In celebration of hitting 2,000 posts, here’s the full 18-piece Pre-Dawn Art Series.
Would you be interested in buying one, some, or maybe even each of these if suddenly you could?
This is Part One of the Pre-Dawn Preview Set, featuring 1 Pokemon for each Type from among characters appearing in the first three sets of the game. I’ve taken the concept of Shiny Pokemon literally here, as these models would be manufactured using glow-in-the-dark material and paint.
These 18 character cards would show up all over the place in the run-up to the base set release, giving every player immediate access to at least 1 shiny character within their favorite type.
Here’s what most of Team Rocket will look like in Dawn.
Lt. Surge makes for an imposing leader for Rocket Grunts but can backfire if you start rolling 1s. The Paranoia attribute is unusual... I wanted to represent the Vermilion Gym’s obsession with trash cans (which are classified as low obstacles in the CMG) and the overall trap-like nature of Lt. Surge’s lair.
(Yes, shifting a low obstacle into a Trainer adjacent to a pit or difficult terrain will push said Trainer into said pit or difficult terrain. Yes, failing a pit check into a pit will immediately defeat a Trainer, just like it would immediately defeat a Pokemon.)
I wasn’t sure if I’d be using back-side text on Trainers in the base set, but I knew the mechanic would first show up on Villains - and since I recently locked Rocket Grunt into the first wave of Trainers, here we are.
There’s your Ghost trainer for like the first two sets. Acerola is great but there’s only one of her.
More Supporter options!
Swimmer is a great choice for your sideboard if you’re looking to add water to the battle arena. And even without the water, each version of Swimmer brings a powerful once-off Inventory item into the battle, making them versatile and quick allies on just about any team!
N is another example of how I plan on using the release schedule to get greater mileage out of specific cards or interactions. There aren’t any Master level Pokemon from Unova in Dawn! This means that, for the first few months of the game’s existence, N would be strong, solid, but not yet able to summon monsters like Zekrom through the sideboard. Don’t expect to see Zekrom (or Reshiram) until Havoc at the earliest.
As for the Plasma Grunts, well, there they are. Not every Villainous Team is seeing support in Dawn, and those that show up are only included due to circumstance. Like, I decided I wanted N to be in the base set roster of trainers, and since he’s always got grunts around him... there ya go.
Of course, these Plasma Grunts hail from the Plasma Frigate and had nothing to do with N. Slight flavor fail, but I love the black grunt outfits so much more than the white ones.
Hiker is going to be an early standout as S-tier in terms of Trainer support. Think of Hiker like you might value a Railroad property in Monopoly: The more of it you have, the stronger it gets. Stack a few Hikers in your sideboard to dramatically alter the location of the battle, and probably to the benefit of your boulder-chucking and Earthquaking allies.
In the imaginary worldspace where you could buy this product, the Hiker pack would exist as a subset within Dawn. Each Hiker pack would include this character card, a matching scale character figure, 5 mettle tokens (1 blank), 2 Moon Stone tokens (1 blank), 1 Gen-3 Common and 1 Gen-3 Rare... something like that.
Dawn’s appearance in the Dawn base set was requested, so here she is!
Coordinator grants 1 allied Pokemon either a free movement or a free attack, making Dawn a wonderful trainer to include on your team even if you never utilize any of her other useful tricks.
Here’s are examples for cheap Trainers at three different levels of Mastery: Poke, Great, and Ultra.
Just about every flavor of Serena you could ask for, including one +Rare version of the ‘basic’ Serena that would appear someplace as a chase rare. (The rest of the gang here would get a +Rare variant, too!)
OKAY! Which version of organization do you prefer: Option 1) Excluding +Rarity cards from binder-order and sticking all of the +Rarity cards at the end of the collection; or Option 2) Sticking +Rarity cards in-line as applicable. I feel that both methods of organization have Pros and Cons, but personally I prefer Option 1 as it preserves mathematical elegance.
Am I overthinking this? Yes. Absolutely.
Neither the Red Orb nor the Blue Orb will be making an appearance in Dawn, making Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre unplayable in all but the most-open of formats.
Pokemon with Attributes! Up until these two cards, the only Pokemon to get Attributes have been Ultra Beasts, but I determined both Bidoof and Meowth deserved the distinction given their sentient natures.
At a sideboard cost of 3, these two characters are prime material for teching against opposing strategies: Bidoof for taking advantage of terrain strats and opponents intent on pushing your allies into pits; and Meowth for mucking up token generators and roll-heavy teams.
Honestly, my favorite aspect here is where Meowth appears in proper set order. #71/150 puts him in Grass type, hiding right behind - you guessed it - Sunflora!
My hope is that the imaginary person who buys a booster pack won’t be disappointed if their +Rare pull happens to be something like, say, Bounsweet. That card is sweet if you don’t mind the pun - for 5 points, you get a few Defensive tricks and an Evolution into something more useful, pending you find your team facing a Villainous opponent.
And these cards only get more useful from there! Who wouldn’t want to run that unique Arcanine?
And now we’re filling-out the remaining +Rarity slots!
Due to an accounting error on my part, I have found myself with an open Dragon slot. While this caused me a bit of a headache tonight, the final result is the inclusion of Dragonair in Dawn which actually makes me really happy.
The ultimate weather-maker is back, baby!
I couldn’t stop tonight until I had a soft-lock on the 150 character slots... I was simply too close not to make it past this particular milestone, and now I can safely say that this phase of the journey is OVER.
Here’s what I can tell you about Dawn as it stands tonight: 13 Bug ~ 6 Dark ~ 4 Dragon ~ 9 Electric ~ 4 Fairy ~ 8 Fighting ~ 13 Fire ~ 2 Flying ~ 3 Ghost ~ 15 Grass ~ 9 Ground ~ 8 Ice ~ 15 Normal ~ 8 Poison ~ 8 Psychic ~ 8 Rock ~ 7 Steel ~ 10 Water
These numbers don’t tell the whole story though, as many Pokemon are dual-typed but are only counted here under their primary type.
40 Commons / 40 Uncommons / 40 Rares / 30 Very Rares ... and an unspecified number of hidden +Rarity variants and other goodies spread throughout the set, including megas, fakemon, gender-splits, popular story Pokemon, and a number of things I absolutely don’t want to spoil yet by mentioning here. Technically, Dawn has everything I endeavor to roll out in future expansions - only tastes of what is to come, though.
I’ve been working on this monster of a base set for well over a year, pulling from even older elements dating back to 2016 and earlier. If you’ve stuck with me this long, THANK YOU - I seriously would not have kept going with this if I didn’t know so many of you were out there following along. It’s been a trip!
I CAN FINALLY PUT COLLECTOR NUMBERS ON THESE CARDS OMG
Only four slots left to fill. I’m stoked to start replacing all the “X/150″ stand-ins with right and proper collector info.
Anywho. Here’s Shaymin. Its base form is pretty flippin’ good on its own but Shaymin might have trouble maintaining relevance in the Master format. Collect Sky Forme to help remedy this issue - Air Slash is crazy potent when paired with those stats!
These three cards probably do it for Ice Type in Dawn.
Swinub and Piloswine are fairly simple, their strongest attributes being Endure... of course, Pickup is always good.
Cryogonal is one of my favorite Pokemon of all time for being so goddamn weird - a fractal snowflake Pokemon, what’s not to love? I penned a brand new ability to complement its dex entry, giving Ice a hard counter to Fire’s propensity for dishing out burned tokens. You’ll note that each of its three attacks gives its owner a choice, in effect doubling the outcomes of its activation. Fractal, indeed!
My goal in writing these six cards was to provide a second splash of starter Pokemon in the base set without letting them feel same-sy. For regular versions of the Kanto starters, please consult the Dawn Starter Set.