The Pokémon TCG introduces cards you cannot play alone, and Mega Rayquaza returns after eleven years

There is a card in the next Pokémon TCG expansion that, on its own, does nothing at all. The card says so itself: "You can't play this card by itself." It needs its other half.

The Pokémon Company International announced Mega Evolution—Delta Reign on 21 August, and it lands in shops worldwide on 6 November. It brings 103 cards, four Mega Evolution Pokémon ex led by Mega Rayquaza ex, and a mechanic the card game has never used before: Legendary Stadiums.

Mega Rayquaza had not appeared in the TCG since XY Ancient Origins, which is from 2015. Eleven years. But he is not the part that deserves your attention here.

Two cards, one artwork, a single Stadium

A Legendary Stadium is two different Stadium cards played at the same time and counting as one. Put them down together and their illustrations line up into a single panoramic image, something the Pokémon TCG had never done before.

The first one shown is called Legendary Peak, cards 096/103 and 097/103, both illustrated by nagimiso. The wording is explicit: you cannot play the card alone, you must combine two different Legendary Peak cards from your hand and play them as one Stadium. What they do once down: every time a ★ Pokémon, yours or your opponent's, is Knocked Out by damage from the opponent's Pokémon, that player takes one fewer Prize card.

That said, so hunting them down is not a nightmare, The Pokémon Company has confirmed that booster packs containing a Legendary Stadium include both halves. The expansion has six of these cards, meaning three complete Stadiums.

The four Mega ex, read one by one

Mega Rayquaza ex (084/103) is a Basic with 280 HP and an ability, Regal Roar, that on being played from hand to your Bench lets you look at the top four cards of your deck and attach one Basic Energy you find there. Its attack, Emerald Storm, deals 50 damage for every Fire and Lightning Energy attached to all of your Pokémon, not just to itself. Art by takuyoa.

Mega Golurk ex (047/103) is the toughest of the four at 350 HP, and the strangest: its ability, Conditional Activation, stops it attacking unless you have ten or more cards in hand. In exchange, Goliath Punch hits for 300 off two Energy, though it takes 30 damage doing it.

Mega Golisopod ex (011/103) has 340 HP and punishes anything already hurt, although it needs somebody else to do the dirty work first: Finishing Blow deals 60, plus 160 more if the opponent's Active Pokémon already has damage on it. Mega Malamar ex (069/103) sits at 320 HP and its Psychic Puppetry deals 70 for each Pokémon on the opponent's Bench, so the fuller their board the worse it gets, and against a Bench of five that is 350 damage in one swing, enough to drop anything sitting across the table including any of these four.

Here are the four cards in full, collector numbers included.

The detail the press release leaves out: they are worth three Prizes

All of them carry the Mega Evolution ex Rule printed on the card, and that is the small print that decides games: when one of these Mega ex is Knocked Out, your opponent takes three Prize cards, not the usual two for a Pokémon ex. Dropping one is close to winning half the match.

Now put that next to what Legendary Peak does, because I think that is the deck this expansion wants you to build. The Stadium subtracts one Prize card when a ★ Pokémon goes down, ★ being the Colorless type symbol. And Mega Rayquaza ex is, precisely, a Colorless Pokémon.

In plain terms: with the Stadium in play, knocking out your Rayquaza stops paying three Prizes and starts paying two. But it cuts both ways, because the wording says "yours or your opponent's", so the Stadium shields the other side too. The most dangerous card to have on the table becomes half as rewarding to take down. The press release says none of this; it comes from reading both cards and laying them side by side.

What is inside, and the three dates

According to The Pokémon Company International, the official breakdown is four Mega Evolution Pokémon ex, six Pokémon ex, the six Stadium cards that make up the three Legendary Stadiums, fourteen Illustration Rare Pokémon, seventeen Ultra Rare cards and six Special Illustration Rares. It will be sold in booster packs, Elite Trainer Boxes and assorted collections.

There are three dates, and they are easy to mix up. Prerelease tournaments start on 24 October at independent shops in the Play! Pokémon programme, and they are the way to play with the cards before anyone else. The expansion reaches Pokémon TCG Live on 5 November, on iOS, Android, macOS and Windows. The cardboard hits shops on 6 November, and that is the same day everywhere: Spanish shops are not running behind Japan or the United States, so anyone who wants to open packs on day one will have them at the same time as everybody else.

So the digital version beats the physical one by a day, which is the sort of thing worth knowing before you queue up. And if the mobile side is more your thing, the other pack on the way is Team Rocket's Ambition in Pokémon TCG Pocket, or if you wonder why opening packs grips people, we pulled it apart in how gacha works.

On 24 October, at the prereleases, we will find out whether the two-card trick is a design idea or a way to sell twice the boosters.