Best Digimon Tamers – Upgrade Your Deck

The partners to the titular Digimon in the show, Digimon Tamers ebb and flow between being some of the strongest staples in the game, and the weakest. Due to their inherent strength of not being Digimon that can be attacked or deleted by most card effects, their consistent value has been hard to overlook.

Booster Set 8 introduced ways to interact with tamers, after BT7 saw power support for Tamer based decks, thanks to a focus on Hybrid Digimon, that use tamers as a starting point. Most decks do still struggle to interact with Tamers, with cards like BT12-057 Quartzmon and BT9-112 DeathXmon being a necessary evil in some decks to keep the tamers under control.

When tamers are at full power though, these are some of the best additions to a deck.

Red Digimon Tamers

Generics Hiro BT8-086 Amanokawa and BT1-085 Tai Kamiya are standout choices for their usage across any red deck without an in archetype memory setter. BT10-087 Taiki Kudo is our pick for the best non-generic red Tamer. For 3 cost, it searches the top 4 cards. Adding 1 to hand, and loading 1 under a tamer. By suspending the card, it allows players to Digi Xros using cards under any tamer in addition to the hand. Allowing the deck to frequently spit out bodies without going as negative from hand. Taiki was a large part of the now banned Shoutmon X4 Turbo.

Blue

BT3-093 Davis Motomiya is a frequent addition to Blue decks, and Green decks that need the blue source. This is because the memory tamer can add a blue and green card from a top 3 search when the card is played. When playing decks such as Imperialdramon, which uses both Blue and Green, the card can sometimes pick up multiple cards in one search!

Blue’s source strip style decks often add BT5-088 Sora Takenouchi & Joe Kido for its consistent boost in memory and oppressive source removal. Sometimes, they’ll also add the 1 copy of BT7-086 Tommy Himi that the banlist allows them to.

Yellow

BT1-087 T.K. Takaishi and BT13-095 Marcus Damon are the top Yellow Tamers. TK allows players to fix their security and gain vital info about its contents, whereas Marcus has 3 effects to warrant its hefty 5 play cost. Both are memory fixers, and Marcus, when suspended steals a memory and deals -3000DP in archetype.

Green

BT1-089 Mimi Tachikawa, BT13-100 Yoshino Fujieda and BT10-090 Zenjiro Tsurugi are the top picks for Green tamers. The ladies are memory tamers, Mimi allows the player to suspend her to perform a hatching action if the player owns a level 5.
Yoshino replaces Mimi in most plant decks now for giving 1 memory when evolving the Plants & Faries; making cheap evolutions even cheaper. Zenjiro free-plays a Ballistamon blocker, which also allows his 2nd effect to immediately give back a memory.

Black

Black’s picks are archetype specific but are incredibly powerful. BT9-092 Yuji Musya gives 1 memory and an extra draw when an X-Antibody Digimon leaves the raising area. It also can be suspended while a Digimon attacks to load a source under it. This is important in the deck for effect timings. BT11-092 Analogman grants memory and sets up the trash for building the perfect Machinedramon stack. When suspended it also allow for redirection, which means Machinedramon without Blocker effects can still stall and play defence. The card was limited to 1 in the August-September Ultimate Cup banlist.

Purple

ST14-11 Ai & Mako are the key piece to the now limited Beelzemon engine. They top 4 search for the tribe. In addition, they allow players to stack a card from their hand to the deck, allowing them to stack the deck for combos. BT13-102 Keenan Crier is a 2 cost tamer masquerading as a 3 cost. Most players won’t trash an option or tamer to prevent the player gaining back 1 memory and a draw. As games go longer, its “gain 1 memory when a Digimon is played by effect” effect steals more turns.

White

EX1-066 Analog Youth is a 2 drop tamer that searches 3 cards and adds 1 to hand. Due to it trashing the rest, it sees frequent play in Purple decks. BT9-092 Cool Boy is one of the best tamers ever printed at 2 cost. It adds an X-Antibody Digimon and the option card to hand. More importantly, when X-Evolving (which often costs 0), suspending it gives you a draw and a memory.