With the latest Pokemon Trading Card Game set, Ancient Origins, becoming legal for competitive play this Wednesday, September 2, we reached out to a Pokemon TCG expert for their thoughts on the 10 best new cards. That means that reprints like Lysandre and Level Ball, while great cards, were not considered for this list. These Ancient Origins cards are all available now in the Pokemon TCG and its online version.

Loading

10. Sceptile-Ex & M Sceptile EX

Before we get to the list, meet our expert, Simon Narode. He's been playing Pokemon TCG competitively for three years, placing high in multiple city, regional, state, and national tournaments, and peaking with a 2nd place finish at the 2013 World Championships in the Masters Division -- not to mention he placed 7th in this year's Worlds last weekend with his Donphan deck. But as it turns out, getting 7th wasn't so bad because while he didn't take the top prize, he earned a special personal victory. "In my last round of Swiss before my Top 8, I was in a situation where I had to win in order to make Top 8, and I got paired against Jason Klaczynski, who was the 2013 World Champion, so he was the one who beat me in the finals three years ago," Narode told us. "So I got to face off against him, and I beat him. For me that was the most important game of the tournament, and I felt really pleased with myself for doing that. So I felt victorious already going into the Top 8."As for why he chose the spinning elephant deck for Worlds, Narode offered a little insight into his thinking."It got me so many of my Championship points that I felt like I knew it inside and out," he said. "I think that some of the most popular decks that were really hyped up, at least for American players, were Blastoise -- which I felt was a little too all-in -- Manectric/Garbodor, and Seismitoad/Crobat. They all did really well in the tournament, but I felt like I didn't have enough experience with the decks to take them and play them really well. I think that for those kinds of decks you need to be able to outskill your opponent in that matchup. And that's what makes the decks so strong, they can outplay their bad matchups so that nothing's actually that bad. But I didn't feel like I had enough confidence to do that. But I knew that I could do that with Donphan because I'd been playing it for so long, and it worked out. I actually beat a lot of really terrible matchups Day 2, because I think I knew the little plays and tricks I could pull off to win the game."Now, on to the cards!

9. Giratina-EX

8. Vileplume

Loading

7. Flareon, Jolteon & Vaporeon

That's right, we're starting off with a two-in-one. Narode put these two cards into a single entry because one is only as good as its evolution partner. Here's what makes Sceptile-EX (AOR 7/98) and its Mega evolution (AOR 8/98) so good.You always really want to be looking for cards with inexpensive energy requirements on their attacks, so that's one of the first things that stands out when you look at these cards. Nothing costs more than two energy, which is a really big deal. You look at Sceptile-EX, the un-evolved version, and you're like, "Sleep poison is sort of a mediocre first attack, but it's fine as long as the second attack is good," and the second attack is actually very good. Unseen Claw does 60 damage, plus 70 more damage if the defending Pokemon is affected by a Special Condition. And in Expanded in particular this is very easy to pull off with a card, Hypno-Toxic Laser (PLS 123/135), which poisons your opponent's Pokemon and puts them to sleep on the flip. That's a guaranteed status condition, so you play Hypno-Toxic Laser and then for just two energy with Unseen Claw you're doing 130 damage. And then you play Virbank City Gym (PLS 126/135) so they take extra poison damage, and you attach a Muscle Band (XY 121/146) -- and then you have a knock out for 200 damage for only two energy, which is really strong. So that's a very good strong attack.As long as the Mega is good, then Sceptile-EX is really good as well. And Mega Sceptile-EX turns out to be really awesome, because it's a really inexpensive energy acceleration attack for Grass type, which is a type that's lacking in good energy acceleration. You look at the other options and you basically have Virizion-EX (PLB 9/101), which is rotating out of Standard. You also have Sceptile (PRM 8/160), but that's also inefficient because it's a Stage 2 and pretty limited energy acceleration. So M Sceptile-EX provides that acceleration while also healing your Pokemon, with Jagged Saber and doing 100 damage. It's just so many good things all wrapped into one.Theta Stop, which is its Ancient Trait, is also really strong. I think it's the strongest Ancient Trait to come out of this set. It stops things like Genesect-EX's (PLB 11/105) Red Signal and Ninetales's (DRX 19/124) Bright Look, abilities that drag up your opponent's Pokemon. There are so many things that manipulate the board state that Theta Stop shuts down, so it's a really good Ancient Trait.All these things together make Mega Sceptile a really good card. You can also evolve him on the first turn of the game or on the same turn if you play it by running the stadium Forest of Giant Plants (AOR 74/98).There aren't that many good Fire cards in the format currently, and the ones that come out of the set are not very impressive either -- apart from Flareon (AOR 13/98).Everyone's favorite Ghost-Dragon is back in the form of Giratina-EX (57/98), and it's packing a nasty new move. And we thought Toad-lock was bad!Giratina-EX is a really weird card. It's got a very expensive energy requirement on its attack, but it's attack is so good. And it's got a really strong but very specific ability. I think, just because it's attack is so good and its ability is so good -- and they kind of work together in that its ability is defensive, and it requires a lot of energy to attack -- I think that it will probably see play, but in a very specific deck that can support its energy requirement.I think it'll be something that runs Double-Dragon Energy, which makes it a lot easier to use that attack. Or Rainbow Energy, which allows you to use other attackers with it. Maybe people are thinking about running it in some sort of Aromatisse (XY 93/146) deck, where you have the versatility of other attackers that you can run and move your energy around and heal Giratina and preserve your energy. That's what you have to think about when you have so many energies in your attack requirements. You have to think about how you can conserve those energies. But you don't want to be charging up another Giratina every turn. That's not efficient.You never know in future sets if there's going to be such a totally busted Mega that a deck is going to be built entirely around it. In that case, Giratina-EX becomes even stronger because you completely counter that deck. In the current format, the big ones that I think you're going to be looking at are Primal Groudon-EX (PRC 86/160), M Rayquaza-EX (ROS 76/108), and M Tyranitar-EX (AOR 43/98), which are all things that could one-hit K-O Giratina-EX -- but they can't because of its ability. You want to prevent yourself from being one-hit K-O'd, so those are the ones that very, very relevant.Because of its Chaos Wheel ability, people are thinking about pairing Giratina-EX with Vileplume (AOR 3/98). It increases the value of Vileplume, and Vileplume increases the value of Chaos Wheel, because you're preventing them from playing any item card in addition to special energy cards and stadium cards, making their hand even more dead, which is really powerful.It'll be even stronger as we start to see more stadium cards get released. There have been decks in past formats that were so dependent on their stadiums that they didn't function without it. Preventing someone from playing a stadium is really, really good in that kind of metagame. I don't think we have that kind of metagame right now, so I'm not sure that blocking stadiums is that good right now. But it's such a strong effect in specific metagames that I think it's definitely worthy of a Top 10 spot.Vileplume has a long history of shutting down card usage, so it's little wonder that this new one, Vileplume (AOR 3/98), is back at it again while also getting pollen in our eyes. No items AND allergies? Yikes!Vileplume I find especially interesting, because we've seen this Vileplume before, and it was very, very strong back then. I don't think Vileplume is as strong now as it was then. But you do have new support, Forest of Giant Plants, which means you can get a turn one Vileplume, and then you don't get to play items the entire game. That's pretty crazy. So for that reason alone, I think Vileplume's worth a spot on the list.There are a lot of ways to get around it right now, but it's still a really strong effect. In the metagame right now, we have Seismitoad-EX (FFI 20/111) and it's one of the most dominant Pokemon in the format. So most decks are built with that in mind, so that they can function under item lock. So you could probably play an entire game with a normal deck with a lot of items and just be fine, because you've been able to build it with that in mind.The original trio of Eeveelutions are back with new abilities to share their typing with all of your Stage 1 Pokemon. That might not seem too impressive to the casual eye, but building a deck around their abilities can bring a world of hurt, and cute Eevees, to your opponent.These look really, really good but we'll have to see how the metagame shapes up. If things are not weak to Lightning, Fire or Water, then these are a lot of wasted slots in your deck. So it's totally metagame-dependent. But the effect to allow your other attackers to hit for those type weaknesses is so good. It makes Stage 1 attackers that are already good even better. And it makes attackers that were only limited by their damage output considerable.In a deck, I would run probably one or two of each. Say the metagame for Fall Regionals is a lot of Virizion-EX and Genesect-EX, which have a Fire weakness. And then a lot of Lugia-EX (68/98), which is really popular, and Yveltal-EX (XY 79/146), which you hit for Lightning weakness. And there's Landorus-EX (BCR 89/149), one of the most popular cards in the game, which you want to hit for Water weakness. Most important is hitting for the Fire weakness. So I would run something like a 3-1-1-2 line, with three Eevee, one Jolteon, one Vaporeon, two Flareons, or something like that. That's just off the top of my head. But that's one way you could do it. Then in the matchup that you need you'd search out which one you'd need. But you'd run two Flareons because you're most likely going to need it and you don't want it to end up in your prize cards.