MEGA Starter Set ex: Japan's Three ¥1,800 Decks Compared

Three Japanese preconstructed decks land the same day, they all cost the same, and the official page is entirely in Japanese. The MEGA Starter Set ex line is three separate ¥1,800 boxes — Eevee ex, Zorua & Zoroark ex, and Sprigatito & Meowscarada ex — released in Japan on Friday, July 31, 2026, each containing one ready-to-play 60-card deck plus a playmat, a coin, a paper damage-counter sheet and two guides. Here is what separates them, and what it costs to move one across an ocean.

What is the MEGA Starter Set ex, and which of the three should I buy?

It’s a 構築デッキ (kōchiku deck, constructed deck) — a sealed, playable 60-card deck built around one Pokémon ex, not a random booster. Which one you buy comes down to how much setup you’re willing to do before your headline card can attack: Eevee ex is a Basic and hits the field turn one, Zoroark ex needs one evolution step, Meowscarada ex needs two.

That ¥1,800 is 希望小売価格 (kibō kouri kakaku, suggested retail) including tax, and it’s identical across all three, so price isn’t a tiebreaker. If you want the general lay of the land on Japanese product types — why a starter set is priced where it is against a ¥200 booster or a ¥550 high class pack — we broke that down in Japanese Pokémon product types explained.

What’s in the ¥1,800 box, and the fine print that matters

Every one of the three boxes carries the same contents line: one 60-card deck, one sheet of damage counters and markers, one Pokémon coin, one playmat, one player’s guide, and one instruction booklet. Nothing is random — starter sets don’t have a pull.

The official page then adds four footnotes, and three of them change what you should expect when you open the box.

The fourth footnote is the one that quietly rewards buying more than one: the coin and the playmat are fixed per product. Each of the three decks has its own coin and its own mat, so three boxes means three different mats and three different coins rather than three copies of the same accessory.

What one deck actually costs to get out of Japan

Here is the part nobody puts on the product page. The deck costs ¥1,800. The postage costs more than the deck.

Japan Post’s EMS rate table doesn’t even have a bracket below 500g — “up to 500g” is the lightest row that exists. At that row, EMS is ¥3,900 to the U.S. (Fourth Zone) and ¥3,150 to Europe (Third Zone, which also covers Canada, Mexico, Oceania and the Middle East). The cheaper tracked option, International Air Packet, is ¥2,040 and ¥1,600 at the same bracket.

Read the shape of that table rather than any single number. Postage brackets don’t scale with the number of decks you buy — they scale with total weight, and one boxed deck does not fill a bracket on its own. A one-deck order to the U.S. by EMS is ¥1,800 of product against ¥3,900 of postage: you’re paying more than twice the item price to move it. Three decks at ¥5,400 in product moves you up a bracket or two at most, and the postage per deck collapses. The same logic is why adding Storm Emeralda boosters at ¥200 each to the same parcel is close to free per pack once the box is already going. For the full landed-cost picture including proxy fees and customs, see our breakdown of proxy shipping costs from Japan.

Eevee ex: the Basic that draws its own gas

Official product image © The Pokémon Company (from the linked official page).

Eevee ex is a Basic Pokémon with 200 HP and a Colorless typing, which makes it the fastest of the three to get onto the field — no evolution line to assemble. Its first attack, 「もってくる」 (Motte Kuru, “Bring It Along”), costs a single Energy and draws three cards. Its second, 「ブレイブダッシュ」 (Brave Dash), costs three and does 200 damage, with a coin flip that puts 30 damage back on Eevee ex if it comes up tails.

The deck runs on Lightning Energy, and the support line is the Pawmi family — パモ (Pawmi), パモット (Pawmo) and パーモット (Pawmot). Pawmot’s Ability 「はつでんタッチ」 takes a Basic Lightning Energy out of your discard pile and attaches it to one of your Pokémon, which is the deck’s answer to the fact that its own attacker keeps taking recoil. The card list for this deck runs to 019 entries.

Zorua & Zoroark ex: damage that scales with your board

Official product image © The Pokémon Company (from the linked official page).

Zoroark ex is a Stage 1 with 270 HP, evolving from Zorua. Its cheap attack is the interesting one: 「ライオットビート」 (Riot Beat) costs one Darkness Energy and does 20 damage times the number of your Pokémon in play. Fill your Bench and a one-Energy attack turns into real damage. Its heavy attack, 「スラッシュダウン」 (Slash Down), does 210 but locks itself out the following turn, so the deck is built to alternate rather than spam.

The support line is Purrloin and Liepard — チョロネコ and レパルダス — whose attack 「ついげきクロー」 does 20 damage for every damage counter already on the opponent’s Active Pokémon, turning chip damage into a finisher. This is the deck I’d hand to someone buying exactly one box: a single Darkness Energy gets you attacking, and one evolution step is a lower barrier than the Grass deck’s two. Its card list also runs to 019 entries.

Sprigatito & Meowscarada ex: the one that reaches the Bench

Official product image © The Pokémon Company (from the linked official page).

Meowscarada ex has the biggest number on the box: 320 HP, the highest of the three. It’s a Stage 2, evolving up through ニャオハ (Sprigatito) and ニャローテ (Floragato), so it’s also the slowest to set up. Its attack 「マジカルバレット」 (Magical Bullet) costs two Grass Energy for 120 damage, and then puts another 120 on one of the opponent’s Benched Pokémon that already has damage counters on it — Weakness and Resistance are not applied to that Bench hit.

The support line is the Smoliv family — ミニーブ (Smoliv), オリーニョ (Dolliv) and オリーヴァ (Arboliva) — and Arboliva’s Ability 「オイルスリップ」 can be used once per turn to switch the opponent’s Active Pokémon with one from their Bench. That’s the engine: drag a damaged Pokémon out of the Bench, or push a fresh one into the Active spot so Magical Bullet’s second hit lands where you want it. This deck’s card list runs to 017 entries, the shortest of the three.

Which deck for which buyer

One last piece of timing worth knowing before you decide how urgent this is. There’s no announced English version of these decks, and the Japanese and English release calendars are still running on separate tracks — the 30th CELEBRATION expansion on September 16, 2026 is the first worldwide simultaneous Pokémon TCG release, and it doesn’t cover this product. If you want a MEGA Starter Set ex, the Japanese box is the only box — and everything else dated on the Japanese schedule sits on our JP release calendar.