‘Build & Battle Boxes’ Are Changing for ‘Brilliant Stars!’

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Water Pokémon Master

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Build & Battle Boxes are changing! Currently they come with a 23-Card Evolution Pack, including one of four prerelease promos. They also come with four booster packs from their set.
We’ve received word that starting with Brilliant Stars, they will instead feature 40-card decks with “ready-to-play cards.” They will still retail for $19.99 and come with one of four promo cards, four booster packs, a deck sheet, and a code card for Pokemon TCG Live.
We don’t have additional details on the decks themselves. Common sense says you’ll be able to choose from four different decks, since each deck will include a prerelease promo of a different Energy type. There were several variations of each Evolution pack, so there’s a...
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This seems like a move to make Prerelease more of an actual tournament and less of a "Get some cards ahead of time" event. Recent sets being so huge has made the extra cards in a prerelease pretty useless - 22 cards nearly always are the entirety of my deck if I don't pull a V, other than maybe a few trainers or extras of the 22-card deck that come in the packs - so this seems like a better way to get more balanced play (and taking out the possibility of getting a V in the box helps a lot also).

That said, I hope TPCI isn't substantially misunderstanding the point of prerelease for most people. The actual tournament always seemed like fun, and as a Judge maybe that's my bias, but I have to wonder how many of the folks will show up if they know they won't get a V... and on the flip side, the fact that "Get a V and win" was not necessarily a bad thing for those players who aren't serious, don't know how to play particularly well, or are younger, and get to have a 2-1 tournament because they pulled the good V - or those kids who go 0-3 but pulled Cinderace VMax or whatever and at least have that to be excited about. Now those folks get less packs - at most 3, and oftentimes less if leagues do 2 packs per.

Of course, the article isn't clear as to what those 4 booster packs can do - are they just packs? Or do you get to put cards from them in the 40 card deck? And does "40 card deck" mean the final deck will be 60 cards? Or is this really just a rewording of things that isn't really any different than before...
 
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snoopy369 said:
This seems like a move to make Prerelease more of an actual tournament and less of a "Get some cards ahead of time" event. Recent sets being so huge has made the extra cards in a prerelease pretty useless - 22 cards nearly always are the entirety of my deck if I don't pull a V, other than maybe a few trainers or extras of the 22-card deck that come in the packs - so this seems like a better way to get more balanced play (and taking out the possibility of getting a V in the box helps a lot also).

That said, I hope TPCI isn't substantially misunderstanding the point of prerelease for most people. The actual tournament always seemed like fun, and as a Judge maybe that's my bias, but I have to wonder how many of the folks will show up if they know they won't get a V... and on the flip side, the fact that "Get a V and win" was not necessarily a bad thing for those players who aren't serious, don't know how to play particularly well, or are younger, and get to have a 2-1 tournament because they pulled the good V - or those kids who go 0-3 but pulled Cinderace VMax or whatever and at least have that to be excited about. Now those folks get less packs - at most 3, and oftentimes less if leagues do 2 packs per.

Of course, the article isn't clear as to what those 4 booster packs can do - are they just packs? Or do you get to put cards from them in the 40 card deck? And does "40 card deck" mean the final deck will be 60 cards? Or is this really just a rewording of things that isn't really any different than before...
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Reading the article explains the article. The only thing they're changing is replacing the 23-card pack with a 40-card pack.
 
Rooie said:
Reading the article explains the article. The only thing they're changing is replacing the 23-card pack with a 40-card pack.
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I don’t think that’s clear at all. If they’re still aiming for a 40 card deck, then what does this mean? Or they’re aiming at 60? And if it’s ready to play does that mean you can alter it? Or not? So much unknown right now.
 
snoopy369 said:
I don’t think that’s clear at all. If they’re still aiming for a 40 card deck, then what does this mean? Or they’re aiming at 60? And if it’s ready to play does that mean you can alter it? Or not? So much unknown right now.
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It sounds to me like when they refer to "deck" they just mean the evolution pack. The prerelease kit will still come with 4 packs inside, and the "40 card deck" will not include any basic energies. I believe when they say ready to play, it means that the evolution pack is synergetic enough that you just need to replace some of the cards with energies and move on. At least that's how I understood it.
 
snoopy369 said:
This seems like a move to make Prerelease more of an actual tournament and less of a "Get some cards ahead of time" event. Recent sets being so huge has made the extra cards in a prerelease pretty useless - 22 cards nearly always are the entirety of my deck if I don't pull a V, other than maybe a few trainers or extras of the 22-card deck that come in the packs - so this seems like a better way to get more balanced play (and taking out the possibility of getting a V in the box helps a lot also).

That said, I hope TPCI isn't substantially misunderstanding the point of prerelease for most people. The actual tournament always seemed like fun, and as a Judge maybe that's my bias, but I have to wonder how many of the folks will show up if they know they won't get a V... and on the flip side, the fact that "Get a V and win" was not necessarily a bad thing for those players who aren't serious, don't know how to play particularly well, or are younger, and get to have a 2-1 tournament because they pulled the good V - or those kids who go 0-3 but pulled Cinderace VMax or whatever and at least have that to be excited about. Now those folks get less packs - at most 3, and oftentimes less if leagues do 2 packs per.

Of course, the article isn't clear as to what those 4 booster packs can do - are they just packs? Or do you get to put cards from them in the 40 card deck? And does "40 card deck" mean the final deck will be 60 cards? Or is this really just a rewording of things that isn't really any different than before...
Click to expand...
What do you mean won’t get a V? where does it say V’s aren’t obtainable?
 
Sad. I was hoping they'd nix the idea of a random promo from a set of 4. As a collector it's actually pretty annoying. Oh well.
 
It seems to me the only difference is 23 pack is now 40. This is so the player has variety with deck building during the prerelease. But this is also an indicator that pokemon won't chill with the mega sets any time soon. Look at the next one, its 283 cards. That's bigger than some mtg sets, and those on average are huge. I hope that pokemon restructures their regular packs to hold 15 cards instead of 10 soon because that's the only way mtg was able to justify the colossal sets
 
I mean, the "40 card pack" seems like it's probably meant to be the deck you play with... or at least is suggested. Obviously you'll still be able to modify it with the packs in the box.

However, if this is basically a pre-built deck... that likely means some of the 40 cards included will be the suggested energies one should use with it.
 
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