The Maple Story card game is another one of those trading card games that tries its best to mimic the online gameplay of an MMO, and not only do they succeed in this endeavor but they do manage to take it one step further by including actual l33t spe4k in their expansion titles. Each expansion thus far has focused on a certain aspect of the game that wasn't addressed in the main set, with OMG BOSSES! focusing on, you guessed it, bosses, and P3TS, focusing on the equally obvious pet creatures. However P3TS treats pets differently than OMG BOSSES! treated bosses, in that bosses had their own rules and were essentially a totally different card type, whereas pets are just very good and interesting creatures?... wait wait... no I'm wrong pets are items. Yeah I know its confusing but bear with me. Don't get me wrong, the pets are cool, but in actuality P3TS makes its mark as a Maple Story expansion with its utility which fleshes out the game overall, which end up somewhat overshadowing the whole pet-theme in the first place.

But since pets are the whole theme of the expansion lets talk about them. As I said before pets in Maple Story are just really good items that do wonky things. We previewed one card, Bahamut, which hit for an unfathomable amount of damage but stayed in play for only a few turns, but to be honest that card really isn't even a pet at all, it is a summon (another thing that was first showcased in Maple Story P3TS.)



The difference between pets normal creatures is that pets first of all pets are items, and not monsters. Second of all they are extremely low level; in fact the highest pet I have personally seen opened in a pack is level 20. Third of all they all have the ability “hungry” which lets you, at the beginning of every turn, put a card from the top of your deck face down underneath the pet card. Then when they have 3 underneath them (which is the maximum) they do some sort of phenomenal ability, and the eaten cards are placed on the bottom of your deck. Finally fourth of all pets are all HORRENDOUSLY CUTE! Seriously, you have to say AWWWWWW every time one is played. In fact, there may be something to a strategy that simply uses pets to cause your opponent to have seizures from the sheer cuteness of it all.



Anyway so you put out these pet items and they slowly eat your deck, and as they do they get ready to blow off some cool powers. The Black Bunny allows you to put any and all bowman monsters of level 30 or less that were underneath her into play, and the Brown Kitty allows you to put one of her hungry cards in your hand. The Puppy gains you thirty life, the Panda lets you play ANY monster he ate to the field (except bosses) and the Black Dragon becomes a gigantic Black Dragon monster with 80 attack and 120 HP. Good stuff right? In addition, certain cards now have abilities that help you feed your pets. For example the Black Dragon's level 10 rogue ability allows you to put one more card underneath your pets per turn effectively halving the time it takes them to get full (or if you've attached two underneath your character, making them get full every turn!).

As I said before, pets are cool. They are interesting items with interesting mechanics and they are cuter than anything else that has come out of this game yet. However, there are still very few pet cards printed, and thus very few strategies that include them besides playing a bunch and loading them up with “get full faster” abilities. I was giddy every time I opened a pet in a pack, but that really was just the fanboy in me and fanboys and fangirls rejoice because you will squeal every time you add a new pet to your repertoire.

However, if my paycheck says anything about me its that I am not only a fanboy, I am a critic and a professional one at that, and because of that I have to look at what “pets” themselves add to the game, the answer to that is “unfortunately little”. Pets are cool, I can't deny that, but without support they only go off once every three turns which is never enough to build a solid strategy around. However, what P3TS does bring you, is a bunch of cards you CAN build decks around, utility cards, which is in my opinion why P3TS is such a good expansion!

Apparently the people over at Wizards R&D did nothing but read the definition of “utility” over and over again as they were designing P3TS because utility seems to saturate all of the cards that aren't pets in the expansion. From “Destroy All Monsters” which allows you to, appropriately enough, destroy all monsters, to cards that basically let you prevent damage, deal damage, and overall make your deck better, P3TS is absolutely loaded with cards that people will want to get full play sets of. In my humble opinion, this means that P3TS will probably be one of the highest in demand Maple Story sets for some time. Some of my favorites are the efficient 50/50 root creatures, Blessing of the Amazon, which allows you to simply deal 40 unpreventable damage straight up, and Disorder, which allows you to destroy 2 weak monsters.



So if you are judging P3TS based on what it gives to the Maple Story card game, you can see right there it is a good expansion, however there are a couple more criteria that expansions need to be judged by and probably the first and foremost is “can you start playing the game with this expansion?” The short answer is yes, but the long answer is yeeeeeeeeeeessssss (ouch even I hate myself for making that joke) but think twice about it. Even though P3TS has a lot of utility cards (which is why the set can be played by newbies in the first place) the set isn't really balanced in respect to itself. Rogues getting pet black dragons, pet yetis, Destroy All Monsters, and Disorder is enough to make them nearly unstoppable in the format, except I haven't seen any really good rogue characters. Along the same lines, some of the knight and bowman characters that are showcased in P3TS are GREAT but the knight and bowman cards leave something to be desired. Honestly, if you are learning Maple Story, you probably should pick up the full trifecta of set 1, OMG BOSSES!, and P3TS. Having all three is probably the most efficient way to learn.



Which brings me to my last point, how does P3TS fit in with the rest of Maple Story? Honestly, I would have to say rather well. Most of the cards were designed with either pet cards in mind, or with cards from previous expansions in mind. The abilities cards grant do general things such as drawing cards or gaining an absurd amount of life, and I have seen more “unlimited” powers (powers that aren't based on levels or other aspects of cards) in this set than I have seen in any other. Honestly, other than the pet cards themselves, P3TS is the natural continuation of the Maple Story card game, so if you are an avid player, you should probably pick it up.

There are a couple different types of Trading Card Game players out there. You can either play to win, play to be creative, or play to collect the cards, and P3TS seems to satisfy all of these archetype. Me, well I'm one of those players that does whatever it takes to win, and the sheer efficiency of the cards in P3TS pleases me quite a bit. However, I can only imagine the collector will absolutely love the cute pet cards and the creator will enjoy the awesome new abilities that give him great ways to make new synergistic combos. Overall P3TS is a good expansion, and since the game itself is still so young it definitely says many great things about Maple Stories future if Wizards can keep putting out expansions like this. It won't be attracting many new Maple Story players unless they have a real obsession with cuteness, but it did make the whole game of Maple Story better overall.

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Presentation Rating = 7.5 Honestly, there is no problem with the presentation of P3TS, its just that it is similar to Maple Story's original mega cute presentation. I did give it an extra .5 for the unbearably cute pets though.	Gameplay Rating = 8.5 The gameplay of P3TS is solid. It would be better if it could be played on its own, but honestly, the amount it gives to the overall Maple Story experience is more than enough to overlook that minor flaw.
Synergy Rating = 9.0 P3TS definitely ties up the loose ends that the first two sets of Maple Story had lying around. The pet items fit nicely into the overall TCG mold, and hopefully we will see more, but the utility cards that were printed are by far the best thing about the expansion.	Innovation Rating = 7.5 As I said before the pets in the set are cool, but they are overshadowed by the other cards that are printed. I do hope we see new pets in the future though.

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