Live break - Pokémon TCG: 30th Celebration - Elite Trainer Box

Thirty years of Pokémon packed into one box. The 30th Celebration set puts Mewtwo ex and Mew ex at the centre, with Umbreon ex, Salamence ex and Greninja ex alongside them - a line-up that reads like a tour of three decades of the game.

Thirty reasons to open packs. Every booster in this expansion guarantees a Pikachu card, and the publisher made thirty different ones - each in a different style, by a different artist. The whole pack is foil too: all five cards carry it, including the Basic Energy designed by YOSHIROTTEN. Opening here means collecting a run, not hunting a single hit.

The Elite Trainer Box contains:

• 9 Pokémon TCG: 30th Celebration booster packs
• a full-art foil promo card - Nidorina (Stage 1, evolves from Nidoran♀, 90 HP, Psychic; the Share Happiness Ability heals 30 damage from one of your Pokémon, the Bite attack does 30)
• 16 foil Basic Energy cards
• 65 card sleeves
• a player's guide to the 30th Celebration expansion
• 6 damage-counter dice
• a competition-legal coin-flip die
• a plastic coin
• a collector's box with 6 dividers
• a Pokémon TCG Live code card

What that gives you. The ETB is the easiest way into a set: nine packs to open, sleeves for a whole deck and a box where the collection has a place from day one instead of sitting loose. Sixteen foil energies are real help when building a deck - energy usually has to be bought separately.

Who the Pokémon TCG is for. It is a two-player game: each side builds a sixty-card deck where Pokémon fight with attacks, energy powers those attacks, and Trainer and Item cards bend the turn. You can play a ready-made deck or build your own from what the packs give you - and the second is its own pleasure, because it forces decisions about what stays in and what goes.

As a collection, every set brings dozens of new illustrations from artists worldwide, including full-art cards and holographic, gold or rainbow finishes on the rarest ones. With 30th Celebration there is also the run of thirty Pikachu, which makes the collection a finite, achievable goal.