V-Tamer 01 is pretty good, but I only skimmed through it years ago (I didn't actually read it because, at the time, I didn't know near as much Japanese as I do now and only the first couple volumes had been scanlated). For the record, while a single Tamer is featured as the protagonist, there are other Tamers in the series (though they mainly act as antagonists). It's also worth noting that evolution is (for the most part) permanent in this one, much as it is in the original V-pets which it very heavily takes after.
If anyone else was studious on the original V-pet releases, I find it worth noting that V-dramon is a Digimon introduced for the sake of the manga, and in the story, it was treated as some kind of special glitched Digimon. However, they later included V-dramon (and Aero V-dramon) in the Digimon Pendulum LCD series (to be specific, Pendulum 4: Wind Guardians). From what I understand, the Digimon Pendulums were just coming out by the time the manga was first being made (the first chapter even has Taichi doing a little product-placement for them). In spite of this, Pendulums 1-5 all seem to be alluded to in the story (most notably in the crests that Taichi collects).
Tamers (never thought I would see that word in a new season)
strange how only one (thus far) series of the anime has used that term to describe the "people with Partner Digimon", in spite of the fact that it's fairly prominent almost everywhere else in the franchise (the Ryou games that take place in the Adventure universe even used "Tamer" in their titles, and possibly in-story, oddly enough).
Well except it takes place in Japan where it would be perfectly logical that a card game alone would be enough. Then again the Japanese version also talks about there being "video games." So it's possible there wasn't a TV show and the card game came about solely because of the popularity of the video games themselves.
funnily enough, Tamers showed Jenrya getting excited when his father brought back an American Digimon game. Rather odd considering the only Digimon games released in the west are a select number of localized console/portable games (most prominently the Digimon World and Digimon Story series) filled with typo-ridden translations, and a very limited number of LCD toys that seem like a hollow shell of their Japanese counterparts. If an American Digimon game can be THAT good, then either Jenrya's some kind of import enthusiast (well, he does seem like a bit of an otaku), or this MUST be an alternate version of our world's Digimon media. 'Course, the fact that we don't (to my knowledge) have a game where you can play as Terriermon fighting Gorimon in a desert is probably enough indication of that.