My favorite thing about working on the Inuyasha Trading Game was coming up with ideas for subsets. The subsets in Inuyasha are some of the most unique and cool looking card that Score Entertainment ever produced. They visually still hold up today. Thanks in big part to the creative geniuses of the two graphic designers that I was able to work with during the life of the game. Carl Braun and Jerry Comandante.
Legends was the first subset released for the game; in second set named Kijin. The dvd special features had all this great sketch art on them. We really wanted to figure out a way to use it in the card game. The finished project was a stunning mix of sketch and vector art that turned out awesome. The Naraku from the Legends subset was heavily played through out the run of the game. Naraku was mainly used in decks that tried mill your opponent out as its primary win strategy.
Shippo’s Story is probably the most unique subset we did. Originally the brain child of Mike Gibson. My design counter part for the first few sets of the game. Shippo’s Story was a sequence from the show in which Shippo told the story of Inuyasha and Koga fighting over Kagome’s love using drawings made with crayons. When used all together with the Koga Hidden Rare the drawings make a very formidable deck. Affectionately named Cat, Dog, Wolf.
These cards are cute. I mean who doesn’t love Chibi’s. Other than input on the graphical design of the cards and each Chibi pumping each other I did not have much to do with the individual effects of the characters. I was hospitalized during this time with a ruptured appendix. The man himself David “Chippy” Eckhart did all the character effects. The Chibi’s were loved by fans and kind of loathed by the serious tournament players. Their low deck cost combined with increasing stats makes them a scary deck to face. It was the Chibi deck and Naraku’s Poison Insect, 3 that lead to me creating the location School Hallway.
Legendary Foes was an opportunity to give some love to a few of shows bad guys that had not received any support since the first few sets. Whither or not they are legendary; I will leave that up you to decide. I’m looking at you Carrion Crow. Legendary Foes also highlighted the Power Up mechanic that was introduced in Kassen. The design of the cards was inspired by patterns used on antique Japanese wall scrolls.
The pervious subset highlighted the shows villains. Timeless Champions highlighted the shows heroes. Rumiko Takahashi’s character designs are an iconic piece of the 2000’s anime scene. No other subsets shows that like Timeless Champions. Bold character art popping out on a silver background really brings home just how memorable the characters are in the show.
The idea behind the Memories subset came from looking at an old photo album. I wanted to to explore some of non battle, calmer and tragic moments of the show. Memories is unique amongst the games subsets because it is all events. Nearly every other subset is mostly character cards. Shot in the Heart and A Special Occasion were the most played cards of the set among the tournament players. Memories was a run a away hit with collectors and fans of the show.
The Tousou subset was similar to Memories in that it feature any character cards. Making the only other set to do so. Named Weapons of War or maybe just Weapons. I honestly do not remember. Featuring all the iconic weapons used by the characters in show. A couple of power house items are Tetsusaiga and Jewel of Four Souls. Less on the dangerous side the Kagome’s items provide more utility focused effects. Her bicycle searches for locations. While the backpack searches for items. A pretty usual effect since it can get any card in the subset.
Feudal Warriors featured most of the very rare six deck cost characters in the game. Only a hand full of characters were ever made with a deck cost higher than five. I absolutely love the Inuyasha in his demon from this subset. It looks so awesome. The Koga is also another one of my favorites. A must in any Wolf themed deck. Kikyo is also very strong. She can disrupt opponents who use effects to lock down your characters.
I did not talk about the subset from the final set Tensei because it was reprints of convention and tournament promos. I also didnt talk about the Band of Seven subset that was released in the Feudal Warfare decks. Not because I didn’t want to. The Band of Seven are awesome. But I currently don’t have the Band of Seven images up on the site. I will come back to them at another time.
What was your favorite subset from the game? Let me know in the comments below.
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Here recently I found cases of the game on sale cheap and bought some to fill out my collection save Keshin and Tensei (I just… i just loathe the card frames the game went to in those. The 2nd generation of frames were perfect!)
Although I seem to be missing a lot of set 1. I wonder where I put it…
Memories and Shippo’s story are probably my favorite.