2017 Rotation coming up

On September 1st the 2016-2017 Rotation will take place which, for competitive play at least, means many sets will no longer be 'legal'. For those who are new to the game, rotation happens every year. It removes a few sets and makes room for new ones. You can still use your old cards for expanded play and friendlies (providing the other player/s accept) but for league play those sets that are rotated out will no longer be playable.


Details on what will be in the 2017 season format are below.


Expansion Sets

Primal Clash
Double Crisis
Roaring Skies
Ancient Origins
BREAKThrough
BREAKPoint
Generations
Fates Collide
Steam Siege



Other

XY Promos XY36 and higher (This means XY1-35 are now out of rotation and therefore not legal for the 2017 season format)
McDonald's Collection 2014
McDonald's Collection 2015
XY Trainer Kit—Latias and Latios
XY Trainer Kit—Pikachu Libre and Suicune



note: Expanded will remain the same as it was in 2016. So everything that's legal in expanded in the current season will remain legal in the new season for expanded play

NIGHT MARCH CAN GO TO HELL.

Seriously, now that that monstrosity is gone, we can start having actual decks doing things...

Yanmega will come back. If it doesn't I'll switch back to TCG and make it so.

All of the Roaring Skies based decks look as strong, if not stronger, than ever. Looking at you, M-Rayquaza...

I'm also looking forward to seeing more "toolbox" decks, which are my second favorite archetype behind Eels. Toolbox decks revolve around having a counter for literally everything. Water Toolbox currently can stop items, shut down EXes, take two prizes for killing a Joltik, and take no damage from evolutions, all at the same time. The deck I saw on stream today that I decided I wanted to try to build online is "Vileplume and all his friends", meaning Jolteon EX, Glaceon EX, and Yveltal EX.

Lastly, their are a number of Steam Siege based decks that I expect to play out well, most notably the Volcanion EX ones.

Yeah, the removal of night march is gonna free the game up a little, for sure.

The loss of battle compressor is gonna cause a fair bit of trouble for a fair few decks too.

I've not really had a chance to do research into what I expect to do well in the coming year, whoops. :(