In a sense, I am grateful for Pokemon TCG Pocket. It’s given me something to write about this week. I won’t have to endure the depressingly real world of Disco Elysium, or parse out how Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess works. I don’t have to return to UFO 50 and try to figure out how to review 50 games in one writeup.
No, I can just complain about a little app, and call it a day, and ignore some other things stressing me out.
Opening
The starting moments of a game are critical ones. They’re the moment that developer tries to hook you in. It can be a flash-forward, an exciting call to action, character creation, introduction to mechanics, or one of many other different things.
TCG Pocket starts by having the player open booster packs.
This is followed by opening more booster packs.
You can’t actually play a game with the cards until you’ve reached level 3, something you do by opening more and more booster packs, and critically, using the not-quite-premium currency to speed up the pack opening timer. Sure, you could wait the 2 days or so it would take it do it normally, but I would be shocked if more than 5% of the playerbase actually did this.
But after reaching level 3, is that experience worth it?
Not really.
Gameplay
The game generally plays like a simplified version of the physical Pokemon TCG.
Like the physical TCG, there are multiple types of cards, primarily the Pokemon and trainers. Pokemon cards are played out onto a bench, with one Pokemon in the active slot at any point in time. Only the active slot card can actually use attacks. Trainer cards are one-time use effects that can do a variety of things, generally drawing more cards, healing damage off your own Pokemon, or switching which one is in the active slot.
The game has been slimmed down from a standard Pokemon game, however. Players only need 3 points to win, instead of 6. Trainer card effects have been simplified, turning Professor Oak into a Pot of Greed. The bench only has 3 slots.
The biggest change has been made to energy. In the physical game, energy cards are a part of the deck. Only one can be played per turn, and they’re played onto Pokemon. Pokemon can only use attacks that they meet the energy threshold for.
In Pocket, they’re not part of the deck. Instead, you generate a single energy each turn, and can play energy onto a single Pokemon each turn. As a result, it’s no longer possible to get too many or too few energy, even though you can get the wrong type. This is a nice idea that’s currently irrelevant, because the game rewards mono-type quite heavily, with only one incentive for doing otherwise.
The thing is… it doesn’t really feel like it matters. The rewards for winning in PVP are basically nonexistent. None of the daily missions require it, and none of my non-premium missions require it either. PVE is more rewarding, but the events are on a timer you can speed up with money, and many of the rewards are one-time, or locked behind using a specific deck type instead of just winning. The game’s balance is also pretty middling, with just a handful of decks being relevant, and they rely upon 2 copies of one of the rarer cards.
And that kind of makes sense, because it doesn’t really feel like it’s about the battling. It’s about the collecting. Critically, it’s about the booster packs.
Booster Packs
Everything about Pocket is designed to reinforce opening boosters. The home screen is the booster opening page. The link to the in-game shop is more prominently displayed than the link to the battle options.
Booster pack openings are an 8 step process. Select a pack type to open. Select a pack from a revolving carousal. Swipe the top of the pack for a crunchy lovely opening sound. Tap through each card in the booster, with what I can only describe as a glittering chime for each card, and more for rarer ones. View the full results. Watch cards slot into your binder. Swipe up on new cards to register them into your card dex. Watch them slide into place, and your card collection count tick up.
It is then time to open another booster pack.
I’m breaking this down not because it’s overwhelming or slow (though it feels a little drawn out). I’m noting it because it’s indicative of where the game’s priorities are.
Overall
Many people do just collect physical Pokemon cards without playing the trading card game. I certainly did growing up. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with just enjoying the art and collecting them. If Pocket TCG was purely the collection elements, without the aggressive monetization, it wouldn’t be for me, but I wouldn’t have as many problems with it.
But Pocket isn’t just “Not For Me.” It’s an aggressive experience that’s designed to build player engagement habits, and convert those habits into cash. I don’t respect it, and I don’t recommend it.
I’m also not going to pretend that it doesn’t work, that it isn’t at least partly compelling. Bait is designed to be tasty. But I am not a fish. I can spit out the hook.
Ah, Trading Card Games, or if you’re me, “The Money Hole.” PAX Unplugged is almost always awash in TCG’s of some sort or another, and this year was no exception.
Alpha Clash
Alpha Clash was the indie TCG of the show for me. Were there other small TCG’s at the show? Yes, but if you can afford a Disney license for your product, you’re not small enough.
It’s also the one I’m probably going to write the least about here. It’s actually interesting, so I’m going to play a bunch more and do a full writeup later. But as a teaser, here are some of the game’s mechanics:
Every creature effectively has haste. (Okay.)
All cards are lands. (We’ve seen this before, but still neat.)
The entire system for resolving combat has been blown up. There’s a secondary system to prevent the game from stalling out in a game of chicken with combat tricks. (Actually very new and interesting.)
As with almost all games, I do have problems with it. I dislike the the rarity system, and I don’t love the American comic book aesthetic. But the game’s actual mechanics are far more solid than pretty much every other indie TCG I’ve run into over the last few years. So this could be one to watch.
I’ve done some thinking about other Disney properties in Lorcana, but I never put my thoughts into writing in my “Future of Lorcana” writeup a while back. I was curious if Lorcana could potentially see Marvel or Star Wars cards, and the answer right now appears to be “No.” Otherwise I suspect Fantasy Flight wouldn’t have shelled out for a license for Star Wars: Unlimited.
I never actually asked anyone what the Unlimited in the name meant. Presumably the amount of money Fantasy Flight hopes to make with the game? Regardless, I did play a demo of Star Wars: Unlimited.
I don’t have much to say on the game itself. It’s not uninteresting, but the starter decks and demos often don’t translate into thrilling gameplay. Meanwhile, Star Wars: Unlimited doesn’t have any incredibly unique inherent systems if you’ve already played a ton of games.
The most interesting part of the game for me is how it handles the ever present “actions on opponent’s turn” problem. Star Wars: Unlimited makes it so that players don’t really have turns, they just have actions. Doing anything: attacking, playing a unit card, using a commander ability, or playing an action card all use up your action, resolve the effect, and then pass priority to your opponent. In addition, one of the actions that can be taken is to pass all futures for the round, and in exchange, get to act first next round, called seizing the initiative.
If I remember correctly, I think this sort of mechanic might have been in Star Wars: Destiny, another collectible game by Fantasy Flight.
My overall thoughts on Unlimited are kind of just “Okay.” Star Wars has negative brand loyalty from me, mostly because I just don’t care about the franchise. Also because I’m petty and billion years ago dated someone who cared too much. There were some elements in Star Wars: Unlimited that felt like fun flavor touches with how certain mechanics functioned, or characters worked together. But while I’d play more of the game, I’m not in any rush to acquire a copy. It launches March 8th, and I suppose I’ll see what state it’s in at PAX East.
Lorcana
The most notable thing about Lorcana for me at PAX Unplugged was that the prices were “within expectations” as opposed to an “arm and leg.” Usually things are not notably cheaper at Conventions. Usually it’s the other way around. But booster boxes and decks were at MSRP. For comparison, single booster boxes are currently $207 dollars.
Not cheap, but yknow. Normal prices. Also 8% sales tax. The hell is that Pennsylvania?
I was going to say that I didn’t actually play any Lorcana at the show, but that’s not true! While I didn’t play any during the show, I did run into a very friendly group of folks in the hotel lobby Wednesday night, and spent a few hours chatting with them. And also beating them with their own starter decks that they’d just picked up. Because y’know, I’ve played the game before. A lot.
There wasn’t anything in the new set that immediately stood out to me. Looking back at it now, it does have at least one new keyword, and some new typal references. It also had a fair amount of space on the show floor.
Magic: The Gathering
Magic earns a slot on this just barely above Pokémon by virtue of the fact that I actually did play some Magic at Unplugged. It was a grand total of 3 games, they were all two-headed giant Ixalan drafts. Me and the friend I was playing with won every single one, admittedly some by the skin of our teeth. But win we did, and I was able to get a copy of one of the Dr. Who commander decks with our prize tickets.
There’s not too much to say on Magic, really. Ixalan is a fun set. Pasttimes is still running events in a way that makes no sense. You still have to use the terrible MTG Companion app whose one saving grace is that I can log in with my MTG Arena Account.
Pokémon
I didn’t play much Pokémon this year outside of looping by the Pokémon booth to get some pins. At this point, I’ve played those demos enough that I could probably run them. They did add a small raid battle mode which was almost cool, but unfortunately, doesn’t actually have any meaningful strategy.
As such, it’s hard to tell if Pokémon was mostly at Unplugged as a collector’s game, as opposed to a TCG.
Everyone else.
It was an interesting year for PAX TCG’s. There was a lot more support for mid-level entries than I was expecting. The show had at least semi-dedicated areas for Flesh & Blood, and One Piece. I think I saw SolForge fusion over somewhere as well. That said, I didn’t play any of these, and didn’t feel very compelled to.
Unlike last year, with Gem Blenders & Genesis, and last year’s PAX East with Nostalgix, it felt like a very light year for the true indies, with Alpha Clash really being the only one.
Right now, something very interesting is happening. So what am I talking about? Is it the global pandemic? The fact that we’re finally making progress with immunizations? The massive change in working remote or working from home? Or perhaps it’s the new presidental administration.
Well, no. Those things are all happening, but I’m talking about the fact that the cost of buying sealed packages of Pokemon cards has almost doubled or trippled in price. In this writing/video/whatever, I’m going to talk about why I think that is, and why I think a lot of people have the wrong idea. For those already familar with the Pokemon Trading Card Game, or TCG as it’s often shortened to, skip ahead a bit to the reasons. For everyone else, I want to provide a little bit of quick background.
Background on the Pokemon Trading Card Game Pokemon, for those who might not know is a global media franchise that started as a video game, and at this point has branched out into almost every conceivable product you could imagine. In terms of popularity, Pokemon is often quoted as the most profitable franchise in the world, above things like Star Wars, or Marvel, or Micky Mouse.
The Pokemon Trading Card Game is a collectible card game. For the purpose of this discussion, it’s not important to know too much about it, except for two brief things.
The first is that cards are released in “Sets”. You can think of them like seasons of a TV show. Each set has a specific number of different cards in it, at various rarities. The second thing to know is that a single “Set” may contain multiple copies of cards that are mechanically identical, which is to say when used as part of game, they function exactly the same, but they have different artwork. Here’s an example, with a card named Charizard V. The first image is the normal version, the second is the full art version. The full art version is much rarer. Finally, there’s a shiny version, the one that’s black. It’s actually from a different set, but we’ll talk about that later. The key point here is that from a gameplay standpoint, all of these cards are identical, and there is no in game advantage to using one over the other.
And finally, a little bit of background on pricing. Generally speaking, a Pack of Pokemon Cards retails at $4.00 MSRP(Mass Suggested Retail Price, IE, what a Target/Walmart will sell the product for on release.) for a single booster. A booster box, a collection of 36 boosters, retails at about $140 dollars, but generally speaking, when a set releases, it’s not hard to find a booster box for $90 to $100 dollars on either eBay or Amazon. There are also Fat Packs. These tend to retail at $30 to $40, and contain 10 booster packs.
One other quick thing to note: Buying products at MSRP for those of us who are addictsenthusiasts is fairly rare. We usually have connections, either with stores, or online distributors that, as mentioned above, sell below MSRP.
End of Background
All right, so with that background out of the way, lets get into the current state of things, by looking at how much booster boxes cost for several of the last few sets of cards.
Name
Price – USD
Battle Styles (Not released at time of writing)
$147 eBay, $160 Amazon
Vivid Voltage
$197 eBay, $208 Amazon
Rebel Clash
$150 eBay, 190 Amazon
Darkness Ablaze
$172 eBay, $180 Amazon
Sword and Shield
$200 eBay, $190 Amazon
Keep in mind, these are all products with an MSRP of $140, and that generally speaking only ever cost $80-$90 dollars in reality.
Now, people who already follow the scene might notice something missing here, and I’ll get to that in a moment.
Name
Price – USD
Shining Fates Fat Pack (10 Packs)
$100 to $150 eBay, $123 Amazon
Champions Path Fat Pack (10 Packs)
$100 on Amazon, $95 on eBay
Now for anyone who plays the Pokemon Trading card game, I’d like to make a brief note: I bought a playset of all non-reprint cards in Champions Path. It cost me $133. That’s 4 copies of every single card in the set, that hadn’t printed before.
So, whats going on here? Why are these booster packs so expensive? What happened?
And for anyone who thinks “Well, thats just capitalism” here’s the offical statement from pokemon.com. So clearly, they’re not in love with this either.
Ed Note: And why would they be? As they’re the publisher/distributor, they don’t make extra money if the price people are willing to pay goes up, if they’re not the one setting the price.
I have two general guesses here, one for the first set of cards, and one for the second. They overlap a bit, but lets start with the ones above.
So, lets talk about the dates here. While the official announcement on the site has been updated since then, articles about the announcement start showing up on Feb 11th.
So why is this date important? Well, because Feb 11th is the day right before the start of Chinese New Year.
For anyone who hasn’t had things manufactured in China, Chinese New Year is effectively a full shutdown period. And this year, it won’t be over until Febuary 22nd. It’s a public holiday, and a very big one, and you can expect factory shutdowns for approximately two weeks. So, what that actually means is that factories will likely be shutdown until February 26th, the day I’m writing this article.
Now, despite what we might believe, even global megacorporation’s are limited by the laws of reality, including the fact that if you want to ship this stuff via boat from China where it’s printed, to the rest of the world, you’re going to be looking at a timeline of about 3 months.
With this info, we can start to make some guesses about what’s going on here, and to make some predictions involving future timelines. But before we get into that, lets talk about three more parts of this perfect storm.
Charizard, Coronavirus, and the 25th Anniversary
This year is the 25th Anniversary of the Pokemon Franchise. As part of this, there’s been a general marketing push with things like a Post-Malone concert, Katy Perry, and other things that I think might have pushed Pokemon a little bit more into the limelight then it might have been otherwise. I don’t think it would have been hugely noticed if it wasn’t for the fact that we’re all stuck at home, with no ability to go anywhere or do anything. But a large portion of this push has probally pulled up a bit of nostalgia.
And this brings us Charizard. Charizard is a large fire dragon Pokemon. It tends to be one of the more visible and identifiable members of the franchise, and it also has the interesting distinction of being one of, if not, the most valuable mass market card ever available. Currently, base set shadow-less Charizard’s go for $5000 to $10000. And perfect ones can go for over $200,000. And currently, many of these sets that have just released feature Charizard’s new form, Charizard VMAX. This is the first time this Pokemon has been featured on a card.
And finally, we have coronavirus. Parents are staying home from work, and trying to entertain kids. Large numbers of people are on unemployment or furloughed, looking desperately for anything they can use to get a bit of extra money or scrape by. And we’ve had a wave of publicity about how profitable scalping can be recently with things like graphics cards and game consoles.
Oh, and one more thing.
Most Pokemon Cards are effectively worthless.
You won’t hear most collectors say this, and you won’t hear it brought up often, but it’s a simple fact that should be acknowledged. When you buy a sealed pack of Pokemon cards, odds are that the price of buying the cards in the booster pack are lower then the price of buying the cards individually. Even for the most recent sets, commanding ridiculous prices, the common/uncommon/rare cards in those sets go for 5 to 20 cents. It’s why I was able to buy a full playset of these cards for $133. The only cards worth over a few dollars are the hyper-rares, cards that present in less then 1-3 sealed packs, and of those, only the full arts and alt arts are really worth cash, and those tend to be present at about 1 in 36 rates, and NOT EVEN ALL OF THOSE ARE EXPENSIVE.
Buying sealed Pokemon Cards is a gamble, and statistically you will not get your value back. For kids, to whom every card is special, this isn’t a huge problem. For adults, who can just buy the cards they want, this shouldn’t be a problem, unless you really like gambling, and opening boosters.
Which a lot of folks do.
Lets put these pieces together, and see what happened.
So here’s what I think might have actually happened, based on the things I’ve laid out above. From this point onward, we’re venturing into purely speculation. Pretty much everything I’ve put above is a verifiable fact, and I’m more then happy to fix them if folks find errors.
Coronavirus and Shipping Delays result is less cards being generally available then usual, in addition to smaller game stores suffering heavily from the lack of foot traffic, leading to less orders of product in general.
Hype around the 25th anniversary of Pokemon leads to a higher level of brand awareness, along with the fairly lucrative scalping that we’ve seen previously last year and this year.
A set of cards is printed at a very high rarity, of a Pokemon with a history of being fairly collectible, and commanding obscenely high prices, and knowledge of this begins to leak out.
The incredibly low rate of actually getting this card leads to everyone involved who wants the card, from scalpers to collectors buying up as much of the product as possible for a chance of getting it.
This becomes public knowledge, and now even folks who weren’t interested are getting involved in the hype, or trying to get stuff before it sells out. Effectively, what we saw with toilet paper before.
The simple realities of production in China, combined with Chinese New Year, international lockdowns, and all of the above means that there is no easy way to rapidly increase supply of product on a quick timescale.
So where does that leave us? Well, I started writing this article on the 26th, and it’s now the 15th. The prices of most sealed products show no sign of slowing down. And the simple reality of what it takes to manufacture more cards mean that we’re still likely several months out from increased supply. If we assume that TPCI (The Pokemon Company International) decided to try to increase supply as of the date that they made the official announcement of being aware that consumers were being hit by shortages, they still wouldn’t have started production until 2/26.
And since boats can only go so fast, we likely won’t see any difference in supply for at least the next three months, meaning that speculation, hoarding, and other junk will likely continue until June/July, as just having something showing up at port doesn’t mean it’s available to buy.
This is my personal theory. I don’t think YouTube personalities opening cards, or folks posting on Twitter caused this. I think it’s a combo of a heavily impacted supply chain, hype, and chaos.
So until that time, enjoy, and buy singles if you’re gonna buy at all.
If this list looks familar, that might be because it’s an exact copy of Nico Alabas’s ( @LimitlessNico ) list from the Melbourne International a few weeks back. You can see more of the standings, and decks used here.
GAME 1 – LOSS TO PIKAROM Game 1 was against a an electric deck, that appeared to be a variant of Pikarom using the Morpeko V and Morpeko V MAX. However, instead of using the V Max’s attack, it primarily used memory energy with it to allow it to blast with Electro Wheel, and then retreat and swap in a Lillies Pokedoll. Overall, I wasn’t able to hit hard enough, and simply got beaten down and outplayed.
GAME 2 – WIN VS PIKAROM
Game 2 was a win, but was a much closer match up. Despite playing vs Pikarom, I was able to hold on, and after two of my Dedennes got sniped, my opponent misplayed, and tried to use Tapu Koko’s V’s Thunderous Bolt twice in a row. Unfortunately, that’s not how that attack works. The game went to time, and with both of us having two prizes left, he retreated his Tapu Koko V on turn two, meaning I needed to either knock out both of his basics in play, or the Koko on the bench. I was just barely able to get the 200 damage from Mega Lopunny & Jigglypuff GX with Puffy Smashers GX, and take the game on turn 3 of time.
GAME 3 – LOSS TO MILL
Game 3 was against mill, and was one of roughest openings I’ve ever had piloting the deck. My opening hand had no draw, and my starting Pokemon was Dedenne GX. Despite this, of the match-ups, this felt like the most winnable one. However, I utterly botched first. Of my three answers to a mill deck, my Blacephalon got milled turn one. Then, I rather foolish put both my Nagandel GX, and my Magcargo GX into the discard at the same time. From then on, I just got locked out and milled down with Pal Pad, Lt. Surge, and Bellelba & Brycen-Man.
For me, this game felt the worst because it was a match-up I could have won if I had played differently.
SO WHAT WENT WRONG?
Of the three games, I feel like I definitely should have been able to win at least 2 of them. However, in game 3, I critically failed to understand how the control combo worked, and made what I’d consider to be several major misplays. They were as follows
Knocking out his pokemon, allowing him to use Lt. Surge
Discarding both my Magcargo GX and Nagandel GX at the same time, allowing him to remove them with Girafarig.
I think that if I had gone for one at a time at a maximum, I would have possibly been able to reset the prize card status, or go for a mill win with Magcargo GX mill 5. But I let my win conditions get removed, while helping him set up his prizes.
For game 1, I think I would have won if I had teched slightly differently. One of the biggest issues I had piloting the deck overall was having a very hard time grabbing psychic energy when I needed it. The deck only runs two, and venom shock is a really good tool for dealing with benched mons, and stuff like Morpeko. If I was to run the list again, I might try adding a Viridian Forest.
I want to stress I don’t think this would generally improve the deck for a larger event. It did, after all, win an international. However, I think that the deck most likely shines against ADP and Zacian V decks. At a smaller event, however, a Viridian Forest would help the toolbox nature of the deck set up a bit faster.
Finally, I also mispredicted the sorts of decks I expected to see. I was expecting to see a lot more goons, and maybe a few weird grass decks. But there wasn’t actually a single one.
That’s all for now, thanks for reading, and hopefully I can report better progress next time.
