Hello everyone! This is Elena from Gaia Storm TCG, and welcome to another article here at TCG Park. We have some exciting news to share because the new Pokémon TCG set has fully been revealed: Lost Origin. This expansion will arrive in September and bring back unique concepts we hadn’t seen in years. Keep reading to find out all you need to know about this set!.
The New Ruler of the Game: Giratina VSTAR
The main figure of the Lost Origin set is going to be Giratina VSTAR, which is something we were all kind of expecting after having seen Dialga and Palkia in the previous set. Giratina is the third piece of this particular Legendary puzzle, and it looks like, perhaps, will be the most powerful of the trio.
Giratina VSTAR has an unstoppable attack that deals 280 damage straight away. If you keep in mind that virtually all the other V STAR cards in the format have precisely a 280 HP cap, one has to wonder if Giratina won’t become an instant tier S. But if this was not enough, Giratina still has additional strengths.
To begin with, it is a Dragon-type Pokémon and, as such, has no type weakness given that the Fairy Pokémon no longer exist in the Trading Card Game. Next, it has a VSTAR attack that gets you an instant KO on the opponent’s active Pokémon if you have at least ten or more cards in the Lost Zone. And on top of everything, the Giratina V card has its characteristic “Shred” attack that can bypass Miltank and other walls.
The Return of the Lost Zone
Even if Giratina is one of my all-time favourite Legendary Pokémon, it is not the only reason why I am so excited for this set: The Lost Zone Mechanic is coming back. Let me explain what the Lost Zone is for those of you that are not familiar.
The Lost Zone is a special place on the board, similar to the Discard Pile, where cards can go if they are affected by a specific type of card. The main difference that the Lost Zone has is that once a card is placed there, there is no way to get it back because you can’t interact with it anymore. When I started playing Pokémon more than a decade ago, the Lost Zone and the cards that benefit from it were a common strategy. Some Pokemon TCG decks revolved specifically around sending your opponent cards to the Lost Zone until you could win the game.
This time, the Lost Zone shenanigans are coming back, and Lost Origin features a lot of unique cards that reach their maximum potential while having a whole Lost Zone. Something to highlight is that you can very quickly identify which cards are related to the Lost Zone because they have blue and purple smoke swirls around their illustrations. I was surprised by the number of cards we are getting to experiment with.
Some of the most powerful cards in the set have to do in some way or another with the Lost Zone. We have a generic energy accelerator, Mirage Gate, that charges up to 2 basic energy to your Pokémon if you have at least seven cards in the Lost Zone. Psychic-type Confey is an excellent consistency card and the most consistent way to send cards to the Lost Zone while you thin out your deck.
But not everything is going to be just the Lost Zone. There is a Pidgeotto V that can enable infinite loops, a Drapion V that is the ultimate Mew VMAX counter and an Aerodactyl VSTAR that leaves your opponent without being able to use their V STAR moves. We will cover them in more detail once we have more information about the set.
Conclusion
We still have some time until Lost Origin officially hits the stores, but it is clear that the set is going to be amazing. If you, like me, can’t wait to have your hands on it, you can already pre-order Lost Origin products here at TCG Park. Thanks for reading!