Pokemon Introduces Tag Team Pokemon-GX

The world Pokémon trading card game and video game championships in Nashville have wrapped up, but during the event, Pokémon revealed that big changes are coming to the TCG very soon in the form of Tag Team Pokémon-GX.

These cards feature two Pokémon of the same type and give up three prize cards when they are knocked out. So far the only card that has been revealed is Pikachu & Zekrom-GX, so we will have to wait and see which other pairs will be used to get a better idea of how these new cards will work.

One thing we can gather from the Pikachu & Zekrom card is that the GX attack is the first of its kind with a "+" energy requirement. By adding additional energy to the card, players can take advantage of a devastating secondary effect to the attack.

On its own, this seems like a decent card. 240 HP is ridiculous for a basic Pokémon-GX, and puts it at the same level as most Stage 2 Pokémon-GX such as Vikavolt, Decidueye, and Kommo-o. The first attack called Full Blitz requires three lightning energy cards, does 150 damage, and lets you search for three more lightning energy cards and attach them to one of your Pokémon.

The GX attack is where things get interesting. For three lightning energy cards, you can do 200 damage to your opponent's active Pokémon. But if you have three additional lightning energy cards attached to Pikachu & Zekrom, you can do 170 damage to one of your opponent's benched Pokémon.

These two attacks work well together. It may take a little while to set up this card's first attack, but once you do, you can use the attack to power up Pikachu & Zekrom's GX attack for your following turn. Using it should be able to knock out most basic Pokémon-GX and give you between two and four prize cards in one hit.

I would liken these cards to the old two-Pokémon LEGEND cards of the HeartGold & SoulSilver era. The difference being that those required getting two separate cards into play before you could think about adding the required energy. These Tag Team cards seem far less clunky and should have decent attacks.

With the introduction of this new, powerful basic Pokémon-GX that can hit for massive damage every turn, it appears that the power creep that has afflicted the Pokémon TCG won't be slowing down anytime soon. Pikachu & Zekrom-GX will be available in our February 2019 set, so stay tuned for more updates.