The constant monthly barrage of expansion continues as TPCi (The Pokemon Company International) has announced the release date of the next set for Pokemon Pocket. Titled Secluded Springs, this expansion is scheduled for release next week, on the 28th of August.
The ex Versions of the Legendary Beasts
Following TPCi’s announcement trailer, we know Secluded Springs is set to feature the debut of ex versions of the Legendary Beasts, Entei, Raikou, and Suicune.
One of the defining characteristics each of these Pokemon has is their shared ability, Legendary Pulse, which gives the controlling player an extra card draw at the end of the turn.
With how Pokemon Pocket is designed with its twenty-card deck limit, being able to draw an extra card without jumping through hoops is a good option to have while giving more creative space for competitive deck building.
In terms of their overall designed package, each of the Legendary Beasts is packing a two-energy cost activation attack, making them pretty quick to go on the offensive. However, each Pokemon has a different plan of attack.
Raikou ex’s capability to ping any of the opponent’s benched Pokemon, allows for an early Cyrus play to take out a more vulnerable piece of the opposing line-up. This is very reminiscent of Articuno ex from Genetic Apex.
Entei ex is a little more standard with its offensive option. In fact, a player could say that Entei ex might be a worse Charizard ex (from Shining Revelry) as it does slightly less damage and has less health when it comes to trading.
Notably, Entei ex has the benefit of being a Basic-Stage Pokemon. Even if you paired up this particular Legendary Beast with Magby to accelerate its damage potential, that’s still less card investment than Charizard ex and its need for running a Rare Candy and a Charmander.
Suicune ex has the best upward range when it comes to damage potential. There is no getting around the fact that Suicune ex is highly reliant on filled benches, but a lot of competitive decks tend to run set-ups that take advantage of filling up their backrow.
Giratina ex & Greninja or Darkrai ex, the Sylveon ex draw engine, Suicune ex has the potential to force players outside of established meta deck lists because of how well it can take advantage of the standard formula.
New Water Support
It looks like TPCi is not done trying to give Water-types even more support to push them into the competitive spotlight. Mantyke comes in as the Water-type analogy to energy accelerants like Pichu and Magby.
Mantyke could potentially lead to high-energy investment Pokemon like Blastoise ex or one of the Gyarados variants to see more play, especially when paired with Misty. Mantyke offers that little bit of consistency when it comes to energy acceleration that Water-type decks have been missing for their potential win conditions.
Milotic, on the other hand, is basically a Lillie but for any Stage level of Water-type Pokemon. Pairing Milotic with Irida and you’re looking at a potential 100 health healing on any Water-type Pokemon, drastically extending their staying power in the active zone. You can even take it a step further by adding a Potion to push the healing further to 120, almost mitigating the damage done by even the hardest-hitting Pokemon.
If ever a Water-type deck is running an ex Pokemon as its main win condition, Milotic can come in as an out for the Lightning-type Oricorio should it appear in the match-up.
We have to give TPCi credit for their attempts to make Water-type-focused decks enticing to build and run. If anything, the developers are doing what they can to promote a healthy, competitive environment with all these new support tools.
New Latios and Latias Tag-team
One of the more interesting cards advertised in the trailer is the pair of Latios and Latias. As single-point prize Pokemon, these two cards are trying to promote a hyper-specialized build that might be the developer’s attempt to bring back single-prize point only decks to competitive relevance.
Unfortunately, it’s a little tough to say how well Latios and Latias can do. Latias is a good starting unit that’s an even better Skarmory (Space-Time Smackdown). Latios has some good damage potential despite its frail body, but what’s making Latios questionable is the fact that its attack, a three-cost one at that, requires total energy discard.
Getting three psychic-type energy is already a tall order since Psychic-types currently don’t have a way to accelerate this kind of energy on allies.
At the moment, we’d like to give these two the benefit of the doubt. We have yet to see the complete card list for Secluded Springs. There exists a possibility that there may be a Pokemon or Trainer card that can answer this conundrum that still hasn’t been shown to the public. This might just give Psychic-type decks some much-needed support that does not include just using Giratina ex.