Digimon Staples Guide: Red, Blue, Yellow

When deck building, you might not have all the pieces that you need. This is where Digimon staples come in to help out. Staples differ across colors, and can be all types of cards. From Digi-Eggs, to tamers, option cards, rookies and megas, there’s staples for every meta that’ll help you learn how to play the Digimon TCG.

Eggs: Most Expensive Digimon Staples

Digimon starts with the eggs, so so shall we. These generic eggs can be used in the majority of decks in these colors.

BT8-001 Gurimon

Red decks often have high DP Digimon or means of boosting to hit this 6000 DP threshold. Gurimon is usually a guaranteed draw when attacking.

BT1-006 Cupimon / BT3-003 Upamon. EX2-003 Viximon

Yellow eggs Cupimon, Upamon and Viximon have all seen use in control lists, with Viximon seeing the more recent usage in Security Control. All 3 facilitate draws, with Cupimon requiring 5 or more security when attacking, Upamon 3 or under and Viximon being when an option card is used.

Blue Eggs are good eggs

Blue is  known among all Digimon deck colors for draw power. BT1-003 Upamon was largely considered the best blue Digi-egg. It, BT10-002 Bebydomon and BT3-002 DemiVeemon facilitate consistent draws.

Upamon punishing cards being played to the field or source strip, DemiVeemon being fantastic in Jamming decks. Many use Kyaromon giving draw for a “source strip” and safer draw than Upamon that requires an attack. BT11-002 Wanyamon only requires a tamer to be on the field while attacking. This makes it many player’s choice egg.

Floodgates: Most common Digimon Staples

Often rookies, “Floodgates” are used to slow your opponent. Floodgates are a good way to pad your deck. However, be aware, most floodgates affect both players.

“Psychemons”

Named after the progenitor, these cards stop you from reducing play costs on Digimon. However option cards are unaffected as those are “Costs” not “Play Costs”.

BT8-071 Psychemon
ST12-03 Solarmon
ST13-08 Chikurimon

BT9-033/047 Pillomon and Pomumon prevent Digimon from being played at all by effects.

Memory Blockers: Most Played Floodgates

These cards prevent your opponent from gaining memory by effects, except tamer effects.

BT3-046 Terriermon
BT3-061 Chuumon
BT3-077 Chuumon
Then BT6-021 Modokimon in Double Diamond

Digivolution Floodgates

As of BT13, there are 2 types of Digivolution floodgates. BT8-059 Kokuwamon, which stops players ignoring Digivolution costs. And cards that stop players reducing digivolution costs. (BT5-005/21/33 Gaossmon, Syakomon and Cutemon respectively)

Memory Tamers: Digimon Staples in Every Color

Basically, every memory tamer can be used in any deck to prevent memory choking. Listed are each color’s Top 2 for brevity:

Red

BT1-085 Tai Kamiya (Sec+1)
BT8-086 Hiro Amanokawa (DP)

Blue

BT3-093 Davis Motomiya (Best)
BT9-086 Kiyoshiyo Higashimitari

Yellow

BT1-087 T.K. Takaishi
BT8-090 Kari Kamiya

Memboosts and more digimon staples

Options are the last of the digimon staples. Here is often where we see most players looking to pad out their final cards.

Memory Boosts of every kind

Yellow has BT6-100 Reinforcing Memory Boost! It’s limited to 1 for its strength. Unlike every other memory boost, it grants 3 memory with its delay, instead of 2. Despite giving 1 less memory than Reinforcing, the “color boosts” search the top 4 cards and add a Digimon to hand see frequent play. As they are cheap, and have the delay effect that refunds most of its cost next turn, they are solid consistency options for a burst of speed.

In addition to Blue Memory Boost, blue has access to Howling Memory Boost for decks that aim to source strip. Eventually, when we cover Purple digimon staples, you will see that not all memory boosts are created equal.

No Cost? No Problem

Memory boosts overall cost 1 to play thanks to memory refund. They’re a form of gas that can help you speed up your play. But Red, Blue and Yellow notoriously have options that cost even less. 0 Cost.

Blue has Hammer Spark which gains 1 memory from hand.
Red has Gravity Crush which gives 2 memory, but gives your opponent 2 at end of turn… if they live to see it.
Yellow use Blinding Ray to gain 2 memory, burning 1 of their own security.

Some lucky decks have access to multiple of these “Sparks”.