Pokemon TCG Shrouded Fable Review

A little set with a lot of room:

Is anybody else beginning to get a little overwhelmed by the absolute mach speed at which Pokemon is releasing sets recently? It feels like yesterday when we all sat around for the prerelease of Temporal Forces, now I’ve blinked and we’re three months deep into Twilight Masquerade and now Stellar Crown is on its way in just under a month! It’s hard to know where to look first and, more importantly, what the best set to invest in is. Whilst not a main set, the passing of 2nd August gave us the English version of Shrouded Fable, and with it the promise of a Tier 1 format shakeup. It’s small, but certainly mighty and had the top players at this year’s World Championships sweating with how ambiguous its release date became. But Worlds is almost over and Shrouded Fable has hit the shelves, so how well does it really live up to the claims fans have been making?

Bigger isn't always better!:

Shrouded Fable takes on the Pokemon introduced in the second half of Scarlet and Violet’s DLC: The Indigo Disk, with a small set of just 99 cards, 64 standard rares and 35 full art and special art rares. The stars of the set are the quartet of Okidogi, Munkedori, Fezandipiti and Pecharunt, who have finally made their way onto the TCG stage as Feature EX cards, with Pecharunt making its debut.

The main issue with a small set like this is that it isn’t available to buy in Booster Boxes, so anyone adamant on either collecting all the new pretty art or looking for that one card you just can’t seem to pull is going to have to surrender themselves to the Elite Trainer Box gacha for the best value for money. Or you could just treat yourself to a Booster Pack after work one day and pray, and we all know the serotonin levels from THOSE hits transcend all others.

But for those looking to build decks rather than grow collections, there are certainly some individual cards to look out for that can elevate existing sets massively and provide some fresh competition in the infernal and eternal reign of Charizard EX, alongside some brand new builds with Shrouded Fable features as the front runners.

Poison bites back:

Let's look at Pecharunt first, this sets little star with two cards to its name, both its standard and EX versions are Dark type cards that have gorgeous special art rares, the former of which got itself a Promo in the Shrouded Fable Elite Trainer Boxes (yippee!). They also both focus around a mechanic that’s been missing from the metagame for a while and I’ve been wanting to see become relevant again since the loss of Klawf back in April when rotation hit: poison.

The single prize Pecharunt has the ability ‘Toxic Subjugation’, allowing for the player to increase poison damage upon checkup by 5 damage counters, having opponents take 60 damage every time the turns switch over. This makes for some great early game chipping whilst your stronger fighters sit on the bench and charge themselves to take the rest of the opposition’s health in one sweep. Combine this with cards like Radiant Sneasler and the stadium Perilous Jungle and your opponents could be punished immensely between your turns, taking up to 100 damage every time. Am I hearing a return of disruption dark type decks? Gengar EX, anyone?

The Pecharunt EX can be highly utilised in any dark deck with the ability ‘Subjugating Chains’, which allows the player to switch any of their benched dark types into the active spot for free, but poisons them if they do so. A free switch is juicy, especially with options to mitigate the poison effect with tools like Ancient Booster Energy Capsule. Ancient Box and Roaring Moon have certainly been having a lot of fun with it. And it goes hand in hand with another feature in this set, Okidogi EX, who is able to swing for double damage if it has been poisoned with ‘Chain Crazed’. Pecharunt EX can also be a sneaky finishing attacker with ‘Irritated Outburst’, dealing 60 damage for each prize card taken by an opponent.

Holding onto Pecharunts other hand (paw? thing?) is Munkidori EX, whose ability ‘Oh No You Dont’ gives it the value of an uncommon as it means the opponent only takes one prize card if a Pecharunt EX is on the field when it is knocked out. Paired with an attack that does 190 damage with only one retreat cost, that's quite the single prizer.

Fezandipiti stands alone as a feature but provides a buff akin to Rotom V, minus the turn end, allowing the player to draw 3 cards every time one of their Pokemon is knocked out during your opponent’s turn. This can be slotted into practically any deck, providing key draw support when those hands brick or those top deck draws seem to hate you in particular. If Nemona wasn’t already obsolete enough.

Speaking of the Scarlet & Violet cast, one in particular had a very special highlight this set.

Counting Stars and Counting Coins:

Penny already has a card in the TCG, acting as a more limited version of Professor Turo’s scenario in only being able to pick up basic Pokemon but avoids Turo’s very annoying effect of having to discard the attached cards by letting you put them into your hand instead. It sees little play, so it seems Pokemon doubled down by granting one to her alter ego too. Cassiopeia acts a little like Arceus’ VSTAR power ‘Starbirth’ and lets you search your deck for any 2 cards you like, but comes with the condition of it being the only card left in your hand when you use it, though this can be relatively easy to achieve with a few Ultra Balls.

And the condition isn’t the only card Cassiopeia is concerned about. Sitting at a hefty £70 a few weeks after release, its special art rare is the most expensive card in this set.

So Shrouded Fable’s features are crazy, surprise surprise the Pokemon that has the power to brainwash an entire region when it gets sad does some absolute work on the playmat. And of course, it's great to see some buffs granted to some truly underutilised tactics. For once, it feels like Pokemon has made a set post Obsidian Flames that does make Charizard EX infinitely better than the last. This is the ideal time to be trying out new things, right?

…Right?

No catchy tagline this time. Pokemon, what is this.:

The TCG website calls the special art rares for the Duskull, Dusclops and Dusknoir line ‘After Dusk’ and as much as I need all three of them because they are SO cute, I think that’s very fitting, for there was truly no darker time for this trio to show up for any player trying to stay out of Charizard’s firing line. Good luck with that, it’s now gotten even stronger because its last ‘weakness’, if you can even claim it has a weakness, has now been covered. It’s been covered very, very well.

The Dusclops and Dusknoir Shrouded Fable slapped us in the face with the same ability, ‘Cursed Blast’, dealing damage counters in exchange for them getting knocked out, 5 for Dusclops and 13 for Dusknoir. This can be great on its own, dealing chip damage and finishing off damaged Pokemon that have escaped onto the bench whilst being able to pierce through Jirachi’s ‘Stellar Veil’ because it’s an ability instead of an attack. But combining it with Charizard EX turns it into even more of a demon than it already is.

Despite every feature of the card feeling like it was designed to warp the metagame into a Tier 0 format, Charizard EX’s initial damage output is actually relatively weak for a Stage 2 Pokemon, Burning Darkness only hits for 180 without its conditions. Usually this isn’t a problem, damage scaling based on how close the opponent is to victory is a condition that gets met naturally throughout a match, and turns Charizard into an absolute machine in the late game. But what if it didn't have to be exclusive to the late game, Dusknoir asks us; what if there was a way to control the rate at which the opponent takes prize cards, having Charizard deal 240, 270, 300 damage as early as we like? What if we create a format in which we can open up our third turn with the endgame in sight and there isn’t anything that the opponent can do about it?

…Yeah, there has to be some super high up executive at Pokemon who was a Charizard fanboy growing up, or something. I can’t say I’ll be surprised if the winning decks at Worlds this year are, like, 95% some variant of this tech. It’s absolutely nuts.

So, is it shrouded in hype?:

Shrouded Fable, what a set, right? The first side set to follow Paldean Fates and it has stepped it up massively with both these new features and its dark horses that are guaranteed to make all our lives hell when they come to a local card store near you. I really wish it was a main set solely for there to be a better way to nab some of the special art rares because some might just make my personal top 10 (I need that Duskull so bad why does it have to be an actual played card). It’s a shame that it kicked up so much of a fuss and made Worlds an absolute nightmare to prepare for, but there are some cards here that are definitely worth trying to get ahold of and will hold monumental stakes in the metagame going forward. Charizard EX keeps its rankings for another day. Let’s hope Stellar Crown has something to say about it.