I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve started falling behind in Pokemon TCG Pocket. After fully completing Genetic Apex and rushing through Mythical Island, Pocket took a bit of a back seat in my gaming rotation. This is the curse of needing to keep up with the latest and greatest all the time. It’s hard to stick with anything long term, and Pocket is moving extremely fast.
Right now I’m just one ex card away from completing my Triumphant Light collection (and just 60 pack points away from crafting it) so I’m confident I’ll get it done before the next set drops. Unfortunately, my Space-Time Smackdown situation is far more dire. I’m at just 142/155 with barely enough pack points to craft the final ex card I’m still missing. Now that I can feel Shining Revelry breathing down my neck, I’m starting to worry that it’s going to be really hard to catch up.
Related
Pokemon Pocket: Sneak Peek Event Guide
Here’s how to play the Sneak Peek event in Pokemon TCG Player!
I’ve been playing Pokemon TCG Pocket since a month before the global release (I moved to New Zealand for a few weeks if TPC asks) and I’m still struggling to keep up. How on Earth is anyone supposed to pick up Pocket if they haven’t been playing from the very start? TCGs are already hard to break into for new players, but Pocket takes it to a whole other level.
If You Haven’t Started Yet, You’re Already Too Late
Pokemon TCG Pocket is expanding at a much faster pace than anyone expected. The game launched in October and it already has two full sets and two themed booster sets, with a third quickly approaching. That’s over 1,000 cards in just five months, which is about double what you would get from the main Pokemon TCG in the same amount of time. There’s so much to collect. It’s hard not to fall behind, and even harder to catch up if you’re just starting out.
When it comes to TCGs, any set may be someone’s first. If you’re just getting into the Pokemon TCG today, it would be impossible to collect every card that’s ever been made over the last 29 years – but you wouldn’t need to. You can start with the most recent set and pick up the singles you need to flesh out a competitive deck, and you’ll be ready to play. There’s a lot to learn if you want to get into a card game, but the financial barrier to entry is relatively small, especially in Pokemon.
Pocket is different from the main TCG in two major ways that both make it extremely difficult to just jump in. First and foremost, Pocket is a collector-focused game. It emphasizes the experience of upcoming packs and organizing cards into binders and displays, and rewards you with currency for doing it. Completing your collection by opening packs, spending pack points, making Wonder Picks, and trading is the game in Pocket way more than the actual battles are. If you want a serious competitive card game, play the regular Pokemon TCG. If you want the satisfaction of completing a checklist one pack rip at a time, play Pocket.
Unfortunately, the second big difference between Pokemon TCG and Pocket is what makes it so hard to catch up if you fall behind. The system of acquiring cards demands that you open packs, and lots of them. There are no common singles to buy for a nickel on TCGPlayer in Pocket. You can acquire specific singles, but you have to trade in your empty wrappers (pack points) to get them, and the cheapest ones cost seven. You’re also only allowed to buy cards with wrappers from the set that card comes from, which forces you to divide your already meager resources across every existing set – and they just keep coming.
Trading and Wonder Picks can help speed things up, but if someone was just starting out with Pocket today, I’d recommend they start opening Shining Revelry packs and never look back. It may be frustrating to miss so many older cards, but the only way to keep up with Pocket is to stay current. Bad for collectors, even worse for competitive players.
How Does A New Player Even Build A Decent Deck?
It’s so difficult to get specific cards in Pocket that I don’t even know how a new player can get started with deck-building. There might be some good archetypes that come out of the Shining Revelry (the new Charizard ex looks quite strong) but there are always going to be trainer card staples from other sets that you’ll absolutely need to have in order to build a competitive deck.
One of the best decks in the Triumphant Light meta was the Arceus ex and Dialga ex deck. It used Giovanni and Sabrina from Genetic Apex, Leaf from Mythical Island, and Dawn, Cyrus, and Giant Cape From Space-Time Smackdown. Unless you have a friend, the trade tokens, and the trade stamina to trade you all of these cards, your only hope of getting them is to open tons of packs from all of these different sets. Cards like Giovanni and Sabrina aren’t going away anytime soon either, so no matter when someone starts, they’ll need to figure out how to get these cards.
Some staple item cards like Poke Ball, Potion, and Professor’s Research can be easily obtained with shop tickets. Hopefully more of the staple trainer cards will get added to the shop soon.
One of the best things about Pokemon, and the reason it’s been so successful for almost 30 years, is that its appeal is timeless. Parents who grew up loving Pokemon can share it with their kids today, and their kids love it just as much as they do. In order to keep Pokemon alive it has to remain accessible, but Pokemon TCG Pocket is not accessible to newcomers at all. It’s only been five months and this is already a problem, I can’t imagine how bad it might be five, ten, or twenty years from now.
I expect Pocket will change a lot, but it’s disappointing that anyone who didn’t start playing on day one last October is already left behind.
- Released
-
October 30, 2024
- Publisher(s)
-
The Pokemon Company