Darkness Ablaze Analysis – A Set Better Suited for Expanded?

Hello everyone! With Darkness Ablaze and this season’s rotation just around the corner, I thought I’d give my take on the new set and analyze how it will help kick off the next format. Like any set, Darkness Ablaze has a few clear winners, but it’s not always apparent how some of these cards will be played. Additionally, there are some cards I believe to be overrated or overlooked, and I’ll talk about those ones as well. Just because I call some cards overlooked or overrated does not mean I think the overlooked cards are better than the overrated ones. Overall, I find Darkness Ablaze to be quite underwhelming despite it having a few powerful cards. We must also consider the rotation, which cycles out Ultra Prism, Forbidden Light, Celestial Storm, and Lost Thunder. Although there is one online tournament that will use Darkness Ablaze in a pre-rotation format, I’m going to analyze everything in a post-rotation context because that’s likely more relevant for a majority of people.

Generally, I’m unimpressed with the Pokemon of this set. There are some oddballs such as Corviknight, Vanilluxe, Rhyperior V, and Mew V that may be worth keeping an eye out for the future, but they aren’t going to do anything right now. There are some neat setup Pokemon such as Starly and Wishiwashi, but they get invalidated by Marnie. Most of the Pokemon VMAX are uninteresting. They all have high-HP and high damage output, but not enough of either to stand out. All of the Trainers are interesting at the very least, and we got a few insane ones with Turbo Patch and Cape of Toughness. However, there’s nothing here worthy of being called a staple; even Turbo Patch is deck specific. Overall, the array of Trainers in the set is a little underwhelming. However, this set knocked it out of the park with the Special Energy. Although type specific, all three of the Special Energy cards are incredible.

Winners

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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