By: Daniel Kendle
(Many terms and gameplay mechanics discussed in this article are explained further in episode 13 of JOYSTiCK. It’s advised to read that review prior to this one).
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*Note: This article was written prior to the most recent expansion release. This may impact deck viability
It’s been around 5 months since ‘Pokemon TCG Pocket’ launched on mobile devices, and has been a great success for the franchise. Reportedly having generated around $500 million dollars by February of this year, the game’s critical and financial progress is guaranteed to continue for the years to come.
We’ve seen 4 booster pack expansions since the app’s launch in late October, with a 5th coming March 27: Genetic Apex, Mythical Island, Spacetime Smackdown, Triumphant Light, and soon to join the fray, Shining Revelry. With these have also come many events for both online and offline battling, obtaining rare promo cards, and more. The game’s developers seem to be attentive to the community too: after releasing a trading feature in January, it’s controversy surrounding the in-game currency required to use it has been announced to be retired later in the game’s life, either this year or 2026.
With these highlights out of the way, a large issue with the game has arisen with its continued expansion releases: the online meta surrounding deck-building and playing has become rife with overpowered cards and strategies. This is what we’ll be focusing on today, and why this is an issue. We’ll also be examining several powerful decks as examples for the argument, and finally see ways to potentially combat this issue in the future.
In short, a game’s meta is basically its current competitive state: what aspects of PVP are good or bad, and what strategies are best when playing. This is a vague description, but an all-encompassing one.
Player-versus-player gameplay in ‘Pocket’ comes down to using decks, each required to have 20 cards total. Only up to 2 of the same card can be used in a deck, leaving the player to have to employ at least 10 unique cards. Cards from different expansions can be used in tandem with each other.
The strongest type of cards in the game are “ex” cards: variations of normal Pokemon with higher health and damage, along with more unique effects wrapped into each attack. To balance this, knocking an ex out rewards 2 prize points, with 3 being needed to win a match.
Overall, with some niche exceptions, the game’s meta is mostly ex cards, which presents some issues. The main one, however, is that the over reliance on decks to use ex cards makes deck-building a more linear, provincial task.
Again, there are some commonly-used decks that forgo ex’s, but the prevalence of these cards online lead to most players combating them with their own ex’s, thus catalyzing the problem. The abundance of them online and the relatively-small pool of them combine to create a lack of variety of top-level decks to imitate. This doesn’t necessarily make matches stale, but rather streamlines creativity in making decks into choosing between several powerful options, each with a fluid “correct” list of required cards.
Ex’s as a whole also de-emphasize normal non-ex cards. Unless you have a killer strategy up your sleeve, more often than not non-ex decks struggle against their cousins. This disarray in power makes many cards in new expansions unable to break out into competitive play, unless they can support ex cards.
These problems have soured the metagame. There is still fun to be had, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not ideal to have players be pigeonholed into a selection of certain cards. Experimentation should be rampant in this game, but honestly, it’s often hard to find decks online with more uncommon cards – at least, by my standards.
Here’s a list of some of the best decks in the game, each with an explanation as to why:
- Arceus ex – Arceus’s unique Fabled Luster ability gives it immunity to status effects. Its Ultimate Force attack is also great, giving it 20+ damage for each Pokemon on your bench (with a maximum of 3 allowed, this peaks at 130 damage). Its biggest plus, though, is other Pokémon’s Link abilities giving them unique benefits when Arceus is on the field. There’s too many to go over here, but overall, it’s nuts how much utility these cards get when paired with the ex card.
- Gyrados ex/Greninja – For 4 energy, Gyrados’s Rampaging Whirlpool attack does 140 damage, discarding a random energy point from any Pokemon in play. Coupled with Greninja’s Water Shuriken ability letting it do 20 damage to any of your opponent’s Pokemon in addition to your active Pokémon’s attack, this allows colossal 160 damage per turn – becoming 180 damage if the opponent’s Pokemon has a water type weakness.
- Mewtwo ex/Gardevoir – While not as prevalent as it was a few months ago, this deck is still a threat. Mewtwo’s Psydrive does 150 damage, but requires 4 energy to use, similar to Gyrados. With Gardevoir, each turn you can add an extra energy to Mewtwo using its Psy Shadow ability alongside your normal energy. This means you can attach 2 energy per turn, helpful with Psydrive discarding 2 energy from Mewtwo after being used.
- Darkrai ex/Magnezone – This one’s pretty complicated, so listen closely. Magnezone evolves from Magneton, which evolves from Magnemite. In Genetic Apex, its Magneton card has the Volt Charge ability, which lets it attach an additional lightning energy to itself every turn, once again along with your regular per-turn energy (you don’t need to have a deck that uses lightning energy to use this card, too). Then, when evolved into the Magnezone card from Spacetime Smackdown, its Thunder Blast attack does 110 damage per turn, with the only caveat being having to discard a lightning energy after use. If you’ve hoarded a lot of energies on Magneton in turns past, then this attack becomes a menace for any deck. Couple this with Darkrai ex’s Nightmare Aura ability, which does 20 damage to the opponent’s active Pokemon whenever a darkness energy is attached to it from the discard pile. This deck is lethal, despite its complexity.
The examples listed above are fine examples of the strength of ex cards, and their numerous advantages. A lot of ‘Pocket’’s meta relies on energy acceleration: if your opponent gets an extra card when they knock you out, speed becomes the name of the game.
Once again, the current meta is far from bad, but restrictive in player expression through deck building. So, here are some of my ideas for how to improve competitive play, in my opinion:
- Give players stronger non-ex cards. I think that Arceus’s Link mechanic is really cool, and would like to see more stuff like it in the future. However, making the trait apply to both the ex and non-ex versions of Arceus makes the latter immediately inferior to the former, and therefore inconsequential. Why not make more regular cards that affect each other in beneficial ways? Having these in addition to ex cards could be great for diversity, and less focus on decks that mostly focus on a single attacker.
- Introduce more “stand-alone” cards. This point probably deviates from my first suggestion, but bear with me for a second. While cards that link with each other would be nice, another possibility is having more cards that affect all cards as a whole, instead of a select few. Giving Trainer, Item, and other supporter cards universal benefits for cards would go a long way in making some Pokemon more viable and widespread.
These were just 2 ideas, but I hope you can see the potential here. ‘Pocket’ is fun, but I think that its competitive corner is in need of improvement. I’m optimistic, honestly; these developers seem to love their game, and I think they can continue iterating on bettering PVP. Until then, though, I’ll still be looking forward to what they do next.
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