Chakra Is Not the Only Thing You Pay in the NARUTO Card Game — The 7 Kinds of Price the 38 Confirmed Entries Demand

This article is commentary and analysis by this site. To keep it distinct from official facts, reasoning and speculation are clearly labeled.

When you try to judge whether a card is strong, the first thing you look at is its cost. In the NARUTO Card Game that means the number in the upper left of the frame — the chakra cost.

Line up every confirmed card, though, and the cards that actually carry that number turn out to be the minority. Of the 38 entries registered in our card database, only 12 have a readable cost number. The four EX Characters — the game’s trump cards — have no cost box at all.

So what do the cards without a cost box give up instead? Reading the effect text with an eye for “payment” turns up seven distinct kinds of price.

7 kindsKinds of price confirmedAs of Aug 19

12Cards with a printed cost number

0EX Characters that pay chakraAll four pay none

2Cards that pay an extra price with "Then,"

About this article: The figures below are tallied from the 38 entries registered in our card database. The sources are the sample card images on the official “About the NARUTO Card Game” page and scans of the English demo cards handed out at Gen Con 2026 (SAMPLE watermark, NOT FOR SALE marking); each card’s source URL is recorded on its database page. The official rulebook and comprehensive rules are unpublished, and the demo cards may not match the retail release. Below we use price as a catch-all for both “what you hand over to use an effect” and “what you lose as part of the effect” — this is not official terminology.

1. The full list — 7 kinds and how many cards demand each

Counting everything confirmed from the effect text and the card frame, by kind:

Cards demanding each kind of price (38 confirmed entries)

Chakra (printed cost box) 8 at cost 1, 4 at cost 212cards

Put your Characters in the trash [Summon Requirements] on 4 EX Characters4cards

Rest a card 2 Leaders + the Summon Card3cards

Reduce your own life N-009 Kakashi Hatake1cards

Cannot turn chakra face up N-016 Shisui Uchiha1cards

Put a card from hand on top of deck N-012 Sasuke Uchiha1cards

Turn 1 chakra face down (in text) N-001 Naruto Uzumaki1cards

Let’s walk through where each one is written on the card.

2. Chakra — the 12 cards that pay with a number

This is the most straightforward price. The official site describes the Chakra Card as “a card required to activate support effects such as ninjutsu,” and the Chakra Card C-001 itself reads:

When using Chakra, turn this card face-down.

In other words, chakra is not spent so much as flipped face down. The details of the five-card resource are collected in our complete guide to Chakra Cards.

Twelve confirmed cards carry a number in the cost box.

Cost	Cards	Names
1	8	Choji Akimichi, Hinata Hyuga, Shikamaru Nara N-008, Kakashi Hatake N-009, Karin N-010, Shisui Uchiha N-016, Suigetsu Hozuki N-021, Sakura Haruno
2	4	Naruto Uzumaki N-004, Jiraiya N-006, Orochimaru, Sasuke Uchiha (Chidori)

All twelve are Character cards that carry a [Support] line on the frame. So within what is confirmed, the correspondence is: the number in the cost box is the price for activating a support effect. What the difference between cost 1 and cost 2 actually buys is covered in the Aug 16 chakra cost analysis, and the removal-specific pattern in the Aug 18 removal analysis.

Note: The procedure itself — “turn face down as many chakra as the printed number” — is not stated in any published rulebook. The correspondence above is only what can be read from the card text plus the official site’s description.

3. Putting your own Characters in the trash — the 4 EX Characters

The four confirmed EX Characters have no cost box. In its place, two lines appear:

Cannot be summoned normally. [Summon Requirements] Place 1 of your Characters with 10 or more power in your trash. (Gamabunta N-005)

Line up all four sets of [Summon Requirements] and what they ask for is consistently Characters on your field.

Gamabunta N-005 — 1 of your Characters with 10 or more power
Manda N-022 — 1 of your Characters
Naruto Uzumaki N-003 — 1 of your Characters, and 1 of your Characters with 10 or more power
Sasuke Uchiha N-014 — 1 of your Characters, and 1 of your {The Taka} type Characters

None of the four asks for a single chakra. This is one of the clearest design decisions visible so far: the trump cards of this game cannot be bought with chakra — they are bought with your board. Holding chakra in reserve does not put you closer to playing a big card.

Read the other way, it also means your chakra is entirely intact on the turn you summon an EX Character. EX Sasuke (N-014) has [Rush] and an [On Summon] removal effect, so on paper you can summon, attack immediately, and still have your face-down supports ready. That said, the detailed timing and processing order are unannounced, so this is strictly “what the text says if you read it literally.”

For a comparison of how heavy each summon requirement is, see our EX Character guide; for every confirmed route onto the field, see the summon routes roundup.

4. Finding 1: Only 2 cards pay later with “Then,” — and both are negation

This is the part that stood out most. Exactly two confirmed cards attach an extra price with the connective “Then,”.

[Support] Lightning Blade
[Support Activated] Negate that card. Then, reduce your life by 2. (Kakashi Hatake N-009)

[Support] Koto Amatsukami
[Support Activated] Negate that card. Then, from this turn until the end of your next turn’s End Phase, you cannot turn your CHAKRA face-up. (Shisui Uchiha N-016)

These two are also the only confirmed cards that negate an opponent’s support. They are likewise the only two carrying the [Support Activated] keyword.

So within what is confirmed, the design is consistent: negation always comes with an additional price. And the two prices are of completely different natures.

Kakashi pays 2 life (with a Leader’s life at 15, that is roughly 13% paid up front)
Shisui pays chakra reuse — the Leader’s [Recovery] action of turning chakra face up is locked until the end phase of your next turn

Both cost 1. The same cost, the same “negate that card” effect, and two completely different kinds of penalty — a useful baseline for comparison once more cards appear.

Worth noting: the two prices differ in what they hit, but both are paid by you. No confirmed card demands anything of the opponent (making them pay life, locking their chakra).

5. Finding 2: Only one card — a Leader — pays with its hand

The Leader effect on Sasuke Uchiha (N-012) reads:

[Activate: Main] [Once Per Turn] Draw 1 card and place 1 card from your hand on top of your deck.

You draw and return the same number, so your hand size does not grow. What that effect is really doing — being the only confirmed way to set the top of your deck — is covered in detail in the Aug 10 deck-top article.

The point here is that no other confirmed card takes your hand as a price. The “discard a card” style of cost common in other TCGs has not appeared. Only two confirmed cards touch the hand at all: this N-012, and Sakura Haruno (Cha!), which returns a Character to its owner’s hand.

6. Finding 3: Three cards pay by resting — and all three rest something different

Card	Text	What gets rested
N-001Naruto Uzumaki N-001	[Recovery] If it is the second turn or later, rest this card and flip all of your CHAKRA face-up.	Your Leader
N-012Sasuke Uchiha N-012	(identical)	Your Leader
S-001Summon Card S-001	You may rest this card to summon a Character card.	The Summon Card

The two Leaders share word-for-word identical [Recovery] text: they rest themselves in exchange for turning all chakra face up at once. The Summon Card instead rests one at a time, each time you put a Character onto the field.

Unconfirmed: When a rested card becomes active (upright) again has not been announced for either Leaders or Summon Cards. Without that, “how many Characters can you summon in one turn” cannot be pinned down either, so the confirmed information is not yet enough to model how a deck actually flows. The turn structure itself is readable as a four-phase system from the playmat handed out at Gen Con 2026.

7. A price that isn’t printed — the collateral damage of mass removal

Strictly speaking this is not a price, but two mass-removal cards effectively cost you something too.

[Support] Rasengan
[During Your Main] K.O. all Characters. (Naruto Uzumaki N-004; Chidori: One Thousand Birds has identical text)

There is no “your” qualifier, so your own Characters are caught in it too. How the presence or absence of “your” determines the scope of an effect is covered in the article on reading effect targets.

Read as “cost 2 plus your own board,” these are effectively expensive cards. But since the frame does not print that as a price, they are excluded from the tallies above.

8. General TCG principles — how to read a game with many kinds of cost

The following is not confirmed fact but general reasoning shared across trading card games.

In a game with a single cost currency (mana, energy), you can judge a card by asking whether it earns its number. When there are several resources to spend, the number of axes for comparison multiplies. Is “1 chakra” heavier than “2 life,” or than “1 Character on your board”? That answer changes with the board state every single time.

The common beginner mistake in such games is judging power purely by the visible number. As we saw above, the four confirmed EX Characters have no cost box — and that emphatically does not mean they are free.

What actually helps in play is the habit of putting into words, every time, what you personally lose by using a card. For how to evaluate cards in general see the basics of card evaluation, and for counting resources see card advantage and tempo.

9. What is still unknown

How the printed cost number maps to the number of chakra actually turned face down (rulebook unpublished)
When rested Leaders and Summon Cards become active again
When and in what order Characters are put in the trash to meet [Summon Requirements]
Whether any support pays a price other than chakra (only Kakashi and Shisui so far)
Whether any text demands something of the opponent (zero confirmed)
Whether cards above cost 2 exist (only 1 and 2 are confirmed)

These should become clear at the next major reveal, New York Comic Con 2026 (Oct 8–11), and with the eventual rulebook release.

Summary

Of 38 confirmed entries, only 12 print a cost number. All are Character cards with a [Support] line — 8 at cost 1, 4 at cost 2
The four EX Characters have no cost box and pay zero chakra. Their price is putting your own Characters in the trash — trump cards are bought with the board, not with chakra
There are seven kinds of price in total: chakra / Characters / life / hand / locked chakra recovery / resting your Leader / resting a Summon Card
Only two cards pay an extra price with a “Then,” clause (N-009 Kakashi Hatake and N-016 Shisui Uchiha). Those two are also the only confirmed negation cards, so negation always carries a penalty
Zero confirmed cards demand anything of the opponent

Every confirmed card is catalogued in our card database, the meaning of each notation in the keyword and notation guide, and how to approach the rules in the improvement roadmap. We will update this article as new cards reveal further kinds of price.