Not a game
The first thing to know about the Cards Inc. set is that it has no rules. The tops carry figures, but nothing on any card says how to pit them against each other; there is no deck to build and no way to win. The cards are a collection: seventy-two numbered pictures of the first season’s bladers, bit-beasts, teams, tops and stadiums, sold in packs and meant to be completed. What follows is how to read them, not how to play them.
The numbering
Card 1 is the title and introduction card. The set then walks team by team through the season’s five teams, numbers 2 to 47, in a fixed rhythm: a team card, then each member’s character card followed by that member’s bit-beast card. The Bladebreakers open the run with Tyson and Dragoon, Kai and Dranzer, Max and Draciel, Ray and Driger, and Kenny, who has a character card but no bit-beast card. The White Tigers, the All Starz, the Majestics and the Demolition Boys follow in the same pattern.
Numbers 48 to 69 are the tops, twenty-two of them. Numbers 70 and 71 are the two stadium cards, titled Dragoon Storm Stadium / The Vortex and Blizzard Bowl / Spin Blaster. Number 72 is the checklist card.
What the backs carry
The backs are where the set does its talking. A character card’s back carries the name, the team and a short profile of the blader. A bit-beast card’s back names its owner, lists the Beyblades that beast appears with and names its special attacks. A team card’s back pairs each member with a bit-beast. On this site each card page lists the facts read from its back, owner, Beyblades, special attacks, team members and the tops’ figures, in our own words; the printed text stays on the card, and the photographs of the backs are there to be read by turning the card over.
The rated tops
Each top card, numbers 48 to 69, prints on its back a type, Attack, Defense, Combination or Endurance, and three figures, attack, defence and endurance, followed by a total rating. Dragoon Storm, for instance, is an Attack type rated 7, 3 and 7 for a total of 17; Driger F is a Combination type at 8, 6 and 8 for 22, the highest total in the set. Seven tops are Attack, seven Combination, six Defense and two Endurance.
Two cards do not add up. Card 64, Seaborg as a Defense type, prints 5, 5 and 7 and a total of 18; card 67, Ultimate Frostic Dranzer, prints 4, 5 and 7 and a total of 15. We show the figures as printed and say so on those pages, because the card is the record even when the arithmetic is wrong.
The stadiums and the checklist
The two stadium cards each carry two stadiums, one per side. Card 70 shows Dragoon Storm Stadium on its front and The Vortex on its back; card 71 shows Blizzard Bowl on its front and Spin Blaster on its back. The checklist card, 72, lists numbers 1 to 39 on its front and 40 to 72 on its back, and closes with a line pointing collectors to the seventy-two-card parallel foil set.
The foil parallel
Every one of the seventy-two cards exists twice. The base printing has a plain finish; the parallel has a light-catching foil finish over the same number and title. The pack front reads six cards, five regular and one foil, and the pack back states that the foil parallel set is inserted one to one, so base and parallel together make 144 cards. The five promo cards, MP1 to MP5, sit outside both runs; they were exclusive to a UK memorabilia convention, and no foil version of them is recorded.
Reading a card page here
Each card page on this site shows the site’s photograph of the front, turns over to the back, and lists the facts the card carries: its number, kind, team, subject, owner and, for the tops, the printed type and figures. Nothing is invented to fill a gap; where a back carries no list, the page carries none either.