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hololive Official Card Game Review
- Taylor Rioux
- Sep 2
- 6 min read
Something to cheer for.
Vtubing is a massive phenomenon in the streaming and content creation space, and has grown exponentially over the last few years, capturing the hearts and attention of people all over the world. With distinct personalities and elaborate outfits, Vtubers have entertained millions through song, dance, chats, and collaboration, with Hololive members perhaps being the most popular personas of all. As with all things that become immensely popular, there is of course an associated card game. Thanks to COVER Corp., I was able to test out the hololive OFFICIAL CARD GAME through the Tokino Sora and AZKi starter deck, as well as tinker a bit with these baseline decks using cards obtained in several booster packs I was provided.
Product: hololive Official Card Game Developer: COVER Corp. Price: $60 for a booster box (12 packs), $15 for Starter Deck. |
How does it play?
Rather than give a hyper-detailed explanation of the rules, I’d like to do a brief overview of the structure and flow of the game. If you would like a more detailed breakdown of the rules, here’s the official “Quick Manual”.
To start, your playing cards consist of three separate components: One Oshi holomem card, Cheer Deck, and Deck. The Oshi holomem is a sort of Vtuber leader card your deck is built around, with its life total serving as the player’s life count, and special abilities that can only be activated through a unique resource (holo power). Your Cheer Deck (20 cards) is your energy resource (think mana in Magic: The Gathering or energy in Pokemon) that you use to activate the abilities of your holomems — Vtuber cards that function as your battle units. Finally, your Deck consists of 50 total holomem and support cards (one time use cards that provide an immediate effect). Each of these elements occupies a specific space on the board or playmat (stage) — you don’t mix them all into one single pile.
The packaging is nice, and the art used is great.
The game starts with each player drawing 7 cards to their hand, placing their Oshi holomem and a debut holomem card face-down onto the board, revealing them when both players have finished placing their cards. After this, players can place additional “Spot” or “Debut” cards face down in the “back” position of the stage. Each player then takes a number of cheer cards equal to their Oshi holomem’s “life” and places them face down in the top left corner of their stage. From here, the first player begins their first turn.
Generally speaking the flow of a turn will look something like untapping all of your cards (if tapped), drawing a card, playing a new holomem or support card, ‘blooming’ your holomem (stacking a more powerful holomem card onto your existing holomem card to power it up, like an evolution), and using skills to damage your opponents holomems. When a holomem receives damage equal to or greater than their HP total, they are placed into the archive and the owner of that holomem loses a life. First Player to lose all of their life, lose all holomem from their stage, or enter their draw phase with no cards remaining in their deck loses the game.
Review
From a broad-strokes perspective, hololive OFFICIAL CARD GAME is a well-designed game. There are a number of distinct deck archetypes and card effects to keep things interesting, and the pace and flow of any individual match is excellent. That said, the lack of variety in distinct Vtuber holomems was a bit disappointing, especially when compared to contemporary TCGs.
Let’s get the most obvious comparison out of the way — this game plays very similarly to the Pokémon Trading Card Game. From the way cheers are placed directly onto your holomems to the ‘blooming’ mechanic, much of the basic flow for the game is reminiscent of the behemoth that is the Pokémon Trading Card Game. Despite this, I do feel hololive OFFICIAL CARD GAME differentiates itself in several key ways, many of which I view as improvements.
From a broad-strokes perspective, hololive OFFICIAL CARD GAME is a well-designed game. There are a number of distinct deck archetypes and card effects to keep things interesting, and the pace and flow of any individual match is excellent.
First, having your energy source (cheer) as a separate deck changes the consistency and feel on its own enormously. Decks are much more consistent, as you always have some resource available to you, and you’re never drawing unwanted energy from the deck.
Second, losing your holomem is not nearly as punishing as losing a lead pokémon. When a holomem is sent to the archive and you lose a life, that “life” cheer card can be placed directly onto one of your back row holomem. Additionally, the opposing player does not gain further advantage by card draw or any other mechanism. This helps address the runaway lead issue prevalent in many TCGs.
Third, every holomem having three stages built in (debut stage, 1st stage, and 2nd stage) avoids the problem that Pokémon has with its powerful basics being the more used option. There isn’t as much of a consistency issue with getting your holomems through their progression, and the power disparity between debut cards and 2nd stage cards is so overwhelming it’s not really possible to rely on debut cards to sweep the board for you.
I really think it's worth noting how gorgeous these cards are.
And finally, the Oshi holomem is a nice touch to the game, adding a central figure or idea to build your deck around that can be used strategically throughout the game. This particular aspect reminds me a bit of something like a commander in Magic or selecting a hero in Hearthstone. I am by no means a high-level player, so the exact use case strategy of each ability or Oshi remains a bit out of my reach, but they did have a noticeable impact on the matches I played.
There is a distinct lack of personalities to choose from when building a deck. As of the current set, there are only about 25 distinct members to choose from. Of course, there are multiple stages and variants of these Vtubers to choose from, so there’s variety mechanically, but it also means that your deck could realistically be comprised entirely of one person, i.e. you could have a deck entirely built from Pekora cards and support cards. While this feature does not appeal to me personally, it would be remiss of me to ignore the fact that having the opportunity to build a deck like a shrine to your favorite internet personality might be the preferred method of engaging in the game for some.
As hololive and Vtubing in general is a bit out of my normal purview, I connected with someone more familiar with these characters/Vtubers to give me their thoughts on some thematic and presentation elements of the card game.
When you take a look at the cards, the art is definitely gorgeous, but without a direct connection to any of the characters it can be hard to gauge how representative they are of the personalities they aim to represent. One of my favorite cards is a Pekora card that sees her drawn in a style similar to the characters from Granblue Fantasy. It’s absolutely stunning, with a lush background and great detail on the card. Thanks to my consultant, I learned that this was intentional because Pekora loves Granblue Fantasy in real life. This is such an excellent touch that is just lost on someone like me. Other details, like outfit changes and ability names, are also appropriately referential.
This is the sort of attention to detail that fans of these personalities would surely love. Even if you don’t play the card game proper, it would be really cool to see your favorites represented in this way, making it an excellent collector’s item. I know I’ve done similarly for Magic: The Gathering having purchased Final Fantasy and Lord of the Rings themed cards just to have them.
This Pekora card is absolutely stunning.
This intense attention to detail on these elements does make the actual game design a bit more jarring thematically. The basic premise of the card game relies on these holomems attacking and damaging opposing holomem to achieve victory, but I’ve never really gotten the sense these particular characters act that way amongst each other. As far as I can tell, hololive is a more collaborative operation, with the Vtubers frequently playing together or making joint appearances. They’re all about uplifting one another and their communities. The collaboration aspect does manifest in the “collab” mechanic in-game, but it’s a rather minor element compared to the more combative, adversarial nature of the other elements of the game. It seems to me a game that revolves around these people should be more based on building people up, rather than tearing them down.
Verdict Overall, this card game was an enjoyable experience. Matches are fun to play, the cards are gorgeous and made of good stock, and the rules are quite intuitive. For fans of hololive or any of their specific members, it makes a great collector’s item, and there are even special signed chase cards you can pull in boosters. The variety of the current holomems available leaves a lot to be desired, though whether or not that is due to an actual lack of variety within the company’s roster is something I’m not familiar with. I think it’s definitely worth a try for both fans of hololive and general TCG players alike.  |