Palworld TCG: A Beginner's Guide to Getting Started

If you've spent any time in Palworld catching, battling, and bossing around your Pals, the card game version is going to feel instantly familiar — and if you've never touched the video game, that's fine too. The Palworld Official Card Game (often just called the Palworld TCG or Palworld OCG) is a standalone two-player trading card game, officially licensed from Pocketpair and published by Bushiroad, and it's built to be easy to pick up from a cold start.

Here's everything you need to know before your first game.

What Is the Palworld TCG?

The Palworld Official Card Game puts you in charge of a team of Pals, battling head-to-head against an opponent using a mix of four card types:

• Pal Cards — your creatures, each with their own stats and abilities
• Gear Cards — weapons and tools that power up your Pals in combat
• Event Cards — one-off effects that can swing a game in your favour
• Structure Cards — bases and persistent effects, just like building at camp in the video game

Every card uses brand-new original artwork made specifically for the card game — none of it is reused from the video game — so even players who know these Pals inside and out will be seeing them in a new light.

How the Game Works

Each player builds a 50-card Main Deck plus a separate 10-card Soul Deck, which acts as your resource system for playing cards throughout the match. Decks are built around a colour identity — Red, Blue, Green, or Purple — and you can combine up to two colours, plus any number of Colourless cards, giving you real deckbuilding choices without an overwhelming card pool to learn on day one.

The Easiest Way to Start: Trial Decks

The fastest way into the game is a Trial Deck — a ready-to-play 50-card Main Deck and 10-card Soul Deck built by the game's designers, so there's zero deckbuilding required to have your first match. HCA currently has both Set 1 Trial Decks in stock:

• Dawn of Palpagos Trial Deck — Red/Blue ($54.99)
• Dawn of Palpagos Trial Deck — Green/Purple ($54.99)

Each Trial Deck comes with more than just the deck itself — a 60-card set (Main Deck + Soul Deck), a paper playmat, a play guide, a life counter, a material/ingredient counter, and a bonus pack of the Dawn of Palpagos booster to crack open once you're hooked. Every Trial Deck also guarantees one parallel-rarity card, so there's a chase pull built in even before you touch a booster pack.

Grab one of each colour pairing and you've got a complete two-player game out of the box — no extra purchases needed to sit down and play with a mate on day one.

Ready to Chase Rarities? Go Sealed

Once you're past your first few games and want to start building your own deck or hunting rarer pulls, the Dawn of Palpagos Booster Box ($239.99, 12 packs) is the next step — 7 cards per pack, drawn from a pool of 161 unique cards across the set, including SP and SSP parallel variants.

What's Coming Next

Dawn of Palpagos is just the start. Bushiroad already has the next two sets on the calendar:

• Legends Awaken (BP02) — pre-order now, releasing 30 October 2026
• Eternal Ascent (BP03) — booster pre-order now for 29 January 2027, with the Red/Green and Blue/Purple Trial Decks landing earlier on 18 December 2026

Where to Start Playing in Fairfield

Cards are only half the game — the other half is having someone to play against. Pick up a Trial Deck (or two) online or in-store at HCA in Fairfield, and keep an eye on our in-store events calendar and Discord community as we look at getting Palworld TCG onto the table for local play.

Shop the full Palworld Official Card Game range at Hobby Collectors Australia →