Pokemon TCG Shrouded Fable was dead on arrival – here’s why

I got the chance to attend the August London Card Show this year, which was the perfect opportunity to see the brand new Pokemon TCG special set in action. I was intrigued to see how other collectors felt about the mysterious new set – and quite surprised by the response.

Despite some hype about Shrouded Fable, thanks to a few beautiful promo cards and a new art style, the latest special expansion set barely made an impact when displayed alongside other sets, eras, and Pokemon TCG products.

London Card Show is one of the biggest events on the Pokemon TCG calendar, meaning scores of Pokemon TCG vendors, collectors, and players were in attendance. Hearing their thoughts on the state of the game was a perfect indicator of why so many Shrouded Fable boxes were still on display by the end of the weekend.

Shrouded Fable didn’t make an impact on collectors

Something that immediately stood out while exploring the heavily-packed rows of vendor tables is the clear lack of interest in Shrouded Fable.

While a few fans were spotted picking up boxes, not much Shrouded Fable stock had moved by the end of the 2-day event.

Despite coming out just a day before the London Card Show, the special set seemed lost among the fan-favorite expansions from Sword & Shield and Japanese sets like Stellar Miracle.

One of the main reasons for this became apparent during one of the Main Stage events – the pull rates for Shrouded Fable are already notoriously brutal.

Content creators and owners of Collector’s Cardhouse, Chloe Webb (@Pokichloe) and Dean Leander (@Pokedean_) had a Main Stage slot with a live Whatnot Shrouded Fable unboxing experience.

Pokemon TCG fans were able to buy packs from the livestream and then watch the creators open the packs, sometimes asking them to sign a card or two.

Only a few full art cards were seen during the live stream, with top pulls being a handful of Ultra Rares and Illustration Rares, including Munkidori ex, Bewear, and Xerosic’s Machinations. Dean named Xerosic the “best hit of the day.”

While some of the cards pulled did get an excited response, many of the packs felt disappointing from a collector’s perspective. At times, it seemed like Dean and Chloe were struggling to say positive things about the cards on the table due to the low pull rates and mountains of duplicate cards.

This is something noted in our Shrouded Fable review, too – the tiny card list makes duplicates common and rare cards incredibly hard to come across. While this is fairly common for special sets (they usually have much smaller card lists) it can still feel frustrating as a collector.

Older Pokemon sets still reigning supreme in the community

While exploring the event, I got the opportunity to chat with card store owners and resellers about their time at the show.

I asked one TCG vendor about what stood out at the event, and they shared that while Pokemon cards usually stand out as the fan-favorite, London Card Show had attracted a much more varied audience this year, leaning into everything from football cards to Dragon Ball Z.

Another revealed that many collectors seemed to be opting for ungraded cards versus slabbed, graded ones this year.

Some sellers had opted for graded mystery bags instead of standard slab displays, enticing fans to test their luck with the hopes of nabbing a rare piece for their collection.

Amidst it all, something that stood out is that not a single vendor pointed out Shrouded Fable as an exciting draw for Pokemon card collectors. A new set should, in theory, be an immensely exciting release for fans, but it already seemed old and uninteresting.

Shrouded Fable was roughly 24 hours old by the time I got to London Card Show and yet, both collectors and sellers found a myriad of other cards to tell me about instead. This was backed up by the multitude of TCG sellers telling me that fans seemed to lean towards older expansion sets when filling out their binders.

One vendor clarified that “pre-2000s” stock seemed to be a hit with their audience, and another new team detailed that, while vintage stock was currently out of their budget, they wanted to have older and rarer pieces in stock instead of just recent releases.

Why Shrouded Fable barely made a dent at London Card Show

One of the main issues that’s put collectors off of Shrouded Fable is the small card list and deadly pull rates.

It’s incredibly hard to pull a rare card from Shrouded Fable, and many collectors who were excited about the designs were likely waiting to buy singles instead – especially thanks to the issues with the Elite Trainer Boxes.

I was personally surprised to see these products in stock at LCS, as they were meant to be delayed until August 23.

On top of this, Shrouded Fable barely had a chance to stand out from the crowd thanks to Pokemon’s speedy release schedule. The breakneck speed of releases is a sticking point for some collectors and it appears to have had an impact on this set in particular.

Card reveals and announcements for the next expansion set Stellar Crown were already in full swing before Shrouded Fable had even come out, and a brand new Japanese expansion set called Paradise Dragona was announced for the same day.

There are positive things to note about Shrouded Fable – it’s a viable set for competitive players and there are some beautiful art pieces that’ll likely spike in value. Some of the cards did pop up at Pokemon Worlds 2024, which shows that the set did hold meaning for some.

The next London Card Show event will be from November 2-3 and I’m intrigued to see how the dual release of Paradise Dragona and Stellar Crown will go down with the community.