I could not even tell you the last time I touched Pokémon TCG Pocket. I went from opening the mobile card-hunting game every day to hardly ever thinking about it. However, the upcoming new set Celestial Guardians might change that. The Pokémon Sun and Moon-based expansion includes an Alolan Raichu ex that looks too good to miss out on.
The mobile hit’s fifth card set drops on April 30 and will feature, among other new Pokémon, the Alola region’s starters Rowlet, Litten and Popplio. There’s also a Rowlet binder cover coming May 1 and additional solo battles coming on April 29 that will include promo cards for Rayquaza ex among others. And of course, no Sun and Moon expansion would be complete without legendaries Solgaleo ex and Lunala ex.
Alolan Raichu ex is what’s turning my head, though. Its three-energy Psychic attack can one-shot Mewtoo and a bunch of others before they can unleash their most damaging attacks, but mostly it just looks really cool. The art by Yoshimi Miyoshi shows Raichu surfing on its tail amid bubblegum balls and beach floats. That’s the life, and maybe going back to opening dozens of packs a week in Pokémon TCG Pocket will get me a little bit closer to it.
I’ll be honest though, Alolan Marowak looks tight as hell too. The Celestial Guardians trailer confirmed other cards as well, including a Rare Candy item. Why are fans so excited for this? The card lets you skip the middle evolution of a Pokémon. This speeds a deck up considerably, especially, say, if you go right from a Charmander to a Charizard that can use Stoke to flip a coin and immediately get three more energy cards.
Other decks will benefit immensely from Rare Candy as well. “Gallade stonks up!” wrote one fan on the subreddit. “Beedrill EX + Meowscarada deck stonks!!” wrote another. Oh man I’m totally about to get sucked back into Pokémon TCG Pocket, aren’t I?
.
