Darkness ablaze will be a very meta defining set with Pokemon Cards like Eternatus Vmax and Crobat, so here is a detailed list of the cards that have competitive viability from most competitive viability to least viability.
Crobat V – Darkness – HP180
Ability: Night Asset
Once during your turn, when you play this Pokemon from hand to your Bench, you may draw cards until you have 6 Pokemon cards in your hand. You can’t use more than 1 Night Asset Ability during your turn.
[D][C] Poison Fang: 70 damage. Your opponent’s Active Pokemon is now Poisoned.
The best card, from this set, is Crobat V. It’s ability allows you to draw cards until you have 6 in hand, but only once per turn. When combining this cards draw ability with Dedenne Gx’s, decks like PikaRom, Welder and Zacian will be able to get off turn one attacks consistently. Crobat will most likely see the most play with the new card of Eternatus Vmax, talked about later in the article.Aside from Eternatus, Crobat will most likely find its way into decks that are already playing one or two Dedenne, since being able to dump your hand and draw 6 to then eventually drawing up to 6 more cards, with Crobat, seems way too powerful to skip out on.
Decidueye – Grass – HP140
Ability: Forest Camouflage
Prevent all damage done to this Pokemon by the attacks of your opponent’s Pokemon V and Pokemon-GX.
[G][C] Split Arrow: 90 damage. This attack does 20 damage to 2 of your opponent’s Benched Pokemon. (Don’t apply Weakness and Resistance.)
The second best card is Decidueye. It’s ability allows it to prevent all damage from V(including VMax) and Gx pokemon. This ability completely counters top tier decks like PikaRom, Reshizard, Mew3, Dragapult and Zacian. The only bad thing about this card is that you lose to baby Blowns, and are a stage 2 deck. Although you can’t beatBlowns, you can easily get to your stage 2 Decidueye with cards like Rosa with Lillie’s poke doll. Overall this card will make these top meta decks play non Gx and V cards in order to have a chance of beating decidueye. Some examples of these cards are zapdos(team up), victini prism(dragon majesty), baby zacian(rebel clash), and giratina(lost thunder).
Eternatus VMAX – Darkness – HP340
Ability: Infinity Zone
If all of your Pokemon in play are [D], you may now have up to 8 [D] Pokemon on your Bench and can’t play any other type of Pokemon. (When this Ability no longer works, discard your Benched Pokemon until there are 5 left.)
[D][C] Dread End: 30x damage. This attack does 30 damage times the number of your [D] Pokemon.
The next card is Eternatus Vmax. It’s cheap attack cost, one dark and one colorless, makes it so it can hit big numbers quickly. It’s attack does 30 times the number of your dark types on your board. Now when you take into account his ability,sky field but only when you have dark pokemon, you can potentially do 270 damage. The only problem with this card is that you're only going to be able to play Crobat V as your consistency pokemon, therefore Eternatus Vmax will probably be a high roll deck that when draws well will just Instantly win games. Another potential problem is that you will need to play at least 12 ways of searching pokemon making it so you space is limited, so playing tech supporters like Mallow&Lana and faba won’t be possible.
Toughness Cape – Trainer
The maximum HP of the Basic Pokemon this card is attached to is increased by 50 (excluding Pokemon-GX)
This tool gives your non-Gx basics 50 extra hp. This gives basic pokemon the ability to survive attacks from things like Zacian, zard, or even the new Eternatus. This is a really big buff to Zacian V decks, as with the tool it will have 270hp.Spritomb can also benefit from it since it will be able to put on more damage counters to do more damage. I also think that more rogue decks will appear due to this card.
Rhyperior V – Fighting – HP230
[F][C][C] Drill Run: 80 damage. Discard 1 Energy from your opponent’s Active Pokemon.
[F][C][C][C] Heavy Rock Cannon: 210 damage. This Pokemon can’t use this attack during your next turn.
Rhyperior is in this list because of the expected popularity of Eternatus, whose weakness is fighting, and of the popularity of PikaRom(also weak to fighting). Rhyperior’s first attack discards an energy from the opponents active, while doing 80 damage. This makes your dragpult and adp matchup extremely favorable, since they won’t be able to get off their main attacks easily. Also with Dianne prism and fighting dojo you can buff your first attack to 110 damage. Your second attack is also pretty solid, for the 1 fighting and 3 colorless you hit 210. You can add to this with Diance and fighting dojo making you number 240. With these two attacks you can two-shot any Vmax pokemon while also disrupting their energy. The only issue with the card is the high attack cost, but with Coalossal you can get three energy down in one turn. In terms of a deck around Rhyperior I think that Coalossal with crushing hammers is definitely the way to go.
Interested in Darkness Ablaze?
PokeNerds has some of the best prices on sealed product and Live Streaming Box Breaks!