We're still a few months out from Twilight Masquerade, the set that'll bring with it cards from Mask of Change and Crimson Haze to Western audiences. It's already shaping up to be an intriguing collection of cards, with a focus on the Scarlet & Violet DLC that includes new forms for the legendary Pokémon Ogerpon. This is coupled with plenty of new evolutionary lines and new takes on old classics.
We've got a few more spoilers thanks to a new article on Pokebeach. They show off a new Pinsir, and a whole new Infernape evolutionary line. We've seen a few cards from Crimson Haze before, with some being revealed at the Japan 2024 Champions League. Our favorite of that batch is the Bloodmoon Ursaluna ex.
Pinsir is probably the least exciting of the four cards revealed, mostly because evolving a monster is one of the most entertaining things to do in Pokémon, no matter how you engage with it.
Pinsir is a grass-type basic Pokémon with 110 HP. It has two abilities, the first of which is called Slow Crunch. This costs two energy and lets you discard all of the energy from Pinsir to knock out the defending Pokémon at the end of your opponent's next turn. The second ability is a simple 100 damage for three energy, which isn't a bad rate.
It's hard to say how effective the Slow Crunch will be, but the idea of putting such an immense amount of pressure on your foe is pretty enticing. The tricky thing here will not just be keeping Pinsir alive, but also ensuring that you get to take out the Pokémon you're hoping to defeat. Just hitting collateral damage instead can be underwhelming.
We're interested, sure, but it seems as though it could take a lot of work to get the most out of this one.
Moving over to Infernape et al, we'll kick things off with Chimchar, a 60 HP basic Fire-type. This 'mon can use Firebreathing, which costs two energy and does at least 20 damage but will do an additional 20 damage if you flip a coin and hit heads. It's intensely unnoteworthy, but it's there.
Monferno offers a second stage, and ups the HP to 90. This comes along with a 40 damage Chop for two energy. It also has a three-energy Heat Blow, which deals 80 damage and makes you discard an Energy from Monferno.
Finally, and this is obviously the most interesting of the bunch, we've got Infernape. Infernape has 140 HP, making it a nice bit healthier than Monferno. It also has a single attack, called Scorching Fire, that deals a massive 200 damage. Sadly, you must you must discard an Energy from Infernape. That would be an issue, except that's not the only ability Infernape has.
Fire Dancing is an Ability, which means it's always active basically, and allows you to attach two Basic Energy cards to your Pokémon in any way you want, as long as those Energy cards come from your hand. This is a nice way to offset the discard ability and could also allow you to build up your next big player in the process. This is definitely a strong card, but it'll definitely be even better if you can build around it and bring in cards that'll work in unison with it.
All this information was on Pokebeach.com, and it's helping us get very excited for the release of Twilight Masquerade in May.
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