Pokemon TCG Pocket: No Wallet? No Problem!

I've had a problem for a while now. For the longest time, I've been looking for a good, casual, quick, mobile card game. Something I can play while in line at the DMV, waiting for jury duty, sitting in the doctor's office, or any place like that. And I haven't found anything yet.

My hunt has taken me through all sorts of games like MTG Arena, Hearthstone, and Marvel Snap, but I've never gotten into any them due to one reason or another. To be honest, I kinda gave up on the hunt for a while. That was until recently.

Some way, somehow, I found myself on Pokemon TCG Twitter in August during their world championship. At this conference, a new 'Pokemon GO'–esque version of the card game was announced. You'd be able to build decks, show off binders, trade, battle, and more; the whole nine yards. Best part: everyone would be able to open two packs every day for free.

This interested me, and I decided to loosely keep tabs on it for the next few weeks. A global launch date was announced a few days ago, but imagine my surprise when I heard that a soft launch had already begun in New Zealand. "Sure," I said. "Let's try it out."

One hurricane later— with a dream powered by a wireless battery pack, a VPN, and one bar of 5G— I managed to install the Kiwi version of Pokemon TCG Pocket (aka PTCGP) onto my phone.

And yeah. Rewind the clock to 3rd grade. This is it.

The premise of the game is pretty simple. Every twelve hours you're able to open a booster pack, which contains 5 random cards. For certain cards, you also have a chance of pulling alternate versions which have different art or flashier effects. These could be holographic, full-art, rainbow bordered, golden, or one of PTCGP's new immersive art cards which play a full-screen animation when you tap and hold on them.

If you want more cards, you can complete certain free challenges like "Open a Booster Pack," "Get 50 cards," or "Add a friend" to earn hourglasses. Each of these hourglasses can be used to speed up the pack timer by one hour, and the game hands them out pretty liberally to start. Within my first day of playing the game, I had over 200 cards that I had pulled, simply by using these hourglasses to get free packs. As of right now, these challenges are finite (minus the daily ones) but I expect they'll add more or have seasonal challenges as the game develops.

You can then take 20 of these cards and put them into a deck which you can use to play a streamlined version of the actual card game against computers, friends, or other players online. If you're instead more of a collector than a battler, then you can arrange your cards into a digital binder to show them off to other players.

One of the more interesting mechanics that I've seen is the game's "Wonder Pick" mechanic. Whenever you open a pack of cards, the contents of that pack are showcased to your friends and sometimes a few other players online. They can then use Wonder Stamina (another free currency you get one of every 12 hours) to randomly pick one of those cards to keep a copy of.

This has created a really interesting community of players sharing screenshots of their extremely lucky packs with their friend code attached, so other players can add them as friends, wonder pick from that same set, and hopefully share in the love a little bit. (Cards are even localized if your friend is in another region!)

The expansion that's included for launch, Genetic Apex, is pretty solid and primarily focuses on Pokemon and gym leaders from the Kanto region. Genetic Apex offers three varieties of Booster Pack for each of the three flagship Pokemon this expansion: Pikachu, Charizard, and Mewtwo. You can see the full card list here.

I've already seen some really competitive decks going around. Starmie EX is really strong right now due to its 2-cost 90-dmg Hydro Splash attack with zero retreat cost. I've also seen a lot of people building around Mewtwo EX/Gardevoir or Machamp EX/Marowak EX. I've personally been fortunate enough to pull the cards needed for a Moltres EX/Charizard EX deck which has been serving me pretty well in online matches.

However, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that this game is still a gacha game at its core and is moderately pay-to-win.

You can spend real money on premium currency and/or a premium pass to open more packs every day. Opening Pokemon packs does grant a similar adrenaline rush to gambling, so if you have an addictive personality I would this into consideration. Additionally, being able to buy packs means whales will have higher chances at getting better cards, so I would also suggest staying away from the ranked ladder if/when it launches.

But if you can put those two points aside and enjoy the free parts of the app, I think you can have a good time.

I should also note that trading has also not been implemented yet, but I expect that there will be limits on how often you can trade. I also think players might be forced to trade cards of similar rarity to prevent funneling cards from alt accounts to a central one. We'll have to wait and see.

Ultimately, I think Pokemon TCG Pocket is a fun game and has a lot of promise! Opening my packs has become something I look forward to each morning. I'm really excited for the global release, when the stores will refresh and the devs'll hopefully add more events and challenges to keep the game fresh and interesting. This is the same company that's been milking Pokemon GO for nearly a decade, and that game's still alive and kicking. I think it's in good hands.

Feel free to add me as a friend when the game comes out! No promises I'll be any good at battling, or that my wonder picks will be amazing. But I'll be playing every day for the near future for sure.

Disclaimer: The Pokemon logo, images, names, characters, and related marks are trademarks and/or copyright of The Pokemon Company, Nintendo, Game Freak, or Creatures Inc. ("Pokemon Rights Holders"). Nintendo/DeNA, if you're reading this, please don't ban me for playing early. :D