Pokemon Trading Card Game GBC

[adman2]

I recently bought the Game Boy Color Pokemon Trading Card Game for the 3DS Virtual Console, and am currently trying to build a Grass-based deck. Supposedly the game is too easy if you tailor your deck to each elemental Club, so I thought I'd try to get through using mostly one type.

The GBC game is more intuitive than I thought it would be, and it's fun so far. I've played the main Pokemon series since Red & Blue first came out in the U.S., but pretty much everyone I knew collected the cards rather than playing with them.

One problem I have so far is that it's easy to be paralyzed (like Flinch in the main series) for multiple turns if you get bad coin flips. Expect to wait for a while if you run into a Rhyhorn with Leer that can do something similar, except incurable by Full Heal because it's not technically an ailment.

Has anyone else played this, or the Japan-only sequel?

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

you might be interested in this old thread

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/pokémon-trading-card-game-gbc.3466123/

 

[Smuckem]

Haven't played it, but have watched a Longplay of it and own the Versus Books strategy guide (an insanely superior product to the official guide).

This game has also inspired more crazy "fantasy booking" from me than any other entry in the series: I always try to imagine how the Club Leaders would be integrated into the main series if they were to somehow, someday show up. What would they do? Would they be strictly post-game characters or make storyline cameos here and there? Would they get to show personality and nuance, instead of being empty husks and tools to put some semblance of plot/structure to the game? The most important question: what 'mons from their respective types would they use? This all also applies to the Masters, to a lesser extent.

Me being a Facility Bot Wannabe, though, I would rather they simply appear in battle facilities and have the original Club Leader theme playing...this also reminds me, the soundtrack is insanely kickass and arguably the best soundtrack to ever come out of a GB or GBC game.

Have fun with that, adman.

you might be interested in this old thread

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/pokémon-trading-card-game-gbc.3466123/

I really appreciate any thread that gets R Inanimate to casually reply and gets people in general all pumped up. Nice work, sir!

 

[adman2]

After intimidating the members of the Grass Club to give me more booster packs, I got some Tangelas and Pinsirs. You'll gain a new respect for Tangela after playing this game, trust me. Stun Spore has a coin flip chance of paralysis for 1 Grass energy to stall for more cards. If you build it up to 2 Grass energy and 1 Colorless, you can get a guaranteed Poison with Poison Whip.

Poison deals 10 damage per turn in a game where the bulkiest Pokemon has maybe 120 HP at most, and Basic Pokemon tend to have much less than that.

(Why do they give you booster packs when you beat them? Then again, I should ask the same thing about the player characters beating up preschoolers' teams to steal their pocket change in the main series. . .)

The rival Ronald is pretty much Blue from RBY, except the arrogant personality seems sillier when he has a deck of cards instead of real Pokemon to summon.

EDIT: As for the Club Leaders, I hope that if they ever make it into the main series, they will use Pokemon that correspond to the broader types of the card game. (e.g. The Grass Club leader would use Grass, Bug, and Poison types.)

 

[sin(pi)]

I've played of these, managed to find a fan translation of the sequel.

Best deck is probably still Haymaker, but that becomes rather boring after a while. Blastoise (with a some combination of Gyarados/Articuno/Lapras) is by far and away the best monocolour deck, though Venusaur/Egg sounded pretty fun and I would try and build towards that if you're playing grass. Probably isn't super consistent, but you'll have a blast playing it, and Venusaur can abuse Pokémon Center and super potion which is cute.

You definitely want 4 ER and 1-4 SER in every deck you build, then 3-4 Oak, Comp Search, Itemfinder, Bill (in order of urgency). That does take a while but it'll bump your winrate up a lot.

 

[Lightning Energy]

Easily my favorite Pokemon spin-off game. It translates the physical card game very well into a digital version and I'm surprised it's not more popular. I low-key hope for a NA release of Here Comes Team GR! during each Nintendo Direct.

Personally I play with a Fire/Lightning Haymaker-ish deck featuring Electabuzz and Fossil Magmar, but I also enjoy using some cards that I like even if they aren't amazing (like the Cat Punch Meowth and the GB-only Eeveelutions). I do like how every single piece of music in this game is a perfect 10/10, it's all so catchy and upbeat.

 

[adman2]

I just defeated Nikki, the Grass Club leader. She must be a sad case to lose to a new player with a monotype deck. . .of the same type!

Here's the deck I have right now. It's not perfect, but enough booster packs should improve it somewhat:

Pokemon

Bulbasaur: 3
Ivysaur: 1
Venusaur: 1
Caterpie: 4
Metapod: 2
Butterfree: 2 (This saved me from Exeggutor at the end by using Whirlwind to force a switch)
Nidoran F: 3 (Yeah, it's an annoying card that depends entirely on coin flips to work)
Bellsprout: 2
Weepinbell: 1
Tangela: 4 (This can paralyze with one Energy, or poison once built up a bit.)
Pinsir: 2 (A star of the deck. Guillotine hurts, and its other attack can paralyze)


Trainer

Professor Oak: 1 (Gimme more! I often have crummy hands, so being able to discard them is nice.)
Bill: 2 (Why don't more booster packs have these? Drawing cards with no drawbacks is good.)
Energy Retrieval: 1
Energy Search: 2 (I should probably put more of these in the deck.)
Pluspower: 2
Defender: 1
Gust of Wind: 1
Potion: 2
Full Heal: 2


Energy

Grass: 18 (What did you expect?)
Psychic: 3 (in case I ever need to use Exeggcute, who requires it for one attack)
Double Colorless Energy: 1 (several Grass Pokemon can use colorless energy)


EDIT: Wow! I didn't expect Gene of the Rock Club to be that easy even with his elemental weakness to Grass. A new Pokemon Breeder card let me get Butterfree really early in the match, and it destroyed his Diglett and Onix. After that, he ran out of Pokemon and the match ended. Some of these Trainer cards must have been banned in the physical card game after 1st gen. . .

 

[Nix_Hex]

Regarding Haymaker, of course it's cheap but is by far the best way to farm booster packs. After that, you'll have all the cards in the world to make fun decks with.

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

Is Haymaker definitively the best? I have a water deck with Blastoise/Dewgong/Articuno and as long as I make it to turn 4 it's game over, I have so much draw with Bills/Oaks that I just churn through everything that I need and flesh out every bench member with Rain Dance that my op has zero chance. The only bad games are the ones where you draw only one Squirtle and your op has cheap damage

 

[adman2]

Okay, here's the mono-Grass deck as of now. Still no Scythers yet. . .


Pokemon (should I have fewer in my deck to increase odds of getting better ones? Bellsprout and Weepinbell do almost nothing for me, and Venusaur comes up too rarely to justify Bulbasaur and Ivysaur.)

Bulbasaur: 3
Ivysaur: 2
Venusaur: 1
Caterpie: 4
Metapod: 3
Butterfree: 2
Bellsprout: 2
Weepinbell: 1
Tangela: 4
Pinsir: 2


Trainer

Professor Oak: 1
Bill: 2
Pokemon Breeder: 1
Energy Retrieval: 1
Energy Search: 3
Pluspower: 1
Defender: 1
Potion: 2

Energy

Grass: 18
Psychic: 2
Double Colorless: 2

I got lucky when fighting Amy of the Water Club. She mostly used Squirtles and that annoying Horsea with Smokescreen to lower my accuracy. Butterfree tends to salvage this deck.

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

Okay, here's the mono-Grass deck as of now. Still no Scythers yet. . .


Pokemon (should I have fewer in my deck to increase odds of getting better ones? Bellsprout and Weepinbell do almost nothing for me, and Venusaur comes up too rarely to justify Bulbasaur and Ivysaur.)

Bulbasaur: 3
Ivysaur: 2
Venusaur: 1
Caterpie: 4
Metapod: 3
Butterfree: 2
Bellsprout: 2
Weepinbell: 1
Tangela: 4
Pinsir: 2


Trainer

Professor Oak: 1
Bill: 2
Pokemon Breeder: 1
Energy Retrieval: 1
Energy Search: 3
Pluspower: 1
Defender: 1
Potion: 2

Energy

Grass: 18
Psychic: 2
Double Colorless: 2

I got lucky when fighting Amy of the Water Club. She mostly used Squirtles and that annoying Horsea with Smokescreen to lower my accuracy. Butterfree tends to salvage this deck.

You definitely want fewer Pokemon groups, a good rule of thumb is to limit to two or three main family lines with single pokemon lines scattered in otherwise (i.e. my aforementioned Blastoise+Dewgong+Articuno, a fire example of Charmeleon+Rapidash+Ninetales+Tauros, etc)

For grass types I'm a big fan of the Nidoran lines, Nidoran M is fairly decent while Nidorino and Nidoking are insanely strong hitters while Nidoran M is a good opener with cost efficient damage. Good pairing with the Bulbasaur line.

 

[adman2]

You definitely want fewer Pokemon groups, a good rule of thumb is to limit to two or three main family lines with single pokemon lines scattered in otherwise (i.e. my aforementioned Blastoise+Dewgong+Articuno, a fire example of Charmeleon+Rapidash+Ninetales+Tauros, etc)

For grass types I'm a big fan of the Nidoran lines, Nidoran M is fairly decent while Nidorino and Nidoking are insanely strong hitters while Nidoran M is a good opener with cost efficient damage. Good pairing with the Bulbasaur line.

Okay, I removed a few Pokemon from my deck, and got much better results against the Science Club and Rick. The Science Club should really be called the "Poison Club"! Tangela beat Rick's Mewtwo by having only one Grass Energy to get around his Psychic (does +10 damage for each energy).

Imakuni? confused his own Psyduck with his Trainer Card. He must be a joke character. Either way, he seems dodgy. . .

Pokemon

Bulbasaur: 4
Ivysaur: 3
Venusaur: 2
Exeggcute: 3
Exeggutor: 2
Tangela: 2
Pinsir: 2


Trainer

Professor Oak: 1 (That senile professor is a surprisingly rare card)
Bill: 2
Pokemon Breeder: 2
Energy Retrieval: 1
Energy Search: 3
Energy Removal: 2
Pluspower: 1
Defender: 1
Potion: 2
Super Potion: 1
Full Heal: 2

Energy

Grass: 20
Psychic: 2
Double Colorless: 2

EDIT: The Electric and Psychic Clubs are down too. Murray was the toughest fight yet. Murray had Mr. Mime to block all attacks above a certain strength, and Alakazam could transfer damage to benched Pokemon. I ended up winning because Murray ran out of cards! Never doubt Tangela's ability to stall.

 

[Lightning Energy]

Murray was the toughest fight yet. Murray had Mr. Mime to block all attacks above a certain strength, and Alakazam could transfer damage to benched Pokemon. I ended up winning because Murray ran out of cards! Never doubt Tangela's ability to stall.

Murray's notoriously easy to deck out: he may use a stall deck but he loves using Professor Oak which does not mesh well with that archetype at all.

 

[adman2]

Murray's notoriously easy to deck out: he may use a stall deck but he loves using Professor Oak which does not mesh well with that archetype at all.

Ha ha! The difficulty in this game is so inconsistent. The Club Leaders can be anticlimactic, but some minor character may beat you with Do The Wave Wigglytuff time and time again.

The Fire Club wasn't as hard as I was expecting to be. The Nidorans and Weezing lines aren't weak to Fire, and fare well in combat. Nidoqueen made Ken fairly easy on the second attempt. (The first try gave me very bad hands where I didn't draw more than 1 Pokemon).

 

[Random Passerby]

Ha ha! The difficulty in this game is so inconsistent. The Club Leaders can be anticlimactic, but some minor character may beat you with Do The Wave Wigglytuff time and time again.

The Fire Club wasn't as hard as I was expecting to be. The Nidorans and Weezing lines aren't weak to Fire, and fare well in combat. Nidoqueen made Ken fairly easy on the second attempt. (The first try gave me very bad hands where I didn't draw more than 1 Pokemon).

You have just unlocked memories which are best suppressed. I played this game long ago and had fun with a Water deck, centred around Blastoise and Dewgong (seriously, these things are broken). Articuno is good while Magikarp is a high risk, high reward strategy since Gyarados is almost as strong as Dewgong.

 

[adman2]

I'm currently trying to grind for cards before the final fights. Still no Scyther. This must be a more faithful adaptation than I thought if they're trying to mimic the rarity of the real cards!

 

[adman2]

I finally got a Scyther by beating up Andrew of the Rock Club several times. The main problem I'm having now is with the Fire "Elite Four" member.

Looks like I'll have to build a deck revolving around Nidoqueen and Weezing to beat her. (Never found a Nidoking). Several Pokemon that are Grass in the card game are weak to Psychic instead of Fire, usually the ones that aren't Grass or Bug type in the main series.

 

[adman2]

I won the game with my Grass deck! Good thing you can save after fighting each of the "Elite Four" members, because Grass can be a bit. . .inconsistent. Lots of coin flip cards.

Koffing requires 2 Energy, but you win no matter what coin flip result you get. Tails confuses, and Heads poisons. Weezing is a downgrade if anything, because its basic attack can only inflict Poison, and that's if you get Heads.

Scyther's 0 retreat cost saved me in one fight where I could switch to Pinsir and Guillotine to win.

Pinsir can paralyze with Heads on its 2 energy attack, and its 2 Grass 2 Colorless Guillotine does a consistent 50 damage. Two Guillotines can even take out legendaries.

In the ending, the Legendary Pokemon Cards can apparently talk. They also "vanished from Ronald's deck" after I won the final battle. Then again, this trainer has no use for Legendary Pokemon Cards, since none of them are Grass! :p

(Why does Dragonite count as a legendary Pokemon in this game, anyway? I expected Mewtwo. . .)


Here's the final deck. It may not be the best, but it was good enough to beat the AI. . .


Pokemon

Koffing: 4
Weezing: 2
Tangela: 4
Scyther: 1 (If only I had more of those. . .)
Pinsir: 4

Trainer

Professor Oak: 3
Bill: 3
Super Energy Retrieval: 1
Energy Search: 3
Energy Removal: 2
Computer Search: 1
Defender: 1
Potion: 2
Super Potion: 1
Full Heal: 2

Energy

Grass: 23
Double Colorless: 3

 

[adman2]

Today, I replayed the beginning of the Pokemon Trading Card GBC game again. I wanted to do a mono-Water at first, but Squirtle & Friends was so terrible that I settled on mono-Fighting instead based on the few good cards in that deck.

Fighting plays quite differently from Grass. It's more focused on direct damage instead of coin flip status ailments like Poison or Paralysis. Either I'm luckier this time, or Fighting is a more consistent type to use. Hardly any Pokemon resist Grass, and Grass seems to barely have any resistances either.

Fighting requires more awareness of elemental weaknesses. (Grass is pretty much "bring some Poison-based Pokemon instead of bugs and plants if you run into a Fire trainer", and that's it.) The Electric Club leader couldn't do any damage to my Rhyhorn, and my attacks did double damage to him. I had more trouble with the Flying Pikachu a random trainer had in the club than with him.

 

[Nix_Hex]

Murray's notoriously easy to deck out: he may use a stall deck but he loves using Professor Oak which does not mesh well with that archetype at all.

My favorite tactic for Murray is to load up on Fossil Moltres and shave his deck turn by turn with Wildfire. It's one fire energy so you can use it nearly every turn, especially with Evergy Retrievals. Of course, there are multiple more effective ways to take him out - Fossil Magmar breaks through Mime easily enough, GoW to bypass high HP mons Chansey and Kang and take out his Abras before it's too late - but there's something satisfying about depriving him options. With enough Potions and Energy Removals you can win 6-6, especially if he lets Chansey pointlessly Scrunch without retreating.

 

[Lightning Energy]

My favorite tactic for Murray is to load up on Fossil Moltres and shave his deck turn by turn with Wildfire. It's one fire energy so you can use it nearly every turn, especially with Evergy Retrievals. Of course, there are multiple more effective ways to take him out - Fossil Magmar breaks through Mime easily enough, GoW to bypass high HP mons Chansey and Kang and take out his Abras before it's too late - but there's something satisfying about depriving him options. With enough Potions and Energy Removals you can win 6-6, especially if he lets Chansey pointlessly Scrunch without retreating.

Dragonair's a good card to use against him, too: it resists Psychic and Hyper Beam depletes his Energy (though he likes doing the same to you, which is really annoying). Hadn't thought of Moltres, though: that sounds interesting to try, especially in combination with Moltres lv. 37.

 

[adman2]

Ugh! Amanda from the Water Club was probably the hardest opponent yet for the mono-Fighting team. That's purely because she has a Scyther that resists Fighting. I had to stall her with Rhyhorn's Leer until I could evolve Machop and defeat her with Seismic Toss.

Machamp's Seismic Toss has a funny animation in this game. It shows a globe falling on the enemy Pokemon, and when it crashes, you can see Japan and Indonesia falling on top of Australia.

 

[adman2]

Joseph from the Science Club is a jerk if you're using a mono-Fighting deck. He uses mostly Pokemon that were Flying types in the main series, and therefore are immune to Fighting attacks that do 30 damage or less (i.e. most of them unless you're Machoke, Machamp, or Rhydon). Type matchups can be even more one-sided in the card game than in the original series.

P.S. Never use Aerodactyl if your deck needs evolutions to work. Aerodactyl's Pokemon Power disables evolution on BOTH sides of the field, which I didn't realize at first.

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

Decided to troll around a bit and threw together a Zapdos deck, 2x legendary Zapdos, 2x base zapdos, 20x lightning energy, and 36 trainers

I proceeded to roflstomp every gym leader and the grand masters without breaking a sweat, only had one close call vs nikki because big thunder kept hitting my own bench

 

[adman2]

I have all the badges from the clubs with my mono-Fighting deck.

The way I beat Murray was stalling him out with Onix and Rhyhorn. Onix can block any attack that deals less than 30 damage for two energy, and Rhyhorn has a coin flip chance of blocking any attack for 1 energy. Alakazam could do nothing except hope for coin flip confusion damage. Maintenance comes in handy for a stall deck, but I forgot to take out some of the "draw more cards" ones like Bill at the time.