We're taking a first look at the latest Pokémon tcg Sword and Shield expansion: Brilliant Stars.

The card which caught our attention the most is Alcremie it's only move Rainbow Flower adds 40 damage power for each different basic Energy type attached to all of your Pokémon, allowing this Pokémon to do massive damage.

This move is bolstered by Supporter card Café Master, which allows you to search for a different type of basic Energy for up to 3 benched Pokémon. Alcremie's ability Additional Order allows you to attack after you've used Café Master, because in other cases your turn would end after you'd played Café Master.

Since you may want to use Pokémon of different types anyhow, you'll probably want to combine Electivire and Magmortar, since they're an obvious combo. Electivire's move Explosive Bolt does 90 more damage if you have Magmortar on your bench and, vice versa, Magmortar's Boltplosion does 120 more damage if you have Electivire on your bench.

Spiritomb's move Ticking Terror turns your opponent's Pokémon's weakness into Darkness until the end of your next turn. Spiritomb has a retreat cost of 1, so you can replace it with another Darkness Pokémon such as Liepard, which has a retreat cost of 1 as well. It will double the amount of damage dealt to your opponent's Pokémon.

Brilliant Stars's Liepard also has the ability Trade for which you must discard a card from your in order to draw 2 cards. If you combine Lierpard with Wormadam, either of the Fighting type (077/172) or of the Steel type (098/172), this trade off is mitigated because of their move Matron's Anger, which does 10 more damage for each Pokémon in your discard pile. So these Pokémon are useful in late game.

Lucray's move Energy Crush does 50 damage for each Energy attached attached to all of your opponent's Pokémon. It needs only 1 Energy card and the retreat cost is only 1 as well.

Escavalier's ability Miraculous Armor let it take 100 less damage from attacks of Pokémon V.

Farfetch'd's attack Leek Lash does 10 more damage for each damage counter on your opponent's Active Pokémon.

Castform has two moves. You can either draw 2 cards or do 30 damage and move a basic Energy from Castform to 1 of your benched Pokémon.

Many strategies on this website use XY Flashfire's Lysandre, but for newer players of the physical card game it might hard to get their hands on that card. Brilliant Stars features Boss's Orders which has the same effect as it switches one of your opponent's benched Pokémon with their Active Pokémon.

You'll frequently face powerful Pokémon V. Choice Belt is a tool which can be attached to your Pokémon which will deal 30 more damage to your opponent's Pokémon V.

Cheren's Care allows you to put a colorless Pokémon with damage counters as well as all attached cards back into your hand.

Blunder Policy is a tool which is especially useful if attached to a Pokémon such Roaring Skies's Electrode with its Continuous Tumble where you get to flip a coin until you get tails. This tool allows you to draw 3 cards if any of the coin flips is tails.

This article is just a brief tour through the most interesting cards of Brilliant Stars. Stay tuned for more in depth analysis later on this website.

See JustInBasil's archetypes of Brilliant Stars.

See Ellis Longhurst's article on Brilliant Stars.