Pokemon TCG Stellar Crown Set Digs Deep Into Area Zero

After a few sets celebrating its first DLC adventure, the Pokemon Trading Card Game is moving onto the second half of The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero with its latest expansion. Scarlet & Violet — Stellar Crown introduces the world of The Indigo Disk to Pokemon TCG, with Blueberry Academy characters and the legendary Terapagos making debuts. So what does it have to offer? Let’s dig in.

Terapagos is clearly the centerpiece of the set, as the legend is the focus of all the set visuals. It feels like perhaps the world of the second DLC adventure only gets a few cameos, so that a subsequent release can focus on those elements. That makes sense to us, as Terapagos brings with it a new type of Tera Pokemon that would really need effort to build a deck around. These ex variants have super-strong attacks that require three different energy types.

Lapras seems like a viable one to us, as a Basic with the ability to search and attach all energy in the top 20 cards of your deck. Galvantula is a harder sell, as its three-energy move is a 180-damage attack that does stop the opponent from playing Items next turn but makes you discard all the energy to do it. Truly, a lot of these creatures may see play exclusively to use their not-special attack instead.

The Terapagos ex itself may be the most intriguing, which is a rarity to see! Usually the face of the set has a big, flashy attack, but it’s rarely a competitively viable one. Its Crown Opal attack does 180 damage (yawn), but it prevents damage from “Basic non-Colorless Pokemon.” So it’s vulnerable to a mirror match — Terapagos is itself Colorless — but it’s protected from a lot of threats in a professional scene that has always shied away from the effort and uncertainty of relying on evolutions.

We mentioned in our coverage of the previous set, Shrouded Fable, that it was nice to see powerful legends and mythics at uncommon rarity. After all, one of the biggest problems of CCGs in general is how much of a pack is instant garbage in most contexts! So making uncommons interesting and fun lowers that percentage a bit. Among those appearing in Pokemon TCG Stellar Crown: Koraidon, Celebi, Diancie, Tornadus, and… Mewtwo! Those of us who have been playing the game since the last millennium can remember just how wild and fun it was to pull a Mewtwo in a pack, and now that pleasant memory resurfaces a bit more frequently. Excellent.

Speaking of nostalgia! Stellar Crown also features Venusaur and Blastoise, with the former built around shutting down the opponent and healing up while the latter’s about taking hits and dishing them out. The Venusaur strategy could be assisted by the new Hydrapple, which lets you play an extra energy every turn and heal a bit when you do, and a Cradily that flips a coin from the bench every turn to inflict a status effect of your choice. (Of course, that’d be a lot of evolutions to play.)

Even though this is an Area Zero-focused set, don’t expect to see a lot of Ancient and Future appearances. There’s one each, for Iron Boulder and Raging Bolt? Though the factions made some serious appearances in this year’s world championships, it may be a one-time thing as we may be nearing the end of them in the TCG.

The three-energy Tera scheme introduced in Stellar Crown seems to be the new big thing for Pokemon TCG, so we’d expect to see more of these creatures in sets to come. After all, they’ve got to keep doing something until a new game debuts! And hey, we’ve seen worse ideas. It’s a bit of a shame that they never made the type-changing version as relevant as we’d hoped, though.

The latest Pokemon Trading Card Game expansion, Scarlet & Violet — Stellar Crown, launches September 13, 2024. For more on the Pokemon TCG, check out our archive.