2023 is going to be a pretty terrible year for Magic the Gathering players and is shaping up to be the best year YuGiOh has had since the 5D's era. Where does that leave the Pokemon TCG?

Well, it looks pretty fantastic. If you've been following the card game over the past year, you'd know Brilliant Stars brought back the trainer gallery, which means that in addition to the possibility of your regular holo rare or full art card, there is also a chance that the reverse holo slot, which is normally nothing to write home about, will come with a full art holo card featuring a Pokemon existing in its habitat or with a trainer.

The newest set, Crown Zenith, which is the Western version of the insanely popular VStar Universe set in Japan that has some of the coolest looking cards they've ever printed, is set to release at the end of this month, and it will be a very unique set to open with a gallery of over 100 cards (compared to other galleries with 30) on top of the alt-arts and Radiant Pokemon we already had in the past year, with some pretty stunning artwork. It's a reprint of every Sword and Shield rare with new art and a preview of how they'll be handling the game moving forward. Starting in 2023, the gallery cards will no longer have that ugly yet classically fitting yellow border around the card and will move towards a cleaner grey color that looks blinged out in holo when holding it up to light, and compliments a lot of cards. This is one of the ways Pokemon in the west is becoming more like what you'd see in Japan, but there are a few more.


Wishiwashi Trainer Gallery artwork in the West, featuring the yellow border, alongside the card released in Japan, with the grey border.

Now, packs will no longer have 10 cards in them with a chance of getting nothing cool. Starting with the first Scarlet and Violet sets to release later in the year, you'll have five cards per pack with a guaranteed "hit" and chances at getting even more than that. This will likely send shockwaves across the community, as it means there may be the potential for the same kinds of "god packs" we see in Japan where every card in the pack is crazy rare. This also, unfortunately, means that there will be a much higher chance that new packs of Pokemon cards can be weighed with even higher discrepancies than seen before.

No more set logos, instead, just like Japan, sets will be labeled according to the generation they're from and the order in which the set was released. Energy cards will now have a designation to them, meaning your Fire Energy will now be a Basic Fire Energy or have some sort of useful powerup attached to it.

On top of this, no more V cards. EX is back! This means opportunities for non-full art cards that have heavy play-ability and cooler artwork than we've seen on a lot of throwaway "V rares" and VStar cards.



While aspects of the cards have changed, the release structure seems to largely be the same, and the competitive community for the game will likely see a greater benefit from having to spend less money for good, playable cards thanks to there being guaranteed powerful cards and less bulk to shamefully store away.

Sadly though, even though we're getting less cards per pack, the price of each pack is also increasing. This is a bit of a blow, as a $3.99 USD pack will now sell at $4.49. I don't necessarily get the reasoning as there is very little inflationary overhead that a cardboard printing company has to worry about, it costs very little to produce, they already raised prices last year, and they're putting far less cardboard into each pack starting with the new generation. They actually have to put a foil in each pack instead of players gambling on a chance at one, but it just feels weird that we get less cards and it costs more.

There are concerns that, now that The Pokemon Company purchased the company they used to print the cards, that they will adjust to match the demand of even scalpers, meaning that the cards themselves may lose value over time, but seeing the way that children are still interacting with the cards nowadays, I think the demand will hold true several decades into the future regardless of how many people are trying to flip them for a quick buck. Sure, the Charizard UPC promos are now worth $10 USD a piece, but that's been common for promo cards that didn't have some bizarrely low supply behind them. They could do another reprint of Evolving Skies and I don't think that would stop anybody from mindlessly ripping packs open in hopes of the Umbreon VMAX alt art where its staring at the moon (people call it Moonbreon) That card is worth $600 US right now, and even if it had another wave, that doesn't make it any more likely that it'll have much impact on circulation given the pull rates of the set, unless we have an error box situation like seen with Fusion Strike, where a chunk of the super rare cards weren't in circulation until there was a few pallets in Canada that were full of them, back to back, as a mistake, leading to abysmal pull rates for most people that buy Western printed sets.

To me, there's a lot of positives to all of these changes, minus the pricing obviously. I'm looking very forward to see what this generation has in store for us!

What do you think about the Pokemon Trading Card Game going into 2023? Are you going to be opening packs of Crown Zenith? What do you think about the changes to the card artwork and pack variance?

alexanyways : I can tell that there are going to be so many people who take advantage of the guaranteed hit near the start of the launch. There are going to be a lot of people that either don't know it's guaranteed or people that want to take advantage of those people and try to charge a ton until it levels out.

But by cutting the cards in half, commons and uncommins are going to become rarer and a little more valuable because you would normally get 8 total C's and UC's in a pack.

Not of a fan of the guaranteed holo to be honest. Holo cards are already worth very little, and this will only further diminish their value and relevance. Considering holos were the highest rarity of card you could obtain through the first two generations of the Pokemon TCG (with the exception of crystal cards in Aquapolis and Skyridge), it's kind of sad to see how unimportant they've become. Not that I dislike the new cards styles that have been introduced, of course. I just wish getting a holographic card meant something. Starting with Scarlet and Violet, they will be relegated to bulk.