I Attended A Cyberpunk TCG Beta Event - Here’s Everything I Learned About The New Game

Published Sep 20, 2026, 3:12 PM EDT Carrie is a Senior Writer at ScreenRant who previously managed Geek to Geek Media and wrote for SwitchRPG. She is particularly knowledgeable when it comes to WoW, Diablo, and cozy games. She has a passion for supporting the indies and always enjoys sharing her passions with others through her writing. As a huge fan of both trading card games and Cyberpunk 2077, there's no way I could pass up trying out the new Cyberpunk TCG as soon as possible. Based on the Cyberpunk universe, including the massively popular video game, Cyberpunk 2077, and the animated miniseries, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, this new trading card game already has a lot of lore and fans behind it. The full retail release for the Cyberpunk TCG won't happen until November 6, with a retail pre-release weekend taking place on October 30. However, many game stores were able to hold in-store Beta Events this past week for an early look at the cards and gameplay. Thankfully, this included my own friendly local game store, where I got to try it out. I'm still learning this game as well, so some of these rules may not be correct! What The Cyberpunk TCG Beta Event Consisted Of In a way, this Cyberpunk TCG Beta Event was a sort of pre-pre-release. After purchasing the Beta Event Kit box, players got a chance to look through their cards and get a feel for the attacks and setup. The box included the following: Six Welcome to Night City booster packs Three additional random Legend cards One Beta Event promo card, a Nova Rare "Mantis Blades" One full set of Cyberpunk TCG dice, including a D4, D6, D8, D10, D12, and D20 The Beta event was considered a "sealed deck" format, with special rules that are a bit different than what the normal gameplay will be. This is due to the fact that we were pretty limited in our card choices for building the decks. Whereas the game will require decks to consider RAM and color limitations, as well as a specified number of copies of a card we can have in our deck, here we were given pretty much free rein. The stipulations we had were that we could only have up to three colors in the deck, must have three Legends, and decks would have at least 30 non-Legend cards in the main deck. It was also recommended that at least 15 of those cards have the Eddies symbol on them so they could be "sold" as a resource to play cards. In between rounds, we could swap cards from our deck out with unused cards in our sideboard, so we could tweak things as we learned. These Legends can be powerful game changers, as I quickly learned when one of my opponents stacked a ton of gear on one and completely trounced me. Once we began playing, there were several rounds, each consisting of about an hour. Each round, we would play three games against our opponent before switching to a new opponent. Of course, none of us really knew how to play the game yet, so it was a fun chance for us all to share the same giddy excitement, as well as to stumble around together with the rules. Playing The Cyberpunk TCG Trying to decide what other TCGs the Cyberpunk TCG could compare to proved difficult, with some players thinking it felt like Magic: The Gathering, and others, like myself, seeing comparisons to Disney Lorcana and even Yu-Gi-Oh!. If you've played other TCGs, you will likely find the general gameplay of resource gathering and combat rules feel familiar. Essentially, in your goal to become a Night City Legend, you want to collect the most Gig dice. Once players can hold onto seven Gig dice to the point that they start their turn with them, they win. Alternatively, there is an overtime mode if things start to go past the final player's seventh turn. As you play, you want to send Units into the field and equip them with Gear cards to make them stronger or give them useful abilities. Program cards can be used as essentially Instants or Disney Lorcana's Song cards to do a one-time attack. There are also rules for how to block attacks from your enemy, giving the game a little more interactivity and back and forth. Each turn you get to add a Gig die from your pool of seven dice, as well as draw a card, ready your cards, "sell" a card to the Eddies pool, and play from your hand. You can fight to steal your rival player's Gigs, or take down one of their Units. You also have three Legend cards that start the game face-down, which you can pay to flip over, so their abilities are active. Then, if they have the "Go Solo" keyword, you can also pay to bring the Legend up to the playing field to attack. These Legends can be powerful game changers, as I quickly learned when one of my opponents stacked a ton of gear on one and completely trounced me. This Game Is Perfect For Cyberpunk 2077 Fans, But Fun For All Of course, fans of Cyberpunk 2077 will love all the references in these cards. Whether it's playing with V as a Legend, deploying a Johnny Silverhand Unit card, or any number of familiar characters, this feels like a true extension of that universe. Those of us who knew the game were excitedly showing each other some of our favorites and laughing about some of the abilities. However, there were also many at this Cyberpunk TCG Beta Event who had never played the video game or had any familiarity with the universe, but still loved this game. In fact, several said they were going to get Cyberpunk 2077 after trying the TCG, which I feel is a testament to just how good this TCG is. Now, I'm just sad I have several weeks to wait before the full release of the Cyberpunk TCG. Cyberpunk TCG Franchise Cyberpunk Original Release Date October 30, 2026 Publisher WeirdCo Designer Richard Zapp Player Count 2 Number Of Cards ~150 cards, ~50 per deck