Let’s Build the TCG We Wish Existed
Pentagon Games5 min read·Just now--
Forty-five cards, six-turn matches, and a game whose final shape depends on the people who play it first.
A Trading Card Game Built With our Community
Closed beta opens soon for our $PEN VIP and Blockchain Superheroes (BCSH) community. Here’s how we’re building BCSH — and why we’re starting with the people who’ve been here longest.
For most of the history of games, the people who play a game and the people who shape it are two different groups. A studio spends years in a closed room, builds something they think will work, ships it, and then learns whether players agree. By that point, fixing what’s broken is expensive. Sometimes impossible.
We think there’s a better way to build the kind of game we want to build. That’s why our closed beta for BCSH, our first TCG, opens this month — and why the first invitations are going to the people who’ve been part of Pentagon longest.
What the game is
BCSH is a digital trading card game. It’s playable in your browser today. Forty-five cards, real mechanics, a working public leaderboard. Six-turn matches that take a few minutes each. Three zones on the board, each one shaping how your cards behave when you deploy them. Chain heroes that connect cards across the board and grow stronger the more you build them.
The world it’s set in already exists. Aiko, the first defender. Ethan, the second to wake up. BCSH heroes formed in response to the Obelith threat. The Nexarch invasion. If you hold a Chain Hero or Foundation Hero NFT, you’ve owned a piece of this universe for a while — the cards are how those characters finally enter active play.
What’s not yet decided is how the game should feel. Which cards are exciting to play with. Which strategies are too dominant and need tuning. Which moments earn a “show me that again.” Where the learning curve is right and where it’s brutal.
These are questions we can’t answer alone. So we’re not going to try.
Why the community shapes this game from the start
There’s a difference between a beta where players are tested on and a beta where players are listened to. We’re trying to build the second kind.
Three major areas, specifically, that BCSH players will shape:
The way the game feels. Pack opening animations. Chain detonation effects. What happens when you win — and what happens when you lose. The play board itself, the rhythm of a match, the moments that make you want to share a clip. These details are not finalized. Our community has eyes that see things we can’t see anymore, and we want those eyes on the game before it ships.
The balance and the meta. Every match generates data. Public match data. Win rates by card, by deck, by faction. When a card is dominating or underperforming, the community sees it at the same time we do. Adjustments get explained, not hidden. The conversation about what’s balanced and what isn’t happens openly, with real numbers on the table.
The lore and the story. The BCSH universe has a canonical arc. Future seasons build on it. Which heroes get featured next, what narratives the seasonal cards explore, how the conflict between Heroes and Nexarch unfolds — these are conversations we want to have with the community.
The thing that makes contribution real
We’ve watched enough game launches to know what “community-driven” usually means: a Discord channel where people leave suggestions and a team that promises to read them. That’s not enough.
So we’re doing something different.
If a community member’s idea is adopted into BCSH TCG, that contributor receives a unique Hero card minted only for contributors. Not for sale. Not airdropped to holders. Not earnable through play. The only way to have one is to have shaped the game.
The supply is implicitly capped — we adopt a small number of suggestions each season. These cards live on-chain alongside the rest of the BCSH collection. Anyone can verify who has one. And once minted, they exist forever.
We think this is the cleanest possible promise: real contribution, real recognition, on-chain. Not a points system. Not a leaderboard for ideas. A specific card that exists because of a specific person.
How to be part of it
The closed beta opens this month. The first invitations are going to our $PEN VIP https://vip.pentagon.games/ and Hero communities — the people who’ve been with Pentagon long enough to have earned a seat at the table.
We’re starting tight so we can actually read every piece of feedback rather than just the loudest. What gets adopted, gets adopted — and the contributor card is how you’ll know.
Anyone, whether or not you’re in the beta, can watch the public leaderboard from day one.
What comes next
After the closed beta, we’ll open the doors wider. The game economy — how cards are earned, how starter sets work, how ownership ties into play — is one more thing we want our early testers to help us shape, not something we’ve pre-decided behind closed doors.
There’s also a parallel track to BCSH that we’ll be writing about separately on Pentagon Chain in the coming days — it’s worth a piece of its own, and it’s a story we want to tell properly.
But all of that depends on this first chapter going right. And this first chapter depends on the people who play it telling us the truth.
If you’ve been part of Pentagon for a while, you’ll see the closed beta invitation soon. If you’re discovering us through this article — welcome. There’s a lot more coming.
About Pentagon Games:
Pentagon Games is developing an entertainment hub powered by its zkEVM-based Pentagon Chain. This platform offers secure, immersive, AI-driven experiences, integrating brands and intellectual properties with Web3 technologies. It aims to drive mass adoption and enable cross-chain interoperability
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