If you have been in the TCG community for a while, you may have noticed a fundamental problem with TCGs based off of Japanese Animation (also known as anime). What that problem is, however, seems to vary from person to person. Many times good solid gameplay is sacrificed for story and flavor. Other times anime TCGs are based on American redubs of the original series, and some anime fans who might be more particular about translation than others may have a problem with that. Finally, sometimes anime based TCGs fail to capture the overall feel of an anime and simply seem like any old TCG with a brand name slapped on it to make it sell.

Keeping these in mind, I was extremely skeptical when I set out to review the Official Bleach Trading Card Game. Luckily my skepticism proved to be unfounded as Bleach actually turned out to be a very solid game both in its gameplay mechanics and in how it recreates the show. As an extra treat, Bleach attempted to be a TCG that broke the mold of its TCG predecessors by taking the concepts of resource management, deck building, and combat in completely new directions. The interesting thing to examine was how much they succeeded in this attempt.


Game in progress

The first thing that sets Bleach apart from most trading card games is that you actually have to build 2 decks instead of one. One deck, your side deck (not to be confused with sideboard), includes your Guardian card, and all of your energy cards, which are the main resources in Bleach. The other deck, your main deck, includes the cards you will play during the course of the game. Guardians are cards that represent the player’s persona during a game of Bleach. Printed on each Guardian card is a power total, which is your life point total for the game, and the amount of energy of Bleach’s three energy types that Guardian provides. Your side deck needs to include EXACTLY the amount of energy printed on the Guardian card, no more and no less, so your choice of Guardian greatly effects what cards you can safely run in your main deck. Guardians also generally come with one ability that will help you out during the game.


Kisuke Urahara as a guardian

The three types of energy in Bleach: Mind, Body, and Spirit, and every card in your main deck costs some combination of the three. The card types in bleach are relatively simple and generally follow the standard TCG mold. There are characters, which are your main attacking force, items, which attach to characters to make them better, battlegrounds, which have a variety of ongoing permanent effects, and events, which are all instant effects you can play on either turn that take place in last in first out order. All cards on the field, including Guardians, can also have abilities, and the abilities in Bleach take the standard TCG mold of Activated (abilities you pay some cost for to use when you like), Triggered (abilities that happen automatically when some condition is met), and Static (abilities that are always in effect).To play a card you have to deplete (turn sideways) a number of energy cards equal to the energy cost of that card.


Hitsugaya Toshiro as a character

The Bleach turn structure is relatively simple. Each turn the first thing you do is renew (turn vertical) your depleted cards and draw a card from your main deck. After that you have two more chances to either draw a card or play any energy card you want from your side deck. This method of resource management sets Bleach apart from other TCGs, because your main resources aren’t mixed in with your main deck. The only thing you give up for resources are possible cards in hand. You can, in effect, play one or two energy cards every turn if you so desire (giving up the card draws you would otherwise get in exchange). In short “luck” cannot deprive you of resources in this game, which brings resource management entirely into the realm of strategy.


It’s actually better if you play with your own layout, and not with the included play-mat

The next step of a turn in Bleach is the Main Phase. During the Main Phase you may play as many cards as you have energy to pay for. You may also play abilities of your guardian, battlegrounds, characters, and items as much as you like, as long as you have the resources to pay for them. During your main phase you may also attack with as many characters you want. This can be done in any order you like, so for example, if I have 3 characters in play I can play an item on one character, attack with that character, play a battleground afterward, attack with the final two characters, and then play an event that wipes the board. To attack, you deplete the character you are attacking with. Characters cannot attack or deplete on the turn they come into play but they can do so as soon as your current turn ends.

There are six important stats in the game: Strength, Fortitude, Agility, Intelligence, Quickness, and Spiritual Pressure. Each character however can only have 1 to 3 of these stats on their card so characters won’t have access to every stat. Quick thinking ninja-like characters may have a spread of Agility, Intelligence, and Quickness, whereas brawlers might have something more like Strength, Fortitude, and Spiritual Pressure. When you attack with a character, you choose one of that character’s stats to attack with, and their rating in that stat becomes their attacking strength. Now the defending player may block by depleting one of his characters, however he can only do so if his blocking choice has the same stat the attacking character attacked with. So if the aforementioned thinking ninja attacked an opponent with his agility stat, and the opponent only controlled the aforementioned big bruiser, then the opponent would be unable to defend. Since the brawler didn’t have a rating in agility, the agile character gets his damage through to the opponents “power” total with no resistance. This is interesting because it makes Bleach combat more of an evasion game. It also prevents game stagnating lockdowns where neither player can get damage through.


An Event Card

Anyway, while you are in battle you can obviously use events and abilities to augment your attacker or defender’s stats; however you can also do this by “boosting” the character. Almost every card in the game has a “boost value” printed on it. The boost value consists of a number and a stat, and to boost you discard a card with a boost value on it during combat. The stat of the character you are boosting that corresponds to the stat printed on the card discarded is then augmented by that card’s boost value. This means basically every card in bleach is some form of combat trick, and it makes combat very interesting.


Isshin is being boosted by the two Up Close and Personals

Unblocked characters obviously get through to deal their stat in damage to the opponent's power. Blocked characters however compare their attacking stat (after all the boosting and effect playing is done) to the blockers blocking stat. If the attacker’s stat is higher, the blocker dies and the difference between the two stats is dealt as damage directly to the opponent’s life total. If the blocker has a higher stat, the attacker dies, but no damage is dealt to the attacking player, and if both stats are tied then both characters die. Once the character’s stats are compared their stats are locked for that attack. You cannot boost or play any other effects to augment stats at this point, for example if you were trying to push your blockers stat a bit higher so he would survive at the last minute, which was actually a subject that caused some rules confusion in my play testing and could have been explained a bit better in the manual.

Bleach is an interesting system because unlike many trading card games it doesn't focus as much on resource management. Instead the game puts a much greater focus on combat which does a good job in recreating the “epic battle” feel of the TV show. “Power” totals for players are generally relatively high (around 30-40) while character stats are low (around 2-5) allowing for a lot of back and forth gameplay and many chances for come from behind victories, which in this game in particular are extremely satisfying. Of course, with all the focus put on combat, some of the out of combat aspects of the game do fall short in some areas.


An item representing… a scribble?

One example of this is the “overlay system.” In Bleach most characters are “unique”. What this means is that two character cards with the same name cannot be on the same side of the field at the same time. This makes sense story wise, considering we shouldn’t be seeing 3 or 4 clones of Ichigo or Chad coming out of the woodwork for no reason, but it doesn’t work very well in gameplay mechanics. The problem is, several characters with the same name are printed in multiple versions with scaling power levels. So Ichigo as a school student, is obviously less powerful than Ichigo as a death god (sorry… soul reaper for you English dub fans), which is less powerful than Ichigo after he goes through his special training. To upgrade to a better version of a character, you need to “overlay” it.

To overlay a card, you first discard the card that is being overlaid and all the items that are attached to it as well. Then you put the new version into play in the same state as the old version, so if the old card was depleted the new card will also be depleted. In case this wasn't bad enough, this new card can't attack or deplete this turn either, as if it had just been played fresh from your hand without overlaying at all. This means whenever you overlay you are actually severely reducing your strength and combat options that turn, and losing everything you invested in the previous version of the character. It strikes me that it would be enough to include only one of the overlay drawbacks (the retaining of game state, the discarding of items, or the inability to attack or deplete) but including all three manages to make it almost always wrong to overlay a character. Instead the correct decision seems to be to build up your weaker version of the character until he dies in combat, and simply play the character you would have overlaid him with fresh. This way you still have to discard all the items attached to the character and your new character still can’t attack or deplete but at least it’s guaranteed to come in fresh, in renewed status. Also, if you can manage to at least suck up a few points of damage with your weaker character version it will have served more utility than simply dying to allow the new version to come into play. The whole overlay system itself just feels clunky and could probably have been designed a bit better.

There is another annoying thing about the Bleach TCG and that's the sheer amount of errata that has come out in the few sets printed already. In fact, it's not even the amount of errata; it's the scope of the errata. Cards aren't just tightened up to clarify their meaning, their entire functionality is changed. For example, a recent errata of Kisuke Urahara added “Use only during your turn” to “Discard an item from your hand or remove from the game an item in your discard pile: Draw a card. Limit once per turn.” Another example is Orihime who had “Limit one per turn” added to the ability “Discard a card from your hand: If that card is a student gain power equal to that card's energy cost. Use only when you have less power than your opponent.” This change effectively shut down several decks that ran off of an Orihime life gain engine. More annoying is the fact that there is really nothing on the old Orihime card that says Orihime should work that way. So it’s not even like you can assume that’s how Orihime operates and your only confusion was in some clunky wording. You literally have no clue unless you go to the official errata site.

This retroactive card functionality change is really frustrating when the card can simply be banned or restricted instead. Speaking of restrictions, several cards have also been changed to have “Limit 1 per deck” built into the rules so instead of having an easily manageable banned/restricted list, Score has opted to bury these deep within card errata, making it that much harder to play Bleach competitively without a rulebook and errata sheet by your side. All in all I think it’s a bad decision to use errata to make massive changes to card functionality. It simply increases the amount of bookkeeping needed in playing the game, and disappoints new players when they find out their favorite card isn’t as good as it should have been.

---

[Editor's Note: Representatives at Score Entertainment, after reading our review and feedback, have decided to impliment some changes to make their errata and rules much more visible and accessible to the players. This should help players to quickly check up on the latest rulings or changes. ]

---

Now that I have examined the game system deeply, let me revert to drooling fan boy mode for a while and tell you that bleach really is an awesome game. The amount of fan recognition built into this game is through the roof. Just about everything in the Anime is represented in the cards, from characters, to the signature Bleach monsters called “hollows”, to weapons, to special death god powers, to random events like getting punched in the eye by a guy three times your size (see the beginning of the soul society arc). Popular characters have more and more versions of themselves made into characters and guardians as their popularity ebbs and flows. In addition there is just something about how the game mechanics work that makes you feel like you are in the Bleach universe. For example, the fact that strength seems to appear on more cards than not, means that characters with high strength get through battles by trampling over their foes, but characters with agility, which shows up less often, generally get around their foes. Attaching these stats to say the big bruiser that is Zaraki Kenpachi or the quick martial artist Soi Fon brings a smile to fan's faces.


The Hokuto Gate an actual battleground from the anime

The only problem I really have with the way the game is presented to fans, is that it is based off the American dub, which is somewhat “kiddified” if you don’t mind me saying. Personally I think “Death God” or “Shinigami” sounds a lot better than “Soul Reaper” both in the anime and on the card. In the American dub, translators decided to start using the original Japanese in some circumstances rather than others, so the “Soul Reaper’s” spirit swords are still called “Zanpakuto” but the modified souls they use are called “Mod Souls” and not “Konpaku”. The card game unfortunately continues this trend as it goes into areas that the Anime didn’t delve into completely. Truthfully, this strange use of Japenglishese just sounds and feels very awkward.

Also the game sometimes mistakenly presupposes you have a great deal of fan based knowledge when you play the game. One card says “remove all squad 10 members from the game” but cards that represent squad ten members don't tell you they are squad ten members. Sure the captain and lieutenant have “Squad 10 captain” and “Squad 10 lieutenant” written in their version under their name, but this is more of a coincidence than anything else. They have the squad ten symbol and 10 written in Japanese on them, but other than that they have nothing to indicate they are from squad 10, so I would assume that later versions with different titles won’t have such a convenient reference. The “remove all squad 10 members from the game” card doesn't use the symbol OR the Japanese number.

I base these conclusions on the fact that “Hanatarou Yamada” is a character in the anime who is a member of squad 4 but is neither a captain nor a lieutenant. Unfortunately, squad 4 doesn’t appear once on the cards that represents him. The squad 4 symbol and 4 in Japanese is written on the card, but the words “Squad 4” are disappointingly absent. As a newcomer to the game, if someone played a “Destroy target squad 4 member” card I would have no idea if that applied to Hanatarou or not. Expansion packs carry a cheat sheet that shows you which symbol references which squad but I don't see why the symbol itself couldn't be used in the effect wording in the first place, or why cards couldn’t be plainly labeled with their squad number. Without the cheat sheet, you are basically completely lost. Heck, I’ve been a die hard fan of the anime since I watched episode 1 in the original Japanese, and I still don’t remember which symbols correspond to which squad.



The Cheat Sheet, needless if the cards were worded a bit better.

But I digress; all in all Bleach is a really solid game that I would venture to say anyone could play, even if you aren't a fan of the series. What problems I have found in the overlay rules, flavor, and card wording though sometimes annoying are easily overlooked, and they will probably be fixed as more expansions are released and game balance is refined. The game is really only designed for constructed play and I can't even fathom how limited would work with the Guardian and side deck requirements, so your going to want to spend some money on a few expansion boxes, or on individual cards to build your dream deck. That’s really fine though, because constructed play in Bleach just doesn’t seem to get stale. The entire game really avoids the problem of having one deck that always wins due to its innovative resource and combat system so repeated constructed play is a lot more fun. I definitely suggest giving Bleach a try, even if it's just at a local anime convention you might be going to.

---

Presentation Rating = 9.0 All the graphics on the cards are either anime screen caps or original art from the actual anime artists. The cards are easy to read and starter decks come with a play mat, although its really just a lot easier to use your own layout rather than the mat’s layout. Although some of the screen caps don't make much sense for the card they are on, the artists did a good job overall. In addition, Starter Pack Guardian cards are printed in foil on thick plastic setting them apart from the rest of your cards in the deck, which is a nice touch. The layout of the cards change slightly from expansion to expansion so it gives a nice breath of flavor to the game.

Gameplay Rating = 9.5 What can I say; the game is good, very good. The overlay rules aren’t my favorite and the lack of clear wording and overabundance of errata are enough to be a recurring annoyance but in the end the system is really solid and does a good job recreating the “feel” of Bleach. Bottom line, the game is fun.

Support Rating = 7.0 This category takes a hit, not because of a lack of support, but because of an abundance of the wrong kind of support. Tons of function changing errata, wanton restricting and unrestricting without an easy reference, and a vague rules booklet hurt this game. I had to spend over 30 minutes online just searching for a website that could explain to me whether or not you can play more than one card or attack with more than one character a turn (you can).

Innovation Rating = 9.0 Bleach takes a lot of the idea that were previously implemented in TCG’s, refines them, combines them, and creates something new out of them, and it does it quite well. It doesn't have too many real ideas of its own, but it succeeds in combining many other ideas from other systems in a way that actually works. Its most original idea has to be the stat system and the fact that characters can have completely different stat categories, and this too gives the game a feel that truly brings out the best of the Bleach anime.

---

You must first be a member of our forums to discuss this article. (FREE Service)

Already a member of TCGPlayer.com? Then simply LOGIN and come back to this page!

If not registered with TCGPlayer.com, then Become a Forum Member to rate and discuss articles, and more!

---