Image courtesy of The Pokémon Company

The Pokémon Trading Card Game (or TCG)’s newest set, Journey Together, is due to come out next week, introducing a fresh metagame filled with new decks, and old reliables.

Triggering the rotation of F Block cards, this marks a new season for the game with a lower power level due to the loss of crucial supporting pieces for established deck archetypes. However, the set also introduces Owner’s Pokémon, named mons, which have synergy with one another, or with their respective Trainer cards.

With prerelease season in full swing, here are some cards to look out for.

5. Liligant

Liligant should have come out in Prismatic Evolutions, but has been delayed to Journey Together. Its Sunny Day ability boosts the attack of Grass and Fire Pokémon by an additional 20 and can stack, which makes it a great support Pokémon for the casual-popular Festival Lead archetype. Since the deck can attack two times per turn, each Sunny Day boost has double the effectiveness!

4. Brock’s Scouting

As Budew

continues to have a decent meta presence going into Journey Together, and with the loss of reliable draw engines, Brock’s Scouting has found space in some deck lists that run a mixture of evolution and basic Pokémon, coupled with Jacq

. It’s going to be run as a tech card until better search options come out.

3. Hop’s Zacian ex

Initially touted to be the best Owner’s Pokémon of the bunch due to the insane ways to boost damage, Hop’s Zacian ex has fallen kind of flat due to the lack of ways to accelerate energies outside of hard-to-retreat supports like Archaludon ex

and Metang

, plus the lack of draw.

Hop’s Dubwool, though, has seen some play as a gusting support in decks that still want to play a different Supporter every turn.

2. N’s Zoroark ex

Although N’s Pokémon has some anemic damage numbers, N’s Zoroark ex still remains a potent attacker, backed up by N’s Darmanitan to pick off smaller Pokémon, and N’s Reshiram to nuke larger ones with Maximum Belt

.

N’s Zoroark ex also has the classic Trade ability, which still makes it a decent way to recover from disruption and has potential to become a support Pokémon in the future.

1. Lillie’s Clefairy ex

This unassuming Lillie’s Pokémon has taken over the meta as the best card of the set due to the increased popularity of the Tera Box archetype. With the stranglehold of Dragon-type decks such as Dragapult ex

and Raging Bolt ex

at the top of the metagame, decks need to have an answer to both the bulky and offensive Dragons.

Even outside of silver bullet scenarios, it’s also a great attacker in a pinch, as its Full Moon Rondo can take out a lot of support Pokémon in the metagame, and can be powered up with just a single Crispin

.

Honorable Mentions

Coming from the Japanese Starter Decks Generations, Blaziken ex actually shows some promise as an acceleration engine for decks that sorely need it. Mamoswine ex has also shown potential as the main attacker in a Stage 2-heavy deck. This is further made easier by its own Mammoth Carry ability, which lets it tutor for a Pokémon every turn.

Dudunsparce ex gives decks that rely on Dudunsparce

as a draw engine a way to close out the game with the Adversarial Tail attack, which can swing for 360 damage (or even more)!

If you’re investing in the respective Owner’s Pokémon, make sure to pick up the other named cards as well to support their respective archetypes.

Looking forward, we’ll continue with developments in the Journey Together metagame. Which other cards are you excited to pick up in Journey Together? Which Owner’s Pokémon deck are you going to run in the post-rotation metagame? Will the Dragapult ex

‘s stranglehold on the metagame finally come to a close? Let us know in the comments!

To keep on top of previews for Journey Together, bookmark our card image gallery.