New Livestream Set to Reveal the Latest TCG Product Info: Our Speculation!
The Japanese Pokemon TCG YouTube channel has announced a new livestream that will reveal the latest product information. It will take place on Sunday at 3 AM PDT / 5 AM CDT / 6 AM EDT / 10 AM UTC.
The last September livestream was back in 2019 at Tokyo’s Champions League tournament. It revealed the first two Supporter cards from the Sword & Shield era (which was releasing in one month), full art promo cards players could win at upcoming tournaments, a handful of secret rares from TAG All Stars (which was releasing in a few weeks), and the announcement that all “A” block cards would rotate out of Japan’s Standard format (at the end of the following month).
The last regular livestream was back in July at the Japan Championships 2021. It revealed real footage of the 25th Anniversary Golden Box as well as Surfing and Flying Pikachu VMAX (though they’d been revealed a few days earlier). Both previews came two months before 25th Anniversary Collection‘s upcoming October release date.
What’s different this time is that most of Japan’s tournaments have been cancelled, so this livestream won’t be produced at an event. This livestream would have taken place during the Yokohama Champions League, but it was cancelled. The next big tournament will take place on October 3rd in Kyoto. This might mean the news is about something more important than usual or Japan feels it must make an announcement now because it can’t do it at its events like normal. Most news can be relegated to website updates, so we’re not sure why there’s a need for a livestream.
Going purely off precedent, we might see news about October’s 25th Anniversary Collection and December’s VMAX Climax. Maybe they’ll show off the texture of that metal Charizard! Maybe they’ll finally tell us how Japan is getting the “remake cards” like Greninja ☆ and Light Toxtricity. We haven’t seen any announcement of what products they’ll come in.
It may be too early to talk about January’s Star Birth, especially since Japan hasn’t revealed VMAX Climax yet. Unless the news is something like “VMAX Climax will be the next set, it will be the last set to have Pokemon VMAX, here’s these new VSTARS we’re releasing for the upcoming Diamond & Pearl era, this is what you can look forward to next year!” Fusion Arts will be fully revealed next week, which means there won’t be anything else to look forward to gameplay-wise for a while. They could use this livestream to tease tournament players by saying “Here’s an upcoming shake-up to gameplay!”
If it’s something more special, we might see something like Pokemon TCG Live (if we were to assume Japan is also getting the app). One thing to note is that we previously revealed VMAX Climax booster packs would come with 11 cards instead of the usual 10. Unless the 11th card is a Puzzle card — which only appeared in Eevee Heroes — could this 11th card be a code card? That’s reaching, though. We wouldn’t normally think twice about it were it not for TCG Live on the horizon.
One thing’s for sure: don’t get too hyped! It’s better to be pleasantly surprised than to hype yourself up into disappointment. What do you think will get revealed? Let us know by commenting below!
