The newest expansion for the
Bleach Trading Card Game is
Portal, which I believe is named after the
Portal between the world of the living and the world of the dead in the
Bleach anime. The expansion “takes place” so to speak in the latter half of the Bount arc, wrapping up the storyline involving the
Bounts, Modified Souls, Ishida's Power, and much much more. The expansion does great justice to this storyline, even more so than other
Bleach expansions and their storylines. There are many new Bount cards and tons of new mechanics to reflect the events that transpired in the latter half of the Bount arc. In addition, there is a subset of cards in
Portal that has to do with the
Bleach movie, Memories of Nobody. This subset is a nice little edition that appeals to both players and collectors alike, sporting not only extremely powerful new mechanics, but also a brand new layout and art based on the
Bleach movie. Even though this subset is a nice treat, in the end
Portal kind of feels like
Bounts 2, which is great because, Bount mechanics were still new and were a great area to expand into. This makes the worst thing about
Bleach:
Portal its name, being that it doesn't really describe the plot arc that the expansion covers, but that's easy to look over.
The first thing you will notice about
Portal is that Bount cards are back in full force along with their Soul mechanic.
Bounts are guardians and other cards that allow you to remove cards from the game into a “soul pool” and then use those souls as resources. The basics of this mechanics were put into effect during the Bount arc, but
Portal has cards that alter the amount of souls you get, the cards you can turn into souls, what you can do with souls, and much much more. The mechanic is very young, but
Portal manages to put a lot of depth into Bount strategies, making the expansion a must for say, tournament players who were using the ever popular Ban and Ho deck.
Aside from cards that actually use the soul mechanic, there are a handful of other cards that take advantage of
Bounts as well. For example, this card here breaks the card limit rule, only for Bount guardians. In fact, a fairly constant theme in
Portal is breaking rules you “shouldn't be able to break”. There are a lot of cards that alter their cost based on certain game states, such as what guardian you choose. There are other cards that break the rules of boosting, characters that can be played on your opponent's turn, lots of cards that make use of the discard pile and way more. Still though, the most interesting cards will definitely be Bount related cards. Though you will find good cards for any deck in
Portal, Bount cards are definitely the focus.
Any and all of the interesting non-bount cards are part of the Memories of Nobody subset. This subset has its own rarity, with a special MON tag being placed before the card number. It feels a lot like its own expansion, focusing more on powerful card draw, recursion, and character based effects, rather than breaking or altering the rules, or using Bount mechanics. In fact, you won't find one Bount card in the subset, fitting since there are no
Bounts in the movie. Instead you will find Blanks, strange soulless creatures that you can swarm your opponent with. There are lots of cards in the Memories of Nobody subset that deal with the number of blanks in play, most of which also deal with the heroine of Memories of Nobody, Senna. However, you will also find new cards for Toshrio Hitsugaya, Rukia, Kenpachi, and many of your other favorite soul reapers. These cards have synergy that deals with their squad, or with other more common game states, so this makes them more likely to combine well with past expansions, than cards from outside of the subset.
Unfortunately, as an expansion,
Portal doesn't stand well on its own. Cards from outside the Memories of Nobody subset want to be combining with cards from the
Bounts expansion, while cards from inside the subset want to play off of Soul Society, Sereitei, and Bankai cards. The expansion feels a lot like two miniature expansions, which is fine, but it doesn't make for very good internally consistent play. This is definitely NOT the expansion you want to start your
Bleach TCG career with, the mechanics, while interesting, are very complex and are geared toward an audience who is already very familiar with the game. In addition there simply aren't very many decks that you can build using
Portal cards and just
Portal cards alone. The modified souls have some nice synergy and of course the Bount cards are powerful, but a viable deck really has to reach back into
Bleach's past releases.
One of the things that has always bothered me about the
Bleach TCG is the fact that card frames change with every expansion. Not only that, but every time they change, the position of key card elements change slightly as well. This is extremely distracting and although the frame change is visually pleasing it is needlessly complicated. This time around the frames don't change once, but twice. Cards out of the subset have one frame and cards inside the subset have another. Cards outside have stats listed toward the top of the card while cards inside have stats listed toward the bottom. This is the single biggest detractor from enjoying
Portal. At this point, veterans to the game can simply search around the card and find what they are looking for, but this doesn't do much for allowing new players to enjoy the set.
Of course the final measurement of how good an expansion is lies in game play, and this is a two sided coin. You see,
Portal in one sense takes a step backward in game design, featuring many cards that are extremely specific, working only with particular characters or guardians. This breaks the long going stride the design team had in trying to make the game more universal. So in a sense,
Portal's game play is somewhat limited. However,
Portal also takes Bount mechanics, which were fairly specific in the Bount expansion, and universalizes them, making them much more accessible and utility driven. This makes a good half of the set feel like it is utility based, even though it is still only based around one subset of cards. It's also impossible to deny the sheer usefulness of some
Portal cards. Even if
Portal doesn't play well by itself, it is littered with cards that make your current
Bleach decks much more powerful.
In conclusion,
Portal is an expansion in the purest sense of the word. It isn't the base game, and cannot serve as a replacement for the base game. However, it does greatly expand on what was already there, in ways that deeply break the
Bleach game design mold. This expansion isn't one that will be easily passed up or forgotten, but it is an expansion that will mostly be seen by people who already play the game and not newbies. The question is whether or not this makes the expansion weaker. Normally I would say yes, however there is just so much inside of
Portal, that I think it makes up for its high learning curve, its complex mechanics, and its changing frame. Overall, if you are a
Bleach fan, pick up some packs of
Portal, you won't be disappointed.
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Presentation Rating = 6.9
Unfortunately, the changing frames are really starting to detract from the absolutely beautiful anime art. The art is just as good as ever however, so quality has not slipped there.
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Gameplay Rating = 7.7
The new mechanics in Portal are its big draw. Not only does it expand on Bounts, it has a number of other powerful effects as well. It doesn't play well by itself but it is still an enjoyable experience.
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Synergy Rating = 8.9
The very reason Portal exists is to expand on previous sets. Portal itself expands on the Bounts set, while the Memories of Nobody subset expands on previous sets.
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Innovation Rating = 9.4
If there is anything that this expansion does, it's break the rules and break the rules well.
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