"I'm Addicted To You, But I Know That You're Toxic"

It was a Saturday like any other Saturday. My Snorlax-self lazily used Rollout out of bed to take a shower and Refresh my Sleep condition. But what would this weekend entail? Endless naps, Netflix, and a jar of queso awaited me, but then a sudden realization. I quickly looked at my calendar and remembered there was a pre-release for the new TCG expansion, Burning Shadows, happening that day. I've been an avid collector of the cards. However, I reached my goal and got at least one card of every species ... until Sun and Moon. As you know, collecting 'em all is a liiittle more expensive than catching 'em all. But would I take the plunge and get back into this addiction? You're reading this blogpost, so the answer's obviously yes. After all, going to a pre-release would be a great way to get a lot of Alola-native Pokémon, right? Well, not exactly.


There were no legendary contents inside.

Ah yes, the fancy Ho-oh box carried not a single rare card. The pre-release operated a bit differently where you start off with four packs and an evolution pack with predetermined cards so you had something playable, but I was still ticked off. I mean, when your rarest card is a non-holo Slowking, you'd be salty too! But of course, too much sodium in your system is toxic, so that became the inspiration for my pre-release deck.


The evolution pack came with two Toxicroaks, which had the ability to poison the opponent and do 30 damage for two energies. That might not seem like much, but I also managed to pull a Seviper and get another one in the evolution pack. Seviper's ability, More Poison, adds an additional counter to a poisoned Pokémon. Since they stack, Toxicroak could reliably do 60 damage per turn. Thanks to Nest Ball and Timer Ball being able to search out key Pokémon, this strategy was relatively easy to pull off. I also added a Meowstic and Bouffalant for additional attackers -- they proved helpful in certain situations.

For such a bad pull, I surprisingly did well! My first opponent had a full-art Marshadow-GX (jealous!), but it was easy to take down due to its Psychic weakness. The next two decks I fought had Dark Pokémon, so I unfortunately fell to one due to not setting up on time. The other, however, was heavily damaged since I got both Toxicroak and Seviper out. My eventual win condition was to power up Meowstic with his Hand Kinesis attack. The attack does 10 damage for each card in your hand, which was easy to power up thanks to draw cards like Professor Kukui. The last match featured a Toxicroak, but I got mine setup first to outpace my opponent and hit for weakness. Winning three out of four matches, I qualified for top cut which meant I got an extra pack!


Speaking of packs, check out those abs!

So what did this mean for pulling rare cards? Absolutely nothing! Yes, the only rare card I got from the extra pull was a holo Zygarde. And yes, I did get some Alola Pokémon, so that means I'm back to collecting. Darn you, Burning Shadows. Your trap was super effective.

Well, here we go again!