The international release of the Mega Evolution set is still a month away, but for players (like myself) whose first major event of the season will be in the new format, now is as good a time as any to start considering all the possibilities that the set offers. There are a ton of new impactful cards, and in this article I have chosen a … Continue reading Mega Evolution Set Review

One of the core philosophies of Pokémon’s card-design is to create emergent complexity out of simple effects. Rather than creating individually complicated cards with dozens of lines of text, or forcing players to memorize numerous keywords to do effectively the same, Pokémon’s gameplay is designed to facilitate situations in which many relatively simple cards and effects can be combined to create complicated scenarios. A primary … Continue reading Why “Gust” Effects Define Formats

The Pokémon TCG’s Black Bolt & White Flare expansions are releasing on July 18th, in time for their first major tournament to be this year’s World Championships in August. As a result, most of the game’s best players are going to be especially secretive about any meaningful leads in discovering the full potential of these new cards. I won’t be competing at the World Championships … Continue reading Black Bolt & White Flare Set Review

On the weekend of May 17th, the Pokémon TCG Pocket tournament scene had its largest tournament ever: the Pocket Royale, which had an incredible $10,000 prize pool distributed among the Top 96 out of 2,829 competing players. Since my first article covering the Celestial Guardians expansion, multiple new high-tier archetypes have been discovered to challenge the previous format’s best archetype, Darkrai/Giratina, for spots at the … Continue reading TCG Pocket Royale: Giratina ex Versus Its Counters

Five months in from its release, Pokémon TCG Pocket is still dominating the mobile space with a constant stream of new impactful expansions and other major improvements to the app. A trading feature was introduced in January which, while still in need of some adjustments, makes card acquisition much easier than before. Most recently, last week’s update included the highly anticipated ranked ladder, including a … Continue reading Pokémon TCG Pocket: The Shining Revelry Metagame

Pokémon TCG Pocket is a new way to play the Pokémon TCG on mobile devices, developed by The Pokémon Company, DeNA Co Ltd, and Creatures Inc—the card designers for both this game and the physical card game. It features a unique, completely isolated format, and slightly modified game-rules. Who is this app for, why did they change the game-rules, what are they doing differently with … Continue reading The Game-Design Behind Pokémon TCG Pocket

Counter Catcher is undeniably one of the strongest cards from Paradox Rift. As an Item card, it allows for advantage-swinging combo plays that include the effect of a Supporter card, to be executed by any deck that expects to fall behind on prize cards in the early game. Among the traditional prize-trading decks, Gardevoir ҼX and Giratina 𝙑sᴛᴀʀ stand to benefit the most, as they … Continue reading Block Lax Strikes Back

Power creep: A term often thrown around in discussions of card game design. Broadly, it describes the phenomenon of cards becoming gradually more ‘powerful’ over long periods of time. In my view, the way most people talk about power creep is superficial. Discussions I’ve seen only focus on the surface and elude anything worth being concerned over from a player’s perspective. What I’ll be exploring throughout … Continue reading Power Creep, and Its History in the Pokemon TCG

Hello, Cut or Tap readers! I’m Jake Gearhart, and if you’ve read anything from me in the past— whether on Twitter, or in any articles I’ve written elsewhere— you’ll know that I love talking about a different side of Pokémon from what most people tend to spend time on. Sometimes that’s critiquing game-design, or poking holes in the game’s most complicated rulings, but the topic … Continue reading How Likely Am I to Win a Tournament?