rules while playing. Those rules are pretty short, but after our first game we were left with some questions that seem to be unanswered (for example: face down cards are barely explained). For us this opened the route to house rules, but if Kayou wants to create a competitive scene there will be a need for a definitive rule book.
Overall we think this is a pretty, fun and accessible TCG if you like My Little Pony. It's not perfect, but collectors and card game players will surely enjoy the cards. With the current setup there are a lot of options for more characters, new abilities and even the addition of other MLP generations, but we'll have to see which expansion sets follow in the future.
TCG and Friendship Eternal
When shopping for these cards, be aware of the similarities in the packaging and naming with the Friendship Eternal cards. While they're both collectible cards made by Kayou, they're not compatible. Decks, packs and boxes of the TCG always have the "My Little Pony Card Game" logo on the box. Below we have all currently available Amazon listings for the TCG, so you can use those to make sure you've got the right listing.
My Little Pony TCG Applejack Starter Deck
My Little Pony TCG Fluttershy Starter Deck
My Little Pony TCG Pinkie Pie Starter Deck
My Little Pony TCG Rainbow Dash Starter Deck
My Little Pony TCG Rarity Starter Deck
My Little Pony TCG Twilight Sparkle Starter Deck
My Little Pony TCG Fantasy Wonderlands Booster Box
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WHERE IS THE DATABASE FOR THESE CARDS???!!!!!
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