With the prerelease already underway and a global release set for March 28th, the Journey Together card list has been compiled and completed. This is thanks to the constant vigilance of online communities.
The Return of Trainer Pokémon
Journey Together is the vanguard for the return of Trainer Pokémon. Originally these debuted as Owner Pokémon in the late 90s to early 2000s in the Gym Heroes expansion. Now, Journey Together is bringing them back, by featuring the trainers: N, Iona, Hop, and Lillie.
Successful competitive viability aside, there is a general positivity surrounding some of the trainer Pokémon. N’s Zoroark ex and Iono’s Kilowattrel, for instance, have the capability of letting their controlling players run through their deck faster.
The former will allow a player to cycle through their hand efficiently, picking and choosing the right tool for the right time. The latter is more of a brute force approach, digging hard and fast by letting the player draw back up to 6 cards at the cost of one basic lightning energy.
Hop’s Snorlax has its rather mundane added 30 damage done by any of Hop’s Pokémon. That said, its ability is enhanced with the help of other Hop’s support cards like Postwick and Hop’s Choice Band. With the entire engine running, Hop’s pokémon will be belly-flopping onto the opponent with a rather hefty +90 tacked on.
Finally, we have Lillie’s Clefairy ex. For a basic Pokémon, this psychic type will take advantage of any wide boards created by both sides. If it so happens that the enemy active pokémon is a Dragon-type, then they’ll be hurting a lot more for a lot less as Clefairy changes their weakness type to psychic without too much investment.
Other Catches Along the Way
Scanning through the card list, we can also find other pokémon of some particular note that may pique the interest of more entrepreneurial deck builders.
Mamoswine ex comes in as a stage 2 Pokémon that can easily start nabbing any Pokémon card from out the deck if the controlling player can get it to land relatively early and unscathed. Coupled with the mandatory draw a turn, that's essentially two cards coming up the pipeline each time.
A couple of other interesting combinations of cards are Magmortar and Volcanion ex, two basic Fire-type pokémon that can pair nicely with Slither Wing. Slither Wing can easily punch out most basic and some of the more robust stage 1 pokémon if not landing a burned condition on any survivors.
Once Slither Wing is inevitably taken out -and that’s not hard to do given that it hurts itself- Volcanion ex can come in and just keep the burn train going for any new enemy pokémon coming onto the active zone.
Both Slither Wing and Volcanion ex are supported by Magmortar’s ability to just accelerate the burn damage each time at check up.
Potential Troubles Along the Way
As much as there is excitement for Journey Together, there is a looming cloud that dampens some prospective buyers. That is the general situation around the supply of products that’s been happening.
The lack of supply versus the overall demand is already seeing some fans left disheartened as they either have to shell out more money on the second-hand market or wait patiently for a resupply.
This frustration over this lack of product supply is exacerbated by all the scalping being done by rogue elements. Not to mention some members of the online community have come forward to claim that even Friendly Local Game Stores (FLGS) had to cancel or cut down on some pre-orders just because there wasn't enough product to go around.
The Pokémon Company International (TPCi) has optimistically taken steps to promote a fairer chance of distribution of its products such as programming their vending machines to randomly release a set amount of products each hour.
Hopefully, we won’t see the same fiasco that happened with the launch of Prismatic Evolutions occur again. Ideally, obviously, the global launch of Journey Together will be received with more fanfare and less disappointment. Only time will tell if there will be a positive change or not.
For those interested in the complete card list and their translations, you can find them here.