Posted in: Card Games, Games, Pokémon TCG, Review, Tabletop | Tagged: battle styles, pokemon, pokemon cards, Pokemon TCG, TCG

Pokémon TCG Battle Styles Product Review: Booster Box

Pokémon cards are more popular than ever, and there's about to be another surge in interest next week when the newest expansion, Sword & Shield: Battle Styles, is released. This new set, the fifth main Sword & Shield expansion, introduces a new mechanic to the Pokémon TCG with Single Strike and Rapid Strike battle styles. This new mechanic will make this a highly playable set, but will it also appeal to collectors? Battle Styles will be released this coming Friday, March 19th, but The Pokémon Company International sent some products ahead of this release in exchange for fair reviews. Now, we're cracking into a full booster box.

The Booster Box includes…

A Booster Box is essentially what you'll see at a hobby shop when you go to buy a pack of Battle Styles. These can be purchased as a complete, sealed item as well, and it's many collectors' favorite way to get the full experience of a series. If you want the best shot at pulling holos, Ultra Rares, and Full Arts, a Booster Box will pretty much guarantee a handful of great pulls every time because you're looking at 36 packs.

Impressions of Pokémon TCG: Battle Styles

Something that I noticed after opening a handful of Battle Styles packs was the strength of the holos. As a longtime collector, I can tell you that the feeling of pulling a holographic card back in the early days of Pokémon TCG, when a holo was the absolute rarest pull in existence, is far different from the feeling of pulling a holo today. Now, we collectors crack into packs with the hope of pulling Ultra Rare cards like Vs, VMAXs, Full Arts, and even Hyper Rare Rainbow and Gold cards. On top of this, many collectors, myself included, miss the classic galaxy foil holo pattern. All that said, I was blown away by the quality of the holos in Battle Styles. To say that they've improved during the Sword & Shield era is an understatement. With previous expansions, I'd be happy to pull a holo but I found myself getting hyped when I pulled the Entei, the Aegislash, and the Orbeetle.

Personally, I think it comes down to color choice. It feels as if the artists behind these cards are getting more used to this new style of liney holographic cards, and are now coloring in a way that leans into this holo pattern. It has created a set of holos that made me remember how exciting it was when holos were king.

The Ultra Rare cards of this set are also quite exciting. My favorite Battle Styles pulls from my own Booster Box include Mimikyu V (by far the best V of the set), and the hilariously strange Flapple V. Mimikyu is one of the franchise's most popular Pokémon, and it shines here with a V and a Full Art V. Pulling the latter is a goal for me the next time I open this set.

The artwork in Battle Styles, in general, is terrific, with great use of storytelling that takes place over multiple cards as well as a few disarmingly cute cards, like the above Espurr and the set's Spoink card.

A major perk of Battle Styles too is the evolution of the Pokémon V cards which, looking back at the Sword & Shield base set, felt a bit underwhelming with how computer-generated some of the art looked. That problem has largely been solved here, with exciting artwork showcasing different styles.

Battle Styles is a smaller set than all of the other Sword & Shield era expansions, with 163 standard cards and 20 Secret Rares. Now… that's still quite a lot, especially when compared to sets from the XY era which feels like forever ago, but is just a handful of years passed.

Personally, I love the smaller sets and would enjoy seeing more expansions like this so that the idea of completing a set before the next expansion arrives doesn't seem like an impossible feat. Battle Styles, for all of its focus on playing mechanics, does a lot of favors for hardcore collectors due to the smaller size and the stellar artwork.

Overall

Overall, Battle Styles is a terrific set that I feel will appeal to both Pokémon TCG competitive players as well as collectors. There are going to be a ton of different ways to crack these packs, but if you can get yourself a Booster Box, nothing compares to the experience of a marathon opening of 36 packs. Highly recommended.

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