30th Celebration: what to buy from the set

Hey everyone, Wallysson here. 30th Celebration is out, and the usual question comes with it: what is actually worth buying?

There are 128 cards in the base set, all of them holo, and 30 different Pikachu with one guaranteed per pack. The three Trainer cards in the set are reprints: Poké Pad, Switch and Ultra Ball. New Trainers, none.

I am going card by card the way I always do: what I would buy, how many copies and why. If you want to compare, the Pitch Black buy list is here and the Chaos Rising one is here.

The calendar is what makes it urgent

30th Celebration came out on September 16, and it was the first set in Pokémon TCG history to get a simultaneous global release. The cards become legal for Play! Pokémon on September 25. The Classic Collection, those 30 reprints with the anniversary stamp that include the Base Set Charizard, is not tournament legal.

The day after the legality date there is already a Regional. Frankfurt, in Germany, and Brisbane, in Australia, run on September 26 and 27, both with Masters sold out. They are the first Regionals of the 2027 season in the European and Oceanian circuits.

The Recife Regional runs on October 3 and 4, at the Centro de Convenções de Pernambuco, which is in Olinda. 30th Celebration will be legal there, and we get to show up with a week of Frankfurt and Brisbane results to study.

The delay and the prices

The launch was messy everywhere. At a Best Buy in Colorado Springs people were camping from 9pm, 13 hours before the doors opened, with the line wrapping around the building. In the UK, The Entertainer capped it at three products per person. In Japan, Mercari banned listings of the complete set the day before release. And before any of that, Pokémon Center cancelled a wave of preorders without ever explaining whether it was bot blocking or whether they had sold more than they had.

Here in Brazil the problem was different. Copag only started shipping on September 16, which was the exact day the product was supposed to be on the shelf. While the rest of the world was opening packs, we were still waiting on the distributor. The first simultaneous global release in the history of the game, and Brazil sat it out.

And then there is the part nobody likes to talk about, which is price. Shops charging well above MSRP, and people paying without blinking. When someone complains, the answer is always supply and demand, as if price were a force of nature instead of somebody's decision. Demand is people.

The person who pays for this is the one who has loved this game for thirty years and now cannot open a product celebrating their own hobby. A good chunk of the stock ends up with people who will never open a pack. For a while now there have been voices saying Pokémon became an investment, that it is a profitable business, and maybe it is. But the dream of pulling a Charizard and getting rich brought in a crowd that is not here for the game or for the collection, and what is left is empty shelves and prices no player can keep up with.

Mew ex is the card of the set

has the Memory Helix Ability, which lets it use the attack of any Pokémon on your Bench, as long as you have the Energy for it. It is the same idea as the Mew ex we had years ago.

What interests me about it is the typing and the zero retreat cost. The low HP matters less because of that: it never gets stuck in the Active Spot, so it is rarely the one taking the knockout. And being able to copy the rest of your team opens up your options. The more choices on the table, the more skill the game takes, and the more fun it is.

There is also the shield role. Building a Mega costs a lot of resources, and if they take it off the board it is very hard to come back. With Mew ex you attack with the Mega's power without putting the Mega out front.

Teleportation Burst does 30 damage and sends it back to the Bench for one Energy. It is the fastest answer the format has to Budew.

There is an effect that is not written on the card: when your opponent opens with a Mew ex face up, you do not know what they are playing, so you play around things that may not even be in their deck.

Why I am not expecting a revolution in two weeks

A card that copies any attack needs testing time. The work is figuring out what to put on the Bench for it to copy, how much room that costs in the list, and which deck can afford to lose that room.

This time there is no Japanese data to copy from. Japan runs its own format, and since the release was global the whole world started from zero on the same day. What does exist are the Limitless online tournaments, which have been running with 30th Celebration legal since the 15th. It is still too few games to be a statistic, but it is what there is to look at before Frankfurt and Brisbane.

The 30th Celebration buy list

The one who puts this list together is Junio, and he does it for every set that comes out. So this article will always be credited to him. And I will be honest: I am a bit lazy about sitting down and going card by card through a new set. Having to write this forces me to read it, understand what arrived and put something together for you.

Usual disclaimer: when I say "4 copies", it does not mean every deck will run four. It means the playset is worth having put away for when you need it.

You can save this list straight to your collection here on the site. Sign in, tick off what you already own and keep track of what is missing. That makes it easy to send only what you still need to the buy and sell groups.

The safe buys

is the only one I would buy without thinking. Either you play a deck built around it, or you play one as a tech, and the playset covers both. I would buy four.

is a fun one to have in the binder. It evolves from Exeggcute, has 150 HP, and the Ability gives it 250 more when it has six or more Grass Energy attached, which makes it a single-prize Pokémon with 400 HP. Getting there is not hard, because Meganium doubles the Energy you attach. Add Venusaur moving Energy around and Teal Mask Ogerpon and you have a Grass deck that takes a beating. I would buy three.

costs two Psychic Energy, does 40 damage, and takes an extra Prize card when it knocks something out with that damage. It knocks out Budew for two Prizes, and in a spread deck it finishes a big Pokémon that already took damage and grabs the extra Prize along the way. I would buy two.

draws until you have seven cards in hand, which is what Cleffa did before rotation, and it works both for opening the game and for recovering from a hand refresh. Swift does 150 and the damage is not affected by any effect on your opponent's Active Pokémon, so it goes through Safeguard. It costs one more Energy than we would like and gives up two Prizes, so it does not replace Cleffa. I would buy one.

The bets worth taking

does 50 damage for each type of Basic Energy attached to your Pokémon. In an Eevee deck you already have Fire, Grass and Psychic without trying, and with four or five types it clears 200 comfortably. I would buy three.

does 100, plus 140 more when your opponent's Active already has damage counters. That is 240 for two Energy, which come easily with Crispin or Toxtricity. It does what Mega Sharpedo does without putting a three-prize Pokémon out front, and it fits everything that is already a damage counter deck: Froslass, Munkidori, Precious Trolley. The Grass Weakness hurts, and it is still the Eevee I want most. I would buy three.

, the devolution one and not the ex, does what Devolution Spray did before rotation, except as an attack. You spread damage, devolve the whole board and take four or five knockouts at once. It is a Stage 1, and the Eevee that evolves on the same turn solves that, because you can hold the Eevee in hand and drop it exactly when you need it. I would buy three, and I see a future for it in the Slowking deck too.

does 30 damage for each of your Pokémon in play. With a full board and Area Zero that becomes 240 for two Energy. It is the mechanic we know from Terapagos and Lillie's Clefairy ex, and it has always been good. I would buy two.

does 30 damage for each damage counter on the target, and the target can be any Pokémon, including on the Bench. With Mega Greninja placing six counters, that is already 180. With two activations, 360, for one Energy. It may not be the missing piece that turns Mega Greninja into a real deck, but it is the best help it could get. I would buy two.

transforms into any Pokémon from your deck on a coin flip, and that Pokémon comes in with the same counters, Energy and Special Conditions. You can put a Stage 2 on the board out of nowhere. The flip is a steep price, but it will be a cheap card, so it is worth having in the binder. I would buy four.

does 250 for three Energy and discards all of them afterwards. It is a single-prize Pokémon hitting like a two-prize one. In a toolbox, where assembling three Energy of different types is easy, it finishes anything that already took damage. It is common and cheap. I would buy four.

has Fainting Spell: if it is knocked out by damage, you flip a coin, and on heads your opponent's attacker goes down with it. The more Megas and ex in the format, the better it gets. The attack places 13 damage counters for two Energy, which talks directly to Munkidori and Toxtricity. It will not be a top deck, but it is very annoying. I would buy three.

costs one Fighting Energy and does 60 damage, and during your opponent's next turn they flip a coin every time they try to use a Trainer from hand: on tails, they discard it instead of using it. I have been seeing it run in Slowking decks. I would buy three.

And there is a story here. That effect does not come from Seismitoad ex, which locked Items with no coin flip at all. It comes from the Neo Genesis Slowking), from 2000, and that Slowking only existed because of a translation error: the Japanese version required it to be Active, and that line went missing on the English card. That let you stack Slowking on the Bench and drop your opponent's odds of resolving a Trainer to one in sixteen. It was banned from Modified at the end of 2002, one of only four cards in history banned before their own set rotated.

and only work together. Illumise's Ability makes Weakness count as ×3 while you have a Volbeat in play, and Volbeat drags one of your opponent's Benched Pokémon into the Active Spot for one Grass Energy. You pick the target and hit it with tripled Weakness. The catch is that the ×3 applies to both Active Pokémon, so yours is exposed too. I would buy two of each, no rush.

and are the same package. Each one's attack costs three Energy and does 80, going up to 160 if it has at least one Energy of the other type attached: Reshiram wants a Lightning, Zekrom wants a Fire. They are toolbox attackers for hitting specific Weakness. I would buy one of each.

does 100 to the Active and 60 more to one of your opponent's Benched Pokémon, for three Energy. With Mega Lucario attaching Energy from the Bench, that cost stops being a problem. I would buy one.

is pure tech: your opponent's Active Pokémon cannot be healed. I would buy one.

The Pikachu, which are a chapter of their own

There are 30 different Pikachu, from 023 to 052, plus two Pikachu ex. Eight of them have a game function: reducing damage, killing Budew, preventing effects, changing Weakness, self-attaching Energy, drawing cards.

This part was put together by Junio, and I trust him here. He flagged himself that it depends on what the meta looks like when the Megas arrive, so the deep dive on the Pikachu I leave to him.

Of the two Pikachu ex, the second one is better. One searches Basic Pokémon from the deck onto the Bench and attacks for 200 discarding all Energy. The other takes the Basic Energy in your hand and attaches it to your Pokémon however you want, and its attack does 200 while taking 30, which beats losing your whole Energy board. That second one talks to Mega Rayquaza, which wants Energy spread around to raise its damage.

I would buy the Pikachu slowly, not in the week of the Regional.

What I am not going to play

was the disappointment of the set for me. Photon Bullets does 50 to each of your opponent's Pokémon ex, which solves nothing in a format where everything has 300 HP, and the big attack costs three Psychic Energy for 230 and then locks it out of attacking next turn. I would wait.

, and come as a package and only work as a package: each one attaches a Basic Energy of its own type, from hand, once per turn, and only if the other two are in play. That is three Bench slots occupied before anything happens. To play, none of the three convinces me. To own, that is another story: their Illustration Rares came out gorgeous, and those I am going to try to pull.

is a nod to the 30 years: for one Metal Energy, if you have exactly 30 cards in hand, you take two Prize cards and shuffle your hand into your deck.

Conclusion

30th Celebration is a set people have been waiting for out of nostalgia, and the cards are beautiful. For competitive play there is little, for collecting there is a lot. I am sticking to the handful that interested me for the game.

What about you, what did you make of the set? Are you going for the master set? Are you skipping this one and pretending it does not exist? Take that argument to the groups, I want to see where it lands.