Shonen Jump’s Bleach TCG: Seireitei Set Review

Fifteen year-old Ichigo Kurosaki is the soul-saving hero of the Bleach anime. He's a Soul Reaper who battles evil Hollows in the popular anime TV show and award-winning DS game. It's also a card game where you can battle as your favorite characters, including Yoruichi and Mayuri with the new Seireitei expansion! Gary checked out the 110-card set and here's his Bleach card game review.

Thugs and Grinding

A few new characters and strategies show up in this set. Yoruichi Shihoin and Mayuri Kurotsuchi are two big ones, along with Saijin from Squad 7 and a few others. The new deck strategies are, well, hordes of thugs and grinding - winning by making your opponent's deck run out of cards. Here's how it all adds up.

Saving Your Soul

After taking a vacation in Soul Society, the evil Hollows are back and ready to play! There are also lots of cards for Squads and ways to do stuff with renewed cards. Mayuri decks make your opponent discard cards from their deck rather than take power damage. Thug decks let you recover cards from your discard pile so you can swarm your opponent with lots of weak warriors.

Not Awesome

Mayuri decks get clobbered by Thug decks 'cuz the thugs just keep coming back from the discard pile over and over and over again. It's also tricky to make good Thug or Mayuri decks without a big chunk of Seireitei cards, so save your allowance or make some good trades.

Should You Score Some?

Heck yes! The Hollows are back, which is great news for evil decks and the new strategies are pretty cool. It takes a whole bunch of cards to really use them properly, but they're a lot of fun. This new set is a solid addition to the Bleach card game and stay tuned for the Bankai set in March 2008!

Thumbs Up:

• The Hollows are back!
• Mayuri lets you grind your opponent's deck, that's awesome.
• Lots of cards for Squad decks.

Thumbs Down:

• Thug decks clobber Mayuri decks.
• You need a lot of cards to build strong Thug/Mayuri decks.

Bleach TCG: Seireitei Rating:

Related Links:

• Bleach: The Blade of Fate - DS Game Review
• Shonen Jump's Bleach Trading Card Game Review
• Bleach: Shattered Blade Game Preview - Nintendo Wii
• Bleach Previews, Yu-Gi-Oh! Championships and Spidey