Pokémon Sun and Moon: Burning Shadows Decks Quite Balanced

Over the last week, and basically ever since The Pokémon Company sent over a box of the latest Pokémon Sun and Moon expansion, I’ve been using the pre-maid Burning Shadows decks to play a number of rounds with my seven year old son. We would swap decks often to keep things a bit fresh, but never once deviated from what The Pokémon Company placed in the boxes. On the whole, things were pretty balanced; although I won more often than my son, it was often chalked up too more experience, rather than better card types.

As a quick refresher from our original article, there were two decks for the Burning Shadows expansion: the Alolan Ninetales Luminous Frost deck and the Lycanroc Rock Steady deck. The Luminous Frost Deck was a Fire/Water deck – which is not a good combination in my opinion – while the Rock Steady deck was a Psychic/Fighting.  Throughout the numerous playthroughs, I definitely preferred using the Rock Steady deck as the overall quality throughout was much higher, and I found the Energy Cards included in the deck were more useful across all the included Pokémon.

Too often when using Luminous Frost deck, I found myself having too much unusable energy for the Pokémon I was trying to use – or more accurately, the Pokémon I continued to draw. Thankfully when using that deck, having Trainer Hau as an option to draw three cards has the potential of popping out on a number of occasions, and can also be retrieved and placed back in your hand using a combination of other Trainer and Item cards.

The other major downside to the Luminous Frost deck is the inclusion of the Alolan Ninetales card. Does it look fantastic? Yes of course, but since it’s special ability nullifies the attacks of Pokémon GX or EX cards, it’s fairly useless in a themed deck v. themed deck game, as themed decks never come with either of those types of cards. It seems like a throw away card for me except…

…I want that Alolan Ninetales, and if I saw that on the shelf as an average Pokémon fan, I’d purchase it in a heartbeat. As a sales technique, hats off to the Pokémon Company, because between that Ninetales and the Lycanroc, I’m taking the Ninetales every day. Its use in a custom deck will be phenomenal, so for those not looking to stick to the pre-built Pokémon decks, I’d actually recommend Luminous Frost over Rock Steady any day.

We will continue to play using these decks, and pit them up against the original Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon decks soon. Until then, check out all our other great Pokémon Trading Card Game news and reviews right now on the site! Also, head over to the Pokémon Centre to find all the Pokémon products you need!