Origin Forme Palkia – Triumphant Light
Date Reviewed: March 10, 2025
Ratings Summary:
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Otaku
Origin Forme Palkia (A2a 023) is a Basic, (W) Type Pokémon with 120 HP, (L) Weakness, a Retreat Cost of (C)(C), and the attack “Zone Smash”. For (W)(W)(W), Zone Smash lets Origin Forme Palkia do 60 damage to the opposing Active, and has you flip a coin. If “heads”, the attack does 120 damage1 instead. If “tails”, it does the base 60 damage (before other card effects). Origin Forme Palkia is only available as a ♦♦♦ rare.
What’s in a name? Both the full Pokémon TCG and the Pokémon TCG Pocket treat a card’s name as its identity. If they have the same name, you’re bound by the 4 Copy Rule in the full TCG, and the 2 Copy Rule in Pocket. I think Origin Forme is part of the card’s name, but this is the first time this has happened in Pocket, and there’s no non-Origin Forme Palkia for me be certain. Pocket has avoided having non-name components near the name, but the full TCG has a history of it.
The (W) Type may be the best supported in Pocket. There many good Pokémon among the many-in-general (W) Pokémon available, but we have Manaphy (A2 050, 162; P-A 048), Misty (A1 220, 267), and Vaporeon (A1a 019, 072) for Energy acceleration, with yesterday’s Irida (A2 072, 087) for healing.2 Which is good, because the other perk of the (W) Type is exploiting the almost universal (W) Weakness found on (R) Type. (R) Types do see competitive success, but the two most played (R) decks still equal less than 3% of the competitive metagame.3
Being a Basic is – say it with me now – the best. No waiting to evolve or additional cards required for Origin Forme Palkia4 to enter play. It can even serve as your opening Active, but that may actually be a detriment in this case. Origin Forme Palkia can make use of Basic Pokémon support like Poké Ball, but is also a legal target for anti-Basic effects like Pokémon Flute. It’s a massive net positive for Origin Forme Palkia; Poké Ball is a staple, while the other cards are rarely competitive.
120 HP is good for a Basic; overall, it’s still decent in mid-to-late game as well. It isn’t just what it allows Origin Forme Palkia to survive, but what it can force the opponent to use to score a OHKO. Budget attacks often won’t hit hard enough. The main exception to this, is, of course, (L) Type attacks due to Origin Forme Palkia’s Weakness; that +20 damage will make OHKOs and 2HKOs possible and/or more reliable. The Retreat Cost of (C)(C) is typical, not really good or bad.
Zone Smash is about what you expect of an attack with a single coin flip; the “tails” result isn’t good but the “heads” result is. There are attackers who can do over 60 damage for (C)(C)(C), and approximately half the time, that’s all Origin Forme Palkia gets for (W)(W)(W). However, that’s a bit of an unfair comparison; it included all Pokémon, regardless of Stage, Type, and even Pokémon ex. What happens when we try for a more apples-to-apples comparison?
There are zero other Basic, (W) Pokémon with (W)(W)(W) Energy costs, so we cannot make the most direct comparison. If I restrict the search to other (W) Types… 60 for (W)(W)(W) isn’t actually that bad. We’re still discussing the lesser of the two equally possible outcomes for Zone Smash. The better “heads” result is a very good return for the Energy. I still don’t love it being unpredictable, but Zone Smash is actually a good attack overall.
Which is why it’s seeing some competitive success. Origin Forme Palkia is not carrying its own deck, unlike it’s older sibling (cousin?) Palkia ex (A2 049, 182, 204, 206) is the focus of multiple decks, and would you look at that? One of them is Palkia ex/Origin Forme Palkia. It runs two of each, plus two Manaphy and the commonly used Trainer cards. While it isn’t 18 Trainers roomy, but 14 slots for Trainers is still… roomy.
Ratings: 3.25/5
I haven’t tried out Origin Forme Palkia for myself, nor have I faced it. The oldest decklist on LimitlessTCG is from March 6; while Triumphant Light isn’t that old, that still makes this a new deck. There’s already 349 instances of it recorded, with a 54.55% win rate. We’ll see if this is a temporary or long term development, but no matter what, this is far, far better than I expected of a “filler” non-ex Legendary Pokémon. I’m happy to have been wrong!
1It has never mattered before to my knowledge, but just in case; the attack is worded so “heads” results in the attack doing 60+60 damage.
2Manaphy and Irida don’t care about Pokémon Type, but still require (W) Energy.
3At the time of writing; I’m referencing LimitlessTCG as usual.
4No, really; given that “Fossil” Pokémon always have a convoluted requirement to hit the field, because of their video game origins, I am grateful the devs did not force such a thing onto Origin Forme cards.
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