The Pokémon Company announces the upcoming TCG expansion, Sword & Shield – Battle Styles, featuring a new gameplay mechanic for the board game.
The Pokémon Company announced the newest Pokémon Expansion of TCG today, which reveals Sword & Shield – Battle Styles to the world and at the same time, showcases a new gameplay mechanic for the tabletop card game. The long-running card game has continued to reinvent itself over the years, whether that’s modifying existing competitive rules or adding new gameplay mechanics like tag teams to the already diverse group of strategies and Pokémon.
Pokémon is currently enjoying quite a bit of success and critical acclaim, even by its own high standards. Pokémon Sword & Shield: The Isle of Armor was well received by fans and introduced many great quality-of-life features in addition to some great DLC, and Pokémon is proven to have a natural home on a Nintendo console. Change. Additions like the Galarian versions of the famous Legendary Bird Trio plus an “end game” in the form of Dynamax Adventures and other challenges have helped broaden the appeal of what Pokémon Sword & Shield offers to fans, and while the series of video games is thriving, its TCG counterpart also continues to perform well. More players choosing the game digitally due to the lack of in-person organized play has helped broaden the scope of the game, and new outfits featuring Pokémon Sword and Shield make entering the TCG more appealing.
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The Pokémon Company announced today that the next step in the Pokémon TCG would be the Battle Styles expansion, which will also introduce the Battle Styles mechanic. The new mechanics give Pokémon two distinct approaches to the new set, with Single Strike Style providing them with powerful attacks that threaten one-hit KOs from opposing Pokémon, while Rapid Strike Style offers more technical gameplay that can provide nuances to the game. On top of that, the upcoming Pokémon Sword & Shield – Battle Styles TCG expansion also released a trailer and some glimpses of what the new cards will look like.
As fans can see, the power of the Pokémon Rapid Strike and Single Strike cards is tantalizing and will undoubtedly get fans excited to include them in their favorite strategies or develop new ones. Pokémon Sword & Shield – Battle Styles will be released on March 19, 2021, and Pokémon like Urshifu, Tyranitar, Empoleon, and more are already confirmed for the set.
With Pokémon continuing to thrive in the spotlight between its hit game Switch, Pokémon GO, and TCG, it’s a great time for fans of the series who simply want more content to play. Pokémon TCG has continued to iterate and develop a game that is friendly for newcomers and deep enough for competitive-minded gamers, and hopefully Pokémon Sword & Shield – Battle Styles will continue that trend in March.
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Pokémon Sword & Shield – Battle Styles launches on March 19, 2021.
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Cody Gravelle (1327 articles published)
Cody is Screen Rant’s Game Review Editor. He joined the team in 2018 and has been reporting on the games quite well every day since then except on weekends where he normally plays them. Despite being in a field apparently about criticizing and enjoying quality games, his most played game of 2019 was Fate / Grand Order, something that is unlikely to change in 2020 and beyond.
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