Okay, I’ll be straight up honest with you: I am way too excited about this for my own good.

In six days’ time, I will be enjoying a bit of BK lunch in Richland while people around me, including myself, open six booster packs of Pokemon Cards from a set that hasn’t come out yet - then we’ll make a small deck out of those cards and play a tournament for fun. For you guys, this doesn’t make a whole lot of set, so I figured that while I’m thinking about prereleases, I’ll “prerelease” a little bit of information from my Thunderlight post for the Trading Card Game.

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A trading card game is not played like most card games. Most card games are played with a deck that is the same no matter what; the cards in it are dealt evenly to everyone. Trading card games are entirely different. Each player must have their own deck, which fits specifications as told by the general rules, and the decks don’t need to be identical. The players play with cards drawn from their own decks. To make a deck, you have to collect cards.

Pokemon cards are released in ’sets’. A set consists of perhaps a hundred to a hundred and forty different cards. This includes Special Energy, Trainers, and all Pokemon within the set. You might wonder how on earth the game can include 493 Pokemon if you can only get up to 140 cards out of a single set. Well, some sets simply don’t include some Pokemon. Eevee and its evolutions have not been seen in two or three sets, much to my sadness (however, in the set to be released after Platinum, they’ll be making a triumphant and VERY POWERFUL return~!).

To collect cards, one must buy booster packs. Booster packs contain cards taken only from one set, and they include 11 cards taken at random from that set. They have a formula for the rarity of the cards included; 6 common, 3 uncommon, 1 rare, and 1 reverse holo (not going to discuss that yet), which can be of any rarity except secret/ultra rare.

For the heck of it, I’m going to create a set list for you right here and now, to demonstrate how sets work. The cards will be referred to by name, rarity (•, ? and *) and number. Every card can be identified by its set and its number (the second Eevee would be 2/15).

- Eevee; 1 •
- Eevee; 2 •
- Flareon; 3 ?
- Vaporeon; 4 ?
- Jolteon; 5 ?
- Flareon; 6 *
- Jolteon; 7 *
- Vaporeon; 8 *
- Espeon; 9 *
- Umbreon; 10 *
- Glaceon; 11 *
- Leafeon; 12 *
- Flareon Lv. X; 13**
- Vaporeon Lv. X; 14**
- Jolteon Lv. X; 15 **

As you can see, there are exactly 15 cards in this miniature set. They are assigned numbers and rarities. (Miniature sets such as this, called POP sets (Pokemon Organized Play), actually do exist.)

Eevee is listed twice. That means there are two different versions of Eevee. They have the same name and evolve into the same things, but they have different statistics (which we’ll discuss later). They are both circles - which means they’re overwhelmingly common.  Remember that, like I said earlier, there are 6 random common cards in each booster pack of 11.

Flareon, Vaporeon and Jolteon are also listed multiple times - three times. I’mma focus on the first two for now, numbers 3-5 and 6-8. The first three are diamonds - that means they’re just uncommon (or they WOULD be diamonds, but the font doesn’t recognize that symbol; they’re listed as questionmarks instead). They’re probably not as strong as the second three, which are stars and therefore rarer. They will have different statistics, but they are the same Pokemon, evolve from the same things, etc.

The rest of the Eons are all stars. They are equally rare. Except for the Lv. X cards.

Lv. X (Level X) cards are particularly special. That’s why they have two stars - they are exceptionally rare. There is no way to be sure you’ll ever get one. They’re generally referred to as Ultra Rares.

My miniset doesn’t even have a Secret Rare, which is reasonable because Secret Rares aren’t released in every set. Secret rares are very aptly named - although they, like all other cards, have a number - but their number is… weird. If I had a secret rare in my set, it would probably be 16/15. It would not show up on any official set lists like the one I posted above. It would be literally a secret! They’re even more rare than Level X cards are…

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Prerelease tournaments are held about a week before a new set is released for sale. Participants pay a $25 entry fee and are given six booster packs (sixty-six cards) from the unreleased set. From those cards, with ‘generic’ cards provided for your free use, you must make a forty-card deck and use it to battle in three rounds. There are no prizes for winning - it’s just fun. There are door prizes awarded and you get to keep all of your cards; at the end, they will give you two more booster packs, receiving eighty-eight cards in total (which normally costs around $30) that haven’t even been released for normal sale yet.

If enough people are interested, a “booster draft” may be held after the tournament, costing an extra $15. In a booster draft, four people are seated at tables and each are given four booster packs from the new set;  each person at the table opens a booster pack at the same time, takes ONE card of their choosing, and passes on the remaining cards to the next person. Then they take a card of their choosing from the remaining cards they were handed, and hand them off again, etcetera. When all four booster packs have been opened in this manner, you form another 40-card deck from these cards (which is generally easier, since you can plan the cards you take out in advance) and have another short tournament.

In the newest set, “Platinum” (which is being released Feb. 11th for normal sale), an interesting new mechanic is being implemented that I’ll cover in my upcoming post about the trading card game; the possibility of obtaining these cards in the set is something to look out for, considering how powerful some of them are. There’s also a specific Level X card I’ve been wanting since I saw it existed about three months ago; I’ve been setting up trades to obtain it for the last week or so, just in case I don’t get it at the prerelease. I’m so excited~!