Japanese Pokémon - Legend (L1) Double Collection Pack w/ Promo (HeartGold & SoulSilver) (2009)

Blurb

JOURNEY TO THE JOHTO REGION TO REVEAL HEARTGOLD & SOULSILVER!

Pokémon are the heart and soul of any great Pokémon Trainer, and now is your chance to catch some of the greatest Pokémon of all time! With new kinds of cards that will change the way you play—like Pokémon Prime and the astonishing Pokémon LEGENDs Ho-Oh and Lugia—plus lots of Trainer cards that will accelerate your game and select Energy cards with a brand-new look, the HeartGold & SoulSilver expansion will get you started on your journey to greatness!

Information

HeartGold & SoulSilver is the name given to the first main expansion of the HeartGold & SoulSilver Series of the Pokémon Trading Card Game. In Japan, it was released as the HeartGold Collection and SoulSilver Collection dual expansions that make up the first expansion block in the Pokémon Card Game LEGEND Era. It is based on Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, featuring Generation II Pokémon. The English expansion was released on February 10, 2010, while the Japanese expansion was released on October 9, 2009.

HeartGold & SoulSilver introduced Pokémon Prime, a type of Pokémon and Pokémon LEGEND, a classification of cards. Pokémon Prime were considerably more powerful than their regular counterparts. Pokémon Prime had Holofoil card border, gold foil name text, spikes on the border of the artwork window, and lacked the Pokédex entry. The artwork featured a close-up of the Pokémon's face. They replaced the Reverse Holofoil in booster packs. Pokémon LEGEND featured Legendary Pokémon and were consisted of two cards, the top half and the bottom half. They were treated as a single card when in play and both halves of the card must be played to the Bench at the same time. To compensate for their higher-than-average HP and stronger attacks, there were two drawbacks to playing Pokémon LEGEND. Both halves of the card have the same name, so only two of each half can be used in a 60-card deck. The opponent would also take two Prize cards upon their defeat, excluding Ho-Oh LEGEND and Lugia LEGEND from this expansion as they only featured one Pokémon. Pokémon LEGEND were entirely Holofoil and takes up three-quarters of the overall card. The top half included the HP and the illustrator's name in both English and Japanese, while the bottom part included the attack box, game rule box, weakness, resistance and retreat cost. The card text in the attack box appeared as if being pushed aside by the artwork.

HeartGold & SoulSilver also introduced an updated card design, which included numerous changes. The card border was changed to gold and silver, the evolution circle moved to the extreme top-left with gold and gray circle, a new graphic of the name and HP strip, a new font for the Stage and the strip was extended slightly longer, a new font and smaller Pokédex entry text, shorter illustrator strip with silver and gold border, and the weakness and resistance no longer have a background graphic. For Japanese prints, the Poké-Power, Poké-Body, and attack text occupied the entire length of the attack box instead of having the first word of each item to be linear to each other.

In the Japanese version of the expansion, the three subclass of Trainer cards were re-classified as Goods, Supporter and Stadium. The strip on the side of the card and the color of the title text featured different color; Goods were silver, Supporter were red, and Stadium were green. The Japanese version also introduced the Reverse Holofoil, known as mirror cards (ミラーカード), from the English version. Each Japanese booster pack came with eight Common and Uncommon, a Basic Energy, a Reverse Holofoil, and a Holofoil.

The Basic Energy cards were printed with a silhouette of a Pokémon and some with a location in the background; Celebi (Grass}}, Ho-Oh and the Bell Tower (Fire), Lugia and the Whirl Islands (Water), Ampharos and the Glitter Lighthouse (Lightning), Espeon (Psychic), Sudowoodo (Fighting), Umbreon (Darkness), and Steelix and the Goldenrod Radio Tower (Metal).