This past Friday (October 18), I attended a special event celebrating the Pokémon Trading Card Game expansion Scarlet & Violet - Surging Sparks, which is slated to release next month. Called the Stellar Maze, the pop-up took place at Lavan, a venue in midtown Manhattan. Though not a huge exhibit, I did leave the Stellar Maze excited for the new release - and very hopeful that future sets will see similar celebrations.

The new Surging Sparks expansion continues the tradition first started earlier this year with the first Scarlet & Violet set, which introduced Tera Pokémon to the card game. The event’s title Stellar Maze is a tie-in to the concept of Stellar Pokémon, a special new type that’s exclusive to Terastallized creatures. With Surging Sparks marking the last expansion of 2024, the company decided to do something special for fans during the week of New York Comic Con - though the exhibit wasn’t directly d with the event - on October 19 and 20.

The Pokémon Stellar Maze Experience

Island Vibes, Dazzling Snacks, & Disorienting Mirrors

The aesthetic concept for the Stellar Maze comes from a mix of Area Zero of the Paldea region and the Coastal biome introduced in last year’s Violet Disk DLC, and this was immediately evident as soon as I stepped into the event space. Employees clad in Hawaiian shirts greeted me, directing me into the main waiting area that was filled with Surging Sparks signage and a display of the expansion. Across a handful of tables sat the Elite Trainer Box and all of its assorted pieces, like dice, booster packs, and even the full-art foil promo Magneton cards.

The shiny crystalline structures that helped inspire the maze also had a clear creative impact on the food served at press preview, which was undoubtedly the most sparkly spread of appetizers I’d ever seen. There was sushi topped with edible silver flakes, sliders with bright blue and red-hued buns, and edible glitter topping everything from cupcakes to deviled eggs to shrimp. Though the food’s thematic connection to the new expansion felt a tiny bit tenous, it was also delicious, and did feel undeniably celebratory all the same.

After about half an hour, the actual maze portion opened up to the crowd. The maze was made of wall-to-wall mirrors basked in dim purple lighting, and though it was fairly short, it was still fairly difficult to figure out - I came embarrassingly close to bumping into glass head-first more times than I’d like to it. In all its confusing glory the maze was also quite dazzling, with some more circular sections designed to give extremely interesting perspectives via repeated reflections offering several angles at once.

The Post-Maze Card Exhibit

Bringing The Card Art To New Heights - Literally

After escaping the maze, I was led into a large room designed to look like a tropical getaway, filled with palm trees and a huge projection of an ocean backdrop along the wall. The entire space was dotted with crystal structures alongside flourishes like fog machines and secondary lighting shining extra sparkles on the main attraction, several very large displays of cards from the new set. Four total were featured in the exhibit: two Tera ex cards, one for Pikachu and one for Alolan Exeggutor, and a double display of the new Latios and Latias ex Surging Sparks cards.

These were all several feet taller than me, and to see the art much larger than I had before was legitimately impressive. The designs for the new Tera versions of Pikachu and Alolan Exeggutor were particularly beautiful to see on such a massive scale, and I found myself noticing lots of smaller details that are harder to pick up on in the physical cards. As silly as it sounds, something about seeing a Pikachu in a crown of jewels towering above me with fog in the air gave me a genuine sense of wonder about the new set.

On the right side of the room, there was also a digital portion of the exhibit consisting of several tablets lining the wall. With these, visitors could look through a digital library of the entire new Surging Sparks set, which were sortable by things like special art and ex cards. Though this index didn’t provide any information that’s not already available online, it was still interesting to be able to get the full picture of just what the expansion will have to offer.

Final Thoughts On The Pokémon Stellar Maze

A Short But Sweet Way To Spend An Evening

Attendees also got a gift bag, which included an ex Battle Deck - the one I received was for Houndoom ex, but it’s possible there were others - and two boosters from the previous expansion Stellar Crown. This was a nice small way to continue the hype built by the event, which was an overall fun way to spend an hour or so. There’s a chance that if I’d gone later in the weekend, when the experience was first-come-first-serve and may have included a lengthy wait time, I would’ve felt differently about the small size and scope.

While the exhibit may not have been extremely large or exceedingly informative, that didn’t make it any less enjoyable, and I very much hope to see similar events for the TCG in future. There’s something about attending an interactive Pokémon experience that builds anticipation in a way that simply reading about the release can’t capture, and similar pop-ups could really capitalize on that. As something of a newcomer to Pokémon Trading Card Game, I’d arrived feeling somewhat neutral on the set, but left feeling quite excited at the prospect of the new cards the Surging Sparks set is slated to offer.

The Scarlet & Violet - Surging Sparks expansion will release for the Pokémon Trading Card Game November 8.