Pokémon TCG’s Paldean Fates expansion includes shiny versions of Pikachu, Ceruledge and 130 more critters

Shiny Pokémon return to the franchise’s popular trading card game in the January 2024 expansion, Scarlet & Violet - Paldean Fates. This third Pokémon TCG set with ‘Fates’ in the titles will include 240 new cards, 130 of which will sport the alternate shiny colouration.

Dropping January 26th of next year, Paldean Fates will appropriately focus on Pokémon found within the Paldean region where the Scarlet & Violet video games take place. As a special expansion, The Pokémon Company will not sell normal booster packs but instead distribute cards via a slate of packaged products such as elite trainer boxes, sticker collections and mini tins.

Among the 240 card-set are 130 shiny Pokémon, including Pikachu, Ceruledge, Tinkaton, Dondozo and Tatsugiri. Decks can only include one copy of a shiny Pokémon and these cards often have unique and powerful abilities that enable some fun and powerful strategies. For example, the current semi-casual meta leans heavily on Shiny Greninja’s ability to discard an energy from a player’s hand to draw two more cards. Paldea’s sets contain no end of ways to retrieve energy cards from discard, so Shiny Greninja fits in perfectly.

Paldean Fates will bring 11 Shiny Pokémon ex and 7 Pokémon ex with normal rules, along with three more Tera Pokémon ex - Charizard, Forretress, and Espathra. This last category was only recently added to the TCG via the Paldean block’s sets. Three new illustration cards will feature shiny Pokémon, while eight special illustration cards have been allotted to either shiny Pokémon ex or Supporter cards. Six of the Pokémon ex cards players can find in the set are earmarked as “hyper rare”, which will be printed with a “unique raised foil effect” new to Shining Paldea’s expansion.

Great Tusk and Iron Treads will join the Ancient and Future Pokémon cards, respectively, that first showed up in previous expansion Paradox Rift. These powerful V and ex Pokémon are alternate forms of their current-day counterparts that emerge from Area Zero in the Great Paldea Rift. One version of the video game transports creatures from the ancient past, all horns and big teeth and prehistoric. In the other direction are sleek metal and cybernetic forms affixed with metal, strobing lights and eerie, almost alien technology.

Scarlet & Violet - Paldean Fates comes to the Pokémon TCG Live app first on January 25th, one day before a wider paper release in hobby shops and retailers. Just like its physical counterpart, the Pokémon TCG Live expansion can be collected through bundles purchased through the in-game shop using premium currency crystals.