Naruto TCG: The Boruto Card Backlash Explained

There’s a thread on r/NarutoCardGame right now that pretty much bottles the mood. The title: „Why the hell are Boruto cards in the Naruto TCG?“ User ThatThingTheDarkSoul walks through the whole fantasy of cracking a pack. The anticipation, maybe something rare, maybe something genuinely cool from Naruto. And then there it is. Boruto.

„Absolutely devastating. Money wasted. Dreams shattered. Pack ruined.“

Theatrical, sure. But the frustration underneath is real, and it’s pointed at a decision Bandai already made.

One detail gets lost in that thread: nobody has opened a pack yet. The NARUTO CARD GAME doesn’t ship until Summer 2027. So this is pre-emptive anger. Which doesn’t make it invalid, but it does change what we’re actually arguing about.

Three eras, five cards, zero Boruto

So what’s actually on the table? In the official announcement from July 29, Bandai Card Games confirmed the game pulls from all three chapters of the series: Naruto, Naruto Shippuden, and Boruto: Naruto Next Generations. Straight out of the press release, no interpretation needed.

Here’s the part that keeps getting skipped, though. Not a single one of the officially revealed cards is a Boruto card. The press release names Naruto Uzumaki, Sasuke Uchiha, Sakura Haruno, Jiraiya, and Itachi Uchiha. Other names float around in coverage. Sometimes Tsunade, sometimes Orochimaru, occasionally Boruto himself. None of that holds up against the official channels. So the community is currently furious about a line in a marketing blurb, not about a card anyone has held.

The rules framework Bandai confirmed is public too: one Leader, 51 cards built around it, plus five Chakra cards and one Summon card. You grind the opposing Leader’s Life down to zero, and Jutsu cost Chakra. Tight, compact, and a lot closer to the One Piece Card Game than to a sticker album.

Why this honestly doesn’t bother me

I’ve been playing Magic since the cards were still sitting in cardboard trays at the back of a comic shop. In all that time one lesson has repeated itself in every single card game I’ve touched: a card’s value has nothing to do with how much you like the character on it.

One Piece followed the exact same script. When movie characters and side cast started landing in sets, plenty of people called it dilution. Two years later everyone sorts their decks by effect, not by affection. A card that flips a board gets played. A card with the fan-favorite face and a bad effect goes in the bulk box. That’s it, that’s the whole mechanism.

If Bandai prints a Boruto card that does real work in a competitive shell, it gets played, bought, and priced accordingly. And if it’s weak, nobody will be talking about it six months later, whoever’s face is on the frame.

There’s a practical case for bringing Boruto in from day one, too. A TCG launching in 2027 has to keep shipping sets for years afterward. It needs a supply of characters, forms, and storylines. Cut the third era out of the pool up front and you’ve shrunk your own library before the game even exists. Bandai has enough experience from Union Arena and One Piece to know how fast a character pool empties out when you start too narrow.

Where the frustration does start to make sense

That said, I don’t want to wave the concern off entirely.

It gets real the moment Boruto cards start landing in the high rarity slots. If the chase card of a box happens to feature a character a big chunk of the buyer base has no interest in, that’s a problem. Not in gameplay, but in the secondary market: those cards drop in price, the box gets less attractive as a package, and eventually retailers start asking why the cases aren’t moving.

That’s a math problem, not a taste problem. It’s also why I’ll be reading the October reveals closely. Not for the effects. For how the eras are spread across the rarities.

For those of us in Europe the timing works out nicely, by the way: Bandai is bringing the NCG to SPIEL in Essen from October 22 to 25, tutorial sessions included. Want to know how heavily each era is represented before then? Flipping through a few demo decks will probably tell you.

My take

What’s happening right now is a fandom argument wearing a card game costume. Boruto has split the Naruto community for years, and that’s old news. The only new thing is that the fight has attached itself to a product nobody has bought yet.

I’d wait. Bandai has more information queued up for December, and by the time the fall events wrap up we’ll know how much Boruto is actually in there. Maybe it’s two cards per set. Maybe it’s an entire color. Either answer sends this debate somewhere completely different.

Here’s what I want to know: would a Boruto card genuinely upset you if it won you the game? Or is that a line no amount of good design gets to cross? Drop it in the comments, I’m curious how this lands outside the usual corners of the internet.

Sources

Bandai Card Games: NARUTO CARD GAME Shows Its Hand (PR Newswire, July 29, 2026)
NARUTO CARD GAME Official Website
r/NarutoCardGame: „Why the hell are Boruto cards in the Naruto TCG?“

Kenearos