Pitch Black's chase ladder is all Mega Darkrai — and I just scanned 406 cards from the set
Pitch Black has been out since July 17, and three months in it's still the Mega Evolution set I get asked about most. Fifth main set in the series, code ME05, 84 cards in the regular run and 36 secret rares stacked on top for 120 total. Six Mega Evolution ex Pokémon live in this one — Delphox, Zeraora, Slowbro, Chandelure, Darkrai and Excadrill — but let's be honest about what everybody is actually opening packs for.
The Darkrai ladder
Mega Darkrai ex shows up four times in this set, and the gap between the rungs is the whole story. #048/084 is the Double Rare — the one you'll actually pull. #101 is the Ultra Rare full-art. #116 is the Special Illustration Rare. And #120/084, the gold Mega Hyper Rare, closes the set. The SIR and the Mega Hyper Rare are the two biggest cards in the expansion, period. If I pull either one out of a box I bought to flip, that box just stopped being a flip.
The other five SIRs
The Special Illustration Rare slot runs #114 through #119: Mega Zeraora ex, Mega Chandelure ex, Mega Darkrai ex, Morpeko ex, then the two trainers — Gladion's Final Battle and Gwynn. Chandelure and Zeraora carry the supporting cast. The two trainer SIRs are the quiet holds here; trainer SIRs in this era have a habit of getting cheap for a few months and then not being cheap anymore.
What I actually have in hand
Here's where this stops being a preview and becomes inventory. I just finished scanning 406 Pitch Black cards front and back — 287 from the regular run across 62 different numbers, plus 119 holos and reverse holos across another 59. That's 121 distinct cards from the set photographed and sitting in the CardStrike system right now, waiting on pricing before they go live.
Nothing in those stacks is above a Rare — this is the base run, not the hit pile. But the three holo rares worth pulling aside are all in it: Miraidon #028, Koraidon #047 and Zarude #056. And here's the number that surprised me: Miraidon turned up eleven times in 119 holos. Nearly one in ten. Koraidon came out four times, Zarude five. If you're building this set and need the Miraidon, I'm going to be the easiest place on the internet to get one.
Every one of those cards is going to light up, number by number, on the Pitch Black checklist page as it gets priced and listed. That page is the real-inventory version — not a scraped list, the cards I own.
Same deal as always: whatever sells out of this pile pays for the next Pitch Black box. The Darkrai, if it ever shows up, isn't going anywhere.
Set facts from The Pokémon Company International's July 17, 2026 release announcement and the released product; card numbers cross-checked against the CardStrike Pitch Black checklist. Not affiliated with The Pokémon Company.