How To Play The Neopets Battledome Trading Card Game

Neopets first broke onto the scene with a popular website game that quickly became a phenomenon in 1999. Now, they’re back with a new trading card game from Upper Deck. Yes, the Neopets Battledome Trading Card Game is here, and whether you’re a millennial itching for a dose of early internet nostalgia or a young buck looking for something new to get into, this game has plenty for everyone to enjoy.

Card Types

If you like playing TCGs with a large variety of card types, then buckle up, because Neopets Battledome is the game for you. There are nine different types of cards, seven of which you can include in your deck. We’re going to go over all of them, so let’s get right into it!

Neopet cards are what the whole game is based around. Every Neopet has four stats: Attack, Defense, Agility, and Hit Points. Every Neopet also comes in four different base colours: Red, Blue, Yellow, and Green. Each colour corresponds to that version’s particular strength. Red has a stronger Attack, Blue has a stronger Defense, Yellow has Agility, and Green has Hit Points.

There are even more powerful versions of these Neopets, and you get access to them with Paint Brush cards, which can be found in your deck. Paint Brushes can “paint” your Neopet and transform them into a special type. So far there are five different special types: Fire, Ghost, Faerie, Starry, and Rainbow. Each of these types has better stats than the base colour versions. 

Codestone cards are another way to level up your Neopet. They add stat boosts, but they also literally level up your Neopet, which allows you to play better cards from your inventory (which is this game’s term for your hand of cards).

A third way to give your Neopet a boost is with Equipment cards. Not only do they provide stat boosts, but some also have special abilities that you can activate in certain situations. These cards stay in effect until they are discarded, but you can only equip up to three at a time. Keep in mind that you can only play Equipment cards that are the same or lower than your Neopet’s current level.

Legend cards provide special abilities and effects to the game, but you can play them directly from your inventory and you can only use them once before discarding them.

Even more powerful are the Faerie cards, which provide strong abilities and effects, and they stay on your board until the end of the round. Keep in mind that you can only use one Faerie at a time, so you’ll have to place the one already in play into the Void if you want to use another.

Potion cards are another one-time way to power up your Neopet or cause another kind of effect on the game.

If you want a little more chaos and unpredictability, then Food cards help spice things up! They provide special abilities and effects, but the catch is that you can use them at any time, even on your opponent’s turn. But they truly are a one-time use, as you don’t discard them afterwards. Like Faeries, you put them in the Void, so be sure to use them wisely!

What’s interesting about the last kind of card is that you don’t actually use it in the trading card game. If you’re lucky enough to find a Code card in a pack, it comes with a scratch-off code that you can redeem on the Neopets website for a special digital item. There’s one of these cards in every 24 packs (on average), making them the rarest card type to find!

How to Play

To start, every player has a 50-card deck made up of Codestone, Paint Brush, Equipment, Potion, Legend, Faerie, and Food cards. 

Every player chooses a Neopet for the round. Keep in mind that this is not the Pokémon TCG, so there is no swapping out your Neopet until the round is over!

There are four phases in a turn. The first is the Draw phase, where the player simply draws a card from the top of their deck and places it in their inventory.

The second phase is the Train phase, where the player may choose a Codestone card from their inventory and place it on their Neopet, leveling it up and giving it a stat boost.

Prep is the third phase, where the player may play one card from their inventory. They can choose to play one Paint Brush, Faerie, Legend, Equipment, or Potion card. Keep in mind that Food cards can be played at any time and do not count as the one card you can play in this phase.

Finally, the last phase is the Battle phase. Battling is how you work towards defeating your opponent. The player starts by rolling the amount of six-sided dice equivalent to their Neopet’s current Attack level. In response, the defending player rolls the dice equivalent to their Neopet’s current Defense level.

Rolling a 4 or a 5 counts as one success for either side, while 1-3 is a failure. Rolling a 6 on an attack is a critical attack, which means it’s an automatic hit. 

But you’re not done yet! Next, compare the Agility levels of the two Neopets. Whoever has the Neopet with the higher Agility level can re-roll the amount of dice equivalent to the difference in levels.

Once that’s done, add up all of the successful attacks and defenses. Successful defenses cancel out an equal amount of successful attacks (except for critical attacks). If there are any successful attacks remaining, each one counts as a hit against the defending Neopet’s Hit Points.

Once the Battle phase is resolved, the player’s turn is over, and now it’s the other player’s turn.

Once a Neopet’s Hit Points are reduced to zero, they are knocked out and that’s the end of the round. First player to win two rounds wins the game!

In Conclusion

The Neopets Battledome Trading Card Game is a fun new addition to the TCG landscape. While the franchise may be primarily aimed towards kids, the amount of card types you can use and the surprising complexity of the game makes this a promising game for anyone to invest in. Whether you’re diving into game strategies or hunting for alt art chase cards, Neopets Battledome has a little something for everyone, and Zephyr Epic is happy to be selling both booster boxes and starter decks on our website to get you going.

Have you given Neopets Battledome a try yet? Let us know what you think in the comments and, as always, thanks for reading!