A meta has emerged in the new Pokémon Trading Card Game for mobile phones that isn’t really fun for you or your opponents.
For a little over a week now, you’ve been able to rededicate yourself to collecting the most valuable and best Pokémon cards as you did in your childhood, and you don’t even have to run to the nearest kiosk to buy booster packs.
In Pokémon TCG Pocket, you have your own Pokédex in your smartphone, so to speak, which you not only use to collect cards, but also to put together powerful decks. You tactically throw these at your AI opponents and other players to emerge victorious from the battles.
In the meantime, however, one strategy in particular has proven to be particularly efficient: and it’s not really fun for anyone; neither for those who use it nor for those against whom it is used. And it’s all because of a single Supporter card: Misty.
Misty turns the card game into a coin toss
Unsurprisingly, Misty is designed for decks that contain many Water-type Pokémon. As a Supporter, she strengthens your Attack cards by attaching Energy points to them, which are needed to execute attacks. The card’s effect is described as follows:
Choose 1 of your Water-type Pokémon and then keep flipping a coin until it comes up tails. For each head, attach 1 Water Energy card from your Energy area to that Pokémon.
Normally, you add a maximum of one energy point to your attack cards per round. As soon as you play Misty, you can theoretically give your water Pokémon a lot more energy – but it depends a lot on how lucky you are with the coin toss.
If you have Lady Luck on your side and keep rolling heads, you’ll rack up tons of energy.Your opponent, on the other hand, will just have to wait.And since there’s no real upper limit to the rolls, this can sometimes result in overkill.
☻
But if you have bad luck, you throw a number and come away empty-handed.
The success of this strategy is therefore extremely randomand causes discontent on both sides of the coin. While it is frustrating for your opponent when you do immense damage in one go, it is equally sobering for you when you don’t get the necessary number of successful throws.
☻
Especially the combination of Misty with the attack card Arktos Ex is causing a stir among players. With its Blizzard attack, Arktos can not only do 80 damage to an opposing Pokémon for three energy points, but it can also do an additional ten damage to each of the opposing bench Pokémon.
So if you’re lucky enough to draw both cards at the beginning of the match, you can really hit it hard on the first turn, which isn’t actually intended by the game. On the other hand, you also have to live with it when it doesn’t work out:
☻
On social media, the community is currently discussing how Misty could be changed to mitigate this sluggish strategy. According to this, a cap could be introduced for coin tosses or the energy that can be earned; or the card could be completely redesigned.
What about you? Have you tried your luck with Misty yet, or do you prefer to control your own destiny when playing cards? Feel free to tell us about it in the comments!
