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Battle Styles came roaring onto the scene of modern Pokemon in March, and brought with it two powerful new archetypes! Rapid Strike and Single Strike are two new powers a Pokemon Card can have, and along with Urshifu, each got a powerful pokemon! Single Strike Tyranitar and Rapid Strike Empoleon are both great deckbuilding tools. They also got their own V-Striker Tins soon after the release of Battle Styles itself!
These tins contain a Tyranitar or Empoleon V card with brand new artwork from Studio PLANETA, as well as 4 packs! 2 Battle Styles, 1 Darkness Ablaze and 1 XY Steam Siege packs are included. Obviously, due to the age of Steam Siege, this pack will not give you any standard legal cards unlike the Battle Styles and the Darkness Ablaze packs.
Flow Like Water
Empoleon V, is a hyper-controlling card that can completely stop your opponents in their tracks! Its ability, Emperor’s Eyes, stop all non-rule box Basic Pokemon from having an ability when they are in play. This stops a lot of common engines from being able to function! Swirling Slice deals 130 damage for 1 Water and 2 Colourless, and has you move an energy off Empoleon onto another Pokemon. Use cards like Bronzong to control this and use it in your favour!
Strong As The Mountain
Tyranitar, on the other hand, is heavily based on both mill and self-mill. Its first ability, Cragalanche, discards the top two cards of your opponent’s deck for 1 Darkness and 2 Colourless. It only deals 60 damage, however, so you might want the tradeoff. Single Strike Crush deals a “crushing” 240 damage for 2 Darkness and 2 Colourless, but forces you to discard the top 4 cards of your deck. With both Chilling Reign and Evolving Skies bringing cards that care about the Discard Pile, this may turn out to be a huge boon! Combine it with more cards, like Giovanni's Exile or Durant, to take it even farther!
Piles of Packs!
The packs themselves are also quite nice. With my Empoleon box, I wasn’t incredibly lucky. I got some good reverse holos for Single Strike and Rapid Strike decks in Mawile and Scroll of Swirls. I also got some more fun cards like Durant to play in the Tyranitar deck. The Tyranitar tin, on the other hand, was fantastic! I got a Single-Strike Urshifu V from the first Battle Styles pack, and the Steam Siege pack not only gave me a reverse holographic rare in Nidoking, but also a full art Ultra-Rare Mega Gardevoir EX!
All in all, these tins are great. Playable promo cards, great packs and a visually pleasing tin design to top it all off. Steam Siege is hard to find now, and the Mega Gardevoir EX is enough of a reason to try and pull them! The tins won’t go amiss for anyone, I’m sure.