Pokémon TCG Pocket Just Got a Game-Changing Feature That’s Worth Coming Back For
Thank God for Community Decks
It’s hard to believe, but Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket is already two years old. To celebrate, The Pokémon Company just rolled out what might be the app’s most significant update yet. It adds two new Dual Fusion booster packs to the game, introducing cards with multiple types to the competitive meta. Solo battles, missions, and more have been reworked in a way that makes the game feel fresh again.
The most clutch update, though, is an entirely new feature: Community Decks. It's is a genuine game-changer for anyone who struggles with deckbuilding, and may just be the reason you need to log back in.
When entering the Battle menu, you’ll now see a Community Decks button right next to Decks. When you click on it, you’ll get a ranked list of the 20 most “popular” decks. (At the moment, the most-used decks revolve around Mega Blaziken ex, Mega Charizard Y ex, and Mega Lucario ex.) When you click on a deck, you can see every card in it. As someone who has trouble building decks, it’s a godsend. Finally, there’s an in-game way to know what players are using outside of battle.
The best part is the update makes it very easy to build those decks. On the ranking page, you’ll see a little label in the top-right corner of a deck that tells you if you have the cards needed to build it. If you’re missing some pieces, it will tell you exactly how many cards you need and show them to you. From there, you can click the 'Edit This Deck' button, which allows you to automatically clone that deck, adjust it as you see fit, and save it. It’s the most convenient quality-of-life feature the app has ever gotten.
As a nice bonus, Community Decks also features a Friends tab, which will show you the decks that your pals are using in battle. You can clone and edit those too, allowing you to easily share strategies with your friends. All of this takes the daunting competitive experience and turns it into something more approachable and collaborative.
The only potential downside to the feature is that you can expect to see a lot of the same decks when you battle online now. Giving more players direct access to the meta could make battling a little stale as you fight the same three top decks over and over. I’m a little more optimistic about the long-term impact, though. Community Decks also give you an easier way to see what the overplayed decks are and develop something that can counter them. If you want to win online right now, your best bet might actually be to craft a water deck instead of cloning a fire one.
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As a regular player, I’m glad to see Pokémon TCG Pocket evolve. It can be a repetitive game if you play it every day, with limited changes to battles and events. Something like Community Decks goes a long way towards taking my brain off autopilot and pushing me to get creative about deckbuilding once again. That goes hand-in-hand with a solo battle overhaul that gives me more reasons to test my new decks in a series of escalating challenges. And, of course, the new Dual Fusion packs also include some truly adorable cards that I can’t wait to collect. That’s about all I could ask for from a year two update.