Crown Zenith may have polished off the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pokemon TCG's Sword & Shield era, but Silver Tempest was the final major expansion starrin♌g the battle-loving land of Galar. That means plenty of cards - a whoppi✨ng 245, to be exact - and a goodly number of noteworthy Trainer cards within the set.
As you have no doubt deduced courtesy of the handy article title at the top of this page, we've endeavored to rank the best of the bunch. It's no small task! If you're building a deck with access to Silver Tempest's list, do consider tossing a few of these Trainers into your tin.
8 Friends In Galar 𝓀
We'll start things off nice and simple with a card that - while it might not blow the roof off any running metas - skates by on undeniable charm. Anyone with a soft spot for the cast of Pokemon Sword & Shield should appreciate this gorgeous rendition of all the championship-seeking children just kind of hanging out together like trainers on a well-deserved break.
Friends in Galar lets you draw three cards. It's about as straightforward as you can get, and the fact that it occupies a once-per-turn Supporter card role means we can't imagine it's getting a ton of play. But it's positively lovely.
7 🏅 Furisode Girl
Furisode Girl, by contrast, 𓆉is seeing plenty of play. Searching for a specific basic Pokemon, which in current card-playing parliance often means something as mighty as a Radiant Pokemon or Pokemon V, is handy enough. Combining this search with the functionality of a Switch card saves you from needing to bog down your deck with Switches in the first place.
With Furisode Girl, you can dig through the deck and find something prime to tap into right then and there, rather than waiting or relying upon a separate card altogether. For that one-two punch, we think it's pretty swell.
6 Serena
We cite Friends in Galar as great for its artwork, and Furisode Girl for its practicality (pretty good art, too, though!) but Serena truly has it all. The celebrated protagonist character from the Pokemon X & Y games became exponentially more popular courtesy of her terrific depiction in that generation's anime adaptation. Fans of the show tend to treasure any chance to get more Serena representation, and this card - especially its full art variant as seen above - more than does the job.
But it's also a cunning card in its own right. Serena is one of those pick-one-of-the-following situations where you can either shore up your options by nixing one to three cards from your hand to ensure you have a total of five, or you can rudely force your foe to switch their active Pokemon with a benched Pokemon V. Not only does this potentially get their V-type Pokemon out during a moment of weakness, but it can also be used to swap an almighty VMAX with something less daunting.
5 Forest Seal Stone 𒅌
Silver Tempest introduces quite the concept with Tool cards that operate as VSTAR Powers. In essence, you're equipping your pal with a special attack that cannot be utilized in any other fashion. Forest Seal Stone still requires that the equipped Pokemon be V-type, but that doesn't exactly reduce the potential picks to a sliver. Indeed, Pokemon V, VSTAR, and VMAX remain all-powerful in the meta as of February 2023.
The flip side, of course, is that you still can't use more than one VSTAR Power per game. But if your deck isn't built around a particular VSTAR Power, why not saddle up with something to fill that gap? If you draw this early enough, the potential usefulness behind searching your deck for precisely the card you need cannot be understated.
4 Worker
Worker is pretty hilarious. It's another three-card draw Supporter like Serena, but it comes with the bonus feature of tearing down any Stadium your opponent may have in play. (Or your own, for that matter, though we're not sure how often that would be wise.) In other words, your Worker is in truth a Demolition Specialist, here to screw over any rival player whose strategy revolves around a pesky Stadium with pre-pl𝄹anned perks.
3 Leafy Camo Poncho 𓆉 🙈
If a VSTAR or VMAX Pokemon is your ticket to victory, few things feel worse than witnessing an opponent undermine that Pokemon with debilitating effects that flip your entire tactical approach on the fritz. Leafy Camo Poncho is an insurance policy preventing anybody from doing just that. We've seen some pretty good plays with Leafy Camo Poncho that shut down decks designed to, well, shut down decks.
It might not have a place in every build; many popular deck archetypes rely too heavily on everything that's already been packed into them. But it's a great card if you've got spare room and intend to go ballistic with one of the Pokemon TCG's most powerful monsters.
2 V Guard Energy 𓆉
30 damage might not sound like a lot in a day and age when Pokemon can have north of 350 HP, but it's still squarely in that make-or-break range where a mighty strike might be just shy of knocking out one of these behemoths. Think of how many attacks do, say, 220, or 250 damage; reflect on how many Pokemon V-types have around 260 to 280.
In short, you're going to want to include as many OHKO-preventatives as possible, and V Guard Energy earns its terrific second-place ranking here because it does precisely that whilst simultaneously serving as an Energy card. It's not a Tool, so it doesn't take up a Tool slot - you can further defend, or include something more offensively-oriented, and still take solace in having this buffer.
1 💫 Earthen Seal Stone
This one's designed to handle those decks with what seems like a million Pokemon V in them. Or any deck with three to four VMAX/VSTARs, which is to say, most presently popular meta decks. If you're up against somebody with an alarming ability to send out these titans, and you lack proper protection or a similar counter effort, you can very quickly find yourself overwhelmed.
Earthen Seal Stone eats up your per-game VSTAR Power, but if you've got someone constantly switching between their VMAXs (hello, Mew VMAX decks!), consider it a nuclear option of sorts to shred most of the HP from the ranks. You'll still need a good plan for defeating what's left of them, but it won't be half as hard. Very nice.