Beginner Guide 2022: The Color's Strength
Overview
Cards in the Digimon Card Game can be broadly categorized into 7 colors: each indicating an affinity toward a particular play style.
A brief history: the first 3 colors to be introduced were red, blue and yellow, in 54-card Japanese starter decks back in April 2020. When the first booster set [BT-01] New Evolution was released a month later, green cards were introduced; and subsequently the release of the second booster set [BT-02] Ultimate Power in July 2020 brought black and purple into the game. The Japanese starter decks for green, black and violet were then released in November 2020.
Remarks: this guide provides a generalization and does not indicate a hard rule for all digimons of said color.
Red: powerful and aggressive
Red decks tend to setup their Digimons into high DP monsters with <SecurityAttack+n>, fearlessly swinging at the opponent's security stack dealing big damage. In attempt to control board, a good number of red cards also take advantage of concurrent deletion effects (destroying an opponent's Digimon while attacking), while some others have access to [Piercing], allowing it to perform security checks when it attack and deletes an opponent's Digimon.
Another almost-exclusive red effect is [Blitz], which allows the Digimon to attack at the end of turn (as memory passes over to your opponent), deliberating the emphasis on a red deck's aggression.
Blue: debuff, freeze, return, and rapid attacks.
Blue Digimons have access to rather wide variety of effects, a lot that resolves around disabling the opponent. Many blue Digimons can remove your opponent's digivolution sources hence their inherited effects, and disabling them from attacking and blocking. Many blue Digimons can also unsuspend themselves, some many times a turn, dealing big damage to your opponent's board and security.
Blue Digimons also have an almost-exclusive access to "return to hand/deck" effects, which are currently very difficult to guard against.
Yellow: recovery and DP-reduction
Yellow cards have a plethora of <Recovery+?> effects, constantly recovering your security and prolonging the game while you gradually wear out your opponent. To take advantage of this defensive security strength, a popular variant of the yellow play-style called "security control" runs big offensive option cards and security Digimons such as Omegamon Zwart Defeat.
Yellow decks also have access to the almost-exclusive DP-reduction effects, which is currently also quite difficult to guard against, especially against Armor Digimons (which we will touch about later).
Green: efficient and fast digivolutions
Green digimons generally digivolve very quickly and efficiently, using low digivolution costs and effects like [Digisorption] which allows you to suspend one of your Digimon to reduce a digivolution cost. Many green Digimons can also suspend your opponent's Digimons so they can be targeted for attack, and with [Piercing] it would devastate your opponent's security as well.
Black: blocking, immunity, and some unique mechanics
Many black digimons have access to [Blocker] effects, allowing them to redirect opponent's attacks to themselves. Many black Digimons also have access to the almost-exclusive [De-digivolve] effect, and board deletion effects that target lower-cost Digimons and together they give black decks decent board control.
It should be noted however, that a black deck's defensive strategies did not bring them very far in competitive games until specific black archetypes such as Diaboromon and X-Antibody Digimons came into play, and those archetypes play quite differently from the traditional black mechanics.
Purple: graveyard control
Many purple Digimons can summon your Digimons from trash, or strengthen themselves when you have a number of cards in your trash.
Notable purple Digimons include the infamous Lilithmon (of the Lilith-loop engine), Beelzemon, and Beelstarmon. LIlithmon was very formidable (with Omnimon Zwart) before [BT5-109] Fuse Into The Ultimate Digimon was banned, while Beelzemon and Beelstarmon builds upon a large trash size for power.
Many purple Digimons also have the almost-exclusive [Retaliation] effect that lets your Digimon concurrently take down the opponent's Digimon that destroyed them in battle.
White: unique
White Digimons were originally reserved for LV7 Digimons during the infancy of the card game, but has gradually opened up to exclusive archetypes starting from BT-06 with the introduction of the LV3 and LV4 Sistermons as well as the all-white Eosmon archetype. Its play-style is highly dependent on archetype and is usually very unique.
Multi-Coloured and Jogress Digivolution
Starting with the ST-09 and ST-10 structure decks, multi-colored Digimons as well as the Jogress digivolution effect was introduced. Read more about multi-color and Jogress digivolutions here.
Conclusion
Some colors and archetypes become strengthened when new sets are introduced. If you are building a deck for competitive play, be sure to check out our decklists for deck recipes that are winning at tournaments!