The key tweak is the shift in how energy works: rather than filling your deck with specific energy cards, you simply select the type (or types) of a deck when building it, and energy is automatically generated once per turn for you to attach how you wish (for two-type decks, which are required for the Dragon Pokémon lines such as Dragonites, which type comes up next is randomised, which effectively replicates a multi-type deck equivalent in real life).
There are smaller tweaks, such as how opening turns work, which have generated a bit of discussion among the aforementioned hardcore. But the real impact here is another change: the cards themselves. Being a single expansion that so far exists in a vacuum, and contains quite mechanically basic cards, TCG Pocket's battles currently benefit from the beauty of simple design. Supporter cards and item cards, for instance, focus purely on things like drawing another two cards, dealing 10 more damage with an attack, switching out opposition Pokémon or reshuffling opponents' hands. There's the odd bit of flair in type- or Pokémon-specific benefits to the gym leader cards, with one for each of the original Indigo League's eight leaders from Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow - Koga, for instance, lets you pick up an active Weezing card and its pre-evolution Koffing and put them back in your hand, making it a handy stalling or recycling tactic.
Once you get into it, you start to see how these simple moves dovetail wonderfully with the cards made available so far. The early days focused heavily on a couple of EX card decks based around Pikachu EX, Mewtwo EX, and Charizard EX - unsurprising, given they're the poster children for the moment. They have some lovely synergies: Mewtwo has a super-powerful attack that requires you to dispose of two energy from it every time it's used, but Gardevoir, a third-stage evolution that takes just long enough to find and lay down to be somewhat balanced, has an ability that can be used from the bench, allowing you to attach one more Psychic energy to a Pokémon of your choice. That and your once-a-turn standard energy lets you restock your Mewtwo perpetually, for highly effective results.
And then, naturally and brilliantly, counters start to appear from off-meta picks. I had great success with a Marowak EX deck, which was heavily chance-based (Marowak does massive damage or no damage, based entirely on two coin tosses), but can be set up super fast, allowing you to get in there and, with a bit of luck, wipe out a powerful EX card of your opponents before they can properly set up. All of this together benefits from the largely excellent balance work of co-developer Creatures Inc: rushing, setting up, stalling and so on are all strategies from the standard physical game that have made it over nicely here. Every powerful strategy has its downsides. I'm currently trying out a Dragonite deck that can do massive damage, but is dealt out at random and takes a while to get going, requiring some smart manoeuvring and stalling.
Knowing the strategy is openly chaotic makes it fun when things go wrong, rather than hugely frustrating. As does, crucially, the snappy pacing of the games themselves. With three points to gain, and two gained for claiming an EX defeat, games last roughly ten minutes or so. There's also no consequence to conceding early - in fact, if anything it's really an act of politeness to do so when you know you're stuffed. It means you can squeeze that game in while on a tea break, at the bus stop, or during a definitely very important and relevant compulsory remote meeting about nothing to do with your department, without worrying about damaging your ranking or score if you have to duck out early or just make a silly mistake. You can also self-select how seriously you take battles before heading in, which I really love: another example of simplicity working to beautiful effect. As far as I can tell, there's no difference in rewards between the two, it's just a tacit acknowledgement that you're up against opponents who'll probably know their stuff, or not.
Of course, there are yet more metagame mechanics woven in here. At first, a concern of mine was how separate battling felt to the rest of the game, particularly the online element, which just rewarded a little XP for a match and nothing else. But then an event came along - one of seemingly many more to come - which offered basic rewards, but just enough to give you a bit of a nudge and feed back into that overall loop. It really is basic: get a certain number of wins in competitive games for a special profile badge people briefly see before you battle them, and get more wins for a snazzier one. Suddenly, I'm rethinking my decks, going back to Wonder Picks or spending a few of those Pack Points to get the final card I haven't already picked up from my free daily boosters, and round and round I go again.
For those not inclined to play online, there is also solo play, with events of their own, and yet more objectives and rewards. These offer a lot more for completion than battling online, in fact, and once you tick them all off you can still repeat the battles infinitely for fun. But aside from somewhat limited events, there is a cap on how much fun you can have here (at least for me, anyway). The highest difficulty isn't particularly high if you have even half an on-meta deck of your own (speaking as a lapsed, at most casual TCG player myself), and so once you know what you're doing they can get a bit repetitive.
For me, it's the online play that's where it's at - and that's also the core of why I've fallen a little ungracefully for Pokémon TCG Pocket despite my own initial reservations. Yes, it feeds into all these other loops. And gosh, there are a lot of loops. I've barely mentioned half of them, with further objective types, event objectives available for limited time - but again, very generous and doable challenge - letting you pick up some special cosmetics like playmats and card covers. And there are a handful of secret quests too, like one for Mew, that remain a delight when you discover them.
But what it comes back to is the intrinsic joy of it all, that word I mentioned earlier for a quite specific reason. So many - so many - online service games these days focus ferociously on maintaining perpetual engagement that they forget the actual fun of the game themselves. Often the engagement then actually gets in the way: you end up ticking off specific tasks within a match, rather than playing the game itself for its own good, and only come back for extrinsic rewards: skins, XP, packs, or whatever else. TCG Pocket has, in a way, almost worked backwards - it's an engagement system with a really quite brilliant, timeless game on top of it, which, if anything, has actually distracted me from all the funny business with engagement.
The same goes for the cards themselves and how they relate to real-world card-collecting. Yes, you can collect cards for their value, real or perceived, and their scarcity and out of the very human compulsion to tick off tasks and complete a collection alone. But these things are also beautiful, if you just stop and look at them, and TCG Pocket carries that beauty over surprisingly well, most obviously with the handful of snazzy "immersive artwork" ones that take you on a guided, 2.5D tour of their own little goldfish bowl worlds. But also with the old classics, like a rejigged cartoony Slowpoke from Miki Tanaka, the classic Viridian Forest "fat" Pikachu a from Mitsuhiro Artia, or the reworked, mournful Cubone of his looking up longingly at the night sky.
It's just the same for the actual game here itself: it's a pocket-sized version of the Pokémon Trading Card Game. They were called Pocket Monsters, after all - I shouldn't be so surprised this all made so much sense.
The Pokémon TCG Pocket meta has become clear, now that the mobile card game has officially drained the battery life of every smartphone this side of Kanto.
Released in late October 2024, Pokémon TCG Pocket is primarily a card-collecting game, though there is a competitive element — a streamlined iteration on the classic Pokémon trading card game. There’s incentive to play battles, too, as winning earns you XP, which helps you level up, which helps you open more booster packs, which helps you build better decks to win more battles. Ah, the great mobile game feedback loop.
What follows is a summary of the Pokémon TCG Pocket meta as of December 2024, including the best decks and the best cards. We’ll update this guide as the Pokémon TCG Pocket meta meaningfully shifts.
At present, all available cards in Pokémon TCG Pocket are from the Genetic Apex expansion, which features three types of booster pack: Mewtwo ex, Pikachu ex, and Charizard ex. No huge surprise, but the three headline cards have come to define the meta since the game’s release.
Decks in Pokémon TCG Pocket comprise 20 cards each. Though you can mix and match types when building a deck, the viable decks du jour are designed around one element. Since most attacks are powered by a specific elemental type, you don’t want to leave the element you draw each turn up to a coin flip. Pokémon TCG Pocket has enough coin flips already.
Furthermore, the best decks are for the most part built around one or two specific cards, with the rest of the deck padded out by trainer cards (items or supporters) and basic Pokémon of the same elemental type. As of December 2024, those top decks are:
In other words, smash that “concede” button if you see any of the above cards on your opponent’s side — and we get into more detail about why these decks are so successful below.
Knowing the best cards of the moment is one thing, but getting those cards is another matter. Right now, the Pokémon TCG Pocket meta is defined by ex cards — high-power cards that are also extremely rare.
Pokemon UnboxingYou can get these from booster packs (you can see your chances of specific cards by clicking the “offering rates” button on the lower-left corner), but if you’re struggling, know you can get specific cards by exchanging pack points, a currency you’ll earn by opening booster packs.
Ex cards start at 500 pack points, though, and currently, you only get five pack points for every booster pack you open. So even if you’re willing to spend IRL money on Poké Gold to open a bunch of packs, you’ll still have to sit through a lot of mindless clicking before you can afford the exact ex card of your choice.
Mewtwo ex is dominating the Pokémon TCG Pocket meta at the moment, thanks to its Psydrive attack, which deals 150 damage. Few Pokémon have 150 HP to survive such a hit, but the attack costs Mewtwo ex four energy to use and further discards two psychic-type energy with each use.
The trick here is to lean on Gardevoir. Gardevoir’s ability, Psy Shadow, allows you to add an extra energy to whatever Pokémon you have in the active spot — and you can use it even with Gardevoir on your bench. This combo allows you to recoup the two energy you burn with each use of Psydrive (one from your turn naturally and one Gardevoir’s ability), essentially guaranteeing 150-damage attacks with no drawbacks.
Pikachu ex might as well be Ash Ketchum’s uncannily super-powered Pikachu. Pikachu ex isn’t part of an evolution chair, so if you draw it, you’re ready to play it. Its attack, Circle Circuit, also only costs two electric energy and deals 30 damage for every electric-type Pokémon on your bench. Stack all three slots on your bench with electric-type Pokémon, and you’re dealing 90 damage per turn.
Electric-type cards in general tend to have lower retreat costs (Electrode has a free retreat, for instance), allowing you to easily swap out cards as needed, keeping your bench — and Pikachu ex’s attack power — at full capacity. This deck also works well with Zapdos ex or Jolteon as backup attackers; both have attacks that can deal up to 200 or 160 damage respectively.
The Charizard ex deck functions a lot like the Mewtwo ex deck in that you have to use one Pokémon to generate energy for another. The key here is to open with Moltres ex. With its Inferno Dance attack, you flip three coins, and for every heads you get, you can apply one bonus fire energy to a Pokémon on your bench. You can load up a Charmander or Charmeleon with with up to three energy per turn.
When your Charmeleon is ready to evolve into Charizard ex, it’ll hopefully have enough energy to use Charizard ex’s Crimson Storm attack, which costs four energy and deals 200 damage but also discards two energy per use. Pull off this combo correctly, and your Charizard ex card should have enough energy to persistently use Crimson Storm. Charizard ex also has 180 HP — enough to survive a hit from Mewtwo ex’s meta-dominating Psydrive attack.
Lapras ex was introduced via Pokémon TCG Pocket’s first battle event, and goes hand-in-hand with Articuno ex. Both cards are basic-stage, so you can play them immediately, and both cards have powerful attacks. Articuno ex’s Blizzard attack deals 80 damage to your opponent’s active Pokémon and 10 damage to any cards on their bench, so you can conceivably knock out any weakened Pokémon on your opponent’s back row. Lapras ex’s attack, Bubble Drain, deals 80 damage to your opponent but heals 20 HP to itself.
Both cards are powerful in a vacuum, but to make the most of this deck, you’ll want to use a Misty trainer card. When you play Misty, you flip a coin repeatedly until you get tails. For however many heads you get, you can attach that amount of water energy to one of your Pokémon. If luck is on your side, you can fully power up Lapras ex or Articuno ex in one turn.
Professor Oak lets you draw two cards, capitalizing on the universal card game theory that suggests, the more cards you draw, the better your chances of victory. Red Card is the opposite: It shuffles your opponent’s hand back into their deck, and then they draw three cards. (It’s best deployed to mess with your opponent after they play a Professor Oak or Poké Ball card, both of which add cards to their hand.)
Meanwhile, Sabrina forces your opponent to swap out their active Pokémon — great for getting out of a pinch. Lastly, X Speed reduces your retreat cost by one for the duration of your turn, allowing you to pull a card with low HP back to your bench in a pinch.
Pokémon TCG Pocket is a free-to-play game, but for those who want a little bit more out of the experience – and are willing to pay for it – there are a few options for premium rewards. Players can spend money on gold, which you can use to open more packs earlier, but for $10 a month you can also subscribe to the Premium Pass.
The Premium Pass is a monthly subscription that offers a few additional things, like extra monthly missions to complete, an extra card pack to open each day to help you build some of the best decks in TCG Pocket, and some fun bonuses in the shop. Missions and shop items rotate in each month, and it seems like each month has a focus on a specific Pokémon, like Mewtwo or Pikachu.
December’s Premium Pass missions, rewards, and items are live now, and offer a Pikachu-themed set of accessories, as well as a free full art Mewtwo card just for logging in. Don't forget, though, that you can always build a winning deck without spending any money, so all of this Premium content is totally optional.
This guide will detail all of the Premium Missions and their rewards for the month of December 2024, as well as the Premium Ticket items in the shop for this month.
