Tag Tamer Manual

The Tag Tamer format ("2v2") is an unofficial format for the 2020 Digimon Card Game for two teams of two players each. It is maintained by community members Aqua2033 and GhostTurt. This page exists to provide thorough documentation for the format in a manner that's readable to newcomers.

The existing rules of the standard format as specified in the CRM should be assumed to still apply wherever they aren't expressly contradicted.

1. Deck Construction

Like in the standard format, decks consist of up to 5 digitama cards and exactly 50 non-digitama cards, with a cap of 4 copies per card except where explicitly stated otherwise. However, in Tag Tamer, the "team restriction" also applies: Card limits are applied to the team as a whole as if they are playing a single 100-card deck. (50-copies cards are treated as being ∞-copies for the sake of the team restriction.)

This is the same restriction used by the officially-supported 3v3 team battle sometimes run as a side event at regionals.

Decks must be sleeved. Once a card enters a shared area, the only way to keep track of whose deck it's a part of is to examine the sleeve.

2. Game Setup

In the Tag Tamer format, each player has a separate deck, hand, breeding area, and memory gauge. Areas owned by only one player are collectively referred to as the non-shared areas. However, the battle area, trash, and security are shared by both teammates. Since they are shared, they are collectively referred to as the shared areas.

At the start of the battle, all players draw 5 simultaneously. The choice to mulligan is individual (so you're not forced to mulligan if your teammate does) and behaves exactly like the base game. After mulligan is selected, all players recover 5 and then shuffle to construct the security. As a result, both teams start with 10 security cards from a combination of their teammates' decks.

Both players perform their breeding phases simultaneously, and any effects triggered by a breeding phase action will be considered to be simultaneous triggers.

During the main phase, both teammates occupy the same turn, with each teammate able to perform as many open game state actions as possible with all resources in the shared areas and any non-shared areas they control until the turn end condition is reached. Once a teammate reaches the turn end condition, they are no longer able to perform open game state actions. However, the End of Turn signal is not sent until both players reach the turn end condition.

(As a specific edge case, if a player cannot draw during their draw phase, but their partner can, the player who cannot draw is immediately set to -3 memory and cannot activate effects for the turn. This is referred to as the deckout state. A team only loses the game by deckout if both teammates are in the deckout state.)

When turn is passed, the memory gauge is normalized so that each teammate's starting memory is the average of the opponent's ending memory rounded up; that is, m := ceil(0.5|m₁ + m₂|).

3. Core Gameplay Logic

This section covers the ways that effects behave in the format.

3-1. Stack Resolution

Both teammates can interact with objects in shared areas, regardless of the owner of any of the cards involved. However, objects in non-shared areas are usable only by their owner.

(As an exception, while a breeding area can only be played/evolved/hatched in/moved from as an open game state action by the owner of that breeding area, players may still use effects to manipulate their partner's breeding area.)

When an effect or open game state action activated by one team triggers further effects of the same team, those effects must be activated by the same teammate who activated the original effect.

When an effect is activated automatically or by an action whose original trigger was performed by the opposing team, the team may decide who gets to activate it.

3-2. Overflow and Memory Loss/Gain

Memory costs are always paid out of the memory gauge of the player performing the costed action.

When a turn player effect or rule gains/loses memory, the operation is performed on the activating teammate.

(When a turn player effect or rule that gains/loses memory occurs automatically, the turn-player team may decide which memory gauge to apply the losses/gains to.)

If a player in the deckout state would gain or lose memory, the operation is instead performed on their partner.

When a non-turn player effect or rule that gains/loses memory is triggered by a turn player effect or open game state action, the losses/gains are applied to the memory gauge of the activating teammate for that trigger.

When a non-turn player effect or rule that gains/loses memory occurs automatically, the turn-player team may decide which memory gauge to apply the losses/gains to.

3-3. Card Ownership

Whenever a card would be returned to a hand, deck, or egg deck, it is automatically sent to the hand/deck/egg-deck of its owner. By induction, it is impossible for hands, decks, and egg decks to include cards from the partner's deck.

This is a stronger version of the exclusion rules the base game uses to prevent digitama from getting placed anywhere that isn't the egg deck. You may recognize this mechanic from Lucemon.

Despite being located in a non-shared area, effects with the [Breeding] tag (or effects with an implicit [Breeding] tag, like Training) may be activated by either teammate.

The logic here is that the [Breeding] tag exports the effect into the global scope of the battle area, which is a shared area.

Similarly, both teammates' unsuspend phase processes can see into their partner's breeding area.

Each player can view the contents of their partner's hand at all times. However, effects can only use cards from the activating player's hand.

(As an extension of this principle, you can't use cards in your partner's hand for DigiXros.)

3-4. Effect Translation

Effects that check or iterate over the number of objects in a shared area have their requirements doubled.

When this card would be played, for each of your opponent's Digimon and Tamers, reduce the cost by 3.

When this card would be played, for every 2 of your opponent's Digimon and Tamers, reduce the cost by 3.

Evolve Lv.5 w/ [Aegiochusmon] in name: Cost 1 for each card in your security

Evolve Lv.5 w/ [Aegiochusmon] in name: Cost 1 for every 2 cards in your security

Effects that reference the size of a player's hand treat both teammates' hands as a single shared area.

FUCK MIRAGE
All Turns Once Per Turn When a card is added to your opponent's hand by an effect, gain 1 memory for every 4 cards in your opponent's hand.	All Turns Once Per Turn When a card is added to your opponent's hand by an effect, gain 1 memory for every 8 cards in the opposing team's combined hands.

When an effect would trash cards in a player's hand until reaching a specified threshold, the procedure is to trash each card individually from the teammate with the larger hand until the limit is reached, but they are treated as being trashed simultaneously.

Effects that check or iterate over the number of colors in a shared area have their requirements increased by 1.

On Play When Evolving If your Tamers with the [ADVENTURE] trait have 3 or more total colors, this Digimon may evolve into a Digimon card with the [ADVENTURE] trait in the hand without paying the cost.

On Play When Evolving If your Tamers with the [ADVENTURE] trait have 4 or more total colors, this Digimon may evolve into a Digimon card with the [ADVENTURE] trait in the hand without paying the cost.

When an effect would act on an opponent directly, the activating teammate selects an opponent to target.

Main Delete 1 of your opponent's level 6 or higher Digimon. If this effect didn't delete, trash the top 3 cards of your opponent's deck.

Main Delete 1 of your opponent's level 6 or higher Digimon. If this effect didn't delete, trash the top 3 cards of 1 of your opponent's decks.

When an effect would act on "either player" directly, the activating teammate selects a player to target.

On Play When Evolving Reveal the top 5 cards of your or your opponent's deck. Return the revealed cards to the top or bottom of the deck.

On Play When Evolving Reveal the top 5 cards of 1 player's deck. Return the revealed cards to the top or bottom of the deck.

When an effect would act on "both players" directly, it affects all four players.

On Play When Evolving For each color among your opponent's Digimon and Tamers, trash the top card of both players' decks. Then, this Digimon gets +1000 DP for each card trashed by this effect for the turn.

On Play When Evolving For every 2 colors among the opposing team's Digimon and Tamers, trash the top card of all players' decks. Then, this Digimon gets +1000 DP for each card trashed by this effect for the turn.

Discontinuity Correction: If an effect has two consecutive conditionals that are logical complements before doubling (for instance, n ≥ 3 and n ≤ 2), but the doubling process creates a gap (in this case, n ≥ 6 and n ≤ 4), the second conditional is adjusted by 1 to close the gap (in this case n ≤ 5).

Start of Your Main Phase By placing 1 [Leon Alexander] from your hand as this Digimon's bottom evolution card, if you have 3 or more security, gain 1 memory. If you have 2 or fewer security, Recovery +1 (Deck) .

Start of Your Main Phase By placing 1 [Leon Alexander] from your hand as this Digimon's bottom evolution card, if you have 6 or more security, gain 1 memory. If you have 5 or fewer security, Recovery +1 (Deck) .

Effects that check the current value of the memory gauge reference the average of the team's memory gauges as a floating-point value.

End of Attack Once Per Turn If your opponent has 1 or more memory, unsuspend this Digimon.

End of Attack Once Per Turn If the team's average memory is -1.0 or less, unsuspend this Digimon.

4. Special Rulings

Certain cards have their text transformed in irregular ways to circumvent issues that would be created by using the regular transformation.

BT7-040 Rasenmon
When one of your Digimon would evolve into this card in the hand, set the evolution cost to the number of cards in your security. If you have 0 security, instead set the evolution cost to 1.	When one of your Digimon would evolve into this card in the hand, the evolution cost is 1 for every 2 cards in your security. If you have 1 or fewer security, instead set the evolution cost to 1.

Rasenmon is an application of the Discontinuity Correction procedure that can't be applied automatically because of the way the card is worded, and must be performed via special ruling.

[BT17-100 Doomsday Clock]
Start of Your Turn If 4 [Doomsday Clock] are placed in your battle area, you win the game.	Start of Your Turn If 4 [Doomsday Clock] are placed in your battle area, you win the game.

[EX9-055 Abbadomon]
On Play When Evolving If there are 4 or more total [Negamon] in your trash and your Digimon's evolution cards, you may play 1 [Abbadomon Core] from your hand or trash to your empty breeding area without paying the cost.	On Play When Evolving If there are 4 or more total [Negamon] in your trash and your Digimon's evolution cards, you may play 1 [Abbadomon Core] from your hand or trash to your empty breeding area without paying the cost.

Effects that can only activate if a full playset of a single card is in a shared area would normally be completely unable to activate, as the normal procedure would double the requirements to 8 [Doomsday Clock]/[Negamon], which is impossible. To prevent this, these two effects specifically are left unchanged.

[BT12-083 Arresterdramon: Superior Mode]
When Evolving Place 1 of your opponent's level 3 or lower Digimon as the bottom evolution card of 1 of your opponent's other Digimon or under 1 of their Tamers. For each of your Tamers with different colors, increase this effect's level maximum by 1.	When Evolving Place 1 of your opponent's level 3 or lower Digimon as the bottom evolution card of 1 of your opponent's other Digimon or under 1 of their Tamers. For every 2 of your Tamers with different colors, increase this effect's level maximum by 1. If you have 7 colors among your Tamers, instead set this effect's level maximum to 7.

In the Standard format, this effect scales to level 7s with only four colors on the battle area, which is trivially easy. With the normal transformation procedure, this would be rendered impossible in Tag Tamer, because there are only 7 colors and you'd need 8 to hit level 7s. As such, a special exception is provided for when the colors are maxed out.

If Bandai ever decides to make an eighth color for some reason, this exception will be removed.

[EX5-072 Holy Beasts Great Cardinal Positions]
When this card would be used, reduce the cost by 1 for each card with the [Deva] or [Four Sovereigns] trait and different names in your trash.	When this card would be used, reduce the cost by 1 for every 2 cards with the [Deva] or [Four Sovereigns] trait and different names in your trash. If you have 18 cards with the [Deva] or [Four Sovereigns] trait and different names in your trash, further reduce the cost by 3.

In Standard, you'd need 12 names to make this option card free. In Tag Tamer, you'd need 24. This poses a problem as there are only 18 names (12 Devas, 4 Sovereigns, 2 option cards) available, for a minimum cost of 3. As such, a special exception is provided for when the names are maxed out.

If Bandai ever prints additional names for the deck, this exception will be adjusted or removed as appropriate.

5. Banlist

The banlist for the Tag Tamer format is controlled by the maintainers, and hasn't been updated since BT-21. Accordingly, some major threats may have evaded detection. This is why we playtest.

Banned Cards (Cannot be included in decks)

Restricted Cards (Can only be included at 1 copy across both teammates' decks)