Pokémon Collection

 Furthermore, the best decks are for the most part built around one or two specific cards, with the rest of the deck padded out by trainer cards (items or supporters) and basic Pokémon of the same elemental type. As of December 2024, those top decks are:

 In other words, smash that “concede” button if you see any of the above cards on your opponent’s side — and we get into more detail about why these decks are so successful below.

 Knowing the best cards of the moment is one thing, but getting those cards is another matter. Right now, the Pokémon TCG Pocket meta is defined by ex cards — high-power cards that are also extremely rare.

 You can get these from booster packs (you can see your chances of specific cards by clicking the “offering rates” button on the lower-left corner), but if you’re struggling, know you can get specific cards by exchanging pack points, a currency you’ll earn by opening booster packs.

 Ex cards start at 500 pack points, though, and currently, you only get five pack points for every booster pack you open. So even if you’re willing to spend IRL money on Poké Gold to open a bunch of packs, you’ll still have to sit through a lot of mindless clicking before you can afford the exact ex card of your choice.

 Mewtwo ex is dominating the Pokémon TCG Pocket meta at the moment, thanks to its Psydrive attack, which deals 150 damage. Few Pokémon have 150 HP to survive such a hit, but the attack costs Mewtwo ex four energy to use and further discards two psychic-type energy with each use.

 The trick here is to lean on Gardevoir. Gardevoir’s ability, Psy Shadow, allows you to add an extra energy to whatever Pokémon you have in the active spot — and you can use it even with Gardevoir on your bench. This combo allows you to recoup the two energy you burn with each use of Psydrive (one from your turn naturally and one Gardevoir’s ability), essentially guaranteeing 150-damage attacks with no drawbacks.

 Pikachu ex might as well be Ash Ketchum’s uncannily super-powered Pikachu. Pikachu ex isn’t part of an evolution chair, so if you draw it, you’re ready to play it. Its attack, Circle Circuit, also only costs two electric energy and deals 30 damage for every electric-type Pokémon on your bench. Stack all three slots on your bench with electric-type Pokémon, and you’re dealing 90 damage per turn.

 Electric-type cards in general tend to have lower retreat costs (Electrode has a free retreat, for instance), allowing you to easily swap out cards as needed, keeping your bench — and Pikachu ex’s attack power — at full capacity. This deck also works well with Zapdos ex or Jolteon as backup attackers; both have attacks that can deal up to 200 or 160 damage respectively.

 The Charizard ex deck functions a lot like the Mewtwo ex deck in that you have to use one Pokémon to generate energy for another. The key here is to open with Moltres ex. With its Inferno Dance attack, you flip three coins, and for every heads you get, you can apply one bonus fire energy to a Pokémon on your bench. You can load up a Charmander or Charmeleon with with up to three energy per turn.

 When your Charmeleon is ready to evolve into Charizard ex, it’ll hopefully have enough energy to use Charizard ex’s Crimson Storm attack, which costs four energy and deals 200 damage but also discards two energy per use. Pull off this combo correctly, and your Charizard ex card should have enough energy to persistently use Crimson Storm. Charizard ex also has 180 HP — enough to survive a hit from Mewtwo ex’s meta-dominating Psydrive attack.

 Lapras ex was introduced via Pokémon TCG Pocket’s first battle event, and goes hand-in-hand with Articuno ex. Both cards are basic-stage, so you can play them immediately, and both cards have powerful attacks. Articuno ex’s Blizzard attack deals 80 damage to your opponent’s active Pokémon and 10 damage to any cards on their bench, so you can conceivably knock out any weakened Pokémon on your opponent’s back row. Lapras ex’s attack, Bubble Drain, deals 80 damage to your opponent but heals 20 HP to itself.

 Both cards are powerful in a vacuum, but to make the most of this deck, you’ll want to use a Misty trainer card. When you play Misty, you flip a coin repeatedly until you get tails. For however many heads you get, you can attach that amount of water energy to one of your Pokémon. If luck is on your side, you can fully power up Lapras ex or Articuno ex in one turn.

 Professor Oak lets you draw two cards, capitalizing on the universal card game theory that suggests, the more cards you draw, the better your chances of victory. Red Card is the opposite: It shuffles your opponent’s hand back into their deck, and then they draw three cards. (It’s best deployed to mess with your opponent after they play a Professor Oak or Poké Ball card, both of which add cards to their hand.)

 Meanwhile, Sabrina forces your opponent to swap out their active Pokémon — great for getting out of a pinch. Lastly, X Speed reduces your retreat cost by one for the duration of your turn, allowing you to pull a card with low HP back to your bench in a pinch.

 Pokémon TCG Pocket is a free-to-play game, but for those who want a little bit more out of the experience – and are willing to pay for it – there are a few options for premium rewards. Players can spend money on gold, which you can use to open more packs earlier, but for $10 a month you can also subscribe to the Premium Pass.

 The Premium Pass is a monthly subscription that offers a few additional things, like extra monthly missions to complete, an extra card pack to open each day to help you build some of the best decks in TCG Pocket, and some fun bonuses in the shop. Missions and shop items rotate in each month, and it seems like each month has a focus on a specific Pokémon, like Mewtwo or Pikachu.

 December’s Premium Pass missions, rewards, and items are live now, and offer a Pikachu-themed set of accessories, as well as a free full art Mewtwo card just for logging in. Don't forget, though, that you can always build a winning deck without spending any money, so all of this Premium content is totally optional.

 This guide will detail all of the Premium Missions and their rewards for the month of December 2024, as well as the Premium Ticket items in the shop for this month.

Pokemon Unboxing

 Premium subscribers in Pokémon TCG Pocket have a host of Premium Missions available throughout the month, all of which offer some pretty decent rewards, from Premium Tickets for use on the shop to Hourglasses of various types. These missions will last until the end of the month, and are easily completed simply by opening packs and completing Wonder Picks.

 There’s also the Wonder Pick feature which lets you see what your friends have got from their boosters and gives you the chance to randomly pick one of those cards for yourself. The game also offers the occasional “God Pack”, which has several of the rarest cards in Pokémon TCG Pocket, but there is a 0.050 per cent of pulling one of those.

 With a number of immersive and animated variants on offer, it can be tough to work out which cards are the rarest which is where this guide comes into play.

 Below, we’ve listed the rarest cards currently in the game. You can actually find these rarities in-game on the pack selection screen under “Offering Rates”. This guide will continue to be updated over time, as more cards are released.

 By far, the rarest cards are the Gold Crown EX variants of Charizard, Pikachu, and Mewtwo. These are not only gold but feature full art and rainbow flair as well, representing the ultimate prize for any Genetic Apex collector. Functionally, these cards are the same as the regular and full-art EX variants.

 The next cards are the Immersive cards, specifically Immersive Mewtwo, Charizard, and Pikachu. These cards have unique visual scenes that you can play that are filled with some of the best artwork in the game. Functionally, these cards are the same as the EX forms of the Pokémon.

 Following these EX cards, we have the full art EX cards. These are exactly like the regular EX variants, but they have their own unique art and often look drastically better than the regular ones. The Mewtwo pack includes Venusaur EX, Articuno EX, Gengar EX, Mewtwo EX, and Marowak EX.

 Next are the full art Trainer cards. These are incredible pieces of art that expand the images the characters are seen in, within the main cards. As with other full art cards, these work the same as the regular Trainer Supporter cards but are much, much prettier.

 Finally, we have the Rainbow Full Art EX cards, of which there are few compared to the regular full-art EX cards. But they look stunning and offer some beautiful scenes and artwork.

 The rarest cards in Pokemon TCG Pocket are the gold variants of Mewtwo ex, Pikachu ex and Charizard ex, the three main cards representing the current Genetic Apex set. The only cards at a crown rarity level, despite being the most rare cards, these three don't actually function any differently to the regular version of those cards (though considering they're still some of the best cards already, they hardly needed to). Still, if you want to get the rarest cards in Pokemon TCG Pocket, we've laid out all the ways you can do it below, including drop rates, costs in Pack Points, and more besides.

 As mentioned, the most rare cards in Pokemon TCG Pocket are the gold versions of Charizard ex, Mewtwo ex, and Pikachu ex. These play the same way as the non-gold versions, they're simply variants, though it's also undeniable that any version of these cards rank highly in the Pokemon TCG Pocket best cards list.

 They're technically classified as "crown" rarity, the only cards that have this prestigious mark. The latter two cards - Pikachu ex and Mewtwo ex - are especially significant, as those cards are at the centre of some of the best decks in Pokemon TCG Pocket.

 Draw from packs. These cards have a very small chance to be drawn from the Genetic Apex packs. The odds on this are very, very low: as laid out in the offering rates, getting a gold card has a 0.16% chance every time you draw a pack (which equates to 1 out of 625). Meanwhile, drawing a specific gold card is even less likely, at 0.053% (53 out of 10,000). There are also the special rare packs you can get (a random 1 of every 2000 packs) that each have a 5% chance to drop a gold card. It's more likely that you'll get a lot of duplicates to put towards the Pokemon TCG Pocket flair system before you get one of these.

 Wonder Picks. This is just Wonder Picking as normal: if a friend happens to have drawn a gold card, you can do a Wonder Pick and pray you get the 1-in-5 chance of getting the same card as them. Keep an eye on your Wonder Picks for the flash of gold…

 Pack Point Exchange. All three cards can be bought from the Pack Point Exchange. They're the most expensive cards in the exchange, costing 2500 Pack Points each. Considering that each pack you open gives you 5 pack points, you'll need to open 500 card packs to get just one of them.

 The great tragedy of all this is that not only are these golden crown cards so rare, but it turns out that the rumour circulating about Pokemon TCG Pocket bent packs providing better cards isn't even true, so you can't weigh the odds in your favor.