Digimon Ruleset Ver4.0 – Things you might have missed

On the 29th of July, the Official Bandai Card Games Channel released a new video on YouTube. It introduced the new design for the Digimon Card game, as well as the new update to the Digimon ruleset. Key details include the introduction of color blind accessibility and the Counter timing introduced with the upcoming ACE Digimon cards. Our breakdown includes things you might have missed as a new player when learning the new Digimon ruleset!

ACE Cards add Counter Timing to the Digimon Ruleset

ACE Cards were supposed to be introduced with the upcoming Digimon TCG starter decks – Dragon of Courage (ST15) and Wolf of Friendship (ST16). As the box art cards, they would have been the series introduction to reactive defence outside of just blocking attacks. Similar to “Hand Traps” from Yu-Gi-Oh, ACE Cards interrupt an attack with a cheap digivolution, which allows When Digivolving effects to happen during an opponents turn and disrupt their play. ACE Cards debuted early in the English Format, however. MetalGarurumon ACE and WarGreymon ACE were present as Box Toppers for the newest set at time of writing – BT13.

The Attack Timeline

With the introduction of the Counter Timing, the Attack pipeline has now changed. Now it reads as:

An attack target is selected (Security or a valid Digimon target).
The attacking Digimon is suspended.
The turn player’s When Attacking Digimon effects are triggered and resolved.
Raid Timing. If the attacking Digimon has Raid (allowing them to change the attack target to the highest DP unsuspended Digimon) then this can be triggered.
COUNTER: The opponent can activate one (1) card from their hand with the Counter tag. (Currently, the only Counter effects are Blast Digivolution)
Blast Digivolution: This allows a Digimon to Digivolve without paying its Digivolution cost, (while still observing Digivolution requirements).
Resolve new When Digivolving effects.
Block Timing. This is where Blocker is triggered, suspending the defending Digimon and redirecting the attack to the blocking card.
Attack Resolution.

With this, the attacking pipeline has changed, but largely follows the same game flow as before, where turn player has priority on effects. It is yet to be seen how much of an effect ACE cards and their new Counter timing will have on the English metagame, as Japan did not see ACE introduction until it was brought in with the starter decks.

The next influx of ACE cards for other colors and decks will be in the upcoming BT14 “Blast Ace” Booster Set.

Colorblind Options and Card Text Updates

With ACE Cards, ST15 and 16 and future BT14 cards, Digimon has added long awaited color blind assistance in the form of a segmented wheel. The cost and digivolution circles on all card types (Digi-Egg – marked with an egg icon, Digimon, Tamer and Option) now have a segmented ring at the edge. Starting at the top and going clockwise, the segments refer to the following colors.

White
Red
Blue
Yellow
Green
Black
Purple

Multicolor cards, or cards with multiple digivolution requirements will have both the segments highlighted, with digivolution circles diagonally representing both colors, instead of 2 separate circles.

An Incomplete Video

The Digimon ruleset ver4.0 is well covered in the official YouTube video but we found that some things may remain unclear to new players.
As the shown cards were single color, an example of the player needing both colors to activate an option was not shown.

The Win Conditions segment also only showed the normal win condition of a clean attack your opponent when they have no security. However, the loss condition of not having a card to draw in your Draw Phase, was absent.