Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket

[HandsomeDead]

I never thought they'd get around to doing this but at the end of 2024 they've finally done a digital version of the Pokémon card game on phones/tablets. 

 

I'm not a card game guy (physically, at least) but I did have a Hearthstone moment where I was pretty into it.  I also played a bit of the Capcom one, Teppen, but I felt like the game was asking me to pay up and be serious earlier than I was ready for, despite enjoying what little I'd played.  In that respect I gotta say Pokémon has been pretty generous.  From what I've been able to gather from what are tutorial rewards I've gathered a decent amount of cards to put together a few viable decks.

 

It's simpler than Hearthstone right now, but then I got into that when it had been running for years so a lot of development in the gameplay had happened at this point.  Pokémon is back at the beginning.  Obviously it's been running since I was in school, and I do remember the art for some of these cards but this isn't a game that includes 25 years of progress, it's a reset which is the right decision, probably.

 

It's a turn based game, attacking each other until they lose but that's all it really has in common with regular Pokémon.  The rules are quite different, like there are less elemental types and they push ice into water, bug into grass and rock and ground into fighting... sort of, it's not fully communicated on the cards what weaknesses are from what I can tell.  I just know I was fighting a Moltres and it's wasn't weak to water but was to electric during a battle thanks to some UI elements.  You also don't just take out someone's squad but you have three "lives" and losing a Pokémon costs a life so it doesn't matter how many you have (there's also very powerful cards that cost 2 lives when you lose it but there are more factors I'm not gonna go into here.  There's still lots of moving parts despite how simple it is, comparatively).

 

I've wanted this a pretty long time and I'm happy it's satisfying to play without a lot of investment.  It's sad it still feels like an app and not a game in how it's presented, not unlike Pokémon Go, but there are still some nice flourishes.  I don't think anyone else here is a TCG guy but this is a thing out there which is kinda cool, for now.  It's not unusual for these things to grow in negative ways.

[Maryokutai]

Watched some videos of this, it seems nicely made, but a part of me keeps thinking that mobile phones and f2p games have completely killed classic digital TGC games, haven't they? The Pokémon TCG on the Game Boy was one of my favourites on that system and I recently replayed it again on Switch. Kind of wish there was still a market for that.

 

Sorry I don't have anything to add to this and I don't want to be negative about this particular release, just an observation. That said it would be cool if they moved this to Switch at least, so the five people without smartphones like myself can give it a shot as well.

[HandsomeDead]

On 07/11/2024 at 15:27, Maryokutai said:

Watched some videos of this, it seems nicely made, but a part of me keeps thinking that mobile phones and f2p games have completely killed classic digital TGC games, haven't they? The Pokémon TCG on the Game Boy was one of my favourites on that system and I recently replayed it again on Switch. Kind of wish there was still a market for that.

 

Umm, seems like an odd thing to see when Balatro is currently running with GotY nominations, and Slay the Spire a few years back.  Inscryption and Midnight Suns too.  I think the reason there isn't a Pokémon TGC themed RPG is that they're in competition with themselves with regular Pokémon games rather than digital TGCs.  I mean that's why I didn't play it back in the day, I'd rather just play vanilla Pokémon.  

 

 

Anyway!  I've been on this a lot and I guess I'm just gonna log my process.

 

My earliest powerful cards that somewhat synched together were a Pikachu EX and Zapdos EX (these are the powerful cards that cost 2 "lives" when defeated) and it was a messy deck but it scored me my earliest wins.  I should say you take 20 cards into a game, and a deck will mostly consist of half of them being Pokémon and the other half being item/assist cards.  And you evolve Pokémon during the match so you take a whole Charizard line if you want to use it.  I'm just explaining that because the Pikachu EX card I think is meant to be like Ash's Pikachu from the anime and isn't part of the Raichu line.  It's just a bullshit card that started to feel bad using.

 

So I start with a more honest deck and get some traction with a Gyarados/Greninja based water deck.  Maybe I should explain that you probably want to start with a singular element type.  The resources you get for moves during the fight are tied to the elements in your deck.  While I'm experimenting with multi-type decks now, maybe I'll talk about it later when I've better figured something out.

I don't think this water deck was particularly good at anything, it was just versatile so I could react with something whenever I came across new stuff while getting used to the game.

 

But my more consistent deck that I mostly use now when I want to pick up that xp from wins is my Alakazam deck.  It's probably the most simple one I've tried putting together but it just works.  Two Alakazam lines, a Clefable line and a Persian line.  Alakazam takes a bit of setting up so the others hold the line.  Clefable is pretty tanky and has a low cost move and Meowth can pull cards from the deck to my hand, and when evolved into Persian it's attacks have a chance of discarding a random card in their hand.  It's disgusting.  The amount of rage quits I've experienced, I'm surprised it's not used more.  But once Alakazam is up and charged it's over for them.  It can one shot the majority of Pokémon if it is also charged to do it's best move because the amount of damage it does relates to how much it's charged.  It's also disgusting.  Most people who use a psychic deck use Mewtwo/Gardevoir which is some sheeple shit because I've rolled it too many times for it to be optimal.

 

At the moment I think it's a bit of a problem that so many run with a very consensus driven deck so it can get a bit same-y but hopefully it'll change with time.  I guess I just gotta obliterate some more Mewtwos so they try something else.

[Maryokutai]

11 hours ago, HandsomeDead said:

Umm, seems like an odd thing to see when Balatro is currently running with GotY nominations, and Slay the Spire a few years back.

 

I meant a more persistent, campaign-based take on the genre with 1:1 duels, like the GBC Pokémon TCG, the Magic games that were on Live Arcade or something like Shadowverse on Switch and Thronebreaker. Those aren't really a thing anymore unfortunately, and roguelike takes on card games don't really fill the same niche. Yu-Gi-Oh! is still a thing but those games look so cheaply made.

 

Edit: just for clarification, sorry for off-topic.

[one-armed dwarf]

Inscryption does have something like this, not to further set the topic adrift but I found it the most interesting part of that game. Balatro is pretty different though.

 

I would really like Square to make a campaign based version of FFVII's Queen's Blood. This could be a hot topic question in itself, mini-game spinoffs.

[HandsomeDead]

A few months later and I've been keeping up with it regularly.  I even started looking out for YouTubers for inspiration so I'm sadly that deep.

 

Since last time they did release like an interim booster pack which had new Pokémon and alternative versions of Pokémon in the previous set.  It livened things up a bit, we started to see people running different decks so it quite quickly made matches more variable.

 

But then the meta started to get honed and what's really unfortunate now is the most effective decks are all centered around coin flips, so luck based.  It's kinda how they interpret low accuracy moves from the regular games.  There were coin flip moves before (e.g Marowak EX, Zapdos EX, Exeggutor EX and Misty support card).  They were annoying and could feel bad losing against if your playing optimally then lose to lucky flips but they weren't too powerful.  That's not the case now.  It's like before relying on these flips would give you a good advantage on heads and it's over on a tails, but it's shifted to not being the end of the world on a tails and it's just over for you on heads.  It's not the risk it should be.  Celebi EX and Gyarados EX (combined with Misty) are just so god damn ridiculous when it comes to the lack of risk they have for how powerful they are.  It's made this phase pretty miserable when they show up.  Which is annoying especially since there are a bunch of cool, tactical decks you can build at the moment, too.

 

Thankfully a proper new set of booster packs are coming at the end of the month so hopefully it comes with some new abilities that get around all this coin flipping nonsense.

 

 

For me though, though I do have what is needed to build one of those aforementioned decks I enjoy using a Wheezing/Scolipede deck too much.  Its about poisoning and shifting around, it's fun and doesn't rely on luck but actual decision making.  Yes I'm on a high horse about this.

 

Roll on the end of the month tbh.  I just needed a rant.

[HandsomeDead]

So, they just started an event.  It looks like they'll do this just before they add new expansions where you can earn a little medal if you win 5 matches in a row.  Sounds easy enough but I've been hearing some struggle and even say they wish it lasted longer than a week.  Card games are inherently RNG but the point of building a good deck is to try and mitigate it.

 

I just logged in and just won my first 5 in a row.  Last time they did this it took a few more attempts and maybe on the second day.  So I'm feeling pretty smug and I found a place that hosts decks so I can generate an image:

 

 

That's the deck that did it.  I'm probably gonna tweak it (I did have 2 X Speeds but swapped one to a Potion last minute. Will probably swap it back) but that ruined a few folks morning.

 

It does make me hope the add some sort of league because there's little stakes to the fights outside this little event they do.  Just a little xp if you win and nothing if you lose.  I think they want to keep it pretty casual but I just think having a ranked mode would really add something to those that like the battling.

[Maryokutai]

Did they streamline the ruleset and get rid of Energy cards for this version? Because that looks like a significantly smaller deck than what I remember them being when I played the game eons ago. I think decks were 50 (?) cards then and I presume the big numbers here are the number of copies in you deck, which would amount to only 20 in total. Which in turn makes stuff that allows you to draw cards incredibly powerful.

 

Edit: just saw that you described it as some kind of reset early in the topic and also mentioned the 20-card limit. My bad, moving on.

[HandsomeDead]

Energy isn't a card here, one is generated at the start of a turn.  Draw cards are very good but matches are short so it can be ended before you can pull what you need, and having a hand full of good cards doesn't mean you'll have the energy for them.  It's definitely balanced differently.

 

If you're running a duel element deck (I'm having some success with a Vaporeon, Flareon with Greninja) it gets difficult because the energy generated is 50/50 each turn, and sometimes RNG does it's thing.  I hope they have another look at that.  Or maybe it'll sort itself out where more energy generating Pokémon are added.  There's a couple at the moment.

[HandsomeDead]

How's this going you ask? oh, could be better.

 

It's about two weeks after the new packs dropped and the nature of these games is rearing it's head.  I am getting so unlucky with the card packs I'm opening.  I have barely any of the good new cards.  It's not the end of the world because thankfully they have avoided power creep pretty well and the new assist cards do breath life into the older ones, even making previously weak cards pretty good (and previously good cards irrelevant (RIP Mewtwo)).  It's just I was hoping to use some of the new Pokémon but that's life in the TGC world I guess.

 

I did get two Dialgas pretty early, it was a card shown in a trailer so there was some excitement about it but something that keeps happening is a card gets previewed or leaked and people make a judgement on it and being completely wrong (people thought Gyarados EX was going to be bad before that released... It ended up dominating the meta).  Dialga isn't that good in practice 😑 

But I eventually did pull two other cards which help me make a pretty good deck I enjoy using.  Infernape!  

 

 

There's still a number of cards I hope to get but with my luck lately I'm not counting on it.

[HandsomeDead]

Kind of monthly update.

 

They dropped another mini set the day after Pokémon day, which is early.  So far they alternated between releasing a big set and a mini set every 6 weeks but this came 2 weeks earlier but it means we have to wait 8 weeks for the next one.

 

That has the consequence of not having as much time to get everything I wanted from the big set before this mini one came.  I could always go back because the mini sets are easier to complete and we have 8 weeks to do it but I dunno I hate that there are some key cards I want from the old set.  

 

But the new set has broadened the game further in some cool ways especially since the Magnezone got a bit overexposed.  That'll happen with a powerful card that can slot into any deck.  Some were pretty novel but I kinda got sick of the sight of it but now everyone is trying new stuff again.

 

The 5 wins in a row eventually starts tomorrow again and I have a plan to get it done easily again.  There is a current meta I've been seeing a lot, Arceus and Dialga, just playing these powerful but energy hungry god cards but I'm gonna go in with my counter deck:

 

 

This has been kicking arse the last few days.  It's interesting, because the only new card in this deck is the Sudowoodo, no new assists that make Gallade better (which was considered just an okay card) but the kinds of cards people play more now make it a really good pick while nothing changes mechanically with it.  It also does well against none meta decks so part of me thinks it was also slept on.  I dunno, I just managed to get my second Gallade just before the mini set dropped, I've not used it until recently.

[HandsomeDead]

On 05/03/2025 at 17:29, HandsomeDead said:

So far they alternated between releasing a big set and a mini set every 6 weeks but this came 2 weeks earlier but it means we have to wait 8 weeks for the next one.

 

Well, this didn't happen.  They ended up practically shadow dropping another mini set 4 weeks after the last one.  I mean, it's a good problem to have considering how games usually operate but I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed with how much stuff they're releasing.  I dunno how they'll keep it up.

 

The new set coincided with them also adding the ranked ladder mode, which is what I wanted, but now I have to reckon with how mad it'll make me.  

 

But despite there being so many cards now I am seeing a trend in what ends up being the strongest and most used decks.  It's Legendary Pokémon, not just one but having 2 or 3 being your whole kit.  It stands to reason I suppose since they are Legendary Pokémon but I guess I never expected them to be played together so much.  I don't think we'll ever see the back of Arceus because of it's Normal typing and fits anywhere, including other legendaries.  And now the latest pack has Giratina which can generate its own Psychic energy so I expect to see it show up everywhere too.  It's just funny having all these cards and potential that maybe could be done better.

 

 

How am I doing on ranked?  Oh, very average.  When I started I thought I could maybe hit the master rank.  I'm getting good streaks, I climbed through the Poke Ball, and Great Ball leagues in a day.  I thought I could be the very best, the best that ever was.  But then I hit the Ultra Ball league and hit a wall.  I eventually found out this was because in the previous leagues you get a bonus for win streaks but in Ultra Ball you just get a flat 10 points a win and -7 for a loss, which is rough, especially at this point when your opponents are pretty sweaty.

 

So I can't see me ever leaving Ultra, mostly because I do make bone headed plays sometimes, and there is lots of random nonsense, and I'm to cool to play meta decks... and I've not even got a Giratina EX yet, but I swear I wouldn't play it...  okay, maybe I would, but in a cool way.

[HandsomeDead]

The ranked ladder for this season ends in just over 2 weeks and I feel like 

 

 

I took about a week off after hitting that wall but came back using a different deck.  I figured if I do want to hit Master Ball I gotta stop being cool and play one of the meta decks, so I went with this:

 

Spoiler

 

Ugh, a water deck.  Disgusting.  I'm one of those people now.

 

It got me over the hump and into Ultra Ball 3 (it was UB2 I was stuck in specifically).  It does really well against the other meta decks.  Not as safe in the beginning due to Magikarp but once you're up and running it's hard to stop.

 

But all I keep encountering now are bloody counter meta decks, so I guess I need a counter counter deck and I'm not experienced enough in card games to build my own at this level, and frankly not smart enough.  It's not really choosing which Pokémon to use, that's the easy part, it's which assist cards, and there are so many now so it's so hard to choose which are more likely to net you the most advantages.

 

 

I hope there are changes to the the progression next ranked season because it feels really brutal.  Of course getting to Master should be an achievement but it's just weird how Ultra feels so grindy.  Anyone with a half decent deck playing moderately well can get in the early section, so it doesn't feel like Ultra is anything special and you want to hit Master but it's so many points needed to rank up and +10 win, -7 lose is... it just takes a few games where the win is just out of your hands.  Nothing you can do about it.

 

I guess I'll keep at it and see if I have that Master Ball emblem next post.