Guardians Rising (TCG)
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Pokémon TCG: Sun & Moon—Guardians Rising (Japanese: キミを待つ島々 Islands Await You and アローラの月光 Alolan Moonlight) is the name given to the second main expansion of cards from the Sun & Moon Series of the Pokémon Trading Card Game (the Sun & Moon Era in Japan). The set continues to feature Generation VII Pokémon and Pokémon-GX in the card game.
Blurb
Island Guardians, Ready for Battle!
Visit Alola for Pokémon fun, from the beaches to the mountain peaks—and discover new traditions and new challenges! Meet the island guardians Tapu Koko-GX and Tapu Lele-GX, and sharpen your skills with Kahuna Hala and Captain Mallow! Be amazed by the secret powers of Kommo-o-GX, Lycanroc-GX, Metagross-GX, Sylveon-GX, Toxapex-GX, Vikavolt-GX, and many more! Come to the islands, and seize the power of the Pokémon TCG: Sun & Moon—Guardians Rising expansion!
Information
Alolan Moonlight logos
Guardians Rising is the name given to the second main expansion of the Sun & Moon Series of the Pokémon Trading Card Game. In Japan, it was released as the Islands Await You and Alolan Moonlight dual expansions that make up the second expansion block in the Pokémon Card Game Sun & Moon Era. It is based on Pokémon Sun and Moon, featuring Generation VII Pokémon. The English expansion was released on May 5, 2017, while the Japanese expansions were released on March 17, 2017. Guardians Rising is composed of its Japanese equivalent as well as the Sun & Moon subset and the Rockruff Full Power Deck.
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Set lists
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Featured Cards
These cards were featured on the Pokémon website at one point.[1]
- Alolan Ninetales-GX: Alolan Ninetales-GX brings a chill to the otherwise tropical Alola region. Your opponents might not find this Pokémon so cool when you start picking off their Pokémon with a trio of icy attacks.
- Tapu Lele-GX: In today’s fast-paced competitive play, Supporter cards are important to any deck. Tapu Lele-GX makes sure you can always get your hands on one with its Wonder Tag Ability. And its Tapu Cure-GX attack will keep your Benched Pokémon healthy and ready for action.
- Lycanroc-GX: Lycanroc-GX lunges into battle with sharp claws and a sinister glint in its eyes. Opponents can fill up their Bench at their own peril, as it only feeds the damage that Lycanroc-GX’s Dangerous Rogue-GX attack can do.
- Metagross-GX: As imposing as Metagross-GX is, its non-damaging Geotech System Ability and Algorithm-GX attack could be its greatest features. The Ability helps you attach Energy from your discard pile directly to your Active Pokémon, while the GX attack lets you search your deck for any five cards.
- Sylveon-GX: If you’re looking to get off to a fast start, the adorable Sylveon-GX is a great option. Its Magical Ribbon attack can fetch three cards from your deck. Then, you can mess with your opponent's hard work by making them scoop up two of their Benched Pokémon with the Plea-GX attack.
- Kommo-o-GX: With somewhat complicated Energy requirements, Kommo-o-GX’s attacks might look a little tricky to use. The payoff will be worth it when you start laying out your opponent’s Active Pokémon for 130 damage each turn with its Shred attack. Then go for the Knock Out with its Ultra Uppercut-GX attack, which can take down almost any Pokémon in one shot.
- Altar of the Moone: Give your Psychic-type and Darkness-type Pokémon more freedom of movement with the Altar of the Moone Stadium card. It reduces the Retreat Cost of these Pokémon by two Energy.
- Altar of the Sunne: Give Fire-type and Metal-type Pokémon some protection with the Altar of the Sunne Stadium card, which eliminates their Weakness.
- Aqua Patch: Many Water-type Pokémon's attacks have steep Energy costs, and many do damage based on how much Energy is attached. Let the Water Energy flow from your discard pile to your Benched Pokémon with Aqua Patch.
- Hala: As if you needed any more encouragement to use a powerful GX attack, Hala will reward you for it. The kahuna lets you shuffle your hand into your deck and draw four cards if you haven’t yet used your once-per-game attack—and a full hand of seven cards if you have!
These cards were also featured on the expansion website.[2]
- Turtonator-GX: The fiery Turtonator-GX provides a number of ways to torch your opponents, including a powerful GX attack that can fuel its own Bright Flame attack or help its teammates prepare their next moves.
- Wishiwashi-GX: True to its size, two of Wishiwashi’s most powerful attacks also require a flood of Energy. But both are worth the effort—Torrential Vortex does solid damage and lets you knock a Special Energy off its target, while Blue Surge-GX has enough force to Knock Out almost any Pokémon it’ll face.
- Vikavolt-GX: Energy flows through Vikavolt-GX, with its Charge Beam electrifying its enormous Super Zap Cannon attack. Then, Vikavolt-GX can shock your opponent’s Bench with its awesome Gigatron-GX attack.
- Tapu Koko-GX: Tapu Koko-GX can make a difference in battle with lightning speed thanks to its Aero Trail Ability. In the right conditions, this Pokémon can easily do 130 damage with its Sky-High Claws attack, or much more with its Tapu Thunder-GX attack, as soon as it comes into play.
- Toxapex-GX: There’s regular poison, and then there’s Toxapex-GX’s Super Intense Poison attack. The attack’s name almost understates its impact—during every between-turns step, the Poisoned Pokémon gets 10 damage counters instead of just one.
- Drampa-GX: With several effective attacks that require only Colorless Energy, Drampa-GX is an awesome card to throw into just about any deck. Its Righteous Edge attack is particularly handy, capable of knocking a Special Energy off its target while also doing a modest amount of damage.
- Golisopod: Keep powerful Pokémon-GX and Pokémon-EX in check with Golisopod’s Resolute Claws attack, which does 150 damage to these Pokémon. Few Stage 1 Pokémon have that kind of power.
- Oricorio: Oricorio appears in many beautiful forms in this expansion, but the pink Pa'u Style may be the most attractive for many decks. When it comes into play, you get to search your deck for two basic Energy cards and add them to your hand, thanks to its Vital Dance Ability.
- Machoke: Machoke may be better known for its offensive prowess, but this Pokémon’s value is all in the protection it offers. With the Daunting Pose Ability, Machoke prevents your opponent from damaging any of your Benched Pokémon as long as it’s in play.
- Sudowoodo: Constrain the size of your opponent’s Bench with a little help from Sudowoodo, whose Roadblock Ability keeps them from having more than four Benched Pokémon.
- Honchkrow: Peck away at your opponent’s Bench with Honchkrow and its simple Feint Attack. For only one Darkness Energy, this attack will do 30 damage to one of your opponent’s Benched Pokémon. Then, use the damage you’ve caused to boost the power of the Raven’s Claw attack.
- Blissey: Blissey is a little tough to crack—it can heal your Active Pokémon when it comes into play, thanks to its Fresh Egg Ability, but it also damages itself greatly with its own powerful Double-Edge attack.
- Aether Paradise Conservation Area: The Aether Paradise Conservation Area Stadium card fills a niche, adding extra defense to both players' Basic Grass-type and Lightning-type Pokémon. If your deck matches those needs, then the damage this prevents makes this card essential.
- Brooklet Hill: With the Brooklet Hill Stadium card, you’ll waste no time getting your Basic Water-type or Fighting-type Pokémon into play. Once during each player's turn, it lets that player search their deck for one of these Pokémon and put it directly onto the Bench.
- Field Blower: Pokémon Tool and Stadium cards are powerful pieces of the puzzle for many decks. The Field Blower Item card is a highly effective counter, letting you discard up to two of those cards from play—even your own, which can come in handy if your opponent is taking advantage of your Stadium card!
Strategy
Expansion Website
The expansion website featured some strategic combinations using cards from the expansion.[3]
Bank on the Mighty Whiscash
Whiscash's Landslip attack has mammoth potential, but it can be unreliable without a little help.
Start with the Mallow Supporter card to search up two Energy and put them on top of your deck.
If you're up against a Pokémon-GX or Pokémon-EX, attach a Choice Band to Whiscash to add a little extra damage.
Then use Landslip to hit for a guaranteed 200 base damage—300 if the third card you discard happens to be an Energy card, too!
Need help getting Mallow out on the next turn? Play Tapu Lele-GX onto your Bench and use its amazing Wonder Tag Ability to retrieve another Mallow from your deck.
You're ready to do another 200+ damage with Whiscash's powerful Landslip attack!
Solgaleo-GX Gains an Ally
Debuting in the Sun & Moon expansion, Solgaleo-GX brings the Sunsteel Strike attack—which has amazing power at the expense of discarding all of its Energy.
With two Metagross-GX on your Bench, you can use each one's Geotech System Ability to retrieve a Metal Energy from the discard pile and attach it to your Active Pokémon.
Play one more Energy card from your hand to get Solgaleo-GX fully powered up again.
With three Energy attached to Solgaleo-GX, you'll be able to use Sunsteel Strike once more!
Card Highlights
The Pokémon website also featured a selection of five cards that were especially strong in competitive play.[4]
Tapu Lele-GX
We kick off our survey of great cards from the Sun & Moon—Guardians Rising expansion with Tapu Lele-GX, the guardian of Akala Island.
Much like Shaymin-EX, which has been a centerpiece of competitive play for ages, Tapu Lele-GX's strength comes from supporting the rest of your strategy. The Wonder Tag Ability allows you to search your deck for a Supporter card and put it into your hand, so you can find the right card for the situation: Professor Sycamore for a fresh hand of cards, Lysandre to target an opponent's Benched Pokémon, and so on. In the Expanded format, Jirachi-EX has been used for years for its Stellar Guidance Ability, and Wonder Tag has the same effect.
Shaymin-EX and Jirachi-EX both come with the major drawback of having low HP, which means they're easy targets for giving up two Prize cards to the opponent. With 170 HP, Tapu Lele-GX does not share that problem. It also packs the powerful Energy Drive attack, which is similar to Mewtwo-EX's X Ball attack and Lugia-EX's Aero Ball attack, both of which have had lots of success in competitive play. For any deck using Psychic Energy, the Tapu Cure-GX attack can also come in handy (but much like Mewtwo-EX's Psydrive attack, it likely won't be used very often).
The power of Tapu Lele-GX is in its flexibility. Any deck that uses Ultra Ball can add this Pokémon and gain access to a Supporter card at will. The Energy Drive attack only needs Colorless Energy, so any kind of deck can use it. Expect to see a lot of Tapu Lele-GX in decks for quite some time!
Aqua Patch
The next new card from the Sun & Moon—Guardians Rising expansion we'll take a look at is Aqua Patch, a Trainer card with all kinds of potential for Water-type decks.
Back in the Black & White—Dark Explorers expansion, one Trainer card sparked a wave of Darkness-type decks for years to come: Dark Patch. Even today, Darkrai-EX and Yveltal-EX continue to have success in the Expanded format because of the incredible speed provided by this Item card. In the Sun & Moon—Guardians Rising expansion, Water-type Pokémon get their own version of this powerful Item card: Aqua Patch.
There's no denying that Aqua Patch provides an incredible effect. Being able to attach multiple Energy in a turn has been a key to many successful strategies in the Pokémon TCG, and doing it at the low cost of an Item card is exceptional. The only hurdle is getting Water Energy into the discard pile, and that can be achieved easily with Ultra Ball or Professor Sycamore. But the one big question remains: which Pokémon can take advantage of this newfound gush of Water Energy?
The early frontrunners for the two best partners for Aqua Patch are Lapras-GX and Alolan Ninetales-GX. Lapras-GX has already seen some success in competitive play, and it could get a boost by being able to attack quickly with Blizzard Burn. Alolan Ninetales-GX has a similarly powerful attack in Blizzard Edge, and it also has the Ice Blade attack to start weakening Pokémon on the opponent's Bench. Its 210 HP makes it difficult to take down in one attack, and the Ice Path-GX attack plays off that beautifully: after Alolan Ninetales-GX takes a big hit, use its GX attack to move that damage onto the opponent's Pokémon.
Aqua Patch is sure to be a cornerstone of many Water-type strategies. As more expansions are released, be on the lookout for more Water-type Pokémon to pair with this amazing Item card!
Choice Band
We continue our look at the powerful cards from the Sun & Moon—Guardians Rising expansion with Choice Band, another potent Trainer card.
Over the past few years, Pokémon Tool cards have been a big part of generating extra damage to Knock Out opposing Pokémon. Silver Bangle, Muscle Band, and Fighting Fury Belt all made a major impact on competitive play. In the Sun & Moon—Guardians Rising expansion, there's a new Pokémon Tool card that could have a similar effect: Choice Band.
Choice Band is reminiscent of Silver Bangle, but it comes with two major differences—it gives bonus damage against both Pokémon-GX and Pokémon-EX, and any Pokémon can use it (Silver Bangle has no effect if it's attached to a Pokémon-EX). 30 additional damage is a significant amount, often enough to push attacks to the point of one-hit Knock Outs rather than requiring two attacks. For example, Golisopod's Resolute Claws attack would do 150 damage to Darkrai-EX, which isn't enough for a KO. But with Choice Band in the equation, that gets bumped up to 180 damage—the perfect amount to take down the big Pokémon-EX in one attack.
The big question is whether Choice Band will replace Fighting Fury Belt in the Standard format. Currently, Fighting Fury Belt is used in nearly every deck that uses Basic Pokémon-GX and Pokémon-EX, especially because the extra HP gives those Pokémon some added durability. But what's more valuable: extra HP or extra damage? It may depend on the strategy, or perhaps some combination of both will be used. This will be something players need to figure out during their practice.
Look for Choice Band to be a big part of competitive play in the future. Whether you're using Pokémon-GX and Pokémon-EX or trying to beat them, it will be a valuable tool.
Garbodor
The fourth card in our review of powerful Pokémon TCG cards in the Sun & Moon—Guardians Rising expansion is Garbodor, a Pokémon that continues to torment opponents.
Item cards are a major part of nearly any competitive deck: Ultra Ball, VS Seeker, Trainers' Mail...the list goes on. It's not unusual for a deck to have over 20 Item cards, and it's likely that more than half of them will end up in the discard pile over the course of a game. And that's where Garbodor comes in.
Garbodor's Trashalanche attack seems pretty unexciting at first glance. For the attack to do any damage at all, the opponent has to put an Item card into their discard pile—so if the opponent isn't running any Item cards, or chooses not to play any, Trashalanche does nothing. But the reality is that nearly every competitive deck relies on Item cards to execute its strategy quickly. The main methods of finding cards quickly are Ultra Ball and Professor Sycamore, both of which require discarding more cards.
It's easy to play four or five Item cards in a single turn, especially on the first turn of the game. Now imagine a scenario where the opponent has 10 Item cards in their discard pile—Garbodor's Trashalanche attack would do 200 damage for a single Psychic Energy! There are even ways to force your opponent to discard Item cards, such as Field Blower discarding Pokémon Tool cards or Delinquent discarding cards from the opponent's hand. The Garbodor with Garbotoxin is already used frequently in competitive play, and it seems likely that Trashalanche will also be something to watch out for.
Garbodor's Trashalanche attack will be incredibly powerful as long as decks rely on Item cards to set up. Will this force players to use fewer Item cards in their decks? It will be interesting to see how this new Pokémon affects the metagame.
Drampa-GX
We wrap up our look at new cards in the Sun & Moon—Guardians Rising expansion with the crafty Colorless-type Pokémon Drampa-GX.
Usually, great cards do one thing particularly well. For example, Mega Rayquaza-EX excels at doing a lot of damage to the opponent's Pokémon quickly, and Shaymin-EX does an exceptional job of drawing extra cards to help execute a strategy. But some cards are good at a lot of different things, and their flexibility is what makes them useful. Drampa-GX looks like one of those cards.
In three different situations, Drampa-GX can be very helpful. When you need to slow down the opponent, the Righteous Edge attack can discard a Special Energy to disrupt their plans. When you just need to attack for big damage, the Berserk attack can get the job done. And when you need to draw more cards to get going, the Big Wheel-GX attack gets you a new hand of 10 cards! And since all these attacks require Colorless Energy, any deck can use this 180-HP Pokémon-GX.
The main reason to use Drampa-GX will be its Berserk attack. It starts off doing just 80 damage, but it gets boosted to 150 damage if your Benched Pokémon have any damage counters on them. Using Rainbow Energy or Team Magma's Secret Base, you can damage your own Benched Pokémon to get the bonus damage. Slap a Choice Band onto Drampa-GX, and Berserk can do 180 damage to an opposing Pokémon-GX or Pokémon-EX, which is enough to take down many of them in one attack.
Drampa-GX might not be a superstar Pokémon that creates a powerful new strategy, but it has plenty of uses to see competitive play. Expect to see plenty of Drampa-GX in the future!
Strategy Articles
The Pokémon website published two strategy articles featuring decks using new cards from the expansion. The first article featured a Drampa-GX/Garbodor deck, which focused on attacking with Drampa-GX early on and later using Garbodor's Trashalanche attack once the opponent had played many Item cards.[5] The second article featured a deck with Metagross-GX.[6] The strategy focused on using Metagross's Geotech System ability to attach energy to itself. Once a Metagross was damaged, it could retreat and the player could use Max Potion to heal it. Then the player could use Geotech System to attach energy to another attacker. Both strategies were quite successful in competitive play in the months after the expansion released.
Gallery
The Guardians Rising logo was designed by Doug Wohlfeil.[7]
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Languages this set is released in
The Islands Await You and Alolan Moonlight sets are released in Japanese and Korean, both only available in unlimited edition. Since the Sun & Moon era, Japanese 1st edition cards are no longer printed. The Guardians Rising set is released in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, with cards also available as Reverse Holos.
In other languages
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External links
- Official website (archive)
References
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20170729050118/https://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-tcg/sun-moon-guardians-rising/sun-moon-guardians-rising-cards
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20170910131703/http://sm2.pokemontcg.com/en-us/new/
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20170909040708/http://sm2.pokemontcg.com/en-us/tactics/
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20170606232823/http://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-news/sun-moon-guardians-rising-card-highlights/
- ↑ https://www.pokemon.com/us/strategy/unleash-the-trashalanche
- ↑ https://www.pokemon.com/us/strategy/mix-it-up-with-metagross-gx
- ↑ Pokémon Trading Card Game: Guardians Rising Pokémon Trading Card Game Rules, page 33
- ↑ Yamamoto confirming he drew the Alolan Moonlight art.
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This article is part of Project TCG, a Bulbapedia project that aims to report on every aspect of the Pokémon Trading Card Game. |
| Pokémon Trading Card Game expansions and releases Bold indicates a main expansion. Italics indicate a special set. Releases that are entirely composed of prints from other releases are small. | |||||
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