Pokemon TCG: Scarlet & Violet 3 Obsidian Flames Elite Trainer Box

Pokemon: trading card game is a two player dueling game where two Pokemon trainers construct a deck and battle it out head to head to see who can knock out the other player’s Pokemon the quickest. Players will have an active Pokemon and up to five benched Pokemon that they can attach one energy to each turn. This energy powers up your Pokemon and allows them to perform various abilities/attacks. Each attack will do a certain amount of damage to your opponent’s active Pokemon and when their health has been depleted they are knocked out. There are various trainer cards, item cards and environment cards to mix up the game play and if used wisely, you can swing the battle in your favour. Players can evolve their Pokemon to make them more powerful and with a huge pool of cards to choose from, players can create unique and powerful decks for battle. Add in the VStar, VMax, EX & GX special Pokemon cards and you can create some very fun, exciting and powerful decks. .

Obsidian Flames is the latest release for the Pokemon: TCG and with most Pokemon sets, there are booster packs, build and battle boxes, bundles and Elite Trainer Boxes (ETB) to purchase. This is the standard format for the Pokemon TCG and one that many of you are probably familiar with. All these packs offer new cards to add to your collection. Obsidian Flames introduces the type-shifted Tera Pokemon EX. Now, that is a lot of buzz words, but what this essentially means is that certain Pokemon will have different energy types to what is their norm. For example, Charizard is usually a fire type Pokemon but will also appear as a darkness type Pokemon in this set. Other type shifted Tera Pokemon include Tyrantir, Eiscue and Vespiqueen to name a few. I picked up the ETB for Obsidian Flames and cracked it open.

Contents

So what does the ETB for Obsidian Flames contain? In this box you will get:

• nine booster packs
• 1 full art foil promo card
• 65 card sleeves
• 45 energy cards
• 1 player’s guide
• 6 damage counters
• 1 competition legal flip coin
• 2 condition markers

That is a lot of content for a relatively small price point and I think it is cracking value for money. The booster packs give you a chance to pull some exciting and rare cards (as with all booster packs) and I was lucky to find the super rare Charizard EX and a few other rare and shiny cards to add to my collection. The sleeves are of good quality, great to protect your cards and are illustrated with Charmander on the back. The full art promo card is a fantastic looking card and one that any Pokemon fan will be pleased to add to their collection or into a deck if intending to battle. Not only is the ETB great value for money, you also have a useful box, with dividers to store your cards in. I think this is great for someone who is just starting to collect Pokemon in general or starting to collect this series specifically.

The player’s guide is a very useful booklet as it lists all the Pokemon cards in this particular set. You can use this as a tick sheet to track what cards you have and what cards you need to complete the set. Apart from the cards you are getting, there is nothing that stands out about this ETB and a lot of things I have said will stand for any other ETB you may pick up. However, I (or more specifically my Son) still enjoyed the box as a whole. The thrill of ripping open the booster packs, amassing a big collection of cards and the hunt for those super rare pulls is always exciting especially when you pull something (or multiple somethings) cool.