Pokémon TCG Announces Best "New" Old Idea At World Championships 2024

The made a big announcement during the World Championships 2024 closing ceremony, revealing the return of the popular Owner's Pokémon mechanic. Worlds has often been the site of major TCG revelations, like last year's closing ceremony heralding the return of ACE SPEC items. Taking place in Honolulu, Hawaii, the 2024 iteration of the game's most important event of the year didn't disappoint, even if there were a few World Championships 2024 TCG controversies that briefly stole the spotlight.

For those unfamiliar, the Owner's Pokémon design first appeared in the Gym Heroes expansion, and have since remained present within the TCG, though often limited to promotional cards and without a proper full set built around them. Owner's Pokémon have a specific trainer, organization, or location tied to them and can usually only evolve from a similarly named basic — for instance, Misty's Gyarados could only evolve from Misty's Magikarp. It's a popular designation that evokes fond memories of some of the franchise's most storied heroes and villains, and it will be returning in 2025.

The Pokémon World Championships 2024 offers a lot of extras if you know where to look, and Ditto Draft is a perfect example.

The announcement of new Owner's Pokémon was accompanied by a lengthy animated trailer that was among the best the company has ever produced for its trading card game. The Pokémon TCG will see Owner's Pokémon return in 2025, with several trainers already revealed to be present within the set — most prominently, the return of fan-favorite N and iconic versions of their Zoroark and Reshiram will appear.Every card revealed in the trailer is as follows:

Additionally, the confirmation of a few of those Pokémon means we can safely assume the following will also be in the set:

We also got brief glimpses of several of these cards and their card text. Perhaps the most interesting one was N's Zoroark EX, which is a new iteration of Zoroark GX, featuring the same ability in Trade.