The Digimon Experience in South Africa

Digimon as a game has grown quite big of a scene, with it developing quite well in Asia, NA and EU. However one region that isn’t talked about much is the African region. I’m a South African player who goes by the handle Curly, and in this article I want to talk about the South African Digimon TCG Scene, how we started, the issues we faced, how we overcame them and where we are currently.

Supply and Demand – The Pain of Acquiring Product

South Africa is a region that outside of the big 3 like Magic, Pokemon, or Yu-gi-oh! has trouble getting product, and Digimon is no exception. In order to get cards, we would import them via other means using Amazon, third party couriers and even making alt accounts to buy online products in other regions. With our region not being directly sold to, we had no means to having a direct retailer meaning that our local card game stores would have to bear a financial risk buying cases of Digimon sets. Luckily two provinces decided to take the risk, and it has paid off in places like Gauteng and the Western Cape.

While players typically only focus on the buying and selling price of cards, for card game shops importing product has the hassle of import tax, delivery fees and quite a few hidden costs. Despite this, shops have managed to keep prices pretty low, at just about what players would pay if they had to do the orders themselves. Digimon right now is a passion project for the communities and these shops, and although profits aren’t huge, the love of the franchise and the game keeps it going.

The TCG Migration and Side Hustle – New TCG, New me

The local Digimon scene was built by players that loved Digimon and were hungry for something new from the franchise. When news of the Japanese Card Game came out we, waited for a follow-up for an English version as well. And when it released, a few players had migrated from other TCG’s or made Digimon their second hustle. Given the current cost of and meta of Yu-gi-oh!, Digimon found a footing for players here.

The singles market of Yu-Gi-Oh is known for being costly and players were reaching a point where it would be unaffordable for them to play and note there is actually a direct retailer that sells these sets here in South Africa, meaning that the boosters are affordable but yet still it was quite hard to acquire essential pieces. Also keep in mind, South Africa’s currency has been in a slump and as time went on, the cost of buying singles internationally from other regions became more expensive. Despite this, Digimon was quite affordable in terms of making a deck that was playable and sometimes players could even get a cost efficient meta deck. This isn’t to say Digimon doesn’t have it’s own hurdles either. One of the big issues that South Africans still face is the same as other regions, where there is a struggle to find singles that need reprints. The issue is exacerbated by the almost doubled price due to delivery and import tax but despite this, players are still willing to buy.

The meta for Yu-Gi-Oh was also one of the biggest reasons why players migrated to Digimon, most moving as they felt that there was a lack of variety since players were playing quite competitively where they felt the meta was not as quite varied. The biggest boon that Digimon had was the amount of love that it showed to fans where the card art and decks hit the right nostalgic notes of the anime, games, manga and other media. The mechanics being inspired from things such as DNA Digivolve, Warp Digivolve, building stacks from a rookie to a mega and even how some of the option cards were named after the Digimon’s signature moves; This attention to detail is one of the biggest things that kept players invested.

Where are we now headed?

We are still keeping up to date as much as other regions and we do focus heavily on pet decks although when the stakes are high, people pull out the big guns. Currently the focus is to continue growing slowly and introduce even more players to the game. For South African players locals still range from 8-10 players and “big” tourneys usually have about 8-12 sometimes even more if we are lucky.

Personally I would like to one day be able to have our two provinces here in South Africa to have a combined tournament where we get all of the players together. I’m still very hopeful as our numbers continue to grow as more people fall in love with the game. I think one thing I’d love to see next is a rivalry between the two regions. I think this would only help to fuel enthusiasm and the scenes for the game. And who knows, if things go well, maybe as we level up from the Rookies down here, we’ll eventually DNA Digivolve and you’ll see us on the world stage one day.