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Parallel World Tactician is the 10th starter set of the Digimon Card Game and it was released in Europe in May 2022 together with Ultimate Ancient Dragon Starter Deck. This deck is a double colour deck featuring both Yellow and Purple Digimons and it includes as usual a 50 cards deck, 4 digi-eggs and 2 holo-memory gauges.
The Boss Digimon featured in this deck is “Mastermon”, a Lv6 Mega Digimon with 13000 DP that can DNA digivolve for free from one Purple and one Yellow Lv5 Digimon. Basing on the game lore, Mastermon is an Angel Digimon that is said to have appeared when an Angel Digimon and a Fallen Angel Digimon in conflict with each other united to face a greater crisis in the digital world. Due to its dual nature, Mastermon is also known as the "Tactician from Another World" as it controls both the Angel and Fallen Angels families and it can summon them from parallel Digital Worlds.
As you may have guessed, the name of this starter deck is a nice reference to the background story of the featured Digimon. In the Trading Card game, Mastermon combines both the recovery characteristics of the Yellow Digimons with the trashing-aggressive nature of the Purple Digimons. Mastering the balance of these two powers is not simple but let's look together into how the deck works and how you can bring out Mastermon's tremendous power.
Deck Composition & Strategy
As mentioned above, this starter deck combines Digimon with defensive tactics with other having trash-utilizing abilities. The goal is to have one Angewomon and one LadyDevimon in play to DNA-digivolve into Mastermon. When digivolving this way, Mastermon allows the player to increase their security stack by one. Furthermore, the player will be able to play a Lv5 or lower Digimon from the security stack for free and to delete one of the opponent's Digimon with a level equal or lower to the Digimon played with this effect. Digivolving from Angewomon and LadyDevimon, Mastermon will also have Security Attack+1 and Retaliation making it quite effective in both attack and defence.
The Digi-egg of this deck, Nyaromon, provides a nice “Draw 1” inherited effect when attacking assuming the player has a yellow Digimon in play.
The rookies (Lv3) of this deck include Salamon, Lopmon, Ghostmon and Tsukaimon. Among the two yellow ones, Salamon is the only really valuable as provides the inherited effect that allows a Digimon to DNA-digivolve at the end of your turn. This effect is quite useful as a player can bring Mastermon to the table even when the memory has moved into the opponent zone and their turn is over. Together with triggering the deleting/security recovery effect of the boss Digimon on turn end, this ability can consistently increase the pace of a deck otherwise a bit slower than the average.
Ghostmon and Tsukaimon are also good rookies, one being the blocker of the deck and the other allowing to search for useful cards.
Among the champions (Lv4) of this deck, Gatomon is one of the best two. First of all, it is a double colour Digimon that can count both as a Yellow and a Purple to trigger the effects of other Digimons. Gatomon can also look for 1 purple and 1 yellow useful card from the top three of your deck and it allows to reduce the digivolution costs by 2 when digivolving into Agewomon or LadyDevimon. If these effects would not be enough, Gatomon also has an inherited effect that allows to DNA-digivolve at the end of the player turn. As I said, one of the best card of the deck.
Witchmon is the other useful Lv4 Digimon as it can be played for free as a security effect and has an on-play effect that allows to retrieve a Purple Lv5 or lower Digimon from the trash to the player's hand.
The two main Ultimate (Lv5) Digimons of this deck are of course Angewomon and LadyDevimon. LadyDevimon is the best one to digivolve from your Lv4 Digimons as it allows a player to trash one card from hand in order to search for one Purple and one Yellow Digimon from the top three cards of the Deck. Angewomon, on the other end, is more efficient when hard played as it grants “security attack -2” to an opponent Digimon. Just a reminder that if you have a LadyDevimon in play with a Gatomon or Salamon, you would be able to DNA-digivolve it into Mastermon even after hard playing Angewomon and using it effect.
The alternative Mega (Lv6) Digimon of this starter deck, Junomon, is not a bad support card as it has retaliation and the ability to trash three cards and return one Digimon to hand when digivolving. It goes without saying, bringing out Mastermon should always be a priority.
Among the various options, “Chaos Degradation” is the second best card of the deck and one of the most powerful option in the game. For a cost of 8, this card allows a player to place one of the opponent Digimon as top or bottom card in their security stack and then to delete the top card of the stack. As this effect is not considered a deletion, Chaos Degration can effectively remove some of the most powerful Digimon in the game without triggering their “on deletion” effect and bypassing their protective mechanism.
The other two options in the deck, “Night Raid” and “Darkness Wave” are good staples that allows to trash and return cards from trash for a very low play cost.
Is This Set Worth Buying?
I really loved playing with Parallel World Tactician Starter Deck. The deck is really well made and it can be a great entry level for experienced players used to TGC with more complex strategies like Yu-Gi-Oh. It is also among the most recent starter decks, meaning it can still be found at a reasonable price and its cards still retain a good value.
The main aspect to consider when buying this deck is the complexity and pace of its core mechanic. As mentioned, the only way to effectively bring Mastermon to the field is by DNA digivolving two Digimon meaning you need to plan to either grow the right stack and hard-play the other needed Digimon or to grow two separate stacks up to Lv5. In terms of pace, this deck is not a “rush deck” and your plan may take a few turns to come to fruition. In the meantime, you will need to contain the opponent's attacks by exploiting your option cards and Digimon abilities carefully. The deck is not super hard to master but it may require a bit of a learning curve to show its true potential.
Overall, ST-10 is definitely a good investment if your playing style is quite tactical and you have the patience to carry out meticulous plans.
In case you are looking to make this deck more competitive, I would recommend to start by buying two copies of this deck as you will definitely need to have 4 copies of Gatomon, Mastermon and Chaos Degradation. Considering the deck is a mixed Yellow and Purple decks, there can be different ways to improve the competitiveness of the starter deck depending on your preferred style.
Among the options, I would recommend to swap the Digi-egg for Nyaromon (BT-10, Xros Encounter) or the more rare to find Demimeramon (BT3, Union Impact). Among the Lv3 Gazimon (BT3) and Psychemon (BT8) would be very good cards to add to your deck as they will slow down your opponent by preventing them from reducing the digivolution or play costs. Together with Gatomon, a couple of very good Lv4 Digimons for your deck will be BlackGatomon from BT8 and Meicoomon from BT9.
Finally, the recent Booster set BT-11 (Dimensional Phase) will provide most of the other cards you would need. In particular, the set will provide a very good version of Angewomon and LadyDevimon to upgrade the ones from ST-10 and the best tamer for this deck, Mirei Mikagura.
Overall, the starter deck has a good competitive potential and obtaining the cards you need to level it up should not be too expensive.
That concludes our thoughts on Digimon Starter deck ST-10: Parallel World Tactician. Do you agree? Let us know your thoughts and tag us on social media @zatugames. To buy Parallel World Tactician Starter deck today click here!