Hello everyone! This is Elena from Gaia Storm TCG and it is a pleasure to be here with you. A couple of hours ago, Pokémon has officially released some big news: the so awaited confirmation of the 2019 rotation. Unlike previous years, the number of sets that won’t be legal anymore is really high for the competitive scene. So, what is the rotation and what crucial cards are we losing?

Each year, Pokémon Trading Card Game renews the allowed cards in the standard format. At the beginning of a new season, just after summer, a number of cards are rotated out in order to keep the metagame evolving. In this particular occasion, there are a total of SIX sets that will be out: Breakthrough, Breakpoint, Generations, Fates Collide, Steam Siege and Evolutions.  All of them are packed with cards that have rightfully affected the metagame for the last two years. That means that the allowed expansions for 2019 are going to be from Sun and Moon onwards, a huge change.

I can’t stress how much different the game terms is about to become now that we are losing those six sets. With Breakthrough, to name a few candidates, we will lose Brigette, Octillery, Float Stone and Parallel City. These are cards that practically build the engine of top decks right now. Equally important is going to be the absence of Puzzle of Time, Garbotoxin Garbodor and Max Elixir from Breakpoint.

Regarding Fates Collide, the influence is going to be also high. We will say goodbye to Mew, Carbink (the two types of basic and the BREAK one), Regirock, Team Rocket Handiwork and Zygarde GX among other. But the most relevant losses are for sure Strong Energy and N. Something similar will happen with Steam Siege. The two most important cards here were, in my opinion, Prof. Sycamore and Volcanion EX. It will be difficult to get use to a format when you can’t discard your entire hand to draw after all those years.

Finally, Generations and Evolutions were more like collections oriented to long time Pokémon fans than to bring competitive value to the game. Nonetheless, there were some cool cards that are for sure going to be missed like Raichu, Mewtwo, Jolteon EX, Team Flare Grunt, Red Card and Starmie.

I just mentioned some of the most relevant cards above but, as you can see, the rotation is for sure going to deeply affect the status of the game. What is going to happen to the current decks? That issue might need another article itself! Thanks for reading!