Sword & Shield VMAX Pull Rate — 5.56% per pack (1 in 18)
5.56% of Sword & Shield booster packs contain a VMAX card — roughly 1 in 18 packs. Sword & Shield ships 4 VMAX cards in the pool, so the chance of pulling any specific VMAX is 0.0139 (≈1 in 72). These percentages come from PackRip's own rate table (the same constants the simulator runs on) — they are a model of the product, not a measurement of it. The Pokemon Company has never published pull rates.
Sword & Shield VMAX pull-rate methodology
| Formula | Tier odds = 5.56% per pack; per-card odds = tier odds ÷ 4 VMAX cards = 1 in 72. |
|---|---|
| Assumptions | One independent rare-slot roll per pack; uniform selection within the tier; no pity timers, box mapping, short-print correction, or edition/condition split. |
| Data source | Set checklist and rarity labels from the bundled Pokemon TCG API catalog; tier rates from rareSlotRates(), mirrored from the live pack opener. |
| Update cadence | Regenerated by prerender whenever set metadata, catalog data, or pull-rate constants change. |
| Limitations | This is a theoretical per-pack rate. Real sealed product can show print-run variance, collation quirks, and market-specific edition differences. |
VMAX cards in Sword & Shield
| # | Card | TCGplayer market | Per-card odds |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Snorlax VMAX #142 | $61.80 | 1 in 72 |
| 2 | Lapras VMAX #50 | $5.57 | 1 in 72 |
| 3 | Morpeko VMAX #80 | $3.46 | 1 in 72 |
| 4 | Stonjourner VMAX #116 | $1.62 | 1 in 72 |
How the 5.56% rate is computed
Every Sword & Shield booster pack rolls one rare-slot card (plus uncommons, commons, and energy in fixed slots). The rare slot is itself a weighted random draw across 7 tiers — Rare, Holo Rare, VMAX, and the era's other chase rarities. The VMAX tier captures 5.56% of those rare-slot draws (= 5.56 packs out of every 100). Within the VMAX tier, all 4 cards share the slot uniformly, so per-card odds are 5.56% ÷ 4 = 0.0139 = 1 in 72.
This is the same math PackRip's live Sword & Shield simulator uses to roll packs — open as many as you want for free, watch the empirical hit rate converge to the theoretical 5.56% over a large enough sample. Source code lives in src/utils/packGenerator.ts and the per-rarity drift is build-time-asserted against the published rates so the simulator and this landing page can never disagree.
Cumulative probability — how many packs to hit VMAX
VMAX pulls follow a geometric distribution with per-pack rate 0.055600. The expected number of packs until your first VMAX hit is 18; at 95% confidence you'll have one within 53 packs. Most experienced openers crack a sealed booster box (36 packs) and hit VMAX with probability 87.2% — so the average box yields just over 2.0 VMAX pulls.
Related on PackRip
- Open Sword & Shield packs free — same pull rates, live RNG
- Sword & Shield binder completion calculator
- Sword & Shield per-pack expected value
- Top 25 most valuable Sword & Shield cards
- Every VMAX card across all 140 booster sets