Pokemon TCG Surging Sparks Expansion Is More Than Just Pikachu

The newest Pokemon Trading Card Game set, Scarlet & Violet: Surging Sparks, has a centerpiece to match the company’s holiday sales ambitions, but with internal competition making its debut, the stakes are pretty high for this expansion. So does it have what it takes to keep the game charging forward?

The cover star for Surging Sparks is Pikachu, a reliable standby that seems ever-present, but hasn’t actually fronted a TCG expansion since Celebrations three years ago. It’s here in its Tera form, making for a card that looks cool if not particularly viable for decks.

It brings with it a batch of Lightning-assisting prints! Tapu Koko searches for Pokemon, Magneton explodes itself to hyper-charge your energy acceleration and Clemont’s Quick Wit offers mass healing. We suppose you could use these with Pikachu, but there are likely better centerpieces to use all these boosts. For example, the new Kilowattrel ex! Any attack that just gets stronger with every energy has a lot to offer.

Taking more of a center stage in the set itself is an offering of Dragon-types. Though some appear in their off-type, like Archaludon and Latias, actual TCG Dragons like Alolan Exeggutor and Tatsugiri benefit from a Tera-type version. It makes sense that we’d see them and they’d potentially be good! After all, dragons in the card game have already been relying on multiple energy types, so the jump to three for a Tera attack isn’t that huge.

We’ve said it before and we hope to keep saying it: getting some high-powered legends at uncommon rarity is just good! This time, we’ve got Registeel, Xerneas, Latios, Ho-Oh, Victini and Wo-Chien. We also get a bit more for the Ancient and Future factions. Gouging Fire, Flutter Mane and Koraidon join the Ancient lineup, while Iron Crown and more Iron Bundle and Miraidon variants add to Future. Nothing about them looks particularly game-changing for them, but after being burned so many times in the past by types that come and go quickly, it’s fun to see some sustainability for once.

After a few years of generally trying to get people to play more evolutions, Surging Sparks offers some reinforcement to a Basic-based strategy. Lively Stadium boosts HP totals for them, while Gravity Mountain decreases HP for Stage 2s. Perhaps most importantly, Latias ex has an ability that removes retreat cost from all Basics. Old-heads like us have fuzzy feelings thinking about rotating around Scythers in those OG Haymaker builds, and the prospect of doing that again with all sorts of modern strategies just hits our nostalgia.

Given the theme, it’s also sort of expected to see a boost for Tera Pokemon. The non-ex Terapagos is handy, as a colorless Basic with a one-energy attack to search for three different energies and load up a fighter all at once. New Trainers help quickly search for them and retrieve bulk energy of different types. Still, it feels like the design team still wants those three-energy attacks to be a high barrier to justify the powerful effects.

As Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket preps for its global launch in a few days, we’re intensely curious about the future of the original game. The flash of Surging Sparks, with its much-loved cover star, will probably do quite well this holiday. But what about after that? Stay tuned, we suppose!

The latest Pokemon Trading Card Game expansion, Scarlet & Violet: Surging Sparks, releases November 8, 2024. For more information about the TCG, check out our archive.