Pokémon has a way inspiring the completionist within people, setting them up on intense collect-a-thons that either take them to unimagined glory or exhaustion laced with deep personal shame. Pokémon TCG Pocket is no different, situating the long-running mania around the card game into a slick, free-to-play package that’s easy to pickup and hard to put down. One fan did the hard work of actually trying to figure out how long it would take on average to get every card currently in the game. The answer isn’t pretty.
Over the weekend, a player who goes by TCGPCollector on Reddit spent several hours building a pack-opening, set-completing simulator to generate thousands of test cases. The simulator can open two packs a day (three with the premium pass), purchasing them with pack points (earned from opening boosters), and doing wonder picks, which give players the chance to pick a copy of a card at random from a pack someone else already opened.
Roughly 10,000 simulations later, TCGPCollector arrived at an estimated average time required to get all of the existing cards from the Genetic Apex set, including the dozens of rare “hidden” ones. The answer is 655 days of continuous playing or 437 with the premium pass. Excluding the secret cards, it would only take 130 days or 87 with the premium pass. And based on recently data-mined info, even more cards are expected to get introduced to the game by that point.
What if you didn’t engage with wonder picks and point purchases at all? Things would be much more grim if players only collected cards by opening booster packs. “It would take on average 3,687 packs to finish your set,” wrote TCGPCollector. “That is about 1,843 days (more than five whole years!), or 1,229 if you have the premium pass (although this would net you a bill of $404 if you had it active for this long). Alternatively, if you wanted to outright buy this set, it would cost $3,200. Clearly, this is unobtainable.”
There are at least some tips for maximizing your odds of finishing the base Pokémon TCG Pocket collection on time. One of them is prioritizing Wonder picks with 2-star cards, which provide the best overall value when it comes to possible outcomes. Another is only using points to purchase the rarest cards you’re least likely to get just by opening packs. But mostly it’s just a waiting game since the bulk of Pokémon TCG Pocket is governed by RNG and stamina meters.
I personally have clearly torpedoed my odds of getting a complete Genetic Apex set anytime soon, since instead of maximizing my chances of getting cards I don’t have, I’ve been focusing on getting Charizards, Mewtoos, and legendary birds Moltres and Articuno in order to wreck people in random battles. The rewards for winning are minuscule, but it’s a great way to kill time in-between waiting for my next booster pack to be ready.