Neopets Battledome TCG Launches April 17, Take A Look At Four New Cards

13.03.2024 - 16:03 / thegamer.com

Upper Deck has unveiled new cards from its upcoming Neopets Battledome trading card game, bringing your favourite early-noughties virtual pets to card form.

Although it was announced in July last year, this is the first we’ve seen of Neopets’ second attempt at a TCG in a good long while. The four cards revealed today showcase the game’s famously simplistic art style, while also hinting at some clever ideas that might make it a bit more complex than you were expecting.

One of the key mechanics of Neopets Battledome is the colour of your pets. Like Neopets itself, your pets come in all types of colours, which also defines their various stats. For instance, Moehog, the first of the four cards shown off today, has base stats of eight HP, two attack, three defence, and five speed.

However, red Moehog has a slightly higher attack stat of three. Blue has higher defence, yellow has higher speed, and green has higher HP. Most Neopets you find in the game will have four different versions available, with their colour corresponding to which stat they have buffed. This means you don’t just have to try and predict which Neopets your opponent has, but which colours of them you’re going to have to deal with.

These are the absolute first Neopets Battledome cards we’ve seen. Last year, a sneak preview of six cards was revealed at Gen Con and Comic-con, showing off some gorgeous rainbow foil cards, and a hint at further mechanics. One card, Naia, Faerie, mentions the ability to paint your Neopets with paintbrushes, potentially giving you a way to swap between colours of your pet on the fly.

The second card revealed today is Ixi, which I’m fairly sure was my first Neopet when I was younger. The basic art has that Neopets simplicity to it, but Upper Deck has already confirmed the game will include original art (which we’ve seen for Shoyru already), and so we might see some very different depictions of Neopets as the game develops.

The last two cards to be shown off are the four versions of Usul with a new, sleeker design, and the griffin Eyrie, whose high attack and HP stats are buffed even further in its red version.

From these first cards, it’s clear to see Neopets is aiming itself squarely at a younger audience than your regular TCG, especially with its age rating of 6+. But Neopets has enjoyed a bit of a resurgence lately, following it becoming an independent company and moving away from Web3 NFT gumph last year, which means there’s a good chance it’ll attract older players too.

Previews for Neopets Battledome’s first set will run through to April 10, ahead of its release on April 17. Here’s hoping we get to see my favourites, Lupe and Skeith, soon.