(Disclaimer: the product in this review was provided to Marriland.com free of charge by Pokémon.)
Wrapping up the series of Detective Pikachu Case File reviews is this review for the Detective Pikachu Greninja-GX Case File (US$24.99), which is the priciest of the Case Files but also contains the most of the Detective Pikachu booster packs and, of course, contains two sizes of a cool Greninja-GX promo card — one of which is a massive JUMBO SIZED version.
As with the other Detective Pikachu Case Files, the Greninja-GX Case File contains the exclusive Detective Pikachu booster packs — 5 of them, to be precise. These 4-card booster packs are not available normally in retail, so you’ll need to pick up Detective Pikachu Case Files or the Collector’s Chest in order to get them, although the standard set is just 18 cards, so thankfully it’s not too rough to collect.
In addition to five of the Detective Pikachu booster packs, this Greninja-GX Case File also contains two Sun & Moon series booster packs, which consists of assorted Sun & Moon sets and not necessarily just the base set (the one I received contained 1 Sun & Moon base set and 1 Sun & Moon—Crimson Invasion booster pack). It also comes with a Greninja pin as well as a normal-sized and jumbo-sized Greninja-GX promo card, SM197.
The Greninja-GX card itself is rather interesting. Its Ability, Elusive Master, allows you to play it directly onto your Bench without having it evolve it so long as it is the last card in your hand, and you even get to draw three cards afterwards to get you out of that tight spot. It’s situational, but with some planning you may be able to pull it off. It has the cheap and strong Mist Slash for just one Water and one Colorless Energy, doing an impressive 130 damage for just two Energy, but that damage isn’t affected by Weakness, Resistance, or other effects, which prevents it from countering strong Fire-types, although at least it can get around Abilities or attacks that reduce or prevent damage. Its GX attack, Dark Mist GX, is cheap and mildly disruptive, placing one of the foe’s Benched Pokémon and all cards attached to it back into their hand, but there are far better GX attacks out there and this one is probably best used in an emergency where it’s absolutely critical rather than depending on it every game.
You can see more of the Detective Pikachu TCG set cards in this earlier post, and you can see more Detective Pikachu products and information in the site’s Detective Pikachu tag.