Whether you're playing the Pokémon TCG, Magic: the Gathering, or just about any other card game, card advantage is an incredibly important concept. The more cards you have access to, at any given time, the more resources you'll have at your disposal to take down your opponent and pull off a win. Some newly revealed cards from the upcoming Japanese Pokémon TCG set Abyss Eye attempt to turn this concept on its head and reward players for approaching the game empty handed. This would be an interesting idea if they weren't all pretty terrible.
A new Slowpoke card, revealed earlier today on a live stream from the official Japanese Pokémon TCG YouTube channel, possesses an attack with a name that roughly translates to "All-You-Can-Discard". This, unusually named, move allows its controller to chuck any number of cards from their hand straight into their discard pile.
You may be wondering why you would want to throw all of your best Pokémon cards away? Well, two payoffs have been revealed that reward this self destructive strategy. You can evolve your Slowpoke into a brand new Slowbro card. Slowbro's "all out" costs a single psychic energy and deals 50 damage by default, but this ramps up to a far more threatening 210 damage if it's used while its controller has an empty hand.
There's also a new Thievul card that can use its "skill thief" attack to choose a move from the opponent's Pokémon and use it themselves, so long as their controller's hand is empty.
Honestly, this is conceptually interesting idea, and it could make for a fun meme deck, but the juice here definitely isn't worth the squeeze. Without considerably more powerful payoffs, Slowpoke's hand emptying shenanigans aren't likely to leave any real impact on the meta.
What's your take? Do you think Slowpoke's day could still come, or is this a strategy that you're better off discarding? Give us your views in the Wargamer Discord.
If you'd like to learn the difference between Slowpoke, Slowbro, and Slowking, take a look at our list of every Pokémon.