It’s a good week to love TCG leaks. We received a plethora of updates last night for Pokemon TCG’s first Scarlet & Violet set.
We’ve been blessed with a lot of new products, cards and set inclusion updates. Let’s dive right in!
NEW ART RARES
Firstly, Pokemon Japan have dropped some more Art Rares, pictured below.
These give us a glimpse into what is emerging as a consistent theme, in storylines running through Art Rares. They’ve done a good job with these so far and including Scyther in these is a nice touch. Shout out to all my Scyther fans out there!
NEW PROMOS
There is no news yet on how or when these will be released but 8 ‘PROMO’ marked cards have released. They appear to be 8 of the first 10 SV-P promotional cards. Nothing crazy in this batch but a few nice artworks including Arcanine and Spidops.
PRERELEASE PROMOS REVEALED
The 4 Prerelease promos for Scarlet & Violet have been revealed as Revavroom, Hawlucha, Pawmot, and Quaquaval.
Scarlet & Violet was a mixed bag of new Pokemon and we’ve received the same in our promos. 3 new-generation Pokemon and 1 random Gen 6 Pokemon.
SCARLET & VIOLET ETB DETAILS RELEASED
This is a big one. The first of the promotional cards we know we’ll be getting in every single ETB now (not just special sets) have dropped and they are stunning. Miraidon and Koraidon feature in their own ETBs and both cards are promotional Art Rares.
Whilst these are not available in Australia, The Pokemon Centre ETBs will come with 2 of the corresponding Pokemon’s cards. 1 with a stamp and 1 without. So the Miraidon will feature a stamped Miraidon and a non-stamped Miraidon with the Koraidon featuring a stamped Koraidon and a non-stamped Koraidon.
All Pokemon Centre pre-orders will receive a LeChonk promotional card for each item pre-ordered.
It looks like we have 2 separate ETBs for this set. One Scarlet and one Violet. Booster Box designs and pack art for English sets have now been released as well.
The full regular set has now been revealed, with only the big hitters at the back end of the set left to come. With some stunning artworks accompanied by silver borders, this set will look pretty at the very least. The full EX gallery accompanied by some select regular cards features below.
SCARLET AND VIOLET RARITIES AND SECRET CARDS
We have some reasonably concrete information regarding the types of cards we’ll see in this set now, thanks to The Pokemon Center International.
There will be:
- 12 ‘Double Rare’ cards. These are our EX cards above, minus 1 from the above gallery, which will not be included. 2 of these 12 will be Tera Pokemon (we know these to be Gyarados and Arcanine).
- 12 Ultra Rare Pokemon EX cards and 8 Ultra Rare Supporter cards. These will be our full art cards.
- 24 ‘Illustration Rare’ cards. These are referred to as ‘Art Rares’ or AR cards in Japanese sets. They will be known as Illustration Rares in English and we currently know of Ralts, Kirlia, Tarountula, Slowpoke, Armarouge, Greavard etc.
- 10 ‘Special Illustration Rare’ cards. These are referred to as ‘Special Art Rares’ or SAR cards in Japanese sets. They will be known as Special Illustration Rares in English and we currently know of Spidops and Gardevoir. I expect these to be the most sought after ‘Alt Art’ style cards. These will also include Supporter cards.
- 6 Hyper Rare Etched Gold cards. There are Trainer cards, Energy cards and Pokemon EX cards included in this. These probably mirror what we’ve seen throughout SWSH with Gold cards but there’s still hope we could see something spectacular like the Crown Zenith Gold Alts. Here’s hoping.
So, it looks like this is a roughly 200 card set with a similar theme to most late-stage SWSH sets. It appears that there are more ‘alternate art’ style cards, however we still don’t know exactly what this looks like inclusion wise. A ‘Gyarados Alt’ would be a huge win for collectors though, as a kick-off present for Scarlet and Violet. It will be interesting to see what emerges as a collecting chase, as more illustration cards could split opinion. Alternatively, it could end up exactly like Evolving Skies, which I’m sure very few people would be mad at.
The stage is set for a big kick off to S&V. More updates will be posted as they come.
BRING BACK THE FAIRY ENERGY! THERE’S STILL TIME!
Champy.
