It must be hard to make the Pokemon Trading Card Game feel fresh again after 20 years and nearly 100 expansions, but the Scarlet & Violet base set does exactly that. Between the overhauled card design, refreshed rarity structure, rule changes to Item cards, reintroduction of Pokemon ex, and the new Tera-type Pokemon, there’s enough here to properly welcome in the next generation of the TCG. It’s important to hit the reset button with the Pokemon TCG every few years, and the Scarlet & Violet expansion establishes a strong foundation for the new era.
Scarlet & Violet is arguably the biggest reset the TCG has ever had thanks to the redesign, which cleans up the info box and swaps the yellow border for a silver one. I’ve never been a collector of Japanese cards, so it’s amazing to see how much cleaner the cards look without the mustard yellow border. The silver seems to complement almost every color palette better, and I love the way the holographic pattern has been incorporated into the border. It makes even basic holo cards feel a lot more special to find.
Speaking of which, you’ll be encountering holographics far more frequently in the Scarlet & Violet era. Instead of a guaranteed reverse-holo and a rare, every pack now includes a guaranteed holo-rare and two reverse-holos. This change accounts for the rise in price from $4 to $4.50 per pack, and at first I wasn’t sold on the value. Creating a new baseline doesn’t change the binary nature of pack openings: either your pack has nothing, or it has something. All it means is that a pack with ‘nothing’ has two reverse-holo and a holo-rare. We’re still hoping to find a full-art or gold card, so unless the pull rates have increased, it seems like it all shakes out to be the same in the end. Kids will enjoy having more reverse holos in every pack, and I figured that was about all there was to it.
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I’ve opened 22 packs so far and pulled eight better-than-rare cards, which is a 36 percent hit-rate. That’s a satisfying hit-rate to me, though not especially high compared to recent expansions, but what makes it interesting is where those hits landed. All of my Pokemon ex cards showed up in the rare slot, but the full-art and alternate-art cards tended to show up in place of the second reverse-holo. I didn’t find anything but a reverse-holo in the first slot, but one pack had two full-art cards - a full-art Oinkologne ex and a full-art Arven - in the same pack.
Having the ability to find multiple ultra rare cards in the same pack - especially in a non-special edition set like this - makes opening them so much more exciting, and while I don’t know if it’s possible to find three in one, I’m willing to open a ton of packs to find out. Japan has always had expansion with god packs that are completely full of ultra rare cards, but we never have, and it’s always felt like a missed opportunity to build excitement for new packs. Having three chances to strike gold in one pack is going to ignite the community and get a lot of people sharing their big pulls again.
The rarity structure has been reworked, and even though it’s explained in the player guide I still found it a little confusing. Common, Uncommon, and Rare remain unchanged, but we now have Double Rare, denoted by an icon with two black stars, which refers to Pokemon ex cards. Then there’s illustration rare, a cross between alternate-art and Trainery Gallery cards, which have a gold star icon, followed by special illustration rares, which are alternate-art Pokemon ex and Trainer cards, denoted by double gold stars. Next is hyper rare, which seems to be Full-Art Pokemon and trainer cards, and has a double silver star icon. Finally, gold cards - Pokemon, Trainer, and Energy cards - have a three gold star icon.
It’s good that each level of rarity has its own name and icon now, but it’s hard to figure out the hierarchy. Is a special illustration rare with two gold stars more or less rare than a hyper rare full-art Pokemon ex card with two silver stars? If this is where we’re starting, I’m concerned at how much more complicated it could get once a few more rarity types are added over the next couple of years. They’ve also completely eliminated rainbow rare cards, which feels like the only major negative to the entire expansion.
Mechanically, Scarlet & Violet seems like a great balance of narrowed focus and new ideas. Tera-type Pokemon all have the same exact ability - they can’t take damage while on the bench - so it’s easy to understand how to build your decks around them and play against them when you run into them in your opponents deck. Similarly, Pokemon ex have bigger health pools and reward two prizes instead of one, but they don’t have complicated rule boxes and restrictions like VSTAR, Radiant, or all of the other special Pokemon that eventually spun out of Sword & Shield. They have simple mechanics, but because they’re not just Basic Pokemon like the original Pokemon EX from 2003 (how has it been 20 years?) they’re a lot more versatile. This feels like a good baseline for the new generation that respects the variety of skill levels among the player base and establishes a new starting point that can be built on throughout the generation.
Scarlet & Violet will eventually swell until it’s bursting at the seams, practically by necessity, but right now I’m looking forward to all the possibilities that the next couple of years of expansions hold. I’m in love with the redesigned cards, the smooth holo-pattern (I never liked Sword & Shields horizontal lines), and the sticker-style reverse-holo imprints. Design-wise, this is the best the Pokemon TCG has looked in a long time. I was feeling burnt out by the end of Sword & Shield, but I’m excited to see how Scarlet & Violet unfolds.
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