By Finn, Grade 7
I’ve been ignoring this for a while, and with the new set Chilling Reign in a little over a month, I’d figure I would talk about this now, but Battle Styles. The most recent set of the Sword & Shield block in the Pokémon Trading Card Game, Battle Styles added over 160 brand new cards into the game along with the introduction of Single and Rapid Strike cards, used to search each other and create exciting combos. There was a lot of hype going up to this set, despite only just getting Shining Fates a little over a month earlier. But, there were some problems and a reason why you can find Battle Styles products pretty easily now compared to the release date. So let’s go over those reasons and the Battle Styles problem that came with it.
Meta-Defining Cards
Now, this really isn’t a problem and is good for the most part, but since I can’t make a full article about this, I might as well put this here. Battle Styles like I said previously came with a new gimmick of Single and Rapid Strike cards, which boosts the consistency of decks with Single Strike and Rapid Strike Pokémon. This mechanic is based on the Urshifus found in the DLC of Sword & Shield, the Isle of Armor. And with that base, the Urshifus of course got their own Single and Rapid Strike V and VMAX cards. Single Strike Urshifu VMAX isn’t really much to write home about, but Rapid Strike Urshifu VMAX instantly became a close to if not a top tier deck. With Octillery to accelerate energy and other Rapid Strike trainers to help boost consistently, it became a major threat to top tier decks quickly, doing enough damage to even rival Eternatus VMAX due to weakness. Along with the Urshifus, Single Strike Houndoom and Rapid Strike Octillery became essentials for energy acceleration in Strike decks, and with more Strike cards coming in future sets, this mechanic is here to stay.
But the Strike cards aren’t the only meta threat deck to come out of Battle Styles, loads of other decks have risen the rank really quickly. Corviknight VMAX was great at one-shotting Vs while also tanking well. In combinations with Cheryl to heal it and Bronzong to move energy around to prevent the attack limitations and the effects of actually playing Cheryl. Salazzle and Weepingbell combined well to create a status gimmick deck and dealing 270 damage from a stage 1 one prize Pokémon on turn 2. Even other cards like Necrozma V and Tapu Koko VMAX became decent rogue decks and more support Pokémon like Kricketune V helped with draw power., but we can’t forget Victini VMAX.
Victini VMAX was an almost meta defining form of power. With its attack Max Victory, Victini does 100 damage but does 120 more if your opponent’s active Pokémon is a V. Along with that, Spreading Flames can accelerate energy onto itself from the discard pile, making it easy to do up to 120 damage on turn 2. While not good against decks like Pikachu and Zekrom and weakness towards decks like Inteleon VMAX, combined with Welder and Volcanion this thing is nearly unstoppable, threatening top tier decks like Zacian V and ADP with weakness. Even after Welder and Volcanion are rotated out of competitive play, it is still possible and easy to power it up to do huge damage, making this thing a very powerful attacker.
Scarcity
Pokémon cards are still a hot product, even months after the huge $200,000 box break. So when a new set is about to be released, scalpers jump onto it immediately, buying up as many ETBs and booster boxes as possible on launch. But, now it’s easy to find Battle Styles, with single boosters being found nearly everywhere. So why did scalpers stop? Well, it’s easy:
Horrible Pull Rates
For those who don’t know, pull rates are the rate or how common it is to get a certain “pull”, or a good card. Anything better than a regular card can be considered a pull, whether it’s a holo, V, VMAX, full art Trainer, gold Trainer or Pokémon or alternative arts. With Battle Styles, the main cards people are going for are the alternative arts for the Empoleon V, Tyranitar V and the Urshifus’ Vs and VMAXs. But right off the bat, even from a large or small sample size these cards were like a 1/700 chance to pull just one. While this is good because it keeps people opening packs, those chances feel smaller than usual for even the most valuable chase card from another set, and this trend doesn’t stop at the alt arts. Even simple Vs and even holos were hard to pull, which annoyed both the collectors and the players. For the collectors, they become unentertained and keep getting some of the same cards again and again, preventing them from getting the master set and probably leading them to go back to other sets or move on to the next as quickly as possible. And for the players, while some of these common cards can see some play, it’s few and far between, since Vs and VMAXs are usually the best at dealing damage and taking prizes. This could lead to them just sticking to their old decks instead of trying a few Battle Styles cards out.
And yeah, that’s the Battle Styles problem. I don’t know what to say here, so bye.