The date for the brand new Pokemon Scarlet & Violet TCG cards have been revealed, along with some really great news: International cards are losing their horrid yellow borders! Woo hoo! we are finite to get the grey/silver that Japan enjoysalong with a number of other quality of life improvements when arranging maps.
It came surprisingly late given the widespread expectation we were going to see S&V‘s first series of cards on February 20 turns out The expansion will not officially be released until March 31st.
Still, there’s a lot to celebrate when we finally get them, not the least of which is the decision to have parity on card designs both in Japan and internationally, inclusive the far superior (and I’ll fight you) gray borders that make each card’s art shine that much better.
It’s a big change, of course, and anyone who’s nostalgic for the cards’ design will likely find this a jarring change until they stop noticing about five seconds later. Also aligning with Japan’s designs is the loss of set symbols, which are instead replaced with far more parsable set codes. I quite liked the symbols, but I also know how ridiculously hard it is to remember all 150. Codes make more sense, even if they appear more purchasable.
The other two changes revealed are that Trainer card subcategories are now shown in the top left, making it much easier to tell if it’s an Item, Support or Stadium when you keep your cards fanned out. and Energy Cards also now have their smaller logo on the bottom right, although I’m having trouble seeing what difference that will make to anything.
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We also have the pack logo for the set, which we’ll be seeing a lot over the next three years.
We should also take a closer look at the revealed cards. Here are the three starters and their measly skills:
Then we have the two feature Ex Legendaries that appear functionally identical to the current generation of Vs:
Two trainer cards are revealed, with scarlet and violetThe senior professors of , each providing the professor’s known research ability:
And here are these new Energy designs:
See, you stopped noticing the lack of bright yellow until I just reminded you.
there will be a way to get those starter Pokemon cards much sooner, as luck would have it. The boxes of the Paldea Collection, coming January 6th, includes all three starter maps as well as oversized versions of the Koraidon and Miraidon-Ex maps. They won’t be valid for tournament play, their abilities and attacks will inevitably be destroyed by launching the actual sets, but at least we now know how these flipped cards will look in the product images.
Only three and a half months to wait. Although to close the gap there is the incredible Crown Zenith is imminent!
