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Northern Invasion Stu: Premier League Adrenalyn
It may not be Magic the Gathering, Pokémon or even Lorcana but with the new football season underway, we have the latest collection of collectible trading cards from Panini available to buy. As a child I loved trying to fill my Panini sticker album each year, negotiating with my classmates at school for their swaps. Things have come on a lot over the years and the traditional sticker album has evolved into the brand new Premier League Adrenalyn XL™ 2025 Official Trading Card Game!
Each of the cards you pull from the sealed packs are fully usable in the game where you draft teams from your collection to play against those of your friends. My son was thrilled to learn that Zatu stock the 2025 Adrenalyn XL cards and has taken to tacking the odd booster (or box) on to my games orders.
Although not the rarest or most powerful card in the collection, his card pull of the month is the Erling Haaland Phenom card, one of only four Phenom special cards this season. Haaland of course takes a forward position in your team and with a control of 95 and an attack rating of 99, he is going to score you plenty of goals. The extreme bottom right penalty target position is also a very difficult position for goalkeepers to cover in the event of a shootout.
Even if you don’t play the game, the Phenom edition Haaland card will take pride of place in your binder and will get you one step closer to completing your 2025 collection.
Jeanne D’Arc - Ross Coulbeck:
Not only is Jeanne D’Arc a great pull, but this is the first Altered card to be included in this monthly feature! A new game on the block, Altered achieved the largest kickstarter ever for a TCG and is a game I’ve been looking forward to for over a year now. The wait felt interminable, but it is finally here and I was lucky enough to pull this card in only my second booster.
Jeanne D’Arc (based around the historical figure of Joan of Arc) is a great pull for several reasons. Firstly, she is not just a unique, but an out of faction unique (both of which I’ll go into shortly). Then we have her stats, while she costs a sliver more than her other variants, she makes up for it with her stats and abilities. Usually a 2/2/2, she is a 1/4/4, sacrificing only 1 in Forest to gain 2 in Mountain and Water, not a bad trade at all. Then when she leaves the expedition, something likely to happen at least twice, she creates a Brassbug token (2/2/2) giving you an advantage next turn. On top of that when a Robot joins your Expeditions, if we control another token (likely in her kind of deck) we can boost another character, which is always really useful. And if that wasn’t enough, if you decide to discard her from reserve instead of playing her again, you can put a card from your hand into reserve, giving you some alternate playlines for cards which are cheaper from reserve. All in all I can’t fault her, she’s a more late game play but she could really give you the edge you need. Not to mention the art looks fantastic!
Before I go let me explain briefly about her rarity as I mentioned. There are 3 levels of rarity in Altered, Common, Rare and Unique, so she is top there. Only 1 in every 8 packs contains a unique. On top of that, while each card has a version in each rarity, rare and unique rarities also get out of faction versions. Normally Jeanne D’Arc is from the Ordis (blue) faction, but here we see her in the Axion (brown) faction, which just shows how lucky a pull this was. I hope I have more uniques to show you soon!
Magic: The Gathering - Tyvar, the Pummeler - Melissa King:
I think it’s safe to say that we are well and truly into spooky season now, and MTG players were able to welcome the coming of the season of tricks and treats with the release of Duskmourn: House of Horrors. Set in a plane which is actually a massive haunted mansion (filled with murderous toys, killer clowns and chaotic demons), the story of Duskmourn revolves around a malevolent demon called Valgavoth, who was summoned to the plane and trapped in the basement of the haunted house.
This set brought with it some new mechanics and creature types, but also the return of some familiar characters, such as The Wanderer, Kaito, Zimone and Nashi. One such returning character is who I picked as my pull of the month…
Tyvar, the Pummeler is a 3 drop [1GG], 3/3, legendary Elf Warrior Creature who protects himself by allowing you to make him indestructible, just by tapping another creature. The text on the card which is more appealing to me, however, is Tyvar’s second ability.
For 3 generic mana and 2 green (easy to achieve in any green deck or elf deck for that matter!), you can pump all creatures you control by +X/+X, where X is the greatest power among creatures you control… Did somebody say built in Createrhoof Behemoth?!
This ability is literally dumb! And what’s more incredible is that if you have enough available mana, you can pay into this ability as many times as you like, and at instant speed! As I eluded to before, with the wealth of ramp available in most green decks, most elf decks, most big stompy decks, this ability isn’t hard to achieve. And with cards like Voja, Jaws of the Conclave as your commander (exactly the deck I’ll be putting this into), getting your creatures big and beefy quickly (to allow for a huge X value) really isn’t hard!
I think I speak for my entire commander pod when I say that they were screaming in horror when I pulled this little treat!
Capone “Gang” Bege - alternate art - Matthew Morgan:
Although this card has been out for a good while now, I was super excited to find it in one of my packs this weekend. Not only does it look fantastic in it's alternate art form, but it fits right into the One Piece TCG deck that I'm currently running. In fact, it's a sought after yellow staple that fits into almost any yellow deck due to it's powerful trigger ability.
But what I love most about this card is how they've depicted the character in the art. Known for being able to harbor people inside him thanks to his gum gum fruit ability, the fortress form shows this power off perfectly and looks incredible in foil too!
That's not all though, as with all alternate art cards Capone is also textured in parts of the card to highlight some of the art. For this card, the parts of the castle are made to pop with the added texture which looks incredible when it catches the light in the right way.
Disney Lorcana “Pete, Game Referee” - Stefano Paravisi:
September has been a crazy month for me on the TCG side. The newest set of Disney Lorcana, “Shimmering Skies” released just before my holidays and, once I came back, I was super busy making new decks and play testing them in preparation for the UK Regional Challenge in Birmingham. And once the Challenge completed, it was time to prepare for the first Set Championship, hoping to win the Mirabelle Enchanted Promo card.
With all these events packed in a month, I ended up opening A LOT of booster packs and choosing which card to feature today was not easy. After a few discussion with my partner in crime (my son) we agreed that the best card to summarize my TCG experience in September should be “Pete, Game Referee”. Pete is a simple uncommon Steel card that can be played by paying 3 Ink and that has both a Strength and a Willpower of 3. In terms of stats and rarity, he does not seem much but what makes this card special is its powerful ability that stops all opponents from playing Actions (and Songs) for a turn.This extremely peculiar ability makes Pete a perfect card to add to every Steel based deck, in particular Amber/Steel Song decks. Playing Pete at the right time can protect a player from the devastating effects of “Be prepared” or “A whole new World” or “Grab your Sword”. It can also keep your cards save from a “Brawl”, a “Sudden Chill” or just prevent your opponent to draw from “Friends on the other side”. Essentially, Pete can both protect your cards and also stop your opponents strategy for one turn potentially slowing them down enough to give the player the advantage they need to take the lead of the match. Considering how impacting this card has been on the metagame, and how many times I saw it played this month, I had to chose Pete as my pull of the month. And as he will say, “It ain’t cheatin’ if you’re the one makin’ the rules.”
