Pokémon TCG Pocket seems to be going rather well for The Pokémon Company. With rumors that the game has netted over $200 million in its first month, it’s now been officially announced that the mobile app has been downloaded over 60 million times since its October 30 launch. To accompany this news, the Pocket devs have revealed a rather big surprise: there’s to be a new special set of Mew-themed packs called Mythical Island, arriving in the game on December 17.
It was widely expected that a new set would join (rather than replace, given the game’s so-far redundant “Select Expansion” page) the launch set, Genetic Apex, at the end of January, as this would follow the three-monthly cycle of the real-world version of the TCG. But I don’t think anyone was expecting a new “Themed Booster Pack” set before the end of the year. That’s the designation given to Mythical Island, which—and I’m speculating somewhat here with ambiguous information—appears to be a smaller “special set” (it’s coded “A1a”, to Genetic Apex’s “A1”), with just Mew pack art, that’ll throw some excellent spanners into the current meta.
Pocket has so far featured just Genetic Apex, the unfortunately named set (everyone else sees it as the codename for a Wolfenstein-style enemy project, right?) that has featured Pikachu, Charizard and Mewtwo. While collecting the entire set would take you over a year without paying astonishing amounts of money, it’s been around long enough now that most people have the cards to build the decks that are dominating the meta. In fact, if you take part in the fun new Emblem Event, you’ll almost inevitably face either the Mewtwo, Charizard, Blastoise or Pikachu decks, almost without variation. So what the game really needs is a bunch of new cards thrown in to explode all that.
So hooray for news of Mythical Island in less than a week. The trailer flashes a whole bunch of new cards, including of course a Mew ex, which has a single energy 20 damage attack, but then a very Ditto-like ability for three energy (and energy of any type, making this a strong addition to any deck) called Genome Hacking. This lets you “choose 1 of your opponent’s Active Pokémon’s attacks and use it as this attack.”
However, I think the real game-changer is going to be an Aerodactyl ex that has an Ability to prevent your opponent from evolving their Active Pokémon. Given how much of the meta is based around such a move, this should shake things up! Better get used to evolving on the bench.
Also briefly glimpsed is a Vaporeon special art with a new Ability to transfer water energy between cards, and gorgeous special arts for Dedenne and Marshadow.
There are new Trainers, too, including Blue, who will reduce all incoming damage for a turn by 10 points, and Leaf who’ll really mess everything up by reducing retreat costs on your Active Pokémon by two. X Speed, step aside.
It’s hard to know if the set is very tiny, and just has the two ex cards and the two new Trainers, or if the trailer is being very selective in what it shows—infuriatingly, these Pocket cards don’t have the traditional numbering that shows you a set’s size. Still, at least I know my Yuka Morii binder will increase by at least one more card, with the addition of her splendid Exeggcute that originally appeared in Sun & Moon’s Forbidden Light set in 2018.
I can’t wait to see how this forces everyone to change tactics come December 17.
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