When I was growing up in secondary school I was like most youngsters that collected the original Pokémon trading cards. However, I didn’t learn how to play it the proper way until late last year when I went into full Pokémon mode with the release of their latest game X & Y. After acquiring my first grass type starter deck from the Kalos Region I once again found that love again and need to collect, or should I say catch em all. Every few months a newer expansion pack is released to keep the trading card game fresh, up to date and most importantly offers you a chance to collect a shiny Pokémon card to add to your every growing collection. So when I was asked to review the latest Furious Fists expansion packs I was instantly onboard and have loved every minute of it.
What is this Pokémon Trading Card game?
Whether you’re a fan of the TV series, an avid Pokémon trainer that plays the video game or just a lover of the Japanese pocket monsters you’ll somewhat already know that battling them is one of the primary roles. The trading card game is the battling side to the ever-growing Pokémon franchise with the obvious opportunity to trade for better cards. Once you’ve laid out the playmat to battle on you’ll divide your deck of 60 cards into a Prize Card section where you collect up to 6 cards after defeating your opponent’s individual Pokémon, your Bench where you line up 5 of your own Pokémon ready to battle with, your Deck pile where you draw new cards from, your Discard Pile where used cards and defeated Pokémon go, and most importantly your Active Pokémon section where you fight. The system works similarly to how the series and the game works. You only can defeat 6 Pokémon, items can boost your team and you even can to be tactical with whatever cards you randomly deal yourself.
What is Furious Fists?
With most successful franchises out there releasing a sequel or an expansion is what the fans would always want. Something to keep the interest, a new talking point and most importantly renewing this brand to keep fans happy and even bring in new players. Furious Fists in an expansion to the XY set of cards with 2 theme decks and multiple expansion packs. The 2 theme decks is the Dark Hammer deck with the mascot Pokémon Pangoro, the fighting panda, and the Enchanted Echo deck with the mascot Pokémon Sylveon, the fairy evolution of Eevee.
Dark Hammer consists of Pokémon that are hard hitters, fighting types and dark types. Featuring cards such as the Pokémon Mienshao who pulls a tricky hit-and-run as Pangoro hammers away at your opponent’s deck. Landorus keeps your team powered up with energy and Machamp’s Fighting Fury Ability can boost your attacks. To name but a few from this deck of 60 you’ll certainly be pulling out all the stops.
Enchanted Echo consists of Pokémon that are more likely to disrupt your opponent’s strategy as this deck of fairy types isn’t as innocent as it seems. Damage prevention moves from Clefable and Accelgor plus the healing powers of Victreebel and the Potion item, this deck balances out the fight to whatever the opponent throws at you.
Is Furious Fists for you?
The accessibility into playing with this pack doesn’t change if you’ve already learned how to play the Trading Card Game itself. It offers more to choose from and the initial game created years ago hasn’t been changed. This means that the expansion will appeal to anyone that’s previous played and the learning curve for the new cards is null. Literally you can play out of the box on release.
The quality of the components within each theme deck and the expansion is top of the range, sturdy and the shiny cards always gleam, just how a rare card should. The deck box, damage counters and metallic coin are built to last and endured the beating I gave them from the battles I had during my review.
The newer cards weren’t overpowering the older cards meaning you can incorporate older cards into the game. I purposely played with my older deck from last year against a Furious Fist deck and still managed to have a great match. I threw in a few expansion packs into the mix too and it complimented what cards I originally played with and still didn’t unbalance the game. So if you have your older cards around don’t think that they’re now redundant, dust them off and get back into the action.
Verdict
I love playing anything Pokémon related but the latest Furious Fist expansions have rekindled my excited to play and trade more. Each of the 2 theme decks come with a decent amount of cards, evolutions, items and are all balanced to ease you into battling straight away. I’m pleased with the individual booster packs for Furious Fists offering me some pretty awesome and rare cards and now I must collect more. I’ll urge any Pokémon fans out there who were like me, a collector of the card but not the player of the card game, to try out the game and see it’s actually as fun as the video game battling itself. I, for one, am excited for the next expansion but until then I must become the Pokémon master, of the cards I already own that is.
