Duel Masters Trading Card Game


The Duel Masters Trading Card Game is a two-player or two vs. two team collectible card game jointly developed by Wizards of the Coast and Takara Tomy. The card game is part of the Duel Masters franchise.
The game was released in Japan in May 2002, where it quickly became the number one selling trading card game for over a year. Owing to this popularity, it was released in the United States on March 5, 2004. The game shares several similarities with , the world's first collectible card game, which was also published by Wizards of the Coast. In fact, Duel Masters was originally intended as an alternative tradename for Magic: The Gathering and the earlier game play was abandoned in the Duel Masters manga plot to promote this latest experience.
As in Magic: The Gathering, Duel Masters players summon creatures and cast spells using mana. Key differences include the fact that all creatures and spells can act as mana producers, creatures cannot block attacking creatures without having the “blocker” ability, and that creatures only have one “power” statistic. Furthermore, duelists have shields in the form of cards that go to their hand when “broken” as opposed to Magics “life points”. Owing to the popularity of Duel Masters, four video games based around the game have been produced, titled Duel Masters: Kaijudo Showdown, Duel Masters: Sempai Legends, Duel Masters: Shadow of the Code for the GBA and Duel Masters: Cobalt for the PS2.
Fans of Duel Masters around the world support player-organized tournaments and also unofficial national championships. The community centers itself on two main forums internationally which contain translations for Japanese cards. Because Duel Masters is one of the most successful TCG in all Asia, a new booster set is released every two months, and new theme decks every three months.
As of December 2006, the English sets of Duel Masters were discontinued by Wizards of the Coast due to weak sales and was hosted by Takara Tomy in Japan for a brief time. However, in June 2012, Wizards of the Coast relaunched Duel Masters under a new franchise named “Kaijudo: Rise of the Duel Masters”. Based on the existing Duel Masters brand, Kaijudo features an online game, trading card game, and a television series. The product was canceled a second time in 2014.

Game Play

In Duel Masters, two players play the role of duelists, using the "art" of "kaijudo" to bring their creatures to life to do battle. Players battle each other by placing cards into their respective "mana zones," then using that mana to cast spells or summon creatures into the "battle zone."
Each player has five shields that protect them from damage; once these are gone, it takes one successful attack to win the duel. When a player's deck runs out of cards, that player automatically loses the duel.
Each player's deck must have a minimum of 40 cards in it. As with all trading card games, players construct their own decks out of cards from their collection. Players can purchase booster packs to increase the number of cards they have in their collection. Boosters are available in English for the first 12 sets, and Japanese for all for the following expansions.

Types of Cards

The symbol for a card's rarity is marked in the bottom right corner of the face-up side:
This is a list of the different Card Mechanics or effects that a creature, spell, cross gear or fortress may have:
Duel Masters cards represent the 5 different civilizations in the Duel Masters creature world.
Each of the civilizations has a zone which most cards of that civilization affect.
The Light Civilization focuses mainly on adding shields, tapping and untapping creatures, and summoning low-mana high-power blockers. Many such blockers cannot attack players. A few cards are designed specifically to counter creatures and spells from other Civilizations, especially Darkness and Fire. Light also has many creatures with the effect "This creature can't be chosen by your opponent."
The Light Civilization is a midair society with rich resources and sophisticated technology. It is considered the most peaceful of the civilizations.
The Races in the Light Civilization consist of:
The Water Civilization focuses mainly on drawing cards, returning creatures from the battle zone to hand, changing or returning cards from the mana zone, low power unblockable creatures, good creatures costing high mana, mid range blockers which cannot attack at all, seeing of hand and shields, searching through deck, changing shields and unattackable creatures. Water cards aid blockers and creatures from Water, Light and Darkness civilizations. Some Water cards directly penalize Fire creatures. As many Water cards allow the player to draw more cards, a long battle can result in his defeat, as the player's deck runs out.
The Water Civilization is a half-land half-sea location filled with creatures that can survive underwater. They are also worshipers of technology
The Races in the Water Civilization consist of:
The Darkness Civilization mainly concentrates on destroying creatures. Powerful creatures usually require a higher mana or a sacrificing act to be summoned. The civilization features many cheap and weak creatures, blockers most of which cannot attack players, creatures having "Slayer" or card effects which can make other creatures "Slayer", cards specifically designed to penalize decks focused on light and nature civilization, discarding cards from opponents hand, self destructing or sacrificing creatures regardless of battle's outcome, sacrificing own creatures, mana or shields for additional benefit, returning a creature from the graveyard, creatures and card effects which allows the user to destroy opponent's creatures, milling from opponent's and/or own deck and picking up one's own shields.
The Darkness Civilization is underground and filled with darkness and toxic gases making it the most inhospitable of the Civilizations.
The Races in the Darkness Civilization are:
Fire focuses on low-power, low-mana creatures as swift attackers. This civilization contains no blockers. Fire has a lot of Dragon support, as well as Speed Attacker, Power Attacker, attacking if able, power-limited creature destruction, blocker and mana destruction, putting shields into graveyard, untapping after winning battles, unattackable creatures, breaking extra shields, taking extra turns, searching and reducing the costs of cross gears effects. A pure Fire deck tends to struggle against a well-designed pure Light deck or other mixed decks. Therefore, many fire cards are designed to aid Armored Dragons, as well as to be used along Nature and Darkness cards, and vice versa. A few Fire cards directly penalize blockers and creatures from Light and Water civilizations.
The Fire Civilization is a dry hot climate filled with volcanoes and lava pits where it has constant volcano eruptions, earthquakes, and other seismic activities that make it unstable to live in.
The races in the Fire Civilization are:
The Nature Civilization focuses on mana increasing, high cost and power ratio creatures, searching deck for creatures, power limited unblockability, moving creatures from/to mana zone, creatures that break shields when blocked, forcing blockers to block, creature/spell cost reduction and shield trigger canceling effects. This civilization contains no blockers except one Phoenix, "Supernova Bigbang Anstathis".
The Nature Civilization is a dense jungle that covers the largest parts of the continent and all its inhabitants have a "might makes right" motto.
The Races in the Nature Civilization are:
Multicolored are a combination of two or more civilizations. They are distinguished by a multicolored card frame. Races exclusive to multicolored are:
Zero was a new civilization introduced in DMR-05 Episode 2: Golden Age. They are not a civilization, so much as a lack of civilization. Players do not need to tap Zero cards in the mana zone to use Zero cards. They are represented by a crystal like six-headed star symbol in their mana number.

Others

There are some cards in the Japanese OCG that do not belong to a certain civilization. For example, Aqua Holy is a pure-light Liquid People. It means that races are not always limited to specific civilizations.
There are some races that belongs to more than one civilization. They consist of: