Pokemon TCG

[Glen-i]

29 minutes ago, Ashley said:

Start it with Charizard and then cross post to Reddit

Not a bad shout, but Charizard has had moments where it rose to relevance, mostly when it got a new form through mechanics like Mega Evolution. Mega Charizard Y is legit amazing!

21 minutes ago, Julius said:

Spinda slander incoming

Someone knows their utterly woeful Pokémon.

[Julius]

3 minutes ago, Glen-i said:

Someone knows their utterly woeful Pokémon.

[Glen-i]

See, now I'm only encouraged more. There are some harsh truth bombs in this topic, and it will be fun to think of ways that these Pokémon could be salvalged (if at all).

[EEVILMURRAY]

17 hours ago, Glen-i said:

OK, this is cool.

Until I noticed that it's pupil is somehow half off of it's eyes, and now it's all I see!

Anyway, speaking of nothing to do with Feraligatr or Trading Card Game, I've been spitballing the idea of doing another nerdy Pokémon thread looking at all the Pokémon that are truly terrible, like, we're talking the ones that have absolutely no viability in any capacity! For an idea of how much these Pokémon suck, even Kecleon has a fringe-case use in specific low tier Smogon cases.

I did something semi-similar along those lines when taking Pokédex text literally from cards many years back

https://derekwheatley.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/feature-dark-side-of-the-mon-2/

[Hero-of-Time]

I see Pokemon TCG Pocket has launched today on mobile devices. Sadly, it isn't compatible with my phone and so I can't partake, although I did download it on the works phone to have a play around with. We are going to use that one as swaps for a lad at work who is playing it.

Looks like you can open a couple of free packs every day, which isn't too bad. However, like with all games set up this way, there appears to be a lot of stuff locked behind premium passes and various currencies.

 

[EEVILMURRAY]

On 10/30/2024 at 7:25 AM, Hero-of-Time said:

I see Pokemon TCG Pocket has launched today on mobile devices. Sadly, it isn't compatible with my phone and so I can't partake, although I did download it on the works phone to have a play around with. We are going to use that one as swaps for a lad at work who is playing it.

Looks like you can open a couple of free packs every day, which isn't too bad. However, like with all games set up this way, there appears to be a lot of stuff locked behind premium passes and various currencies.

 

It's also kinda meh, the game system is a watered down version of the actual TCG, and the only way to get a decent deck is to pull an EX card/Gym Leader, which unlocks a rental version of their deck* to use against the CPU opponents who later on rock 2-3 EX Pokémon per deck (and you're lucky to have even one). 

I've made my way through the missions with mainly the Brock deck and used only decks of own creation using only booster back pulls about 2-3 times.

*which you can use 10 times, Brock has disappeared on my list to use because I used it too much.

[Hero-of-Time]

14 minutes ago, EEVILMURRAY said:

It's also kinda meh, the game system is a watered down version of the actual TCG, and the only way to get a decent deck is to pull an EX card/Gym Leader, which unlocks a rental version of their deck* to use against the CPU opponents who later on rock 2-3 EX Pokémon per deck (and you're lucky to have even one). 

I've made my way through the missions with mainly the Brock deck and used only decks of own creation using only booster back pulls about 2-3 times.

*which you can use 10 times, Brock has disappeared on my list to use because I used it too much.

My mate is only playing it for the collection aspect and so hasn't really bothered much with any deck building or battling.

[Ashley]

Downloaded it the other day and just randomly getting cards. Only really looking for the artwork. 

The amount of padding and animations though... Wish you could turn those off. 

[Ashley]

Finally got round to trying battles and I think the cut down version works for something like this. Enjoying them so far. 

[Julius]

Let's Mega Evolve like it's 2013 

[EEVILMURRAY]

I'll watch the Pokemon Day direct thing when the wife gets home, but looking at the still in that video, Mega Lucario evolving from Riolu?! Knock that shit off.

[Julius]

Went to the Birmingham Gaming Market today and did some proper damage to my wallet – check a look at the pick-ups! 

Trainer Gallery / trainer-present cards:

A lot of cards I love here, I'm a big fan of the Hisuian Arcanine and have wanted to pick that up for a while, and as you can probably tell, I'll gladly pick up any card featuring N. My favourite of the bunch, though? Honestly, probably Clair and her Kingdra, I just love how dynamic the artwork feels. 

Standard Pokémon:

Finally picked up that Electivire to go with my Magmortar from last year's Toy Fair pick-ups! Think my favourite of these is either the Skarmory or the Cleffa. Okay, it's the Cleffa. 

V cards 

Quite a few I like here, obviously, and I really like the Arceus full arts. Having looked up all the Arceus cards and recently locating my Water-type Arceus card from my childhood collection, I'm considering a complete Arceus collection, which is why I broke my soft rule here of only one card per Pokémon – but I did spread the Arceus love out over several stalls at least! 

I think my 3 favourites would be Raikou (Legend of Thunder represent! It was my most expensive card again £28 for most of the day – but we'll come back to that), the Hisuian Samurott (love the contrast of the golden leaves and the blue of the water), and that Lumineon (it just pops so nicely!). 

Trainer cards: 

Favourite of these has to be Cynthia's Ambition, which was the most expensive of the bunch at £20. She's probably another one like Arceus where I see myself collecting all her cards, she's just one of the characters I grew up on and all her full arts look rad as hell. Love the Friends in Sinnoh card too, but that Falkner card also looks far better than any first gym leader deserves to look! 

So, going into this event, I actually have defined my collecting a bit more: it's about the cool artwork, characters and Pokémon I have attachments to from my childhood, and there are some Pokémon I'm considering doing 100% collections of, but I also want to draw a line in my spending a bit, and so most of my spending will be limited to events such as these and I have defined two categories I'm buying cards of – "standard" which are cards below a certain price threshold, and the "premium" cards I'll only ever buy one or two of at a time because they're over that threshold but limited by another. I don't care for graded cards as the value for me is in having the cards myself, I don't really care about the price (unless it's too much) but just want cool cards, and so while Near Mint is my ideal condition for my collection, I'm fine picking up Light Play cards if it saves me a little money. 

I think having a ceiling on my spending and a better idea of what I wanted finally gave me the confidence in returning to the hobby that I needed to pick up some sleeves, toploaders (for the premium stuff), and two binders (black is standard, blue is for the premium cards in toploaders):

With that out of the way, I can talk about the final 2 cards I picked up today – my premium pick-ups. I did a lot of research before the event and had a rough idea of what I'd be interested in when it comes to the lower end of the premium cards pile, but the higher end was much, much more defined as a particular subset of a certain subset of cards which I think have awesome art and just a lot of sentimental value. And I knew which of those cards I wanted first, too. 

The first cards stall we hit up on the day was towards the back of the gaming market and had a great selection, with a loooooooot of great stuff, and it's where I probably picked up 40% of my cards straight off the bat. I spotted a few cards from the smaller subset of premium cards I want and another card which would make an excellent companion piece to a previous pick-up at the Toy Fair, but wanted to wait until the end of the show before pulling the trigger. 

Hitting up a few more stalls I saw the same card from the small subset I want at a higher price, and also the most expensive card from that small subset. Eventually I got a bit burned out on looking through binders and after finishing off our run through every stall, I knew it was time to go back and revisit those cards and pick one of them to take home! Unfortunately for my wallet before doing that I had a run-in with not getting my hands on a limited edition Japanese PS3 box set of Shadow of the Colossus and ICO, so I decided to go above and beyond, returned to the stall and picked up both of the cards I was interested in:

Umbreon VMAX to go along with my Umbreon from last year (which by the way has doubled in value to the point that it is nearing the threshold I'd consider a purchase at to be worthy of the premium binder!), both from the same set and featuring Karen, and the Crown Zenith Galatian Gallery subset's gold Arceus VStar. I mean, where better to start my premium collection than with the Alpha Pokémon that (in-universe) started it all?  

So, the small subset I was referring to was the Creation Trio + Arceus gold VStars from Crown Zenith, all with beautiful art from Akika Egawa showcasing the legendary Pokémon at different spots in relation to Mt Coronet:

Sinnoh means a lot to me in terms of my Pokémon fandom, and so the appeal just makes sense, and these cards helped me figure out that yeah, there are some cards I'm glad to up my budget for (but, you know, within reason and still trying to be sensible by pacing myself somewhat). While I think my aim is to buy most cards at events, considering I could've picked all of these up in September last year when I was starting to get back into the swing things for less than half of what they're now going for, I think I'll be picking up a few of these between now and the Toy Fair in September (assuming I go). We saw all of these cards at the event today, and Giratina, as I already knew, is by far the most expensive (roughly as much as Dialga and Palkia combined), but even though it's my favourite legendary Pokémon, I think it would've just been an odd place to start. 

I'm counting 37 cards picked up today and a lot of damage done to my wallet, but it feels so fun and genuinely good to be back in the hobby. This is the most excited I've felt about Pokémon in a long time, and honestly the reason I didn't pull the trigger on some Paldean cards today isn't for a lack of art, it's a lack of context not having played those games, and so Scarlet is pretty high on my list to get to now! 

What's more, Destined Rivals launches at the end of the month with some AWESOME cards coming!

With partner Pokémon cards back in full force and Team Rocket the focus this time (ft. Giovanni and the HeartGold and SoulSilver Rocket Executives!) you essential have Rocket's cards returning, a new Cynthia full art, a few Ethan/Gold full arts (including an AWESOME Ethan's/Gold's Typhlosion; Legend of Thunder represent!!) and many other awesome looking cards to go with it all!

And then there's the whole Black Bolt/White Flare situation where every Pokémon in the set is getting a full art and they've been split across two separate, parallel sets like the games?

I can't wait 

Edited 13 hours ago by Julius

[Hero-of-Time]

Some fantastic looking purchases there, @Julius.

It's such a shame that the TCG has become a scalpers game now.  I would have loved to have collected the 151 set but couldn't find them anywhere. The recent Prismatic set was pretty cool as well but couldn't find those either.

[Ashley]

11 hours ago, Julius said:

Went to the Birmingham Gaming Market today

I forgot this was on. 

I went to a card shop in Madrid on Saturday and it was crowded with people playing. Would like to learn to play again one day.