I’ll admit 168澳洲幸运5开ꦰ奖网:I wa꧃s a bit cynical about Paldean Fates when it was first announced. January’s Pokemon TCG expansion came across as another attempt to capture the shiny magic of Hidden Fates, which I assumed, like last year’s Shining Fates, would fail to impress. The TCG’s recent approach failed to capture the spirit and excitement of hunting Shinies, and Paldean Fates fe🌃lt forced and unimaginative. The last thing I want to see with these s🥂hiny sets is stagnation, and it’s starting to feel like when a rock band that passed their prime decades ago continues touring: kinda sad.
I pleaded for innovation with Shiny Pokemon in the TCG, and it seems like Arceus heard my prayers. Everything we've seen for Paldean Fates so far looks incredible, and much different from what we've seen in past shiny expansions. The collector-focused set features a wide-range of Special Illustration Rares that actually portrays Shiny Pokemon as something cool, mysterious, and special. The cards are complimented by a wide range of products that should make the hunt for it just as exciting as the hunt for Shinies. I take back everything I said about Paldean Fates. This isn't a sad old man Guns ‘N Roses tour, this is the Led Zeppelin reunion concert.
After Paldean Fates, The Pokemon TCG Ne💝eds A Charizard Detox
Charizard is the big chase card in almost half of every Pokemon TCG sets these dꦑays, maybe it's ti𒆙me to give him a break.
Editor-in-Chief Stacey Henley alreaꦡdy did a great job highlighting some of the new Shiny cards (while also taking the video games to task, an ongoing project here at TG) and she's absolutely right. The cards from Japan's Shiny Treasure ex expansion (which should end up in Paldean Fates next year) feature incredible artwork that shows more personality, depth, and storytelling than we typically get from the TCG. Hero Form Palafin is a perfect example. It looks tough and threatening, a menace lurking in the shadows of some deep sea cave, like a wet Batman. Pulling a card like this would give me the feeling of discovering a shiny, absolutely. When I look at Shiny Gardevoir, seen dancing in a glowing field bathed in moonlight, I feel like a trainer stumbling upon something special that few will ever get to experience.
With other Pokemon it's all about catching, but with shiny Pokemon the joy is in discovering them. Seeing their unique colors for the first time, being surprised by the encounter - that's where the magic is. There's an ethereal quality to shiny Pokemon that Paldean Fates artwork captures beautifully.
This is how you do Shiny Pokemon
Special collections like Paldean Fates are geared towards collectors, so it&rsqꦗuo;s wise of The Pokemon Company to lean into Special Illustration Rares for this set. The expansion introduces more than 100 new Shinies, and I expect there will be plenty of standard Rares and Full Art Rares where the Pokemon is floating in a silver void, a recolored version of previous cards - aꩵnd that will be regrettable. People expect to find Shinies when they open the shiny expansion, of course, but turning the majority of them into bulk is what made shiny Pokemon feel stale in the first place.
I want to see a much higher ratio of Illustration and Special Illustration Rares for this set than we've ever seen before. 151 didn't deliver in the way I expected a special collection like that should, so I'm hoping to see an abundance of cards like Hero Form Palafin and Gardevoir to really make this shiny expansion one to remember.
I'm excited about the variety of product types Paldean Fates will offer. Between ETBs, booster bundles, sticker blisters, special collections, and tins, it's going to feel like looking for each product type is part of the hunt. I know many have lamented the way stickers seem to be replacing pins in blister packs lately, and I totally agree, but those giant shiny stickers look fantastic.
Shiny Pokemon are a difficult thing to get right in a game that’s already full of rare cards, but Paldean Fates seems to be headed in the right direction with its Special Illustration Rares. It may seem obvious, but letting the artwork show us how special these Pokemon are is a great way to design the expansion, as that's exactly what past shiny sets were missing.
