Hello and welcome to the Blog Showdown!

This is where one of eight pilot blogs will be posted and the one that has the best engagement after three weeks from their posting will become the new permanent Monday blog!

Today we are going to be debuting Started Decked, a look at a card game as if we were a new player to that card game and take a look at what works about learning the game, what are some pitfalls, and what can be improved upon for the game.

Today we are going to be looking at the Hololive Official Card Game (OCG)!

I will be referencing the Official Rule Book for the game, which will be linked here if you want to look at the rules yourself.

How to Play

The basics of the game are that you pick a card that is the leader of your deck, called your Oshi holomem, a deck containing 50 cards comprised of holomem and support cards up to a max of four copies of each, and a seperate Cheer deck containing 20 Cheer cards.

The holomem cards are divided into a few categories, not counting the Oshi holomem: Debut, Spot, 1st Stage, 2nd Stage, and Buzz. The support cards are also divided into six types: staff, item, event, tool, mascot, and fan.

The way it works is that you have your Oshi holomem on the field at all times, and the goal of the game is to reduce the life of your opponent’s Oshi holomem to 0. You can also win if your opponent cannot draw cards from their deck or if your opponent has no other holomem other than their Oshi holomem.

When you start the game you draw seven cards, and you may take one free mulligan to draw back up to seven cards again, and then if you do not have a Debut holomem, then you reveal your hand then draw one fewer cards until you have a Debut holomem in your hand.

Then, starting with the players that is going first, you place a Debut holomem facedown in the center position, and if you have one or more Debut or Spot holomem in your hand, you may put them onto the back position facedown. Not including your Oshi holomem, you may have up to six holomem cards in play, with one taking the center position, one in the collab position, up to four in the back position.

Once you have your holomem set up, then you take Cheer cards from your Cheer deck up to the life of your Oshi holomem and place them facedown, with this acting as your life counter.

Then you turn your holomem face up and then the first player begins their turn.

The phases are the Reset Phase, where your resting holomem (turned sideways from activating abilities or having abilities affecting them) become active, the holomem you have in the collab position moves to the back in the rest position, and a holomem in the back position moves to the center position if you have no holomem there. Please note that a resting holomem cannot use Arts, Collab, or baton pass but they can Bloom or move positions through other abilities.

Next is the Draw Phase where you draw one card from your deck, then the Cheer Phase where you take the top card of your Cheer deck and attach it to a holomem.

Then it’s the Main Phase where you can perform a number of actions. You may place a Debut or Spot holomem in play in one of the open back positions, you can Bloom a holomem, Collab a holomem, use an Oshi holomem skill, use a support card, or baton pass.

Now to Bloom a holomem, you can choose a Debut holomem and place a 1st Stage holomem on top of it, provided it’s the same individual, or place a 2nd Stage holomem on top of a 1st Stage holomem. Please note that you cannot Bloom a Spot holomem or a holomem that has entered play this turn or has Bloomed already this turn, and you cannot Bloom down to a lower level and a holomem can’t Bloom into a holomem that has less HP than the damage taken on that holomem.

As another interesting thing to note, a Buzz holomem often has a pretty decent ability, but if they die you lose two life instead.

On the Support card side, the staff, item, and event support cards are cards that have a one time use and are archived (sent to the graveyard as it were), but tool, mascot, and fan cards are attached to holomems, with you only being able to attach only one tool and one mascot to each holomem, but you can attack multiple fan cards to a holomem.

There are also support cards that have the Limited tag on them, and you can only use one card with the Limited tag on them per turn, excluding each player’s first turn.

To Collab, you may take one of your back holomem and place it in the Collab position, but at the same time you take the top card of your deck and place it in the holo Power area. This will let you use your Oshi holomem’s Oshi skills by taking a number of cards in the holo Power area and archiving them to use them.

Each Oshi holomem also has an SP Oshi skill, which is a very powerful ability that can only be used once per game.

Finally baton pass allows you to switch your center holomem with a back holomem by archiving Cheers from your center holomem as indicated in the bottom left of the card.

Once you have finished your Main Phase, then you get to the Performance Phase, where you can use your center holomem and collab holomem’s Arts, abilities that can also do damage to your opponent’s holomem’s.

To use a holomem’s Arts, you need to make sure that they have the appropriate color of Cheer attached to them, indicated on the left side of the Art name in order to get an ability effect and deal damage. Sometimes cards deal additional Critical damage if the icon matches the attribute of the opposing holomem that is being targeted.

When a holomem reaches 0 HP, they are downed and you lose 1 life, 2 if it’s a Buzz holomem, and attach that Cheer card to a holomem of your choice, with any Cheer or support cards attached to the down holomem being archived.

Sometimes cards are activated in the Performance Phase when certain conditions are met, such as being targeted by an Art ability or dealt damage or other conditions, and they resolve as they come in.

Once the Performance Phase is over, then the End Phase begins, when abilities that last until then end of turn end and if there is no holomem in the center position, then one holomem from the back position that isn’t resting is placed in the center. If all back position holomem are resting, then you may choose which one goes to the center, but they remain resting. If you only have a holomem in the collab position, then you don’t move them to the center position and you have an open center position.

Pros and Cons

Now, if you are familiar with card games, then one should have struck your mind immediately, and that is that there are a lot of elements of this game that are shared with the Pokemon TCG.

Not that it is a bad thing, it helps if you are familiar with that game to learn this one, and there are plenty of things that do differentiate it from Pokemon.

It would be remiss of me to say that there isn’t any comparison though, as attaching a resource to your “creatures”, there being a stronger card that has you lose two life, a life system based on prize cards, and having active and sidelined “creatures” does seem like it is encroaching pretty close to the line.

Like I said, the differences are apparent and distinct enough that it shoves those comparisons away. For example, having a leader card that determines your life total is interesting and a mechanic that they can play around with a bit more as the game goes on. There are currently Oshi holomem that have either 5 or 6 life so it isn’t all just one number.

There are also two places where an active holomem can be, with one needing a cost to be put into play, but that cost fuels your leader’s abilities, of which you can charge up to have a massive swing of a turn to help you potentially win the game.

There does seem to be a solid variety of abilities to include some recursion, some card draw, some tutoring, and other abilities, of which they happen to be flavored to the particular member of Hololive that they are associated with.

Which may come as an issue with some people who are not familiar with Hololive, since while they are the biggest vtuber company, they are still somewhat niche on this side of the world.

Someone who has little to no knowledge of Hololive may not get the references that the abilities are mentioning, and while a majority of the art is safe for work and can be played with no major issues, there are a couple of risque cards that may not appeal to some players or those who are introducing the game to a younger audience.

Some aspects of the rule book are pretty confusing, with some sections being later than ideal in order to make some things make sense, though it was easy enough to navigate where I could find the information needed to learn how to play.

It doesn’t help that in some cases the way the rules are written some things are capitalized and some aren’t which can lead to some confusion, especially when Collab is concerned, but with some careful reading you can navigate some of the trickier aspects.

Overall Opinion

I do think that the game is decent enough, though even as a fan of Hololive, I do have to say that there is still some room for improvement.

The aspects it shares with the Pokemon TCG are there as mainstay mechanics and functions, but if they play around with those in the future, it could make for some interesting play patterns, and if the rules were cleaned up a bit I do think that this would be a pretty solid game in the long run.

If you are a fan of Hololive or vtubers I think that this game has enough depth to be interesting, but if that isn’t your aesthetic or if some of the more Pokemon like elements turn you away then the game really isn’t for you.

Thank you for reading, see you next week with a new blog for the Blog Showdown! If you want to see more of this sort of blog, engage with it and we’ll see how it compares with the others!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual

Socials

Bluesky: @jmcasualnerd.bsky.social

Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/jmcasual

YouTube: youtube.com/@jmcasualguy

Twitch: twitch.tv/jmcasual