Why we (likely) won't be getting 10 ex-Pokémon in Space-Time Smackdown

This is basically a continuation of this thread, which got downvoted heavily, so make sure to downvote this one as well, as I will be doing some weird math to show why we likely won’t be getting 10 ex-Pokémon in Space-Time Smackdown.

tl;dr at the bottom again

Genetic Apex had 15 ex-Pokémon, all of them 4 Diamond-Rarity, with up to 3 additional versions (total in brackets):

Venusaur-ex: 2 Stars (2)

Exeggutor-ex: 2 Stars (2)

Charizard-ex: 2 Stars + 3 Stars + Crown (4)

Arcanine-ex: 2 Stars (2)

Moltres-ex: 2 Stars + 2 Stars (3)

Blastoise-ex: 2 Stars (2)

Starmie-ex: 2 Stars (2)

Articuno-ex: 2 Stars + 2 Stars (3)

Pikachu-ex: 2 Stars + 3 Stars + Crown (4)

Zapdos-ex: 2 Stars + 2 Stars (3)

Gengar-ex: 2 Stars + 2 Stars (3)

Mewtwo-ex: 2 Stars + 3 Stars + Crown (4)

Machamp-ex: 2 Stars + 2 Stars (3)

Marowak-ex: 2 Stars (2)

Wigglytuff-ex: 2 Stars + 2 Stars (3)

So we got a total of 42 ex-Pokémon cards in Genetic Apex, with six of them getting only 2 cards, six of them getting 3, and the other 3 (namely Charizard-ex, Pikachu-ex and Mewtwo-ex) getting the full 4-card treatment. Out of 60 Secret Rares, 27 are ex Pokémon.

Now for Mythical Island, we got 5 ex-Pokémon, again all of them 4 Diamond-Rarity, with up to 3 additional versions (total in brackets):

Celebi-ex: 2 Stars + 3 Stars (3)

Gyarados-ex: 2 Stars (2)

Mew-ex: 2 Stars + 2 Stars + Crown (4)

Aerodactyl-ex: 2 Stars + 2 Stars (3)

Pidgeot-ex: 2 Stars (2)

So we got a total of 14 ex-Pokémon cards in Mythical Island, with two of them getting only 2 cards, two of them getting 3, and only Mew-ex getting the full 4-card treatment. Out of 18 Secret Rares, 9 are ex Pokémon.

So, what can we derive from this?

It looks like only the face cards of the booster packs will get a full 4-card treatment, but that doesn’t mean that there has to be an immersive card for each of them (Mew-ex being the outlier here). This could be due to the nature of mini-sets, and we probably need more data from upcoming releases to see if it’s just coincidence or a pattern.

We can also see that about half of the Secret Rares of a set are reserved for ex-Pokémon cards (27/60 in Genetic Apex, that’s 45%, and 9/18 in Mythical Island, that’s 50%), and that their variant-distribution follows the same pattern of ax + ay + bz (where x, y and z are the number of treatments, and a and b are the number of cards that get these treatments).

Now let’s look at the card count of both of these again. Genetic Apex had 286 cards, 60 of which were Secret Rares. Let’s do some more math! How many percent of this set is Secret Rares? ~20,98%

Mythical Island had 86 cards, 18 of which were Secret Rares. And more math! ~20,93% of this set are Secret Rares.

Hey, look, it’s almost the same! I think, it’s safe to assume that ~20-21% is what the devs are aiming for with each new set, when it comes to Secret Rares. Let’s say it’s ~21% for now, because that’s closest to the actual percentages. So, if we try to get 21% from 286, the answer is 60,06. 21% from 86 are 18,06. Rounded down to 60 and 18 very nicely.

With Space-Time Smackdown, we’re getting over 140 cards, which means some arbitrary number between 141 and 149, and this already includes Secret Rares.

Which is great, because now we can do some reverse-engineering!

21% from 141 = 29,61

21% from 142 = 29,82

21% from 143 = 30,03 (Uhh, that one is really close to a whole number)

21% from 144 = 30,24

21% from 145 = 30,45

21% from 146 = 30,66

21% from 147 = 30,87

21% from 148 = 31,08 (another really close one to a whole number)

21% from 149 = 31,29

Here comes the tricky part:

We still don’t know, which number we’ll end up with. It feels weird thinking about us getting an odd number of cards in the set, but an even number of Secret Rares, or vice versa. It could happen, but so far, we only had even numbers in both.

So my guess is that we’ll be getting 144 cards in the set, with 30 of them being Secret Rares.

If half of them are reserved for ex-Pokémon again, we can try to use our a(2-1) + a(3-1) + b(4-1) formula again. We know that b will be 2 this time, because of Dialga and Palkia being the face cards of the set, and even though we’re supposed to get a new Rarity, I think, we should assume that there will be 4 versions for each of them, which means 3 Secret Rares for each, hence why the 4-1 part in brackets. Just for clarity.

This leaves us with a + 2a + 6 = 15, or a + 2a = 9, or 3a = 9.

Which means, a is 3.

So, as far as math is concerned, we should be getting three ex-Pokémon with 2 versions, three ex-Pokémon with 3 versions, and two ex-Pokémon with 4 versions, for a total of eight unique ex-Pokémon in the set.

tl;dr: From the data we have so far, we can assume that we will be getting only 8 ex-Pokémon in Space-Time Smackdown. You can laugh at me for being wrong once the set arrives! I love to be proven wrong. Makes for a good surprise!

And yes, I had a lot of fun with this! Thanks for reading!