The latest Pokémon Trading Card Game expansion, Scarlet & Violet—Stellar Crown, arrives September 13, 2024, but you can visit your local game store to play with it early! Starting August 31, 2024, select retailers will begin selling the Scarlet & Violet—Stellar Crown Build & Battle Box, giving fans a chance to have a Prerelease battle and experience the latest expansion before its official release date. To find a Prerelease event near you, be sure to use the Event Locator.

The Prerelease format allows players to compete using a 40-card deck with four Prize cards set aside at the start of play, as opposed to a 60-card deck with six Prize cards. With its quick, fun games, this format is perfect for introducing new players to the exciting world of the Pokémon TCG and gives seasoned players a window into all that Scarlet & Violet—Stellar Crown has to offer. Due to the limited card pool and the variance of cards that can be acquired in a Build & Battle Box, Prerelease events are also a great opportunity to flex your creative deck-building muscles.

Each Build & Battle Box includes four Scarlet & Violet—Stellar Crown booster packs, a 40-card ready-to-play deck featuring key cards from current and prior sets, as well as one of four unique foil promo cards to boost your Prerelease deck. Depending on which promo card you get, you could add the bodacious Bouffalant, the self-destructive Drifblim, the crabby Crabominable, and the limber Ledian. Whichever promo card you end up with, it will certainly shape your Prerelease strategy!

The Standard format has a variety of ways to drag one of your opponent’s Pokémon to the Active Spot. There’s Pokémon Catcher for those favoring lady luck, Prime Catcher for those who select it as their ACE SPEC, and Boss’s Orders as an all-around favorite for nabbing a choice target. These effects usually aren’t present in the Prerelease format, though, making Ledian’s Glittering Star Pattern Ability especially impressive. When you play this Pokémon from your hand to evolve 1 of your Pokémon, you can switch in one of your opponent’s Benched Pokémon with 90 HP or less to the Active Spot. That means you can target a Pokémon that you narrowly missed a Knock Out on earlier in the game, or pick apart your opponent’s strategy by taking down a key Pokémon that still needs to evolve into a higher HP Pokémon. Ledian packs a decent punch too: its Swift attack does 70 damage for , making the Pokémon an easy fit for any Prerelease strategy.

If you played through the Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet games, you may remember the loveable Cascarrafa Gym Leader Kofu and his penchant for culinary expression. That passion carries through in the Pokémon TCG: when you have a Kofu supporter card in your discard pile, you’ll be able to cook like never before! Crabominable’s Haymaker attack ordinarily costs , but its Food Prep Ability reduces the cost of attacks by for each Kofu card in your discard pile, making it far easier to string together massive Knock Outs. Kofu itself is a strong draw Supporter card, so you’ll want to put as many as possible in your deck to take advantage of both Crabominable’s Food Prep Ability and the added draw consistency.

Drifloon has been a staple attacker in Gardevoir ex decks since the deck first hit the scene. Now you’ll be able to blow up the battle with massive damage using its Evolution, Drifblim, in a local Prerelease! Drifblim’s Everyone Explode Now attack does 50 damage for each of your Drifloon and Drifblim in play, which would ordinarily do a maximum of 200 damage in Standard format since you can only include four copies of Drifloon in your deck. In Prerelease format, though, you can play as many as you want. With six copies, it’s possible to do up to 300 damage! Just be careful—this attack does 30 damage to each of your Drifloon and Drifblim, so you may end up Knocking Out your own Pokémon if you use this attack too many times.

Go big with Bouffalant! Its Curly Wall Ability makes it so that your Basic Pokémon in play take 60 less damage from your opponent’s attacks—but only if there is at least one other Bouffalant in play. With Bouffalant as your Prerelease promo, it becomes even more likely that you’ll have two Bouffalant in play to take advantage of its Curly Wall Ability. With it, the Bash Buffalo Pokémon has an effective HP of 160. If you happen to find any other Basic Pokémon in your Build & Battle Box booster packs, Curly Wall will help them too. Don’t overlook them!

There are variations among Build & Battle Boxes, so you can add your own creative twist when building your deck. Whether you’re heading to a local game store or just playing with a friend, you’re in for some quick and fun battles with cards from the new Scarlet & Violet—Stellar Crown expansion! If you’re not able to make it to a Prerelease event, these Build & Battle Boxes will be available for purchase when the expansion officially launches.