How Pokémon TCG Pocket reignited my love for competitive card games (and yelling at my phone at 2AM)

I have a vicious love-hate relationship with Pokemon TCG Pocket. It is, without a doubt, my favourite mobile game released this year. It is a wonderful game, taking a snapshot out of the physical TCG and morphing it into this easy to endearing virtual collectathon. It has, also, manifested a side of me I thought died once I turned 21 years old. An angrier me, with a visceral hatred for strangers around the world.

Pokemon TCG Pocket has me up at 2AM on the regular, at an age where doing so has become far less appealing. I go to bed annoyed, and wake up with the ghost of that still haunting me. Drinking coffee on a beautiful morning thinking about Mewtwo EX decks, and how carried those who play them obviously are. This isn’t the sign of a bad game. Quite the opposite. Only a truly great game demands such emotional investment.

A while ago we wrote about how the game needed some form of competitive ranked match, some way to try your might against other pokemon trainers across the world. Since then, the game has featured something that isn’t quite what we wanted, but got competitive juices flowing nonetheless. First, a basic PvP mode that rewarded players for earning wins. Only a few weeks ago, a similar mode that required consecutive wins. This last one sank its hooks into me.

It’s the perfect mode to highlight the highs and lows of a meta, but it also encourages a community-wide push towards building the best deck possible before new cards come around and mix it all up again. A celebration of the games’ 1.0 winners, if you would. The greedy Charizard EX deck, the evil Mewtwo EX deck, the diabolical Starmie / Articuno EX plus Misty deck. As of writing we recently got a new basic PvP event alongside the Mythical Island pack, which means all these doozy’s plus the current Deck of the Month: Celebi EX are back and giving migraines.

The developers really do deserve the success they’re getting. Sure, the Pokemon IP and card game is doing a lot of work popularity-wise, but they’ve managed to make a game that’s intensely appealing for players at all skill levels, while popping in little events here and there to keep those with more specialized priorities interested. That I think is the key to why so many people are still busting open packs. It’s moorish.

With new cards on the way, I can safely say this game has me down bad. I popped the premium pass free trial back when it first came out (another smart move by the way), and I don’t see myself turning off that sub any time soon. In my mind, it’s money well earned. How else am I gonna have the cards to beat top tier decks in a pitch black room in the early hours of the morning?