卡片精灵 Cardmon: Camon’s Answer to Pokemon

The majority of the information in this post was given to me by another collector who goes by Melek on Youtube. She shared a ton of images and results from the many boxes he’s opened, without that I wouldn’t have been able to write this article so thank you Melek! Welcome to the Cardmon Universe, this is a trading card franchise developed in China by Camon – the makers of the SCP Foundation sets.

Table of Contents

• Cardmon?
• The Cards
• Cardmon Set Guide
• Cardmon Rarity Guide
• Cardom TCG Rules
• Conclusions

Cardmon?

Ok so you know Pokemon right? Pocket-monsters? And then you’ve probably heard of Digimon eh? Digital-Monsters? Well this should be pretty easy then, it’s Cardmon or Card-Monsters. Just like the other two this is an entire universe of creatures and trainers, with both an in-universe game and an actual real-world TCG too. You could say it’s just a copy of Pokemon, but that’s a little too easy. This is a massive franchise, you’ve just never heard of it. Not just you though, there is almost no information about this product available outside of China – let’s fix that.

Camon is a manufacturer we know pretty well around here. They of course make the SCP Foundation set that I’ve been trying to complete for a long time now. They also make some Marvel Avengers and Disney Princess trading cards, as well as the occasional premium set such as that weird Overlord set they put out last year. Cardmon is their latest creation, at least 10 years old already the franchise is still going strong with new releases every few months. You can track things over on the official website.

The produce encompasses both a TCG and a collection card series, there are also comics and an animated show in the works according to Camon’s site. In this post I’m going to try and walk you through as much of the series as possible using cards I’ve pulled along with all the great information that Melek gave us.

Oh yeah, and while a PokemonTCG booster box is going to run you in the hundreds of dollars – most of the boxes from this franchise are closer to 30 or even less in some cases.

The Cards

Before we get too deep into talking about specific boxes let’s first look at the actual cards – this is the reason you should be excited about this product in the first place. These are some fantastic looking trading cards. Personally I prefer the double-sided, larger size Collection Card releases – but there is so amazing artwork on the TCG cards too as you can so on those 3 SRs above.

Above are some of the best looking cards I’ve pulled so far. These are 2 examples of the MR rarity, this is a promo rarity that always features images of the franchise’s mascot “Kaola Stark”. These cards are covered in foil, but the back is common to the rarity level.

Next up checkout that silver card on the left, that’s an MLR one of the top rarity levels available. That card is covered in refraction texture making it very difficult to scan or photograph. Next to it is an example of the LR rarity level, this card has some excellent etching work in the background. On the right you see the card back typical of the “collection card” variants. These are larger cards not meant for use in the TCG game. We’ll talk more about that different when we go through the boxes.

Finally here are some of the TCG cards. You’ll notice that these cards are much smaller and taller than the collection versions. They also feature a common tcg back, since the full tcg rules use hidden information. Notice that each card has three attacks on the bottom left labeled A, B and C – those are chosen at random using a spinner. I’ll go through that more when we talk about the rules later in this article.

Cardmon Set Guide

In this section we’re going to go through all the boxes that I have information about, the vast majority of this came from Melek again I just added a few more details from my own research.

Box TCG 5-1. The Box code helps you understand what this is. “TCG” means these will be the smaller tcg cards. “5” means it’s a 5-yuan box and 1 is the series. I just ordered a box numbered 10-8 meaning “10-yuan level, 8th series”. The other information in the image tells you what rarities are found in this box.

The rest of these all come from Melek. This one has 60 packs, but each pack has only 2 cards. 1 of those will be a thick stock special card and the other will be a regular card. The pull rate in this box is pretty bad as the packs are at priced low.

This is the premium version of the 60-pack product above. This box only has 20 packs, but each has 3-4 high tier cards in it. If you just want to see flashy cards – this might be the right box to get.

Unfortunately I could not find this box for sale anywhere, Melek says that it contains a mix of cards from many different sets, sort of like the SCP “Yellow” box. This would make it a perfect product for me, I love seeing variety like that.

This is box 5-6, so 5-yuan, 6th series. It’s not a TCG box though, always note that when looking at this product. If you are like me and prefer the larger collection cards then stick to boxes like this without the “TCG” on them.

I haven’t picked a box like this up yet but as you can kind of see from the box art this set contains some unique looking cards. they have a central holographic artwork embedded into them. It’s a really neat effect and this on specifically has a black version of that effect.

Another Cardmon box I wasn’t able to find although it does come highly recommended from Melek for containing a lot of great UR and GR cards. This is a 3-yuan box, so I suspect it is exactly like the SCP yellow boxes, with 50 packs of reprint hits.

I have one of these on the way, it’s the 10-8 box so the newest set I believe. When I first started opening these I was sure that Pokemon Company would have shut it down by now but no, the game is still going strong and this is a brand new release with a new “COOL” rarity level

A 5 yuan box that can contain the new COOL rarity, Melek says you should expect around 3 per box.

This is 5-8, I’m not including every single box available here as each set usually gets a 1/2/5 and 10 yuan box – so there are a lot of boxes out there. This one I opened on video if you’d like to see what it contains.

10-6 is a the 10-yuan box for set 6. Melek says the SSR cards in this release are especially nice with a rainbow metallic background.

This is the 10 year anniversary box, so we know the series has been running for at least 10 years. I couldn’t find one of these for sale but Melek highly recommends it if you can find it.

Another box I’d really like but can’t find for a good price, Melek says this one contains actual “trainer” cards! Chibi versions of the Cardmon trainers. Some vendors do have this, but at over 30$

An example of a premium “special edition” box. There are a few of these out there. Melek has this one and says it comes with 10 10 yuan packs, 10 2-yuan packs and a few fixed pulls. The fixed pulls are still a little random, like your box will have either the red or the blue MLR pictured but not both. She pulled an ER from this!

One of the 2-yuan boxes, this one has horizontal LR cards.

Cardmon Rarity Guide

This information comes directly from Melek, I just re-worded things a little bit. Most of these rarities I have not seen myself yet.

King and ERS These are top rarity cards from specific 10-yuan boxes. Neither of us has pulled this yet, the golden 10-6 box above has one of these pictured on it.

ER This is a “gold” plastic card with the artwork stamped into it with a slight emboss. Melek’s impression is that these do not look as good as their rarity level would call for. To me they look a bit like the Little Frog Gundam PR gold cards.

MLR, GR, MR, UR and LR are sort of the standard “hit” rarity levels for most of the sets. If you pull one of these, you’ve pulled a major hit. You can see some examples of LR and MLR at the start of this post, and I put one of Melek’s GRs right above this. UR is slightly more common than these others but still a pretty big pull.

CH, SCH two types of PVC cards, similar to the FR rarity in Goddess Story. SCH is just a fancier version of CH with some gold outlining. COOL is another PVC rarity level only available in the newest sets.

HR and HRS – this is my favorite rarity. When I first saw these cards I was completely sold on this franchise. IMO this is something PokemonTCG should seriously consider adding, it’s such a cool concept. These are lenticular, fully animated cards. They animate the attack of the monster. The HRS level is just a fancier version of the image.

SP and TR are two special rarities that only exist in a few of the 5-yuan boxes like the 5-8 box I opened. SP is a mirror finish card, impossible to photograph as you can see from Melek’s attempt above.

Finally you’ve got the base level SSR, SR and R tiers. Like all these types of sets SSR is still kind of rare compared to the other two, and generally look really good.

Cardom TCG Rules

I know we’ve been through a lot of information but we are not done yet. Remember that this product encompasses a full on TCG, similar in complexity to the Pokemon TCG. There are two variants of the Cardmon TCG board the more complex variant above is the full game, there is also a simplified version played on this mat design:

That’s the red side, the blue side is identical. In either version there is a common element of random chance to this game that you don’t see as often in the Pokemon TCG. Here you do not pick your attacks, instead each round the attacker will spin a special spinner included with the game. That spinner then says what attack to use.

That spinner also includes the entire rules of the game:

1. The game is played with 2 players, randomly choose who will be the red side and who will be blue. Red attacks first.
2. Each player needs a deck of 20 non-repeating cards. There are no other restrictions on deck construction.
3. Start the game by shuffling the decks and putting them face down in the preparation zone.
4. Each player flips the top card of their deck into the attacker spot.
5. Each player spins, the result says which skill to use on that players card.
6. The move has a power value near it, the larger value wins and stays in the attacker spot. The loser moves to the graveyard. The loser flips a new card into the attacker spot.
7. To win defeat all the cards in the other players deck.
8. If the power values match then both players should re-spin

Those rules are for the simplified board. The more complex board is essentially the same except you will have 4 reserve attackers, sort of like the bench in Pokemon TCG. There are then some extra rules around choosing who to attack and not being able to attack twice with the same card – you have to rotate it out with your bench, even if you win. Deck counts and construction rules are the same for both variants.

Cardmon TCG cards don’t really have custom rules on them or anything like that. So in that sense this is no where near the complexity of PokemonTCG. There are also no “trainer” or reaction cards, just attackers. Still I went ahead and translated one of the cards above in case you were curious what was written on there. The attack names are unique to some of the monsters but only the attack power value matters in the end.

Conclusions

And there we have it, a 10 year old TCG that’s barely been mentioned outside of Asia. I hope you can see from this article just how huge this franchise is, so many different sets and cards produced over the years. The artwork and card design is excellent as well, with tons of variety from set to set. The top tier cards look just as good as anything in the upper tiers of Kayou or Cartoon House. I’ll leave with the 3 images above, all of those were sent to me by Melek and show off some his best pulls so far.