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Pokemon TCG Pocket just dropped
- Thread starter Werewolf Jones
- Start date
Bloody Crow of Cainhurst
Member
BlackTron
Member
Wouldn't mind a classic mode with just Base, Jungle, Fossil cards either (but with 60 card decks/6 prizes plz)
Werewolf Jones
Member
Lol people already getting tired of the autism cards. I KNEW this was gonna happen from day 1.
neocycle
Member
Notice how you don't call this a game. Because you know this isn't a game. It's software designed to make you spend money.
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Werewolf Jones
Member
Just play the GBC games. You'll be happier that way.
BlackTron
Member
I still have the first one, started playing a translation of 2 when I discovered it in this very thread, in fact I beat half of it before even downloading Pocket.
Still can't play base/jungle/fossil online, so my feature wish stands.
Werewolf Jones
Member
You'll just get swept by Fossil Gengar/Jungle Wigglytuff Do the Wave decks anyway lmao.
BlackTron
Member
Yeah maybe
Or maybe also play the game again with my old friends who now live hours away, dabble in the new game but are too busy to adapt to all the new ex cards and meta
Thanks for the tips tho
Fahdis
Member
Did you miss this?
This thing is pulling in ridiculous amounts as we speak.
That said I personally think the two-pack-a-day thing is pretty generous. Don’t really feel like I need to spend money on it. But I’m only in it for the card collecting.
Whenever I want something to fail. It succeeds instead. But when I want it to succeed the opposite happens. I should just think the opposite of what I'm thinking.
BlackTron
Member
If whales wanna impale themselves so I can keep hoarding free cards in my free game, oh well...
You accumulate tons of resources to get boosters just by existing in the game, on top of the daily free boosters. Paying is for the super impatient people who would have to buy an entire retail box of cards when a set comes out to try and complete it ASAP, deranged pretty much. (I did that once with Team Rocket. Never looked back lol)
Fahdis
Member
got the free 2 weeks use for the Pikachu card.TropicanaTwista
Member
Came here to say this. Its so unbelievably cheap and the system is unfair. Especially for those EX pokemon that don't need to be evolved.
I can't play a match now where it isn't a psychic deck with multiple EX Mewtwos and Gardevoir to just allow for more energy. Like I've played 10 matches this morning and no shit that deck was ran 8 of the times, all by different people.
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Herbspiceguy
Member
Mewtwo/Gardevoir does take a bit of setup and can be destroyed, like other powerful ex decks, with aggro decks like Melmetal, Marowak, Primeape, Exeggutor. Koga also does pretty well due to the added counter bonus and it's fun to play.
TropicanaTwista
Member
Yea, I strongly disagree with this. Its not impossible to beat, but you need so much luck on your side. Its so crazy OP. Unlimitless energy, high health pool and crazy strong damage.
Koga or Blaine deck really feel like the best shots but if that you're so much behind the 8 ball. With koga, the damage is so slow dealing, unless you can get poison on them with muk in the active spot. Like even with that being physic weakness, I still find you will lose more than not. Blaine similar thing, you can find the damage output, just need to get lucky with draw and get those Blaine cards with your vulpex early and often.
Really, I feel like EX pokemon shouldn't be allowed, but even if they want to do that, it should limit 1 per deck. It completely defeats the purpose of first one to 3, but technically you need 4 if they just play EXs back to back.
Werewolf Jones
Member
I play Exeggutor EX with Liligant and Butterfree but my set up can get fucked up pretty easily. There's A LOT of Charizard usage. First time that piece of garbage has ever been meta as far as I know.
ResurrectedContrarian
Suffers with mild autism
The online battles are just incredibly mind numbing due to the standard decks.
The worst part about Pocket is that the cards available in the game are built around 1 or 2 extremely obvious decks per type (the Mewtwo deck, the Moltres deck, etc) and on top of that, it actually encourages people to play those by showing them how to build the standard decks (rental decks, etc). It's like their intent is to funnel everything into absolute tedium where everyone plays the same thing.
I'm about to the point where I'm going to just auto-quit every battle if the first round reveals it to be one of the straight standards. There's no real consequence anyway, and I'd rather not waste my time. I don't know why people aren't actually embarrassed to just go through the motions with a standard, game-supplied deck that everyone else plays, might as well be a bot and not even a human player.
The worst part about Pocket is that the cards available in the game are built around 1 or 2 extremely obvious decks per type (the Mewtwo deck, the Moltres deck, etc) and on top of that, it actually encourages people to play those by showing them how to build the standard decks (rental decks, etc). It's like their intent is to funnel everything into absolute tedium where everyone plays the same thing.
I'm about to the point where I'm going to just auto-quit every battle if the first round reveals it to be one of the straight standards. There's no real consequence anyway, and I'd rather not waste my time. I don't know why people aren't actually embarrassed to just go through the motions with a standard, game-supplied deck that everyone else plays, might as well be a bot and not even a human player.
TropicanaTwista
Member
I hate being this type of gamer but I'm getting there myself when I see the Mewtwo deck. Have tried so many different types and I might win 10% of the time vs that, and usually I need to get really lucky in that case with my rng. Not only is it cheap, but it's just mind numbingly stupid, with no strategy. Even some of the other brain dead decks might have you think a little about how to distribute energy, when to use support cards etc.
The Moltres deck is getting there for me as well. Being able to get up to 6 extra energy by your third turn is just busted. It then doesn't become a game of skill, rather just complete coin flips.
BlackTron
Member
Weakness and resistance are different stats...
Banjo64
cumsessed
Want more cards to be released. The lack of Johto Pokemon is a killer. Same for Hoenn.
I’m F2P only, got about 170-180 of the existing cards currently. Progress has slowed to a halt as I mainly pack duplicates now.
In terms of the game itself, fuck Pikachu EX builds. Such a noob way to play and I can’t believe so many people get him in their first hand, makes me think they are bloody hacking. Don’t think I’ve ever come across a Pikachu deck where they haven’t been able to get him in play with a full bench within the first move or 2.
I’m F2P only, got about 170-180 of the existing cards currently. Progress has slowed to a halt as I mainly pack duplicates now.
In terms of the game itself, fuck Pikachu EX builds. Such a noob way to play and I can’t believe so many people get him in their first hand, makes me think they are bloody hacking. Don’t think I’ve ever come across a Pikachu deck where they haven’t been able to get him in play with a full bench within the first move or 2.
BlackTron
Member
I mean, it's only 20 card decks and opening hand is 5. With two Pikachu ex in the deck, that's a 50% chance, even higher by move 2 when you draw another card.
In this game, I often feel like I have more Pokemon than I know what to do with, with the slim bench, no energy cards, and smaller emphasis on trainers.
Banjo64
cumsessed
That percentage might be right, but it sounds wrong to me?
If you only pull 25% of your cards in your first hand, how is there a 50% chance you get 1 of 2 cards?
If anyone could show some working out please I’d appreciate it.
BlackTron
Member
You had me second guessing myself but here goes.
If there is one card you want in a 10 card deck, there's a 10% chance of drawing it; if you draw 5 cards from the same deck, the chance is 50%
So if you draw 5 cards from a deck twice that size (20), the chance is halved, to 25%.
But the above assumes there is only one copy of the card in the deck. If there are two, that would be doubled to 50%.
Edit: TLDR: yeah you pull 25% of your cards, but there are two of what you want, so double it.
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ResurrectedContrarian
Suffers with mild autism
I think the bigger problem behind the uniform decks is simply that scarcity isn't a thing -- everyone has all the major cards after a few weeks of playing.
It simply replicates the core problem of CCGs in the internet era: if anyone can get whatever card they want, the system is totally broken. In the original era of CCGs scarcity was the key non-negotiable feature of the whole thing: every player would have radically different cards to work with, very little overlap in their most powerful ones, and they had to build their strategy around that, because you couldn't just go online and order "everything I need for standard Mewtwo deck" -- you had to basically pull or trade for everything, with high rarity for all the key interesting cards.
Pokemon pocket is getting boring because it went with the idea that "everyone should be able to complete their pokedex" and get pretty much all the cards, which is antithetical to CCG fun. In an ideal world, only the top .001% dedicated of players would ever reach even 75% dex completion, and the kinds of deck you play against would be based on people finding strategies to win with what they have, building decks around the couple of star cards they obtained so far, etc.
If I were behind this game, I'd radically lower the number of cards per day (after a few intro packs, switch to 1 or 2 cards per day max), radically increase rarity of all good cards (so that statistically it's simply impossible for many players to have more than a fraction of the best cards), and then make every event have situational stadium effects to force novel play.
But in summary.... CCGs are one of the many things which the internet permanently ruined, and everyone still playing them is simply in denial or doesn't know how they used to function before becoming braindead pay-to-win enterprises.
It simply replicates the core problem of CCGs in the internet era: if anyone can get whatever card they want, the system is totally broken. In the original era of CCGs scarcity was the key non-negotiable feature of the whole thing: every player would have radically different cards to work with, very little overlap in their most powerful ones, and they had to build their strategy around that, because you couldn't just go online and order "everything I need for standard Mewtwo deck" -- you had to basically pull or trade for everything, with high rarity for all the key interesting cards.
Pokemon pocket is getting boring because it went with the idea that "everyone should be able to complete their pokedex" and get pretty much all the cards, which is antithetical to CCG fun. In an ideal world, only the top .001% dedicated of players would ever reach even 75% dex completion, and the kinds of deck you play against would be based on people finding strategies to win with what they have, building decks around the couple of star cards they obtained so far, etc.
If I were behind this game, I'd radically lower the number of cards per day (after a few intro packs, switch to 1 or 2 cards per day max), radically increase rarity of all good cards (so that statistically it's simply impossible for many players to have more than a fraction of the best cards), and then make every event have situational stadium effects to force novel play.
But in summary.... CCGs are one of the many things which the internet permanently ruined, and everyone still playing them is simply in denial or doesn't know how they used to function before becoming braindead pay-to-win enterprises.
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BlackTron
Member
BlackTron
2 cards out of 20 cards as a percentage figure is 10%.
If you pull 5 cards from the 20, would you not times the 10% by 2.5?
This would give a figure of 25%.
You may be right and I'm being extremely smoothbrain right now, but before completing this conversation I'm gonna quit while ahead and get the coffee I wanted, BBL.
Sleepwalker
Member
Im at the point where pretty much every card is a dupe now 
im still missing a few
im still missing a few
BlackTron
Member
2 cards out of 20 cards as a percentage figure is 10%.
If you pull 5 cards from the 20, would you not times the 10% by 2.5?
This would give a figure of 25%.
Every time you draw a card, the chance of drawing the wanted card is 10%, though I guess if we want to go forensic, the chance actually gets higher every time you draw an unwanted card, because there are less cards in the deck, up to the maximum of 5 in the opening hand. In the 60 card deck this effect is smaller, but in 20 card decks, it's pretty big.
Think Wonder Picks, the draw rate is 1/5 for each card. If you were somehow able to Wonder Pick the same selection again, the chance would change to 1/4.
If there were two of the same card you wanted in the assortment, the chance would double to 2/4.
Anyway, I stand behind 50% lol
TropicanaTwista
Member
Also being just f2p, I gotta imagine that a LOT of people get much better cards with paying. I haven't looked into it but I thought paying only got you an extra pack a day, in terms of gathering cards.
I just counted my stuff, I have 515 cards. I only have 13 EX cards. Mind you, some of these aren't even usable for me due to not having lower pokemon evolutions and obviously they are different types. The amount of games I play vs people where they have 4 ex cards just on the field is astonishing.
ResurrectedContrarian
Suffers with mild autism
Getting your desired Basic EX card on your first turn has actually considerably higher chance than 50%, for most realistic decks
Why?
- you get 5 cards, but also an additional 6th card on first turn; with this, your chance is already around 52%
- assume that the deck uses the standard load of 2 Pokeballs and 2 Professor's Research
- assume 5 total basics in the deck
- for each Pokeball on your first turn, you get to draw another basic, where the chances are further increased by having removed any additional basics from the deck (at least one, you always draw one on first draw); eg. if your first hand has 2 basics and a Pokeball, you're drawing a random basic from the 3 remaining, where 2/3 are your target card... and you can draw 2 pokeballs, more basics, etc
- for a professor's research, you also get 2 additional cards on first turn
I did a thorough calculation with my favorite AI Claude (including both an analytical approach and writing a stochastic function to test the theory, using 5 basics and the rules for 2 pokeballs/2 profs) and the result came up consistently as 67%
So yeah, if you build your deck around a particular basic EX, have 2 of them, use the typical items/supporters, and have about 5 total basic pokemon, you have a very high chance of getting it on first turn... and extremely high chance within a couple of turns.
EDIT:
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BlackTron
Member
Excellent post. Yeah I was thinking you can do even more with trainers, but I was trying to give a really basic answer for a basic scenario.
In normal rules 60 cards, decks are often stuffed with around 30 trainers to ensure if you don't have the card you want, you have a card to get it. With only 20 cards, having a few like Professors Research (I still think of it as Bill lol) and Pokeball has a similar effect...where you need to have a pretty unlucky hand not to execute your plan pretty quickly.
Shake Your Rump
Member
If you mean they didn’t implement resistance, then I agree with you. That would have gone a long way in making battles more interesting.
ResurrectedContrarian
Suffers with mild autism
Online play just sucks in general, that's my judgment on all of gaming. Online is trash, and everything becomes trash to the extent that it goes online.
I'd prefer to have more CPU challenges. The second TCG Game Boy Color game was actually far more fun for me than Pocket could ever be, due to having a long series of highly varied battles against CPU trainers, all with varying rules applied, etc.
BlackTron
Member
The current meta is way different than it used to be, all the viable deck types involve a race to exploit a broken mechanic. Much like a single EX card though, it looks broken but then so is the next EX card.
I played against an opponent with this basic psychic 70 HP Pokemon with an Ability that prevented any damage from EX Pokemon. I was close to winning but that one card ruined me in torturous attrition because I simply didn't have anything left to kill it with. Actually think I knocked one out but he had another benched and by then my normal Pokemon had all been destroyed with Bosses' Orders and other tactics earlier in the battle, then I knew why. It ended with 5 jacked EX in play getting their asses kicked.
You really just need to keep playing the game and seeing all the new strats being used against you, I just dove in and let myself get handled the first few days over and over, then you start using them back, only with a better tweaked deck because you smarter.
Tams
Member
Frankly, it's just not fun so I'm not going to bother.
I have a local games shop that has some tables and chairs. They mostly do trading, but I might see if I can get some games going with all EX, etc. banned. Just normal cards, maybe even only gen 1.
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BlackTron
Member
Yeah I put together two identical 40 card decks from surviving ancient cards for casual battles, and actually used them to pivot away from couch gaming a few times, great fun. I don't mind the new school either though, I think my "hook point" was seeing this Mewtwo Ex deck someone used on me and just flipping out, I tried playing ladder with my own take and got some wins against that boring Charizard strategy with it, and just kept going lol. Can't deny the satisfaction of backhanding a few annoying ass Charizard players.
Shake Your Rump
Member
This 20 card format without energy cards is just pointless, IMHO. Everything is going to be mono-coloured EX decks. I deleted it and you should too.
ResurrectedContrarian
Suffers with mild autism
Ha, in the physical cards I very frequently used a couple of dark cards in my deck with this ability (no damage from EX), and I feel like it's one of my favorite cards because EX (and higher) cards should have a billion penalties and drawbacks if I was in change. I basically hate the tendency for all the original-era cards of a CCG to be made obsolete by the constant upping in power of later gens, so things like EX/GX/Mega evolutions and all the rest tend to annoy me with their very existence, and I try to collect anything that cuts against them : )
