Pokémon CMG

In celebration of hitting 2,000 posts, here’s the full 18-piece Pre-Dawn Art Series.

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.

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.)

More Supporter options! 

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.

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.

Dawn’s appearance in the Dawn base set was requested, so here she is!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!