A Very Opinionated Overview of Pokémon TCG Pocket (from a third-rate duelist)

Did you know the Pokémon TCG is something other than a speculative asset? There’s a game attached to it! Don’t tell eBay, I don’t think they’re able to comprehend this fact.

The Pokémon TCG’s (PTCG, because I do not want to type it out a million times in this post) newest iteration is Pokémon TCG Pocket (a terrible name that doesn’t fit any app icon), which I’ve been seeing everyone compare to Marvel Snap or Magic: The Gathering (MTG) Arena.

But that’s not what it is! It’s Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links, but with Pokémon!!! And as someone with (checks Steam) 3,581 hours in Duel Links, I think I know what I’m talking about.

Here’s the thing, though: Duel Links did things to the Yu-Gi-Oh! (YGO) TCG format that made it better and different and attracted people who otherwise wouldn’t pick up the YGO card game that PTCGP(ocket) is not doing.

Here are my credentials, sir, I am an expert, trust me

I got the PTCG starter set as soon as it came out 😤 I regularly got cards up through the Rocket expansion, but money got in the way. But I played the heck out of the Game Boy Color game (which had only the first three sets). I watched the anime from the start, making monthly trips to Sunset Video at the mall to get the newest VHS release, and played all the mainline games, taking a break during college. Do not ask me about my Pokémon spreadsheets.

I saw YGO’s first show up through Battle City and watched GX Way Too Much. But I was also very impressionable and drank the Kool-Aid and believed 5Ds was bad, because an entire boarding school for card games? That’s okay. But playing them on motorcycles? That is way too far. I wanted to play the YGO TCG, but money. One of my friends gave me all of her reject cards, including the Ojamas, which is a very Chazz Princeton thing to have happen to me. But I never had enough cards to actually play the game.

Despite not having any of the video games and never having the opportunity to play the physical card game, but having the history of doing all of that with Pokémon, YGO has still had a bigger influence on me. I mean, look at my URL. So when I was unemployed for an extended period, what else was there to do but play Duel Links?

The “normal” forms of the TCGs

In order to compare how the mobile versions adapt the format, we need to know what they’re working off of.

The Pokémon TCG is the second-ever TCG, with MTG being the first. And, by being developed by the MTG people, it’s very similar to MTG.

In the Pokémon TCG game, you…

• Have a single deck and discard pile
• Dedicate a large part of your deck to a once/turn resource (energy) to allow your guys to do stuff
• Have one “active” Pokemon and five others on the bench
• r guys attack 1v1, can have multiple attacks, and are destroyed when their health goes to 0
• Do whatever in your turn, which ends once your guy attacks
• Take a “prize card” (6 cards delt, face down, from your deck at the start of the game) when you destroy an opponent’s guy
• Win when: you take your last prize card, your opponent is out of guys, or your opponent attempts to draw but has no cards in their deck (a “deck out”)
• Have to keep buying cards because only the last few sets are (tournament) legal

That last one is why it’s “reasonable” to entomb old cards in plastic and turn it into a collectible, because you won’t be able to play with that card in tournaments in a year or two, anyways.

YGO, funnily enough, was first a manga that had various games in it, but the one that got very popular was a card game. So, infamously, the anime started before Konami had even made the game, which is why there’s a lot of weird/bullshit “rules” in those early episodes (such as the thing with the moon and the catapult turtle). But since it wasn’t made by the MTG team, it wasn’t beholden to follow any of those rules/templates.

In the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG, you…

• Have a “main deck” that you draw from and an “extra deck” for guys you can summon in special ways
• Have 5 slots for summoning guys and 5 slots for placing/using not-guy cards (spells and traps)
  • …and an extra slot for a “field spell”
  • …and 2 extra slots for Pendulum Summons, if it was the pre-VRAINS rule set
  • ……and 2 extra slots for extra deck summons, but no longer dedicated pendulum zones, if it’s the post-VRAINS era
• Have 2 types of “discard piles” (the graveyard and the banished zone)
• Can attack with each of your guys once per battle phase
• Oh yeah, there are several different phases/steps per turn, but we can simplify it here to main phase 1, battle phase, and main phase 2, which happen in that order. Your turn always ends when you choose it to.
• Win when your reduce your opponent’s life points to 0 or they deck out
  • Yes, there are other and very silly win conditions, like the infamous Exodia, but those are generally difficult to pull off in the real world
• r guy is destroyed when it’s attacked by a monster with a higher attack stat than yours (or your defense stat, if you’re in defense position, which is a thing you can do)

And now, the two biggest differentiators, in my opinion:

1. You can (and are expected to) act/react during your opponent’s turn (“You activated my trap card!”)
2. Every single card ever printed is still legal in tournament play

Yes, I know there is a ban list, but there’s something like 100 cards on it and over 10,000 unique cards ever made. Your childhood Blue Eyes White Dragon can be stuck in a deck today and be tournament legal.

And it would still be a good card because there are a ton of support cards to make a Blue Eyes deck viable and relevant.

The fact that everything is legal kind of baffles my MTG friends, as is the walls of texts some cards might have. But it also means that every “gimmick”/feature that has been put into the game is still relevant and usable. Modern decks tend to have extra deck monsters from all the different types of mechanics because they each have their benefits.

With Pokémon, many of the gimmicks no longer exist. Did you know there used to be a Fairy typing? But since they haven’t printed any Fairy type cards for several years now, it’s essentially extinct. Same thing with a banished zone. Or “gigantamax” Pokémon that need several cards to play on the field.

This aligns with the mainline Pokémon games. Mega evolutions, Z-moves, each gen of the mainline games introduces a new gimmick that only exists in that gen, and the card game follows. But it has also made its own gimmicks, like “Delta species,” where a Pokémon’s type is different than what you’d expect (a metal type Umbreon, for example), or a Pokémon that belongs to a specific person, like Team Rocket’s X or Lance’s Y.

The PTCG does a couple things different from the games. There are much fewer types, so some are grouped together: “fighting” type encompasses what you’d consider fighting, ground, and rock types. Stats, moves, and abilities for cards are designed for game balance and not aligning with the “reality” of the mainline games. One of the most broken, overpowered cards ever was an Archeops, which is absolutely useless in the games due to its ability that causes its attack to sharply drop once it’s taken enough damage.

How they were mobile-ified

A phone can only be so wide! And people don’t want to play a long match on their phones. Mobile TCGs need to be designed with simplified mechanics and a quicker resolution than mainline games.

Both Pokémon TCG Pocket and Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links have shrunk the deck size and reduced the number of spots for guys (and spell/trap cards) to 3 (for the bench, at least. You have an additional 1 for your active Pokémon). The scoring system to win is also shortened: you have half as many life points in Duel Links, and you need to score 3 points for Pocket. The removal of prize cards is a nice change, because it means a card you need is no longer stuck in the prize area.

This also means it’s much easier to deck out when you only have 20 cards. But this is no longer a lose condition in PTCG Pocket, bizarrely, so there is no penalty to drawing as many cards as fast as possible. Cards like Pot of Greed are super OP and have been banned for years in YGO, so duelists instead search for a specific card, usually in the same “archetype” (i.e. a Blue Eyes card will search for a Blue Eyes card). Duel Links forces you to contend with this ticking clock.

Pocket has…the opposite of that. Energy cards are now “generated” once per turn, which you can then play. There are a few trainer (akin to spell) cards that can give you extra, but only for a specific typing. This means your deck only has to be Pokémon and trainer cards, but you still have to wait to power up your guys before they can do anything, even retreat (switch with a guy on the bench to be the new active Pokémon).

One of the “jokes” in YGO is “You can’t summon a bunch of Blue Eyes in one turn!” But when a casual/anime-only fan of YGO sees modern YGO, their heads kind of explode because you’re expected to play about 20 different cards on your first turn to set up your board with big, powerful monsters with powerful effects (namely ones that allow you to destroy/negate your opponent’s cards so they can’t summon their big, powerful guys).

To my understanding, modern PTCG (the real version, not Pocket) is kind of like this. You draw/burn through your deck very fast to find the cards that you need to set up big, powerful guys and get a bunch of energy on them. Pocket does not have any of these cards; you will need the full three turns to get your Charizard EX on the board.

I’m sure this will eventually change as more cards are added to Pocket. It’s currently only one set, which, extremely frustratingly, is broken up into 3 sub-sets. You know how card packs have different art on them at the store? In Pocket, they actually pull from different tables for cards. This isn’t clearly communicated, either; I only knew about it from reading articles before its release.

In addition, each pack you open does not take into account any past packs/pulls you’ve done. In Duel Links, each expansion/set is available as a “box,” which shows you exactly how many cards are in it and in what quantities, such as one of each Ultra Rare. So if you want multiple copies of that UR, you have to “reset” the box. But it also means you are guaranteed to get it if you open enough packs.

Except for very limited circumstances in the physical game, each YGO card in a set only exists in one form. Pokémon, like MTG, has additional versions of certain (especially the most powerful) cards to be “fancier” with more holofoil or full-card illustrations.

I’m not good enough at math to tell you if that increases your chances at getting the best cards! EX Pokémon have a “3D effect” in PTCG Pocket, so you can tilt the card (with your finger, not by tilting your phone) to see how different particles/parts move. Which is neat!

Tons of kids collected Pokémon cards because they like Pokémon. People today still buy Pokémon cards because it has their favorite Pokémon on it. When you boot up a new save of PTCG Pocket, you’re shown all the pack opening and collection mechanics. There’s binders and display boards you can make and share with people to show off your collection.

Oh yeah, there’s building decks and battling, too, but they don’t even tell you about it until you hit a level the tutorial doesn’t get you to. One of my friends honestly thought it was just a pack opening simulator and not a fully-fledged TCG game. They do not sell/advertise this feature at all, which is…strange.

If this was only pack opening, how many people will want to put real money into digital cardboard that will disappear when the game is eventually closed down? At least real cardboard could theoretically be worth a lot of money one day.

Giving fans what they want

Most people know and love Yu-Gi-Oh! because of the anime. So, Duel Links has a “story,” which is Seto Kaiba has made a VR world where he can, once again, be the best, and all the various characters join it and duel each other (and maybe stop bad guys when they pop up).

It’s very similar to the, ugh, “metaverse” that was the main setting for VRAINS, which was the current anime series when Duel Links launched. The anime featured two types of duels: “Master rules” with the normal version, and duels where you’re on a surfboard surfing a data stream. Your deck is smaller and the field is smaller and also you need to not crash your surfboard. Also there’s “data storms,” and the main Yu-Gi-Oh! (and also his rival) have the “power” to surf into a data storm and “capture” a card that is totally brand new and is instantly made into a real, legal card and also always happens to have just the power they need to get out of that corner they find themselves in.

It’s very silly.

But this abridged duel format, digital “world,” and each person having a unique power is the basis of Duel Links. The characters say various lines (by their anime VAs), they have special animations for summoning their ace monsters, and their abilities align with the their ace monsters or gimmicks in the show.

Mai Valentine can see the top card of her deck at any time, for example, Weevil Underwood can put that one annoying evil card into your deck at the start of the duel, and Pegasus can start with Toonworld on the board.

Some of these powers are pretty meh, but others are really strong but only work for one specific kind of deck/strategy. It puts a “face” on each of your opponents, and you just know you’re in for a bad time if you face Weevil. But the powers help guide players into certain strategies or could give them the edge to win a duel they might not otherwise, which is very helpful for players new to the TCG.

Seeing these characters from entirely different shows interact with each other is great. The custom lines can be very funny, and you can tell the VAs are having fun doing it.

Pokémon fans love their Pokémon as well as the extremely-deep battle system, but neither are currently in Pocket (if anything, you will have flashbacks to the kid on the playground who has a team of 6 Mewtwo)(Mewtwelve, if you will).

Yu-Gi-Oh! fans love the characters and all of their ridiculousness, and that’s what Duel Links leans into.

Duel Links is still going strong more than seven years later, adding more cards and series as recently as last week. Will Pocket still be here in seven years? Five? Three? There’s countless mobile games that get closed down within a year, even ones attached to major IP, like Harry Potter. Will it even be around long enough for old cards to be cycled out?

Honestly, I have my doubts Pocket will last. Mobile games need new content and events to keep casual and free-to-play-ers coming back, as well as a competitive element or time-limited element to push whales to keep whaling. Did you know Pocket is currently running a Wonderpick-based event? I only knew because I saw a different tab in the missions menu. Absolutely no advertising or push alerts.

There isn’t even any sort of ranked PVP, just “beginner” and “TCG player” levels (and you pick which you are, which is awful for little kids who don’t know what they’re doing). I’ve comfortably gotten to Platinum in both Duel Links and Master Duel (the “full” YGO game with all the cards and the “master ruleset”) using decks that I’ve built myself based on mechanics and themes I found fun. I only found out Floowandereeze was a very good meta deck after I built it. It’s cute birds! That’s the only reason why I picked it, not that it was “good.”

I’m tweaking a Nidoking/queen deck in Pocket, which is what I did in the original Game Boy Color game…but also because, as dark types, it’s strong against the prevailing “meta” of “a bunch of Mewtwos” that fills PVP.

Maybe it’s the YGO brainrot, but matches feel slow and samey. I want to run into someone building a deck around a really weird, obscure card. I want to be surprised by people breaking the meta to do something weird. I want to feel like I’m not beating up actual, literal children in a video game who can’t comprehend what’s going on around them.

I get all of these things in Yu-Gi-Oh!, both the “full” and “abridged” mobile versions, but not Pokémon TCG Pocket. I had to uninstall the Yu-Gi-Oh! games so I’d stop spending all my hours in it and not, you know, writing or seeing the sun. But I don’t fear this outcome with Pokémon, nor the call to pull out my credit card, even for silly little accessories.