Completionists beware – the new Pokemon Trading Card Game set could take you a while to collect. This week, the Pokemon Trading Card Game will officially release Paldea Evolved, the second set of the game’s current Scarlet & Violet cycle. The new set combines three Japanese sets together (along with a few unreleased promo cards) into a single massive set, creating one of the biggest Pokemon TCG sets of all time. With over 279 cards (and over them 80 classified as “Secret Rare” cards, which have pull rates as high as 1 in 40 sets), collectors will have to work to collect the full set, although they’ll certainly be rewarded with some extraordinary cards.
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Before digging into Paldea Evolved’s bloated size, it’s probably best to talk about how “Paldea Evolved” actually impacts the Pokemon TCG card game. The Scarlet & Violet cards generally emphasize low energy cost attacks and moves, with numerous abilities designed to quickly place Energy cards and cycle Energy cards in and out of the discard pile. The goal of Scarlet & Violet generally seems to be to get Pokemon fully operational in a hurry so they can quickly deal damage to opponents.
Paldea Evolved continues both of these trends with a potent card combo that almost certainly will become a meta-relevant deck. The Baxcalibur/Chien-Pao ex combo allows players to quickly pull Water energy cards from their deck and then freely play them to any Pokemon. Chien-Pao ex’s attack deals damage based on the number of Water energy discarded from it, so players will also need to use the Superior Energy Retrieval card (also in this set) to pull energy back from the Discard pile.
Chi-Yu ex is another card that should see a lot of play in Fire-themed decks, with the ability to discard cards from an opponent’s deck and an attack that quickly pulls Fire energy out of a player’s deck and into their hand. It’s another great set-up card and should help set up decks very quickly.
Weirdly, one of the most important cards to come out of the Paldea Evolved deck is Iono, a supporter card that forces both players to dump their hands to the bottom of the deck and replace them with cards equal to the number of prizes in their hand. In the late game, Iono has the potential to be a crippling play against opponents and becomes a “must have” for players in every deck. Iono is that rare trifecta of a card in which it has multiple Secret rare cards, is meta-relevant, and features a popular female character, which has led to its value peaking both internationally and in early pre-releases.
There are plenty of other cards that will likely make a major impact in the metagame – there are four new Special Energy cards that provide players with more options and cards specifically designed to cancel and disrupt abilities, which seem like very valuable supporting Pokemon cards in some meta-relevant decks. I’m not the most fluent in the current state of the Pokemon TCG metagame, but even I can see that there are plenty of cards designed to make an immediate impact on powerful decks and shake things up significantly.
With discussion of the cards themselves out of the way, we should probably talk about the wider issue of Paldea Evolved – its gargantuan set size. On the plus size, the “official” set size is only 193 cards, meaning that there are far fewer cards to parse through and determine what makes the most sense for your deck. The remaining 86 cards are “Secret Rare” cards with variant card art styles, with the most popular of these cards being “Illustration Rare” cards, cards with high quality art that extends the full length of the card. IIllustration Rares (and their predecessors Alternate Art Rare cards) have been something of a revelation for the Pokemon Trading Card Game as they’ve become incredibly popular, with fans often spending a TON of money in the hopes of grabbing their desired chase card from a set. The amount of Illustration Rare cards per set have blown up since they were first introduced in 2019, expanding from just 3 Alternate Art Rare cards in the original Team Up set to nearly 50 Illustration Rare and Secret Illustration rare cards in Paldea Evolved.
The collector in me is really torn by rapidly expanding number of Secret Rares in every set. On one side, I love the look of the cards and the fact that the cards feature more than the same handful of Pokemon over and over again. Illustration Rare cards focus on non-Pokemon ex cards, meaning that even mundane Pokemon like Drowsee and Magikarp have their moment in the sun. And the artwork on these cards are just top-notch and showcase one of the unheralded strengths of the Pokemon Trading Card Game.
However, the chase for these cards opens the way for a lot of excess. Through various pre-release tournaments and some packs provided by The Pokemon Company for this review, I’ve opened a total of 35 packs and I’ve already collected 158 of the 193 non-Secret Rare cards in the set. To be blunt, it’s probably not going to take long before I’m opening packs solely in the hopes of getting a Secret Rare card for my collection, which has a pull rate of about 1 in every 13 to 15 packs. Now, I’m an adult with full access to the Internet and a basic understanding that it’s much cheaper to buy singles than to play the lottery, but my 8-year old still expressed disappointment when we reached a similar point in our chase for every Scarlet & Violet card. He loved the thrill of opening up packs and didn’t understand the cost analysis involved. And perhaps most importantly – he’s the ideal consumer for these cards, not me.
Ultimately, the Pokemon Trading Card Game seems to have found their sweet spot with their recent sets – lots of chase cards means lots of sales. However, I wonder if having too many chase cards is a bane instead of a boon. While the thrill of the chase is a big part of the joy of collecting Pokemon cards, my wallet is already cringing at the prospect of chasing after nearly 80 “special” cards over the next couple of years.
The Pokemon Trading Card Game’s Paldea Evolved set will be released on June 9th.
