Over in the Legend of Mana Card Duel section, I’ve got a new page set up. On the Comics page, you’ll find a set of 5 comics by Hiroyuki Yasuda (安田ひろゆき) that were included in the Making of Mana (1999, ISBN4-7561-3148-4) publication.

The comics feature the Hero, Niccolo, and Duelle while briefly covering important points in the Rules as well as some thoughts about Deck Building. I especially love the goofy little Duelle you see to the right here. It’s fun to read these and imagine people in the past actually playing the TCG. I wonder how many people actually sat down and built decks.

Making of Mana mentions special events for the game at the 1999 Japan Game Convention held from August 27-29, and it just kills me that we’ll never know more than that about it.

My edits to the comics are not perfect, but I think I did a pretty good job on the clean up and translations.

Over at Hotamine (Hotaru Mineral) there is a new Legend of Mana: the Teardrop Crystal calendar for sale.
The art inside looks really cool, a few Japanese fans have been discussing framing each month separately. January and February combine together to make a nice view of the Bejeweled City.

In this final video from 2011, I open two more Legend of Mana Card Duel Starter Decks in a vain attempt to complete out my collection. After that plan falls through, I show off a small assortment of cards I obtained through auctions and count up how many of each type of card there are. The video ends with a tally of all the cards I was still missing. You can watch the other videos for an explanation of the cards and to see another ten Starter Decks opened.

Again, you can read details about the card game, including the translated rule book and fully translated cards, here.

A special thanks to Sevon (Twitter, pixiv) for the awesome “Card Master Sheexy” art included in the video!

I also put together a Videos page where you can find all of these in one place.

In this video I give an explanation of the amount of each card type found in the Starter Decks while searching desperately for new cards. Two different types of decks seem to exist, although there is no way to tell which is which as far as I can tell. Like the previous three videos, this one was filmed in 2011. Make sure to watch the others if you have not yet for an introduction to the game and to see me open a handful of more decks.

Again, you can read details about the card game, including the translated rule book and fully translated cards, here.

A special thanks to Sevon (Twitter, pixiv) for the awesome “Card Master Sheexy” art included in the video!

In this video I really start to learn just how hard it is (actually impossible) to complete a full Legend of Mana Card Duel collection using just Starter Decks. Watch as I slowly drift into insanity while opening three decks and obtain a scant few new cards. This video is a continuation of the previous two, filmed in 2011, so make sure to watch them if you have not yet for an introduction to the game’s cards and to see me open a couple more decks.

Again, you can read details about the card game, including the translated rule book and fully translated cards, here.

A special thanks to Sevon (Twitter, pixiv) for the awesome “Card Master Sheexy” art included in the video!

In this video, filmed in 2011, I continued my efforts to complete my Legend of Mana Card Duel collection by opening up another Starter Deck. Make sure to watch the previous video if you have not yet for an introduction to the game’s cards. I had some misconceptions about the number of commons, uncommons, rares, and holofoils back when I was trying to complete my collection. I have only found three Japanese sites that actually detail the game, and two of them are only card lists! The list I had found at the point of filming this video had some serious errors, leading me to make the wrong assumptions in some of these videos.

Again, you can read details about the card game, including the translated rule book and fully translated cards, here.

A special thanks to Sevon (Twitter, pixiv) for the awesome “Card Master Sheexy” art included in the video!

Over a decade later, I finally edited and cleaned up some videos I recorded for the site. In this video I give an overview of the types of cards in the Legend of Mana Card Duel trading card game, talk briefly about Boosters and Starter Decks, open a Starter Deck, and finally sort through my collection at the time. This was the third Starter Deck I ever opened, the first two being opened in 2004 and likely 2006. This video was originally filmed in 2011, along with a handful of others where I open more Starter Decks.

You can read details about the card game, including the translated rule book and fully translated cards, here.
Of specific interest to this video is the page where I detail the Starter Decks for the game, here.
On the Opened Starter Decks page you can look at the details for all of the Starter Decks I have opened, here. This video goes over the Third Starter Deck specifically.

A special thanks to Sevon (Twitter, pixiv) for the awesome “Card Master Sheexy” art included in the video!
There is even a specially designed card that Sevon made, check it out below.

Perhaps the most esoteric page to ever grace this website, Starter Deck Functionality takes a look at how playable eleven of the Legend of Mana Card Duel starter decks I’ve opened up actually are.

I thought it might be interesting to look at what an introduction to the card game would look like from these starter decks that function as very large and poorly randomized boosters. As it turns out, it would not have been very fun.

Maybe someday in the future I’ll put some of these decks back together and give them a whirl.

If you’ve got a penchant for the pedantic, check it out.

I have finally done it!
I have one of every piece of merchandise related to Legend of Mana Card Duel.

Just look at that beautiful collection right there. At least one of all 150 cards and the mysterious turn order card; I still do not know its origin. I have sealed booster packs, sealed starter decks, a plastic wrapped booster box, and I finally got my hands on a box of starter decks. As far as I can tell, the starter boxes were never plastic wrapped but all 12 starters inside are. If there are any other Legend of Mana Card Duel items out there in the world I’ve never seen nor heard of them, so I am calling this 100% complete.

It has been a long time coming. I first bought some of the cards back in 2004, completed my collection of individual cards in 2015 (you can read about that journey here), and finally in 2022 my collection is at a point that I am very satisfied with it.
18 years after I learned about the card game, it’s finally done. Children have become adults in that time (not me apparently).
23 years after the card game’s release, it’s finally done.

Well… I still do want a few more copies of cards like Rosiotti… send me an e-mail if you’re selling.

You can head to the Gallery or to the Starter Deck and Booster Pack pages to check out images of them.

Just a neat little thing to show off here. It’s an advertisement found at the end of the September 1999 issue of “Game Gather” a Japanese magazine focused on Magic the Gathering and other card games. The issue is for September, but it would have come out on shelves a month or two before.

The red text on the right side of the ad is noteworthy, as it essentially translates to “Square’s First Entry into Trading Cards,” which I had not really thought about. So yeah, it turns out the first trading card game Square ever released was for the Seiken Densetsu series. Very cool. Now, I’m only talking about the Square side of things here, as Enix launched a Dragon Quest Monsters TCG in April 1999, predating this by a handful of months.

Here is the ad:

Isn’t that fun? I honestly never thought I would get to see something like this, considering how few people know about this game.

This ad is specific to this magazine, as far as I can tell, as it appears on the inside of the back cover using the magazine’s fonts and visuals. Whether the game was advertised anywhere else we may never know, unless I start buying random Japanese magazines from around that time. This issue also has a two-page spread about the TCG that I will post about sometime in the future when I get more time to look at it.