Pokemon TCG: Battle Arena Decks: Xerneas Vs Yveltal Card Set

Really excellent product. This product has 120 cards. 20 of the cards have like a holographic design - 6 fairy mana, 6 dark mana, 2 Xerneas, 2 Yveltal, 2 Zoroark, 1 Carbink, 1 Aromatisse. I don't know if it's a balanced fight since I have no clue how to play.All 120 cards are from XY generation. Except for the Energy Retrieval card which use the BW-Plasma Blast print since the XY version hadn't gotten released when this product came out. Both versions of Energy Retrieval are exactly the same functionally. The only difference is the picture. There's 3 copies of it here. Fortunately, I have 3 of the XY version of this card from Primal Clash. So I was able to replace the 3 Plasma Blast prints with the modern design counterpart.The only drawback is that it wasn't the easiest box to open. But I was able to open it without any damage simply by peeling the top part open. Doing this allows you to open the box as if it's one giant deck of cards. So after I took all cards and items out, I was able to close the box with little effort keeping the plastic inside intact.

These two sets have great cards. Much better than the original Xerneas and Yveltal starter decks. Also the 6 shiny dark and 6 shiny fairy energy are great. 20 holofoil opposed to only 2 from other starter decks

I got this set for me and my son to play together. He is 6 years old so doesn't quite know about all the details of a card battle but me and him both love Pokemon and started to collect cards recently. This is a good set for beginners and it has everything you need for two people to battle. I love the cards in it and me and my son are happy.

Tl;DR: The Xerneas deck is stronger than the Yveltal deck. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. If you want two, evenly matched decks out of the box, you'll be frustrated with this purchase.Most of the reviews I found on this product say that it's a great value and has neat cards. Certainly, the abundance of foil cards is quite eye-catching and it's a lot of fun, but I didn't want to buy these decks as a collector's item; I wanted two powerful decks that I could enjoy playing against each other. With a lack of relevant reviews, I decided to buy this product myself. It is the first Pokemon TCG product I've purchased since the late 1990s.The major problem with these decks is that the Xerneas deck has 20 Pokemon that resist Darkness Pokemon. That means that almost every attack from the Yveltal deck is going to deal -20 damage. The one exception is the Psychic Skorupi, but the only attack it can use in this deck does zero damage anyway. There are two cards (2 copies each) that attempt to mitigate this power imbalance. The first is the stadium card Magnetic Storm, and the second is the Pokemon tool Muscle Band.Magnetic Storm is great. All Pokemon lose all resistances. This does not affect the Darkness Pokemon at all and allows them to hit the Fiary-type Pokemon for maximum damage. But there is a drawback. The Xerneas deck can remove Magnetic Storm from play by playing its own stadium: Fairy Garden. There can only be one stadium card in play, so both decks are hoping that their stadium stays in play. Fairy Garden is very powerful. It lets any Pokemon with Fairy Energy attached to it to retreat for free. This means that if the Darkness-type Pokemon can't knock out the opposing Pokemon in one hit, the opposing Pokemon will just retreat to safety, denying the knock-out.Muscle Band is a Pokemon tool that you attach to your Pokemon. It makes all damage-dealing attacks deal 20 more damage. At first glance, it seems great. That perfectly negates the resistance of the Fairy-types. Unfortunately, the Xerneas deck also gets a Pokemon tool: Hard Charm. A Pokemon with Hard Charm attached takes 20 less damage. So if Magnetic Storm is not in play and you don't have a Muscle Band attached, you will struggle to put any damage through, especially since many attacks from the Yveltal deck deal 30 damage. With resistance and Hard Charms, some Darkness-type Pokemon cannot damage the opposing Fairy-type Pokemon!What can the Yveltal deck do about this? It's Pokemon have some neat disruption abilities. Inkay/Malamar can confuse or put Pokemon to sleep. Skorupi/Drapion can poison. Yveltal can remove Energy from opposing Pokemon. Unfortunately, the Xerneas Deck can counter these hard. First off, Fairy Garden means that the Fairy-type Pokemon will retreat to the bench for free, removing special conditions. If the new active Pokemon also has an energy attached, it can retreat and the original one comes right back out to fight. As if that weren't enough, two copies of Pokemon Center Lady and two copies of Full Heal mean that there are 4/60 cards that remove special conditions. And what about discarded energy? The Xerneas deck comes with 2 copies of Energy Retrieval, which takes 2 energy cards out of the discard pile.It's looking bad for the Yveltal deck, but there's more. Aromatisse. There is only one copy of this Pokemon in the Xerneas deck, but it is a game changer. Aromatisse has an ability that lets you move any number of Fairy Energy around from Pokemon to Pokemon as often as you like during your turn. So let's say Carbink has 5 Fairy Energy attached and is dealing 140 damage a turn (one-hit knock out for every Pokemon in the Yveltal deck). Now that Carbink gets confused. Luckily, there is a Fairy Garden in play. Carbink retreats for free. But wait, the Mr. Mime has no energy. It can't retreat. No problem. Aromatisse lets you put an energy from Carbink onto Mr. Mime. Mr. Mime retreats to the bench and Carbink comes forward. Now Aromatisse moves the energy from Mr. Mime back onto Carbink and Carbink continues happily blasting every Darkness Pokemon in sight. This combo is awesome! It feels powerful! It is fun! ... but only for the Xerneas player. The Yveltal deck lacks any of this sort of synergy. It just relies on a bunch of cheap tricks that the Xerneas deck has the tools to counter.At the time of writing, I've only played 5 games with the deck. Xerneas won 4 of those. I plan to update this win ratio in the future. Hopefully my opinion will change.Is it a fun set of decks to battle against each other? Yeah, I think it is. But if you only have fun when you're winning, make sure you're playing the Xerneas deck.UPDATE (November 3): I learned that the one win the Yveltal had was due to misplaying the Zoroark card and making it discard opposing energy rather than its own. Since then, the Yveltal deck has not won a single game. My children and I have become increasingly frustrated with this purchase. I have changed my review to 2 stars on the basis of PLAYABILITY. If you are just collecting cards, this may or may not be a good purchase for you, but if you are buying this for two evenly matched, out-of-the-box decks, DO NOT BUY this product.

This set comes with 120 cards overall, including a lot of useful pokemon and trainer cards that can be used for building your own deck, including Pokemon Fan Clubs, Lysandres, Muscle Bands, Professor Sycamores, Ultra Balls, Shaunas and a bunch of stuff you are likely to use. A lot more trainer cards than a typical theme deck. A lot of the pokemon cards actually see play ni some decks, including the non-promo versions of Ylvetal, Xernaes, and Aromatisse. While the decks aren't playable as Theme Decks online, you do get all the cards and both coins in the online TCG with the included code so you can build the decks for Standard play if you'd like.

My nine year old was SO happy to buy these with his hard earned allowance. I picked the fairy type and he picked the dark. A perfect battle! We’ve since switched out a few from his stash of cards, beware there were something like 17 trainer cards in each deck!!! Crazy. But very well matched- and perfect for mother/son battles ;)

This is a great set for learner's. The main cards are geared to play against each other. Comes with everything you need to get started.

4 Stars only because the package I received was ripped in 2 places on the Yveltal side of the box. I am the type of person to keep these boxes for show, so the fact that it was ripped disappointed me, but other than that, the product was perfect!! LOVE all of the cards that are in it. GREAT price for this for the cards you get!!