New Steam Siege Expansion Announced for Pokemon Trading Card Game

The Pokemon Company announced a new expansion for the popular Pokemon Trading Card Game, featuring characters from this summer's Pokemon movie. "Steam Siege" is the twelfth expansion in the current "XY" TCG series and features Volcanion and Shiny Gardevoir, two of the main Pokemon from Volcanion and the Exquisite Magearna, out later this year. The expansion also reintroduces dual-type cards to the card game, which have been absent since the 2010 "HeartGold and SoulSilver" series.

In addition to Volcanion and Gardevoir, the new expansion will also introduce a new mega evolution card, M-Steelix EX, as one of six new powerful EX cards as well as several new BREAK cards (which are basically supercharged Evolution cards). In total, "Steam Siege" will add 110 new cards to the Pokemon Trading Card Game. Probably the most interesting wrinkle to "Steam Siege" is that it will be released on August 3, 2016, just a few weeks before the annual World Championships in San Francisco. That means that players can incorporate the new cards into their decks, adding some potentially unexpected wrinkles to the year's biggest Pokemon tournament.

In related news, the Pokemon Company also announced a new box set featuring Ho-Oh and Wobbuffet BREAK cards. The new box set will go on sale later this year and will be the only way to get the promo Ho-Oh and Wobbuffet cards.