August's English Set: 'Darkness Ablaze,' Plus Two New Types of Products!

SableyeGuy

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Basically, for 3 energy you do 170. For 4 you do 220. For 5 you fo 270. But for anything after five energy (which is two more than the attack cost) You still do 270.
 

johnwick

Aspiring Trainer
Member
I noticed that in Rebel Clash, the secret rare Frostmoth is from SwSh. With that said, maybe the Rainbow Charizard can be in a future set as a secret? Or part of a exclusive Holiday set in the future (potentially 2021 to allow other VMax and such to be cut out of main sets for this?

Also, Booster Cases for Burning Shadows, Team Up, Unbroken Bonds, and Cosmic Eclipse (have Charizard in them) have gone up a lot. Do any of you think that with the exclusion of the RR Charizard from this set, investing in Cases of this is worth it?
 

johnwick

Aspiring Trainer
Member
No Charizard RR means this set will suck for collectors. With this information, I can safely say that my money will be invested in either the Holiday set or Hidden Fates Final Wave (final printing).
 

johnwick

Aspiring Trainer
Member
If the Full Art Zard from the ETB is the same as the Japan Zard, then we are most definitely getting the RR VMax Zard one way or another.
 

The Fish

0.o
Member
Pokemon catcher and Turbo patch? That's new. What's worse is they're coin-flip based. I hope the Dugtrio ISN'T the one with Dig, and the one with 60 for 1 fighting instead, otherwise this could get VERY coin-flippy.
 

cardgjammer

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Get ready for some flippy, switchy, sirfetchy fun!

^ We finally have a SwSh pokemon card that doesn't need one too many extra conditions that take more than one turn too long to meet...

^ But the big question?

Will it surpass the SuMo theme deck standards?

^ The answer?

After august 14th, when the decks come out, and will be formed by your playtests!!!
 

WillyCharizard

Aspiring Trainer
Member
There are go my hopes for Galarian Darmanitan to finally take down Charizard from theme meta, was hoping for a Frosmoth to have some true energy aceleration, Turbo patch is not guaranteed and Bede is awful dead support most of the time and you cant even use it on the active Pokemon I mean you pretty much can use G. Darmanitan Zen mode full atack once at thats pretty much, he got stuck on active, all the secondary pokemons have high attack cost and quite useless, specially Suicine

Galarian Sirfetch D looks like have better chances, Sirfetch D kill almost everything and with some luck you can abuse the attack several times if survives at least one hit, if Dugtrio its the one with Dig you could buy some time to build Sirfetch D, the rest is useless, Hippowdown 3 energies and you could even hit 0, there is no way to use Stounjouner at all and Passimian is boring
 
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OVERGRO

Pokemon is lyfe.
Member
Wow, these are pretty trash. Sirfetch'd barely has any Darkness Ablaze cards! The theme deck meta will likely remain unchanged. Not to mention these are an insult to the entire concept of theme decks, which is extremely disappointing after they made some pretty okay theme decks just a few sets ago.
 
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Flygonite

Meta/budget player
Member
Seems like this is the way to go when designing theme decks after SSH. Bloated attack costs, very little cards in the deck that can help you load your attackers, and also bloating the deck with attackers when well designed theme decks actually have some balance between offensive and support effects. I miss when theme decks would include copies of Pidgeot, Malamar, Alolan Sandslash, or would make a point of including a "draw 2" or a "draw until your hand is 6/5" Pokémon in all the decks, since there's literally no point in those existing unless you play them at pre-release or at theme format, and because otherwise the format is slow as ****.

In all these theme decks since SSH, where's the Furret? Staraptor? The SSH Snorlax? Cinccino? Coalossal? Frosmoth? Oranguru so you don't discard a valuable resource with Professor's Research (since these decks apparently have the need to include Research with zero recycling?)? They could be doing so much more but it genuinely seems like they don't want to move on from the format where playing Charizard and relying on coinflips, or sniping them with Empoleon is the best way to win. At least Sirfetch'd has Sudowoodo I guess... and Wishiwashi would be ok if it didn't die to the faintest breeze.

I know very little competitive players actually care or bother to look at theme, but for a format that's frequently touted as "introducing new players to the game in a way that makes them familiar and not get overwhelmed with Standard" theme has been doing an awful job at it, from SSH forward.
 

bbb888

Same user name as my Pokémon YouTube channel
Member
Still better than Wizards-era decks with 28 Energies!
 

Diego Lima

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Theme decks were heading in the right direction from Lost Thunder onwards up until Sword and Shield, but the Rebel Clash and these ones look like a step back. Oh well, guess people will continue to spam Relentless Flame, believing it to be the tier 0 boogeyman of the format, and I will continue to farm them into oblivion with the de facto best deck in format: Unseen Depths :)
 

ParPar

Bug Catcher
Member
Oh well, guess people will continue to spam Relentless Flame, believing it to be the tier 0 boogeyman of the format, and I will continue to farm them into oblivion with the de facto best deck in format: Unseen Depths :)
People stay sleeping on that Empoleon but if you get it set up early it commands the entire game with ease. 1 energy direct dive is WAY too powerful.
 

Flygonite

Meta/budget player
Member
No one is sleeping on the deck. In fact, it's the second most played one in theme format according to a reddit user that bothered to gather statistics for 400 duels.
 

WillyCharizard

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Personally I believe Dragonite is the best deck, doesnt have a bad match up at all, advantage over Kyogre, Groudon and Zamazenta and can deal with the rest without problems
 
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