The Naruto Trading Card Game (or TCG) is a great new game that has hit the market in the past year that has gained a wide fan base and is growing in popularity. Most major retail outlets now carry the game, and due to its simple game play, nice looking cards, collect ability, and growing tournament support the Naruto TCG is actually beginning to draw in players from other card games like the TCG giant Yu-Gi-Oh. With its growing popularity many people are curious about how the game works, to see it played with no explanation can be a bit foreboding, however I’m about to break down the simple mechanics of the game right here, right now, in basic terms so anyone who reads this will be ready for a ninja showdown in about 5 minutes!
First you have to understand the three basic card types. There are Ninja, Jutsu, and Missions. Ninja will obviously do your fighting, Jutsu will powerup and support your ninja and have various effects on the game, and Missions represent the tasks assigned to ninja but often times they work in influencing the way a turn is played.
There are two solid victory conditions in the Naruto TCG. The first and most used is winning 10 battle rewards. Each time a ninja is sent to fight, and no other ninja stops them then that player receives a certain number of battle rewards, which are cards off the top of the opposing players deck. When a player has 10 battle rewards the game ends, also if a player runs out of cards in their deck the game also ends.
A deck is needed to play a game, and of course two players require two deck (one a piece). A deck must consist of at least 40 cards, but can contain as many cards as the player wants. This means that if you want to play with 40 cards in a deck, that’s cool, 45 is ok too, 50 is fine, and even 500 cards would be acceptable (although not smart). The other deck restriction is that fact that you can only have three copies of any one card in your deck and your deck can contain no more then 25 ninja. It’s the 25 ninja restriction that makes players want to keep their decks as small as possible, because if you don’t have ninja, you’ll lose the game!
After completing your deck construction you can begin to play. First a coin is flipped and a player calls heads, or tails. The player who called it correctly gets to go first. First step in gameplay is to draw 6 cards (this is only done on the first turn of the game). After looking at these six cards decide if you want to keep your hand or place the cards on the bottom of your deck and draw a new hand of 5 cards, if you still don’t like your hand then you can place it at the bottom of your deck again and draw a new hand of 4 cards, but now you’re stuck with these four cards. Each player has these options only when the game begins, and at no other time.
