New “ex Battle Decks” for Victini ex and Miraidon ex in July, Feature New Artwork!

By: Water Pokémon Master · Posted Posted onApr 25, 2024 at 11:30 AM · 11 Comments

A new set of “ex Battle Decks” will release on July 12th for $9.99 each.

They’ll feature Victini ex and Miraidon ex from Obsidian Flames. Both cards feature brand new artwork that hasn’t been seen in Japan yet. They may release in Japan’s annual end of the year set.

In February, Melmetal ex and Houndoom ex also received English-exclusive artwork in their ex Battle Decks. Neither have released in Japan yet.

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These decks are getting progressively worse. Chien Pao and tinkaton ones were the right level.

Waste of $10 bucks, even the $20 ones are much better value for beginners as it has multiples of key cards.

I would even argue that the $30 ones aare the most optimal way to start playing as kitchen table level pokemon TCG doesn't exist anymore because game is so cheap and everyone has access to top tier decks so using level 1-2 decks in locals will result in a poor experience.

Also, they need to stop with miraidon. It has level 1,2 & 3 level decks
 
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TandemTCG said:
What about the Starter deck things releasing in September? Maybe some of these come in with those?
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The ones from this article that release in November? None of these pokémon are featured in the list of exs. In fact, all four of them are from last year's starter decks.
 
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FireLizard said:
Who misses theme decks?
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I miss the cracked ice holofoil, but I don't particularly miss the theme decks of the XY and early Sun and Moon era. People who grew up with the 2018 and especially the 2019 theme decks are probably in a different boat, however. That Dragonite theme deck from Unified Minds really sets a different standard for entry level products, with a solid number of trainers and a coherent strategy built around Pokémon with actual synergy, plus abilities to help you both accelerate Energy and draw cards.

From a purely gameplay perspective, of course, I would rather buy one of these decks than something closer to an XY theme deck's standards. It gives you a head start on just throwing in multi prize Pokémon, which is what I probably should have been doing instead of replacing all the duplicates in my Zapdos theme deck with jank like a creased Legend Maker Cascoon and no Dust (I wish I was kidding).

@afr1234 actually makes an interesting point about kitchen table level gameplay... I know a college student who learned to play the game with a Chien-Pao ex deck I've been helping him upgrade. He wants the satisfaction of constructing his own deck and testing different ideas, but his brothers just skipped to buying the World Championship reprint decks. I dismantled the only World Championship deck I ever bought as a child well before I'd figured out how strong it was, but after several years of playing Pokémon with more competitive decks, I can see why many kids would just buy the World Championship decks for playing at home, especially if they thought it would make them the victor in their sibling rivalry (Spoiler: It wouldn't. Not after the parents made them start using their own homemade decks again or the sibling rivals bought their own decks).
 
FireLizard said:
Who misses theme decks?
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I would if they were competitively bad, but well built and tailored to be "good" decks in relation to each other. Hell, even when they were as bad as they were, playing theme format on ptcgo was fun (I'm a sucker for "deliberately low power level" formats in TCGs). Now imagine they were well built, with enough copies of the same cards to give some level of consistency to them, and cohesive lines of attackers and support mons (no rulebox, just regular low powerlevel cards). If acquiring singles wasn't such a damn hassle here in my country, I would build those decks myself, just to have that playing experience. If they made them good to go out of the box, I would buy them every time and just have this big pool of cool little underpowered (but competitive towards each other) decks to have fun with my wife and friends who aren't hardcore TCG fans like myself.
 
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