Pokemon just released its biggest Trading Card Game set ever with Sun & Moon: Lost Thunder. At 236 cards, it beats out the previous record holder from 2003, Aquapolis with 186 cards. Lost Thunder is such a big set because instead of combining two Japanese sets into one to be sold in the US, as per usual, it’s combining three — Explosive Impact, Fairy Rise, and Thunderclap Spark. The result is a gargantuan set, the first to ever break 200 cards in the history of the Pokemon TCG, that includes seven Prism Star cards and 13 Pokemon-GX, plus a handful of Secret Rares.
Lost Thunder is poised to make a huge impact (an explosive impact, even) on the competitive scene. Typically, a set will introduce a couple new deck archetypes, and maybe one of them will be competitively viable, but the sheer size of this set means there are numerous powerful decks all hitting at once. The Standard metagame was just starting to stabilize with the likes of Malamar, Zoroark/Lycanroc, Buzzwole/Lycanroc, Buzzwole/Shrine, and Vikavolt/Rayquaza forming the top tier, but this set shakes everything up with a high number of new cards that are instantly viable. Suddenly we’re in a wild west metagame where the old power structure has been thrown out the window and anything goes.
Source: IGN.com Pokemon’s Biggest TCG Set Ever Changes Everything