Pokémon TCG Pocket

[CTNC]

Fun Fact: You can play Koga even if the Weezing/Muk is your only Pokemon. You lose, but you can still do it.

I was going to lose next turn (Which I avoided by losing on my turn instead! I never lost on my turn before! :D) and I instantly tried it when I drew Koga, but I think it wasn't highlighted in the same way cards you can play usually are. It's not telling you you can do that, but it figures if you really want to why should it stop you?
Edit: I did it again. Koga is highlighted in your hand even if playing it means you'd lose. I feel like that should be patched, but it's funny enough that I hope it doesn't.


Less Interesting Fun Fact: You can't play a Pokeball if your deck is empty. I found that out when a Pokeball was the last card in my deck.

Kanga also suffers from a high retreat cost, and since you're probably not putting more than one energy on her before moving to focus on your bench, you often get stuck in situations where you'd really like to swap her out for something that can deal guarenteed damage but she's just stuck out there flipping tails and being setup fodder. It's actually why I dropped it from my own Dragonite deck. I've been trying out a few new mons like Farfetch'd for that early damage or Dodrio for the free retreat, but nothing is really clicking.

What is clicking is swapping out Tentacruel and Heliolisk for Vaporeon and Jolteon. The Fighting weakness early on hurts, but having two Eeveelutions on a team is amazing. The deck feels so much less reliant on Dragonair and Dragonite, in fact a lot of the time the Eeveelutions take care of everything while Dratini just looms ominously from the bench. It also may or may not throw the opponent off the scent of it being a Dragonite deck.

Do you use 1 Jolteon and 1 Vaporeon or 2 of one or each? It feels weird to have more Evolutions than the Pokemon they can evolve from, but being stuck with Eevee has got to hurt... (Can't hurt that much when you get to keep looking at something cute though. :P)

About my deck, (which still doesn't use Eevee because I only have one Jolteon... I can't wait to not completly rely on Dragonite.) I cut Kanga because I got tired of getting tails. I'm using Bruxish as my fifth and sixth Basic Pokemon. You almost never see anyone play Bruxish, so in case anyone needs to look it up: It has 90 HP, Retreat Cost of 1, and the Attack is called Second Strike. Second Strike takes 2 Energy and deals 10 Damage but it deals 60 Extra Damage if the opponent has already taken damage. (70 Total) It's an okay tank if you don't care about attacking with it, but if you want to ever attack with it, no. I don't recommend it without Weezing. I never put more than the 1 Energy needed to switch before trying Weezing and Poison lets Bruxish deal more than 10 Damage in practice instead of just on paper. I'm also experimenting with only 1 Bruxish because getting a second one almost never helps. 5 Basic Pokemon is probably too low even with 2 Pokeballs though...

 

[DrPumpkinz]

Fun Fact: You can play Koga even if the Weezing/Muk is your only Pokemon. You lose, but you can still do it.

I was going to lose next turn (Which I avoided by losing on my turn instead! I never lost on my turn before! :D) and I instantly tried it when I drew Koga, but I think it wasn't highlighted in the same way cards you can play usually are. It's not telling you you can do that, but it figures if you really want to why should it stop you?


Less Interesting Fun Fact: You can't play a Pokeball if your deck is empty. I found that out when a Pokeball was the last card in my deck.


Do you use 1 Jolteon and 1 Vaporeon or 2 of one or each? It feels weird to have more Evolutions than the Pokemon they can evolve from, but being stuck with Eevee has got to hurt... (Can't hurt that much when you get to keep looking at something cute though. :P)

About my deck, (which still doesn't use Eevee because I only have one Jolteon... I can't wait to not completly rely on Dragonite.) I cut Kanga because I got tired of getting tails. I'm using Bruxish as my fifth and sixth Basic Pokemon. You almost never see anyone play Bruxish, so in case anyone needs to look it up: It has 90 HP, Retreat Cost of 1, and the Attack is called Second Strike. Second Strike takes 2 Energy and deals 10 Damage but it deals 60 Extra Damage if the opponent has already taken damage. (70 Total) It's an okay tank if you don't care about attacking with it, but if you want to ever attack with it, no. I don't recommend it without Weezing. I never put more than the 1 Energy needed to switch before trying Weezing and Poison lets Bruxish deal more than 10 Damage in practice instead of just on paper. I'm also experimenting with only 1 Bruxish because getting a second one almost never helps. 5 Basic Pokemon is probably too low even with 2 Pokeballs though...

Only 1 of each. Being stuck with Eevee isn't really a common issue. Unless the energy pool decides to be monochrome that round, you'll likely be prepared for either Eeveelution when they come up, so it's about the same consistency as running duplicates of a non-branching line.

My deck currently (minus trainer cards) is one each of the Dratini line, one each of the Pidgey line, two Eevee, and then one each of Vaporeon and Jolteon.

I was hesitant on Pidgeot at first, since I originally tried it out back when I was still using Tentacruel and the two don't really play that nice together, but I've really come around on it. Infinite Sabrina is really nice in general, but one small but very nice advantage it has over literal Sabrina is that it can be combined with other supporters, so you can do stuff like draw out a 90 HP threat from the bench and use Giovanni so that only two meteors need to hit the active. Plus Pidgeot itself is a pretty respectable mon in its own right, with good HP, decent and cheap damage, and only one retreat.

Hell yeah on getting use out of Bruxish, though. Water has so many cool options that all just get overshadowed by EX spam and turn 1 Misty cheese.

 

[Vinc2612]

My deck currently (minus trainer cards) is one each of the Dratini line, one each of the Pidgey line, two Eevee, and then one each of Vaporeon and Jolteon.

Only one of anything with an evolution sounds unreliable. How often do you sit there missing the (pre-)evolution?

 

[DrPumpkinz]

Only one of anything with an evolution sounds unreliable. How often do you sit there missing the (pre-)evolution?

Occasionally, but between having four different lines, two of which share a base, and also having two Pokeballs and two Oaks, you usually get something rolling pretty early on. It helps that Pidgey and Dratini generally like to stay in the bench most of the time, so not getting their stuff quickly isn't as bad.

 

[Lin]

TIL you can put Golem evo line into any mono energy deck with Brock, as Brock grants the needed Fighting energy without even having it in the deck. Havent seen any decent applications of it, though.

 

[R_N]

TIL you can put Golem evo line into any mono energy deck with Brock, as Brock grants the needed Fighting energy without even having it in the deck. Havent seen any decent applications of it, though.

I suppose related to that you can probably run water types in water-less decks since Misty should work the same way.

 

[Moutemoute]

TIL you can put Golem evo line into any mono energy deck with Brock, as Brock grants the needed Fighting energy without even having it in the deck. Havent seen any decent applications of it, though.

This could work like this :

3 remaining cards probably 1 Red Card + 2 Giovanni/Misty.
You could remove 1 Brock for 1 X-Speed but I like the idea of increased odds to draw it. You could maybe put a Farfetch'd / Kangaskhan?

Only run Water-type Energy. Starmie-EX doesn't need a lot of Energy to apply some pressure which also allows you to charge Golem line once Starmie is on the line. 0 cost retreat allows you to bypass Sabrina if you have 2 Starmie-EX. I put only 1 of each for Golem line because you don't really want to fuck your odds and brick early game with a Golem which can't deal damage. Golem acts as a nuke which can bypass Electric-type decks (OHKO everything in those deck like Pikachu-EX or Zapdos-EX), but also Mewtwo-EX. Starmie-EX puts big pressure on Charizard-EX Ramp Up decks but also Blaine's aggro decks. Big issue could be vs Grass-type decks, especially Venusaur-EX variants, if you can't aggro enough early game, Venusaur-EX can 1v1 the whole deck. Definitively not perfect but probably fun to play.

 

[CryoGyro]

I'd look to play Weezing Koga, a much more robust early-game package. Staryu can be easily picked off, and Starmie hardly needs a Golem nuke to follow up 90 damage.

 

[ant4456]

It's a little funny to me that your exaggerated nightmare card wouldn't even see use outside of pre-release formats and the playground.

Rough days out there.

i looked up cards + went down a bit of a TCG rabbithole, learned about Arceus Dialga Palkia and tbh yeah I now realize I didn't go nearly far enough

 

[R_N]

i looked up cards + went down a bit of a TCG rabbithole, learned about Arceus Dialga Palkia and tbh yeah I now realize I didn't go nearly far enough

Here are a selection of currently-meta cards (well, probably, i haven't kept up fully with shifts in the meta from Surging Sparks):
Charizard ex, a 330 HP card whose ability searches your deck for up to 3 Fire Energy and attach them to any Pokemon in any way you like, including Charizard ex. Who has a 2-energy attack that deals 180 attack as a baseline, then deals an additional 60 damage for each Prize the opponent has taken

Raging Bolt ex, a 240 HP basic with a Fire/Lightning attack cost that deals 70 damage times the number of energy you discard from anywhere on your board. This used to be mid and basically a gimmick until Ogerpon ex happened. Which is a card that traditionally sits on the bench to use its ability, which lets you attach a Grass from your hand to it (once per ogerpon per turn) and draw 2 cards. Suddenly you now have a draw engine that puts more energy into play to discard

Regidrago VStar which is an older card by this point but has started gaining more tools over time to use its gimmick of using any Dragon type's attack so long as it is in your discard pile. This also makes use of Ogerpon, I believe. Notable attacks include:
-Dragapult ex's Phantom Dive, which deals 200 damage to the active and spreads 6 damage in any way you like otherwise
-Kyurem's Trifrost which deals 110 damage to any 3 Pokemon you like, and then you discard all energy attached (for Kyurem this would be 5 unless the opponent used a Colress card, for Regidrago this would be 3)
-Giratina VStar's Lost Impact which deals 280 but you send 2 energy to the lost zone. If you haven't used Regidrago's once-a-game VStar Power & you have 10 cards in the lost zone you can instead opt to use Giratina's which instantly knocks out the active Pokemon and sends it to the lost zone.

Dusknoir, a 2-stage non-ex Pokemon that you can knock out during your turn and if you do put 13 damage counters (130 HP) on any one Pokemon on the opponent's side of the board. They take a prize but, assuredly, so will you.

Fezandipiti ex, a card that sits on the bench and lets you draw 3 cards if your opponent knocked one of your guys out last turn.

Pidgeot ex a Stage 2 card with an ability to let you search for any card you want every turn

Iron Hands ex is a 230 HP basic with a 4-energy attack that deals 120 and if it knocks a Pokemon out it takes 2 prizes. More used against single prizers for obvious reasons. I think this one is drifting out just due to the kind of decks being ran.

Shoutouts to Roaring Moon ex which has an attack that also just instakills a Pokemon (dealing like 200 damage to yourself) which had a spot in the meta for a brief period as like a mid tier deck.

And here are a few recently released cards that are basically unplayable garbage:
Exeggutor ex, a stage 1 with 300 HP an attack that deals 150 and lets you attach any number of energy from your hand to your pokemon. And a 3-separate-energy attack that has you flip a coin and either knock out the active if heads or a benched pokemon if tails
Palossand ex, a stage 1 with 280 HP who has a 3 energy attack that deals 160 and prevents retreat, and a separate 3 energy attack that has you put damage counters on all their benched Pokemon until they have 100 left
Cinderace ex, a stage 2 with 320 HP and 2 attacks with 3 energy. The first (Fire, 2 anything else) deals 280 and cant use that attack next turn. The second (fire, dark, fighting) deals 180 to 1 pokemon of your choice.

 

[CTNC]

Here are a selection of currently-meta cards (well, probably, i haven't kept up fully with shifts in the meta from Surging Sparks):

...
What am I reading?

Are we sure TCG Pocket is based on the physical TGC game?

I know there has to be some differences because of the deck size being 20 instead of 60 and Energies not being cards, but those cards make it sound like game play is almost unrecognizable.

 

[R_N]

...
What am I reading?

Are we sure TCG Pocket is based on the physical TGC game?

I know there has to be some differences because of the deck size being 20 instead of 60 and Energies not being cards, but those cards make it sound like game play is almost unrecognizable.

They made the (correct) call that for what is effectively meant to be a second style of the TCG that will go in its own direction to return to a lower baseline of power that takes the physical TCG as a concept to work backwards from. There's various hallmarks that still remain (the cenral conceit of 1-prizer supports on the bench for your 2-prizer central attackers that do big burst damage, primarily) but you can't just leap directly to 20 years of powercreep as your baseline.

I'm absolutely certain that Pocket in 1, 2, 3 years will be significantly more absurd than what is currently available, but will also be much different from whatever wil be going on in the TCG proper.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

Been havng fun with a Ditto deck. It's not... good, but it's less bad than you'd think, and more importantly it's very silly. It's also a great way to never run into the EXs you're trying to copy.

(man, I wish there was a better way to screenshot your whole deck)

 

[Bakugames]

my main issue with pocket rn is how linear energy feels. I always liked multi energy decks in main tcg and different ways to grab and distribute energy, but rn the main ways to get energy is once per turn or running a rng fest shit like misty/mewtwo gardevoir. i think this linearity is what makes the latter so oppressing, its the only deck with insane energy acceleration that most cant keep up with, even if gardevoir takes a few turns to set up.

it also makes multi energy decks feel pretty bad imo. youre just kinda at the whims of rng if you need a water energy for your dnite

 

[DrPumpkinz]

my main issue with pocket rn is how linear energy feels. I always liked multi energy decks in main tcg and different ways to grab and distribute energy, but rn the main ways to get energy is once per turn or running a rng fest shit like misty/mewtwo gardevoir. i think this linearity is what makes the latter so oppressing, its the only deck with insane energy acceleration that most cant keep up with, even if gardevoir takes a few turns to set up.

it also makes multi energy decks feel pretty bad imo. youre just kinda at the whims of rng if you need a water energy for your dnite

Would be nice if unattached energy got put in a reserve pool to use later instead of being lost to the void.

 

[leafsaber47]

Pokémon TCG Pocket is definitely shaping up to be the biggest thing in Pokémon history next to Pokémon GO.

Thanks to this game, Articuno is near mandatory on a Misty-themed team on Showdown or whatever.

Hurricane and Freeze-Dry hours.

 

[CryoGyro]

As a general ice enthusiast, it's pretty annoying the current representative is a cheese card that's pretty mediocre and unexciting when played fair. Blizzard is evocative on first read but the bench damage doesn't matter enough

 

[Bakugames]

As a general ice enthusiast, it's pretty annoying the current representative is a cheese card that's pretty mediocre and unexciting when played fair. Blizzard is evocative on first read but the bench damage doesn't matter enough

your main tcg options are chien pao searching for energy constantly to accelerate itself and baxcallibur and kyurem spreading 130 atk into 3 pokemon for one energy as long as you have a colress discarded lmfao

 

[ant4456]

Every few days a thread like "Pokmon TCG Pocket needs to be a FOMO skinnerbox because there's nothing to do" and wow it's an insufferable discourse, but it's really making me hate F2P game design even harder lmao.

"Wow this fucking sucks actually" (pointing to game where you only need to play 2 minutes but can play as much as you'd like if you want)

 

[S.A.C. Martin]

I am loving this game from a battling point of view. I am using a Snom/Dratini/Articuno based deck and it is absolutely slapping if I manage to get Dragonite on the field. Like it is destroying the psychic decks at the minute.

Have to say, I wasn't expecting much from this game but you know what - it has been the Pokémon moment of 2024 for me. Really enjoying it.

 

[R_N]

Every few days a thread like "Pokmon TCG Pocket needs to be a FOMO skinnerbox because there's nothing to do" and wow it's an insufferable discourse, but it's really making me hate F2P game design even harder lmao.

"Wow this fucking sucks actually" (pointing to game where you only need to play 2 minutes but can play as much as you'd like if you want)

I feel like a lot of people went into this expecting it to be something like the old TCG games on gameboy but as a gacha with cosntant flow of content and not what it actually is, which is a dive in/dive out tcg "sim" that nevertheless has events throughout the month with new set drops every 6 weeks.

like I certainly wouldn't say no to more solo content but that'll be alleviated if they run more of those lapras-type events in the future. Which they probably will, imagine the first coupel months are testing the waters on seeing what stuff worsk and what needs to be tweaked

e: Also we know a Venusaur one is coming like this week anyway

 

[ant4456]

I feel like a lot of people went into this expecting it to be something like the old TCG games on gameboy but as a gacha with cosntant flow of content and not what it actually is, which is a dive in/dive out tcg "sim" that nevertheless has events throughout the month with new set drops every 6 weeks.

like I certainly wouldn't say no to more solo content but that'll be alleviated if they run more of those lapras-type events in the future. Which they probably will, imagine the first coupel months are testing the waters on seeing what stuff worsk and what needs to be tweaked

e: Also we know a Venusaur one is coming like this week anyway

The main thing isn't that, it's people outright saying "you should do PVP to get dailies to get packs" type stuff which imo is cringe

An expansion to the singleplayer would be nice to me because it has a definitive end, while dailies tend to just be skinnerboxes

 

[Bakugames]

if ppl want dailies they can still play ptcg live, which i hope people move for if they end up interested in playing the tcg itself imo. Simplifying the game does help get people hooked, but i feel like despite it being simpler, the game feels much more unbalanced than the real deal

 

[leafsaber47]

if ppl want dailies they can still play ptcg live, which i hope people move for if they end up interested in playing the tcg itself imo. Simplifying the game does help get people hooked, but i feel like despite it being simpler, the game feels much more unbalanced than the real deal

Misty and her new best friend Articuno say hi.

I personally believe Pokémon and Touhou Project are the only two Japanese (originally a) video game IPs that should stay away from the F2P mold.

But they both already bit that proverbial bullet and there's no turning back. Was Pokémon Masters (EX) ever even as popular as TCG Pocket is right now?

 

[S.A.C. Martin]

Dragonite Deck. I am sweeping so many decks at the minute. It's insane.