To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Detective Conan’s serialization, the official company will cooperate with Takara Toys to launch a Conan-themed TCG game; this company has just recently launched the Blue Route TCG. The selling point of this card game is the IP, and the original author, Gosho Aoyama, personally draws the illustrations; after all, Aoyama, an old thief, is also a fan of the TCG; in this way, this card game has playable and Collectability.
Officials have kept their mouths shut for the past few months, not sharing the game’s rules but only releasing a few previews of the cards, including the book cards and theatre version bonus cards. With the game’s first release on May 4, it was time to preview the game on all major platforms, so the official announcement of its core gameplay was made via live stream on the evening of April 8.
Rules of play for Conan TCG
Construction rules
First, in terms of construction, you must carry one partner card,1 case card, and 40 cards to build the main deck. The deck consists of Character Cards and Event Cards, and you can only use the corresponding colour of your Partner Card, and you can only put up to 3 cards with the same number in the deck. In the case of Conan, for example, there is 1 Patron Card that is Conan, but there is also the 7-cost Character Card Conan.
Winning Condition
The winning condition is to solve the case. Case cards start in the Event section, and after the player has seven cards in their file area, which is a 7-cost turn, they can flip the case card to the Solution section. Once the case card enters the resolution chapter, it checks the amount of Evidence you have in your evidence area, with the first player needing to collect seven pieces of Evidence and the second player six. Once you have the appropriate data, you can declare “Solve the Incident” by placing a partner card across the board to win the game.
It should be added that the declaration must be done with a Beat Card. If you use a Beat Card to do a Cost or Reasoning in that turn, you will have to wait for the next turn to reset before you can declare, and your opponent will have one more turn to remove the Evidence.
The Cost Mechanics of the Cards
Then there’s the cost mechanics of the cards. Each event card and character card has a cost, and you can only play the corresponding card from your hand when the number of cost cards on your field is greater than or equal to the cost of the card you want to use. Generally, you can only play 1 card per turn, unlike other TCGs, where you have to lay down cost cards across the board.
At the beginning of each turn, two cards are placed from the top of the deck, back side up, into the file area, commonly known as the cost area, and these cards lose their effect while they are present. The first player can only place 1 card as a cost on the first turn, similar to the King of Thieves TCG mechanism.
Game Flow
Each player draws five cards at the beginning of the game, using the same reset mechanic as Hearthstone Legends, where they have one chance to put any number of cards back into their deck and draw the same number again.
At the beginning of each turn, reset the characters and patrons placed across the board. This is a traditional reset mechanic; if the patrons are stuck in the archive area, remember to remove them. The player then draws 1 card, a very traditional card draw mechanism.
Event cards are one-time use, and when they are played, they are sent to the removal zone, which is the graveyard of other card games. On the other hand, character cards stay on the field and have an attack power attribute.
The main phase of this game has a couple of actions that are sewn into other card games as well:
1. is to play cards from your hand, only 1 per turn.
2. To put the tapped card into the file area, it is considered a temporary 1-cost use this turn and moved back onto the field for the next turn’s reset phase.
3. Add one cost card to your hand, and you can play another card from your hand this turn. There is no limit to the number of times this action can be performed, and File Zone non-tap cards are hand resources, provided you have enough cost values to play a card with a cost equal to or less than the number of File Zones.
4. Flip a case card into a resolution after you have seven cards in your file zone. These seven are allowed to include beat cards.
5. launches an attack.
Attack Mechanics
Attacks are divided into two types of actions: Reasoning and Action.
Reasoning Attack: Place a character or partner across the table, then add one evidence card to yourself. Some character cards will gain two pieces of Evidence; look at the number in the bottom right corner to see how many. Adding evidence cards is done by placing 1 card from the top of your library into your evidence area.
Action Attack: using your character, declare one attack action on your opponent’s case or a character placed across the board. Only Character cards can attack, as Patron cards have no attack. Your opponent can block with a character that has not been crossed over, change the target of this attack to the corresponding character, and then calculate the attack power of both players. Whoever has the lower attack power discards it to the removal zone.
Card Types and Effects
Like many Japanese TCGs, this is the phase where you can turn in cards to add attack power. The side with the lowest initial Attack Power chooses whether or not to turn in a hand to add Attack Power, and then it’s up to the other side to decide. You can only turn in 1 hand support each time, and both players only have one chance to turn in hand support if you have the same attack power; the defending side is the first decider to hand in support.
If you’re attacking a character card, it’s just a normal hit. If you attack a case card and your opponent doesn’t have a blocking character, you are considered to have succeeded in a facemask, you gain one evidence card, and your opponent loses one evidence card.
When an evidence card is discarded from the evidence zone to the removal zone, that card is shown face up, with or without the trigger mechanism. This is a common trope in Japanese TCGs, with some cards triggering effects during this phase to add randomness to the game.
Character cards have Summoning Disorder on their debut turn and cannot reason or act to attack unless a word like Quick Attack allows them to do things on their debut turn. Preemptive Attacks can crossover Patron cards on the first turn to perform 1 Reasoning to gain 1 Evidence, which is why Preemptive Hands collect 7 Evidence.
Patron cards and character cards usually gain one piece of Evidence. Still, some high-cost character cards can gain two pieces of Evidence, such as the eight8-cost Kudo Shinichi and Hattori Heiji, which will acquire two pieces of Evidence when reasoning. However, 8-cost characters still chip 1 to get one piece of Evidence when attacking case cards.
Since the game is positioned as an IP-oriented, laid-back deck, no stacking or interaction mechanics exist. Players cannot do anything on their opponent’s turn except hand over cards to support blocking characters.
The first five pre-sets released so far are all themed decks corresponding to the characters, and no other character plays are mixed in. The illustrations are manga characters and scenes from well-known events. Regarding the viewing experience of the trial game board, the card effects are relatively simple. At this stage, you can’t play any combos, relying more on the character cards to reason and get Evidence and, depending on the situation, attacking the opponent to put pressure on them. The game has little interaction, and the difficulty of getting started is relatively low.
Each pre-set has 42 cards, some cards to plural pre-set to Qi 3, card sets and other official theme peripherals. May 4 issued the first bullet, in JMay 4, here is a new pre-set; July; June,e second bullet; OctoJu,y 27e, third bullet and a ne, pre-set December, there is a new pre-set n.ext year in January, the fourth bullet and this up, ate I still relative; fast. The store tournament opens right after release, entries are prize packs of cards, and the national tournament starts in November.
The current decks are monochromatic, with Akai Shuichi in red, Amuro Tooru in yellow, Conan in blue, Hattori Heiji in green, and Bandit Kiddo in white. Pre-set 6, which goes on sale June 29, has a multi-coloured theme of green June 29ite, and the series is Heiji vs. Bandit, the first two-player pre-set for the Conan TCG. The second pre-set features the Kanto Kansai Showdown, which is very popular with Heiji. There’s no pre-set for the female partner cards yet, so they’ll probably come out in the second pop.
Closing Thoughts
Regrettably, the only cards produced by the makers of the Conan TCG are currently in Japanese, so non-Japanese speakers will have to play the Japanese version first if they want to play this game, which is presumably a fan-oriented game that will be hard to make too competitive.
Many of the mechanics of this Conan TCG are found in other card games, especially the cost attack to get points. After the designers sewed together, the core gameplay still looked a little interesting, but this attack settlement mechanism was a little strange; brush the Evidence is not fast enough how to do, then knock down the opposite side to reduce its speed; this is not quite in line with the original worldview, the case card is not an exciting design. It’s not very cool to use only 1 card per turn in the early stages, and it’s hard to play more than three cards in the later stages because you have to take away one cost for every card you play, and you have to stack up to 7 costs to flip the case.
Currently, the game needs a strong single solver. It is reasoning that by taking two evidence cards straight away, the game is nearing its end, and you have to go all out to solve the opposite character and stop your opponent from getting more Evidence. The game looks more like a mix of OPCG and Lorcana, with the primary choice being whether to run the score or beat the person.
