A new (or rather, returning) type of Pokémon card was announced at Worlds last night. Trainer’s or Owner’s Pokémon are coming back in 2025, and four examples were revealed at the World Championships on Sunday, August 18, in a snazzy little animated trailer.
Owner’s Pokémon are Pokémon cards which reference the specific trainer they belong to – generally a well known character from the anime and/or games. They were introduced to the trading card game many years ago, with cards like Brock’s Onix releasing in the Pokémon TCG expansion Gym Heroes back in 2000.
Owner’s Pokémon have not really been a part of the game since the early 2000s, and even back then many were exclusively sold in Japan. Sometimes a new one pops up as a one-off promotional card, but that doesn’t really count. However, after this lengthy hiatus, they’re coming back in 2025.
Four Owner’s Pokémon have been shown off so far. We’ve seen Lillie’s Clefairy ex, Marnie’s Grimmsnarl ex, N’s Zoroark ex, and N’s Reshiram.
Lillie’s Clefairy ex has a cool Fairy Zone ability that makes all your opponent’s Dragon Pokémon weak to Psychic – pretty powerful, since that Pokémon card type usually has no weakness at all.
Marnie’s Grimmsnarl evolves from Marnie’s Morgrem, and implies the existence of a Marnie’s Impidimp. Its ability lets you load up your Marnie’s Pokémon with energy for free when it evolves, and its attack can chip away at benched Pokémon.
N’s Zoroark ex has the same ability, Trade, as one of the most best Pokémon cards of all time: Zoroark GX. It’s a really strong draw ability – so powerful that it almost wouldn’t matter what the attack was like.
That attack, Night Joker, is pretty interesting, however. It lets you copy another of your N’s benched Pokémon’s attacks. So while it doesn’t work if you have nothing on the bench, if you have the final new card, N’s Reshiram, you can deal a significant 170 damage with the Virtuous Flame attack or up to 540 damage with Powerful Rage.
The really nice thing is that you can bypass the energy cost of those attacks and do it all for two Darkness energy.
The trailer which reveals these new cards is well worth watching, full as it is with well-animated battles and references to the best Pokémon decks of the day. Also, it ends with the Rocket logo. We’d guess this means Rocket’s Pokémon are also returning, which would make sense – they come from the same era, after all.
For more Pokémon TCG content, check out our guides to the most expensive Pokémon cards and the best Pokémon TCG formats.
Source: Wargamer
