Pokemon had a problem once over ten years ago because they made one of the most powerful cards in the format at the time (tropical beach) exclusive to people who qualified for worlds and made the game extremely p2w, ever since then cards that are very specific to get always have very underwhelming effects (this year worlds card was basically xspeed that only works on psyduck, for example) Glad to see this trend was kept with pocket.
@@jarde1989 You get it from collecting, it makes sense the reward is for collectors, if it was a card obtained from battling then it would be a lot more understandable to be disappointed it isn’t good in battle.
@@chubberdunkus6153 my opponent playing red card almost always helps me out or gives me the the exact card I needed back lol. Cards like red card would be good if the deck sizes were bigger than 20.
Red card is at its peak when you hold it until your opponent finally evolves into a stage 1 Pokemon. You clearly were holding that Gardevoir, Charizard, Machamp, etc....and now good luck getting it back. The worst feeling is the completely random red card that hoses you.
@@gabestorey5270 When you start with so much of your deck already drawn, Red Card means nothing. Most of the game pieces will be vital. I haven't been inconvenienced, never mind screwed over, by Red Card yet.
Man, if you brick, and they Red Card, that's on them for not paying attention. That's a noob move. Like, if you're only Red Carding for the early -1/-2, that's just doing it wrong. I will sometimes bait Red Card by leaving 4 cards in hand so I can potentially get Red Carded into an Oak/Ball or a better basic. Ideally, draw into something with more offense/speed for the early game.
@@SomeCleverAlias honestly gyrados has carried my water deck so hard. Powering up magikarp while an articuno ex or lapras acts as a hitter has been a very effective strategy to me.
@@MangoBlasters-go5cs even though it's harder to set up, blastoise is just the better version of this strategy and it's what I do, there's actually a huge reward for doing it too
Yeah when appraising cards it helps to see how they stack up to similar cards. I guess the only thing Raticate has over Dodrio is that it's weak to fighting, which is less prevalent in the current meta than Electric (Dodrio's weakness).
I think Raticate is designed TO BE bad. I mean, it's a very common card, normal type, only one basic energy, and you can splash it everywhere in starter deck. As in the video games, some early pokemon are meant to be bad, to be replaced later by better pkm. Just my opinion :)
@@gaz4553 pretty fitting for poor Raticate tbh. For most kids playing the Kanto games they're usually placeholder early route Pokémon that get boxed after the first gym or two.
Mienshao is underrated. I made a deck called 'Mienkazam' and it does very well. Covers dark type weakness for Alakazam, super effective against the meta-dominant electric, and shreds stallers like weezing and kangaskhan.
Mienshao did carry for me at the start when everyone had a few normal type in their deck and take advantage to the weakness, but since everyone doesnt have any normal pokemon in their decks, it falls off sudenly
Magikarp is one of the main reasons that gyarados is bad. Sometimes you can just start with magikarp and no other basic and you essentially lost the game. All gyarados really is is a worse snorlax that requires an evolution.
Many pokemon in this game seem like misses because I don't think the devs understood the value of energy. All the best cards and decks revolve around from getting ahead on energy or needing little energy. Hopefully we see better consideration of energy costs in the future.
@@aggrospud7698 just the idea that dual energy decks would be used at all shows they did not understand how energy would effect the development of the meta. It is obvious dual energy decks are at a SEVERE disadvantage but the game presents it like the default way to play in the tutorials
I had to search it up because I didn’t even know it existed 😂. I am not surprised it isn’t used, the amount of energy it needs is absolutely horrendous.
@@BankoIsMe My TCG Pocket conspiracy theory is that Brock used to work on Rhydon making it's energy problems not nearly as bad. Then for whatever reason, they decided to not make Brock work on Rhydon and just left the card as is.
I think Rattata and Raticate serve the same purpose they do in the video games. They’re there to give you something to vary your early game while being meant to be replaced at the first opportunity.
That's how i use them and yea He's fine as an early game card, bring him back into the bench the second i'm able to but He's helpful especially since you can run him on any team
Pokedex actually can be quite fun, because PokeBall actually shuffles your deck so you can use Pokedex to see your cards and if you don't like those 3 cards you can just use PokeBall to shuffle the cards and can also bait out red card early on but that is a bit too niche.
@@tomasdiethelm6553 And explain to me exactly why you think going -1 in card economy for low-quality knowledge (it is a 20-card deck format) is better than the interruption tool that goes possibly very positive in card economy
I actually succesfully use Pokedex with Gengar EX. The amount of times I had Haunter - Gengar as next cards so I hold the pokeball to not shuffle the deck are crazy, or the other way around - I don't need the next three cards so I pokeball and there's a decent chance to get the cards I want sooner. Its currently the most consistent way of looking for evolutions since I already run all the other draw cards. Best way to avoid bricked hands, unlike running 2 Sabrinas 2 Giovannis in every deck
Sabrinas also are not that great late game because by then you probably have a Pokémon you want to sacrifice or that could hit a powerful attack. They are good, but late-game they may not have the good effect you want.
Recently I just got my first Gardevoir from Wonder pick, I had bad luck in my packs.. And so with only 1 Garde I made the Mewtwo deck and filled the spot with Pokedex, which somewhat increase the consistency of finding that only Garde. And so, I even placed one copy in my Blaine deck, since it's very crucial to draw that Blaine, and since that deck it's not energy hungry I'm only running 1 XSpeed. So yeah, I do enjoy Pokedex, it's not the best but it helps thinking in the turns ahead, I think I'll try Blastoise with it too next!
pokedex pre pokeball shuffle is super underrated if you have room for it but I can't justify running more than one copy since it's only truly useful in pretty specific scenarios
10:20 This happens to me all the time. Opponent plays Red Card and I'm like "Sweet! Burn the trash and give me 3 new chances at what I've been looking for" 90% of the time, I get a better hand than what I started with.
I think he didnt know when to play a red card. I dont know it help me or not, but many times when a pokemon evolves to stage 1 looking for stage 2, i would just play it, hoping he shuffles the stage 2 into the deck
@@Thatguyyoudontknow594 usually they pair with handscope, players playing with 1 pokemon like 2 Articuno EX Deck, would have it, but normal decks with more than 2 pokemons including evolutions does not have enough space to insert another 2 hand scope cards with the decks they are going with
Tangela is just waiting for a good Tangrowth (ex maybe) to drop. As a stand alone basic is pretty terrible, but if it had a strong evolution you could make a Tangrowth/Liligant in theory
The Raticate-line is especially sad, because the Doduo line is just so much better. Their only downside is, that in the current meta a Lightning weakness is pretty devastating
I feel like Nidoqueen should do +10 damage for each nidoran, then +30-50 for it’s evolutions, so that you get max value out of Nidokings, but it’s not a requirement
though your suggestion is a nice buff, it's too complicated when compared to other cards in the game. A more likely fix would be giving Nidoqueen the ability to evolve a Nidorino into Nidoking for 2 dark energy.
@@TostonDePana You made a good point, I think the best value is +20 for every Nido Family, like Pikachu, instead of x30, it be base 60 +20 for each Nido family
@@TostonDePana My thought is Maybe reworking how Nidoran F works, and making it into Darkness Caterpie, Spending your attack just to get 1 NIdoran M just isn't worth in a 20 card deck with no specific support. Maybe that'd make other Darkness decks too consistent? But I doubt it.
The problem with a lot of these Pokémon (low hp, high energy requirements, etc.) is the mere existence of EX cards. With EX cards being as good as they are, not many other cards get a chance to be viable.
@@ValetinoLovebird That's a bit moot. I feel like people either throw out their EX when they've lost 2 points already (thus losing any pokemon will lose the game), or are in a position to sweep you from getting to something that can challenge it. A water deck that opens with Starmie EX needs something that can oneshot, or stun it. Anything less, and it will retreat for free. By the time you get a pokemon that can do either, they've built an answer, and you've invested a lot to get there. Most of the pokemon that can answer an EX, are another EX.
@@Soumein There are few ways to beat an EX, another EX, Sabrina, Status, Ability that switch out / remove active pokemon or sneakily execute a weak bench pokemon. Those are the methods I can think off, probably there are more methods in the future like energy removal or someting
I’ve been running Mienfoo/Mienshao in my Charizard deck. (Switched out the Ponyta/Rapidash I had in there). I put it in playing around for a counter to pikachu, but found it is often incredible as there’s a lot of decks running colourless basics with 60hp. Opening fighting into a colorless has on a few occasions let me KO their only Pokémon on turn 3. It’s also nice with charizard to get one early KO because then u can just charge the Char to 3 or 4 energy to Crimson Storm an EX once for the win. THAT ALL SAID, it’s just fodder against Mewtwo which is everywhere, and while I originally added them to bump up my chances vs electric, because PikachuEX has so much health I feel like they’re only useful half the time against Pika anyway. But there’s something there. They feature in my wins more often than not, just hard to work out if adding them over something else has caused any of my losses. I get a kick out of the odd combo though
Yeah, Mienshao and also Golbat, as someone else mentioned, are pure anti-meta cards. They'll probably fall off fast as soon as the next full set lands, but for now they have a niche.
@@Joyboy_J.R. I've been considering running the Zubat line in my Machamp ex for that very reason. Shame Golbat only has 70 HP and still has one retreat cost.
I like the very VERY rare case when I have pokedex, pokeball, and oak in my hand all at once. I use pokedex to look at the top of the deck and see if I want to draw or shuffle draw, shuffle with pokeball, and then draw with oak. Not good enough to use up a valuable slot, but when I have nothing else, it's better than red card
Always seems like when I use red card, the opponent always draws professor's research and one other good top deck. Glad you talked about it. Can lose games as easily as it wins. I want to like meinshao but to me it seems only suitable for hard tech options like sniping weezing arbok decks before they get started or something
@@ValetinoLovebird Fr I literally destroyed a Charizard player just cause I got 3 head on misty on Gyarados and killed the moltress before it can do major inferno dance
The problem with colorless is that almost every hard "is colorless". Most decks only use one type of energy, and with 20 cards, makes a lot of sense. So they just have a higher cost for nothing.
Colorless can still help offset a deck from having every Pokémon with the exact same weakness. Although they'd be better at it if resistances were also a thing in this game.
@@TheLMBLucas: I don't think it's entirely irrelevant. Especially not early on when a player is still building up their collection and might not have enough cards for a fully mono color deck. I mean, Farfetchid in particular is incredibly splashable.
@@EmeralBookwise When you are brand new to the game (or new account), it throws a couple of dozens of packs at you. At that point it's easy to build like a Blaine deck or Sandlash with something else, which is better than using Swanna. Farfetch'd was good when everyone had shit cards, now it's more like a free prize for the opponent and a troll Pokeball for the player.
@@TheLMBLucas: Maybe, but personally I'd prefer to stick to just the two free daily packs for Genetic Apex, while saving up my pack hourglasses to get a head start on the next set whenever it drops.
Red Card gas a few problems going for it. The first is you'll never really know if you helped or harmed your opponents hand unless you run Hand Scope, which is a terrible card in it's own right. The second is 20 card decks. With decks being so small the longer the game goes on, and the more cards your opponent plays makes late game Red Cards less effective than early game ones.
3 energy cost on low/unreliable damage is so, so sad. With costly retreats on top! No added effects? No abilities?? Where's the strategy? Yikes... The fact they made some Pokemon so utterly boring & unusable. Such lost opportunities
It's even worse here than the real TCG. I wish all cards could be playable. If a card just has a weak attack with no text, strategy or even a gimmick, what's the point of the cards existance?
I feel like the reason why the effectiveness/usefulness of some cards varies so greatly is that the devs were just throwing stuff at a wall to see what sticks and that they are gonna use that information as a reference for the power level of future cards however, regarding the problem with stage 2s, I think they *have to* give us some way of "cheesing out" stage 2s, or else the meta is gonna be run by stage 1s/basics before long
I gotta say, I've been helped more often than not by an opponent using Red Card on me. Just earlier today it helped me out tremendously. I had an Omanyte and Staryu on my bench, the Red Card gave me an Omastar, Starmie EX and Misty. I was very happy with my new hand!
I haven't had the chance to use it in a real match yet, but Mienshao would be great counter-strategy in a Mewtwo EX/Gardevoir set by providing cheap damage, covering the Dark weakness, and having enough HP to tank at least 1 hit from anything earlygame that requires under 3 Energy (besides Pikachu EX) before going down while giving your Ralts and Mewtwo time to set up. Theoretically this would help against Electric Decks and opposing Mewtwo EX decks running Meowth. Unfortunately I haven't ran into an opposing Mewtwo or Dark deck yet so I haven't use Mienshao.
I think the problem with Gyarados is that by the time you have set it up (barring a lucky Misty) the opponent is setup and the resource denial isn't effective. If it cost 2 energy and did maybe 50 damage, the resource denial would allow you to wither down the opponent's Pokemon. Would pair nicely with Pidgeot in case they try to set up a bench Pokemon. I think one Pokemon that doens't get enough credit is Persian, another fantastic resource denial card that nets you card advantage on the way. Seen as there's no discard pile recursion in this game, a discarded evolution could end the game. There are lots of deck ideas to try but maybe a Psyduck/Aerodactyle line for more of a control deck. Could run red card just to mess with their card advantage and increase the chance of hitting an important card that might be in their hand after it resolves. I don't have the Persians to try this deck but I'd love to see an iteration of the deck
Gyarados would be good if it had at least 160-170 hp because then it could tank a psydrive and then hyperbeam which would then deny a psydrive next turn.
Only 2 energy for a guaranteed removal would be so busted, when Fearow at the same cost requires a coin flip Considering running Gyarados also requires the trash that is Magikarp, however, I'd think it would maybe be fair enough just to reduce the Energy cost from 4 to 3. Then again, in the future we might have better Magikarps which help search out their own evolution and could maybe break that, although we will almost certainly have better Gyarados by then too.
I had a lot of fun just throwing Meinshao and Golbat into every deck for a week when everyone was spamming pikachu and mewtwo ex decks. So often they'd win me games by hitting 60 repeatedly due to weaknesses. Ended up making a dedicated multi-type deck after that but things like whimsicott just never saw any use when nobody ran things weak to grass. Seems to have been a lot more deck variety the past week though so targetting common weaknesses hasn't been too fruitful.
I run mienshao in a deck with starmie ex. It’s sort of like to counter electric decks. Especially good against pikachu decks. 1 energy to start doing dmg and apply pressure (+20 dmg if against electric). Then bring in starmie to deal the finishing blow. Not too bad of a deck!
Its attack can be used with any single energy to provide meta-relevant fighting coverage to any deck. Makes it a really good active mon if you have to move first. Frankly stunned it's on his list.
As a long time card player I can tell you, hand disruption of any kind is invaluable and no card is in their deck is useless. They may have a 5 card hand but unless you're playing supporter lock, much of that could be evolutions ready to play, Misty's to accelerate, Sabrina to disrupt. You're almost always better off dropping them down to 3 even at a 4 card hand because in the end, it's still 1 less resource they will have. They may get more basics set up earlier, but without the support to get them going, if you're playing aggressively, They will feel the effects of the card denial.
@@thatoneguy4783 Disagree. Firstly, that one card difference is made equal by the fact you had to sacrifice a card in order to hold and play red card at all. Secondly, some cards are just worth significantly more in this game, namely stage 1s & 2s which in many cases are essential to even have a chance at a win. Clearing a whole bunch of relatively weak cards at the risk of giving them the one or two cards they need to secure the win is just too risky imo. You only need to play the game to notice this, as so many people have commented red card is frequently advantageous for the person it is used against. There are niche situations where you have a higher chance of making it work such as immediately after an opponents stage 1 evolution but before a stage 2, but even then it's a dice roll, and is frequently just going to be beaten out by a card with near guaranteed use value.
As you said, no card in the deck is useless. In a _20 card game_ , you usually wind up getting what you need in very few turns or have an easy pivot, and most of the time someone is red carded they just get those cards right back because shuffling 12 cards is barely a shuffle. But keep spreading the word that red card is good, I love when it's wasted on my decks :)
I think of Mienshao the same way I think of Rapidash; if you're going first, it does decent damage on your first attacking turn because you can evolve it straight away. Rapidash has more HP and a supporter to buff it more, but it's been decent in my Fighting decks when I didn't have a lot of other fighting cards to run.
3 things: 1) As someone else said, Mew being bad is a good thing, but I do wish it was a colorless energy to use the Psy Report. Kinda sucks it can only really get played in psychic decks. 2) I think there should be a trainer card that combines Hand Scope and Red Card into one. Something like, “View your opponents hand. Choose whether to shuffle it back into their deck and draw 3 cards, or your opponent draws a card.” Something along those lines. Maybe that’s dumb but hey. 3) I’ve been using Mienshao in my Machamp deck and it’s been performing well. The problem is that Dugtrio is the same card with a better effect. The colorless make it feel like it would be better is something like an Aqua deck, or even a Psychic deck as a Dark deterrent, but it’s probably just not worth it as dark decks are so rare and Psychic has so many powerful options.
9:54 The only time I could see myself using the Pokédex card is if I needed to decide between using the professors research and another supporter card; seeing which 3 cards are on the top of my deck to determine whether I should use the professors research to get those cards, or using giovanni or Sabrina to do extra damage or swap out the Pokemon. Very situational though
Hey nido queen is pretty solid Pokemon. It's starting form can just call nidoran to the bench is like free real estate 😂. And u can set up nidoking using nidoqueen. Also if u planning to set up nidoqueen. Just from just one nidoking u can get like 80+ 50 extra damage. Ie 130 damage and it is pretty insane.
Man, the poke flute would be an amazing idea! An item card thats so specific but unlocks the absolute potential of a support card. On top of it, imagine we get a cool snorlax EX at some point? It would be super fun, strong or balanced, and the problem with Snorlax is how it can 100% kill guarantee your death in the end if you only have 2 pokemon and you get sabrina forced into it. But i really love Snorlax and and i always try to make it work. I think with a good number of basics you maybe can work around that and you need to be extremely careful. Also never play it with EX cards, you really need the 3 prize points to work with it.
yea I really tried to run snorlax as a tank but I would lose because I just couldn't switch him out, so I ended up running articuno instead (similar health less retreat and more consistent damage
12:05 Mienshao + Golbat + Whimsiscott all in 1 deck is a sleeper budget deck. They’re all colorless 1 energy, allowing the player to use any energy, while providing type-counters (fighting, dark, grass)
Yep, Mienshao is great to spash fighting for type advantage against normals, dark, and electric types. It’s cheap and fast and use it with Weezing or weezing and Zapdos for 3 color deck. Didn’t even know this mon that well before playing this, but it has def grown on me since using it.
A cool card would be if nidorina was able to call the rest of nidoking family into ur hand. That would make it much easier to have the synergy between the two.
I honestly don't agree with your gyarados pick, I have a deck built with him being the main focus. I build him up, while having greninja on the side for extra dmg.
I used Mienshao a lot before getting other fighting pokemon and it's great for early damage and chip while you build something else. In my case I used it with Marowak and Grapploct. Only needs 1 energy to both attack and retire and 40 damage early game while other Pokémon need more energy to land an attack is great for early advantage. You can change it at anytime when your other Pokémon are ready and people don't want to waste Sabrina on a weak Pokémon
I feel like cards like Mawile, Gyarados and Fearow would be really interesting with the energy removal, especially vs. decks that want to have that consistent energy flow like char ex and mewtwo ex, but it's just so hard to get them to that point. I wonder if an EX of any of those would help with that? Give them more HP and more time to do their thing. Having a Mewtwo out and having an entire energy or two removed would be pretty devastating while also dealing a not insignificant amount of damage.
I ran Mienshao in a Gengar/Alakazam deck early on (before the meta really settled, mainly due to not having 2x Clefable yet) and while it was not great, it had some positives. It hard countered the Dark decks that would beat psychic. If you start with Mienfoo on T2 then Mienshao on T4, it kills Arbok & Weezing (With Giovanni). I think it looks worse than it is, because Psychic is so strong in the meta right now. Golbat is seeing play in decks and its a straight downgrade from Mienshao, so if the meta shifted I could see it being better. One card I think you missed would be Rhydon. Melmetal is Niche at best, and has more HP, a really good active, higher damage, and a lower retreat cost, plus its stage 1 can cheat the energy to maybe cheese the opponent. I don't think there's any deck that could make Rhydon even sort of manageable. I honestly think they would have to buff Rhyhorn/don's hp by like 50% to even start considering the card which is wild
Nidoqueen requires way too much setup to be good, and getting even a single Nidoking can be a pain. It might work in very stall heavy decks that can let you setup on the bench, but I am not surprised we don’t see these decks in today’s meta. Very inefficient.
Yeah. Maybe it'd be a bit better if Nidoran F searched for all Darkness Pokemon and not exclusively Nidoran M? It's hard to justify ever using Nidoran F's attack when PokeBall and Oak are 2 ofs in nearly every deck.
Mienshao, I used in a misty water deck when I started out as a counter to lightning type pokemon. Later, when I got more water options, it came out. It did some decent work while I used it.
Red Card can be effective if you can wait to play it after your opponent has both used their Oaks and/or Pokeballs AND has more than three cards in their hand. You can negate the card advantage that they had gained. Tough to time this though, and Red Card becomes dead weight if that situation never arises
the thing with gyarados is that I think its powerful in the case of centiskorch, charizard and mewtwo where they discard down due to their powerful attacks and then you stop a consecutive turn use of their ulimate that way. That being said, probably better just to focus on murder murder
Yeah gyarados has two issues. One, magikarp dies to almost everything so just that is a hurdle. Two, it doesn't work unless you pull off a great Misty. Even a one energy Misty doesn't really help gyarados with 4 energy attack only, like imagine if it had a 3 energy attack it could maybe do something. I just hope they make a gyarados EX that is actually playable, though I'm sad because 1* gyarados art is great.
The other thing is that even if you get a really good Misty, you might not have Gyarados. So now you have a lot of energy on the easiest card to KO in the game. Super risky.
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I've been playing a NidoQueen deck and the issue is not the energy or the evolution, but the fact that you have to choose the support. The deck works, but you have to run or Meowth to speed up or kanghaskan to put pressure on the early game. However, with only 6 slots on your deck and being forced to run two oak and two pokeballs, you have only 2 other options. You need speed x to remove the nidoran bad positioned, but you also get a lot of value from sabrina. You also can use red card to slow down your opponent. Also there is no way you make a 3x0 because you need to have your colorless pokemon killed to get your nidoking or nidoqueen on position. I think something would help the deck a lot is if nidoking did 10 more damage. Nidoking always feels that he is 10 short on life or 10 short on damage when you are forced to play it. Poison is not that big of threat to Venusaur X or Lapras X and Charizard X can punish you before dying to poison. Nidoking is really great against no ex decks that rarely have a huge pokemon and also really hurts mewtwo decks. But a great ball like card ( choose monsters from deck) or a dark energy misty like card can change everything for the deck.
I tried Mienshao in a Dragonite deck because it requires a single colorless energy and that's what I was looking for to apply early/mid-game pressure while I tried to get Dragonite online. I figured it was a bonus that a fighting type in that deck would throw off my opponents. It works... ok. The problem is Weezing exists. If you run Weezing ability only (no dark energy in the deck) it does apply less pressure than the 40 damage Mienshao, but it requires 0 energy. So it comes online faster, it takes 0 resources from Dragonite, and it's bulkier. Given that Weezing works even without any energy I just have a hard time imagining any color deck where Weezing doesn't work better than Mienshao... unless maybe you really need something that hits with fighting damage, I guess...?
Am running a one energy cost deck in the old TCG on gameboy it's pretty okay. But wow they debuff pokedex was it always like that? In the old school game pokedex let's you see 5 cards&rearrange them but to just look at 3 cards in your small 20 size deck seems like a waste.
I feel like a lot of the normal type Pokémon are still balanced around colourless energy cards counting double. If there was the option to take double colourless energy, things like snorlax or chansey or even Swanna would make a lot more sense
@@xxWicKedWayZxx idk, if it get EX, it would be different art, no? (I really like this one) Maybe more support card. like more reliable energy ramp than Misty?
I like gyarados. Yea it takes a tone of energy, but I think the losing one energy thing can be more impactful than you think sometimes. Hitting tanky mon trying to get to that 4 energy. He can force someone to keep committing energy to their active mon instead of the bench. I do wish they would change the wording on the card that you got to pick which pokemon lost the energy
I know! It can be extremely disruptive against Mewtwo EX decks because the whole strategy is to be able to use its psydrive consistently via Gardevoir. Even losing one energy can give you the time to take it out and win the game. Honestly, I am surprised someone haven’t found a way to make this card work to counter Mewtwo, Charizard decks.
It's so funny to see Tangela in this video after I beat an Articuno ex that got 4 energy with misty LMAO (Hypno and Venomoth carried Tangela so much) It's a pretty bad card tho I feel like if it has more HP like 100 - 120 HP and heals 20 while doing those 40 damage it could be pretty good as a basic. I'm using it just because I like it along with scyther the other 2 mentioned earlier and 1 Pinsir. The thing that I like about this game being so much based around luck is that you can win with like any card, sure probably will often won 2 or 3 of 10 matches if it's a bad card but you can win if you just make it work with other cards and that's awesome in comparison with normal TCG.
I never use red card, but I live in fear of it. It can affect how I play, e.g. it can discourage me from using Professor's Research on turn 1. I hope that my opponents live in fear of red card too. It means I can get its actual benefit (fear) without even having it in my deck!
Just some random ideas on how to use the worst cards mentioned in the deck. Forgive me if there any similar cards that can do these ideas better. Tangela - I assume you would use this with a Butterfree deck to get more extra health to stall an extra turn or two to stack energies. Ditto - Would probably work as a fun gimmick in a Dragonite/Dual type deck. Basically to hold any energies that are no use to any of your Pokemon on the field. Probably the most useful as an EX Pokemon counter. Mew - Defiantly an early game only Pokemon while you set up your team similar to Meowth. Basically to see what Stage 1 & 2 Pokemon your opponent has and playing Red Card when you know their about to set up evolution. Gyardos - With Misty that 4 energy investment doesn't seem to bad. The 150 HP should withstand most powerful attacks giving you 200 damage if you attack twice. The energy removal is super useful for stopping bench Pokemon from gaining energies while the opponent needs to invest energies into their active Pokemon to attack. Meaning if you defeat the active Pokemon while the bench has no energy investment, the rest of the battle would be super easy. The only downside I think is Magikrap because you do risk it being your only Pokemon at the start of the match, or dragged into play by Sabrina.
Tangela is probably also designed for a future Tangrowth drop, since most Evolving pokemon are more disappointing than their non evolving equivalents. Especially since it has the same effective HP as Tauros until you use Absorb for a 3rd time, Tangela does less damage than Tauros too, which means Tangela is only really worth it with Erica or searching for it with Caterpie
Rattata and Raticate are really funny to me because it's literally the statline of Rattata and Raticate from the original run of those cards from the TCG. They're really bad in the context of PTCGP, but when they first released way back when, they were not terrible early mons, though they did get outclassed pretty quickly.
Rattata actually lost of it's most important boons in TCGP, Base Set Rattata had free retreat, and having something like Super Fang on Raticate would give it a niche. In TCG Pocket though They're just worse Doduo and Dodrio, especially when Dodrio does get that coveted free retreat.
@starmangalaxy2001 Ah, true, I had forgotten about the free Retreat. And Super Fang. I used them all the time in the TCG, surprised I had forgotten, tbh.
Would Rhydon also fall under the same category as Gyrados then? 4 energy stage 2 pokemon with a 100 damage hit (but Rhydon has even less hp at 120). When I got it I thought it would be so strong since I'm still working on building up my Fighting Deck but it definitely did not feel good 😅
I ran gyarados along with blastoise ex for the pvp event and it got me to the 50 wins. Misty is the saving grace for it. Yes it's a gamble but it's worth it. And losing the energy is relevant. I've had a lot of games against mewtwo ex where it prevented the psydrive. Or i've sabrina'd out the dragonite and managed to discard the energy they only have one of and aren't getting back next turn. If they're setting up on their bench I'm usually just killing the active, meaning they need to keep things around to switch in that aren't their setup to prevent them from losing that energy, and i'm just getting points. The math with most attacks means well timed potions keep it alive after 2 hits from most things. In my experience at least it's been a bit of a terror.
the meinshao is good in Mewtwo decks as it's an answer to some dark type decks. Since there isn't any strong dark types that can be made in basic or stage 1, meinshao can kill them before they evolve. and since it's a two stage and requires one energy it's a small amount of space in your 20 card deck. That's about it is it the best no, but it's like a B-Low A Tier for me and works quite well.
When we get ranked it will probably be best of 3 so I'd expect a 3-5 card sideboard. Mienshao is probably going to be a huge counter to Pika, it can one shot all the basics in the deck that aren't zapdos and Pika ex has to have a full bench to kill it. Right now the game is the wild west it's still so early to really judge how some of these cards pan out.
funny thing about skiddo is that your opponent will think its safe to tank it tho Hold off evolving it until third energy, then surprise the defending pokemon with the 70! Gogoat is pretty tanky itself too, with 120 HP.
if the effect of Mew's attack was just a once-per-turn ability, Mew would be so much better. it would still be a low HP mon that's an easy victory point for your opponent if you pass with it in the active slot, but at least in theory you could protect it by retreat it after you use the ability.
Mienshao was a good fighting deck filler for me while I was still working to get all the cards I needed to build the deck I wanted. And I think that’s kind of the mindset with a few of the cards on your list like Rattata and Chansey and even Tangela: they’re to help beginners get started until they get enough bigger and better cards.
I actually slot meinshao and golbat with a starmie EX deck, and it does very well into meta decks like pikachu and mewtwo. Meinshao early game puts great pressure into pikachu decks early and sets you up for one shots for your starmie EX. The fact that it requires only 1 colorless energy makes it pretty flexible in which deck you can slot them in.
dude i just made a gary sleep deck, LOVE it. its a TON of fun and ive mostly gotten wins. running two hypno line, 2 gary line, and 2 regular lapras. its just a game of making the most use of every energy you get and using sabrina well to try and manage energy off what theyre building and using hypno to keep applying energy and stall.
There’s an interesting strat with Pokédex where when you aren’t running a deck where you need poke balls to pull all your pokemon you can run pokeball and Pokédex, use pokedex to see your next pulls and then pokeball if they are bad draws, comboing this with profs research also goes kinda crazy. It’s good for decks with fossils or something like machamp.
Red Card is one of the best cards in the game. You just have to know how to use it. An example is I play a Dragonite deck. Dragonite has 160 hp. Mewtwo ex does 150 damage. A good Mewtwo player who sees I’m playing Dragonite is going to hold onto Giovanni, so they can one shot Dragonite the turn I bring it out. So, everytime I bring out Dragonite when playing against a Mewtwo deck, I play Red Card to get rid of their Giovanni. You can make similar plays to stop Sabrina. Most decks run 2 Sabrinas. So if your opponent hasn’t played Sabrina yet and a situation comes up where Sabrina would really mess up your day, there’s a good chance your opponent has been holding onto a Sabrina waiting for such a situation to come up. So you can play Red Card to prevent them from playing Sabrina. It’s also a good counter to Stage 2 cards. If your opponent has had Charmander on their bench for 3 turns and then suddenly evolves it to Charmeleon, there’s a good chance they’ve had Charizard in their hand for a while and were just waiting to draw a Charmeleon. So you can get rid of the Charizard that’s coming next turn by playing Red Card. Or Stage 1 cards. Did your opponent just attack with Mankey and do 10 damage to themselves? They probably have a Primeape in their hand that’s going to hit you for 100 damage next turn. Get rid of it with Red Card. Even if you’re not someone who’s good at making reads like that, Red Card can still be good by just playing the odds. If your opponent has 5 cards in their hand, and you get rid of them and give them 3, you’ve lowered the chances of them having the card they need, because they’re less likely to have it in a hand of 3 cards than they are in a hand of 5.
There are certainly very specific situations where it can be handy, but by the time you have a fully loaded dragonite they're down to 5 cards in their deck, so "shuffling" that deck usually accomplishes squat. Not to mention there are plenty of people who evolve or attack just to... well, evolve or attack. So trying to "read" those moves is going to fail you half the time. It's just not that effective in a game with 20-card decks. Especially when damn near every deck runs 2 pokeballs and 2 professor oaks. IF you're very familiar with the meta decks, can identify them early, and put the work in to card count discard piles and what-not, it _can_ be effective, but at this point in the game I've found it more effective to save those slots in my deck for more consistently useful cards.
@ I’ve gotten Dragonite out and fully powered by turn 4. If you’re not getting him out until your deck is almost out of cards, chances are you’ve already lost the game. Reads are a thing in virtually every competitive game and are a necessary skill if you want to be a good player. You have to make reads in Pokémon even if you don’t use Red Card.
Don't know if people would agree with me. I feel like if they made the mew card have an ability move to reveal the opppenants hand if the mew is in the active slot, then have the attack be its own thing. The card wouldn't be as bad, but not broken or OP. Somthing like the wheezing card with their Gas Leek Ability.
@@andrewsikes1517 I would have loved an usable Mew if i could obtain it in a doable way like every other card (maybe with a basic Holo version in Mewtwo pack with the Immersive being just aesthetic). With the Cardex requirement, funnily enough, the worse Mew is the better the game becomes for F2P and low spender players.
I was musing the other day about a colourless energy but typed cards deck but the options are not there for it. I think it can be fun like the funny coins no EX deck I set up.
The point of Mienshao is to play the same role as Golbat: Colorless attack of an extra off-Typing. It is arguably better, since its match-up is into the more prevalent deck.
Jigglypuff makes sense because Wigglytuff is a 60 attack 2 energy with 100hp. Its pretty quick for most decks needing an offfset of their main character. If you go second and have the setup, its a hard card for the opponent to get rid as the first set without taking big damage.
Snorlax in Dragonite is pretty great tbh. The only time I've had issues with Snorlax is when opponents realize it's gonna take me 4 turns to swap him out, but so far in like 95% of games, people repeatedly attack into it until it dies and I never even have to think about the retreat. A surprising amount of people just Sabrina it, and help me with it lol. I think it will get worse as people get better at the game, but rn, as a wall I've had a ton of success with it
I remember when I was playing the expert bots and I faced against nidoqueen. It took like a whole 45 minutes cause the bot kept on pulling out nidorans and their evolution as they had a infinite amount of them
My thinking on red card is that it's supposed to be used in conjunction with the periscope, you check to see if their hand is good or bad first and then slap them with the red card if they have anything problematic. In decks where your focus is only 2 pokemon lines, you have room for extra items and they can come in handy slowing your opponent down if your hand isn't looking hot either
@@lucarudloff687 while I don’t think it’s one of the top 10 worst cards, it’s definitely something that can be super hard to set up. Definitely don’t think it’s horrible tho
I think Lickitung deserves to be higher on the list, honestly. While I understand it's funny to see a big number when you get a rare streak, its effective damage is capped by the current HP of the defending Pokemon. Against a target with infinite HP, its expected damage with each attack would be exactly 60. (The math on this isn't too bad, as long as you know the sum of the infinite series (1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8...) is equal to 1. You can think of Lickitung's attack as having a 1/2 chance of doing that first 60 damage, a 1/4 chance of adding a second 60 damage, a 1/8 chance of doing a third 60 damage, etc.) That's already not great for three energy. But once you've exceeded the defending Pokemon's current HP, any additional heads do nothing for you. So for example, against an undamaged Mewtwo EX, you have a 50% chance of doing 0 (T__), a 25% chance of doing exactly 60 (HT_), a 12.5% chance of doing exactly 120 damage (HHT), and a 12.5% chance of doing 150 damage (HHH). That gives you an expected damage of (0 * 0.5) + (60 * 0.25) + (120 * 0.125) + (150 * 0.125) = 0 + 15 + 15 + 18.75 = 48.75. For three energy! Maybe not the worst card in the game, but definitely a contender if you ask me.
As for Red Card, the only time I feel safe using it is if the opponent has been waiting for a while for the Stage 1 evolution for something they're trying to build up to Stage 2. If the opponent plays Ralts immediately and then doesn't play Kirlia for a while, they'll probably have a sizeable hand by that point, which means they're likely to have the Gardevoir. At that point, Red Card seems like a reasonable play. I've seen a lot of opponents throw it out on turn 1 against me, and it's like... sure, you put me down a card, but you also went down a card yourself. That's not card advantage.
Saying Gyarados is bad is definitely a skill issue because you completely ignore the fact that you only lost 1 point when he is defeated and his ability is a threat to any deck require a lot of Energy for attack such as Mewtwo and Articuno.
4 energy for a 100 damage attack gives your opponent a lot of opportunity to develop their attacker with enough energy that removing 1 each turn does not disrupt nearly enough. Gyarados requires Misty cheese to be actually threatening, as that allows it to come online before your opponent is swinging with their big attackers. Source: Tried really hard to make Gyarados work. Starmie-ex, Frosmoth, even Hypno shenanigans. Only time Gyarados actually won games is either my opponent bricked or I got a lucky Misty. And a LOT of games lost because Magikarp is easily the worst Basic in the game, aside from maybe Ditto.
It’s funny because I don’t even know how I said Tangela wrong but I’m seeing so many comments about it I must have butchered it 😂😂
@@spragelsPocket you said it better than Purplecliffe does
It's more like tangle-a not tangel-a
Tangéla… very fancy! tang-a-la
@@spragelsPocket and then you butchered Mienshao too 😅
Remember the drink Tang? It's kinda like that but with an el and a la.
Mew should be bad and i'm very happy it is bad purely based on the way you obtain it, Mew being good would actually make the game pay2win
Pokemon had a problem once over ten years ago because they made one of the most powerful cards in the format at the time (tropical beach) exclusive to people who qualified for worlds and made the game extremely p2w, ever since then cards that are very specific to get always have very underwhelming effects (this year worlds card was basically xspeed that only works on psyduck, for example)
Glad to see this trend was kept with pocket.
It doesn’t have to be OP… but it shouldn’t suck this bad either
Doesn’t even feel like a reward
That’s a good point
@@jarde1989 You get it from collecting, it makes sense the reward is for collectors, if it was a card obtained from battling then it would be a lot more understandable to be disappointed it isn’t good in battle.
@@Timikyu oh! A great observation actually
Love when my opponent red cards me t1 and fixes my hand 🤗
@@chubberdunkus6153 my opponent playing red card almost always helps me out or gives me the the exact card I needed back lol. Cards like red card would be good if the deck sizes were bigger than 20.
Red card is at its peak when you hold it until your opponent finally evolves into a stage 1 Pokemon. You clearly were holding that Gardevoir, Charizard, Machamp, etc....and now good luck getting it back. The worst feeling is the completely random red card that hoses you.
@@chubberdunkus6153 I lost a lot of games because of red card
Same here!
@@jolteon345 Haha well that's why this game is all RNG. It's literally just Coin Flip Pocket.
Red card has become my best friend lately. I’ve probably won my last 20 matches by drawing a brick hand and getting red carded.
It always helps me and I always red card my opponent into a god hand
@@gabestorey5270 When you start with so much of your deck already drawn, Red Card means nothing. Most of the game pieces will be vital. I haven't been inconvenienced, never mind screwed over, by Red Card yet.
Man, if you brick, and they Red Card, that's on them for not paying attention. That's a noob move.
Like, if you're only Red Carding for the early -1/-2, that's just doing it wrong. I will sometimes bait Red Card by leaving 4 cards in hand so I can potentially get Red Carded into an Oak/Ball or a better basic. Ideally, draw into something with more offense/speed for the early game.
>pull a full art gyarados
>consider making a gyarados deck
>see thumbnail
@@SomeCleverAlias honestly gyrados has carried my water deck so hard. Powering up magikarp while an articuno ex or lapras acts as a hitter has been a very effective strategy to me.
@@MangoBlasters-go5cs same, for me I just use misty and it works out rlly well, I was a bit shocked to see it in bad cards
@@MangoBlasters-go5cs even though it's harder to set up, blastoise is just the better version of this strategy and it's what I do, there's actually a huge reward for doing it too
pretty strong if you know how to use it actually
if you manage a hit before they have enough energy, your opponent basically dead
Slap some Misty on it and you are good to good, dude
The problem with raticate is not its attack or Hp, is that Dodrio has the same stats (different weakness) but with zero retreat
Yeah when appraising cards it helps to see how they stack up to similar cards.
I guess the only thing Raticate has over Dodrio is that it's weak to fighting, which is less prevalent in the current meta than Electric (Dodrio's weakness).
I also find it really confusing why Raticate of all pokemon doesn't have zero retreat cost, considering his Run Away ability in Pokemon games
The rat can really carry in the first couple days of deck building. Not great sure but they hold up well enough till you can pull something better.
I think Raticate is designed TO BE bad. I mean, it's a very common card, normal type, only one basic energy, and you can splash it everywhere in starter deck. As in the video games, some early pokemon are meant to be bad, to be replaced later by better pkm.
Just my opinion :)
@@gaz4553 pretty fitting for poor Raticate tbh. For most kids playing the Kanto games they're usually placeholder early route Pokémon that get boxed after the first gym or two.
Mienshao is underrated.
I made a deck called 'Mienkazam' and it does very well. Covers dark type weakness for Alakazam, super effective against the meta-dominant electric, and shreds stallers like weezing and kangaskhan.
@@andrewofaiur I lost earlier to a mewtwo EX deck that had a Mienshao. My Weezing was not prepared
@@andrewofaiur Is your deck 2 lines of Meinshao + 2 lines of alakazam with tech cards?
@@nathansenpai9538 yessir, it's been the winning strat for me so far.
Mienshao did carry for me at the start when everyone had a few normal type in their deck and take advantage to the weakness, but since everyone doesnt have any normal pokemon in their decks, it falls off sudenly
I guess you're right that Gyarados doesn't do enough to justify the investment. I'll take them out and just run the two Magikarp.
Looo lol ololol
Magikarp is one of the main reasons that gyarados is bad. Sometimes you can just start with magikarp and no other basic and you essentially lost the game. All gyarados really is is a worse snorlax that requires an evolution.
@@jprec5174except Gyarados can benefit from Misty coinflips!
Waiting for Magikarp Ex to drop
@@jprec5174 Ok but Gyarados' fullart is literally the coolest artwork in the game right now so idc
Many pokemon in this game seem like misses because I don't think the devs understood the value of energy. All the best cards and decks revolve around from getting ahead on energy or needing little energy. Hopefully we see better consideration of energy costs in the future.
@@aggrospud7698 just the idea that dual energy decks would be used at all shows they did not understand how energy would effect the development of the meta. It is obvious dual energy decks are at a SEVERE disadvantage but the game presents it like the default way to play in the tutorials
TCG all have bad, unplayable cards. They’re filler.
@@Pokeface42 the problem is any high energy card that doesn’t have a synergy to supply it is useless
Rhydon is by far the worst card in the game rn. Nothing comes close to how bad it is. Sadly
I'm surprised it wasn't on here. I'm not expert in this game at all but when I look at it I knew it was trash
I had to search it up because I didn’t even know it existed 😂. I am not surprised it isn’t used, the amount of energy it needs is absolutely horrendous.
@@BankoIsMe My TCG Pocket conspiracy theory is that Brock used to work on Rhydon making it's energy problems not nearly as bad. Then for whatever reason, they decided to not make Brock work on Rhydon and just left the card as is.
Nope. There are worse cards.
I think Rattata and Raticate serve the same purpose they do in the video games. They’re there to give you something to vary your early game while being meant to be replaced at the first opportunity.
That's how i use them and yea He's fine as an early game card, bring him back into the bench the second i'm able to but He's helpful especially since you can run him on any team
Pokedex actually can be quite fun, because PokeBall actually shuffles your deck so you can use Pokedex to see your cards and if you don't like those 3 cards you can just use PokeBall to shuffle the cards and can also bait out red card early on but that is a bit too niche.
That’s a fun thought, thanks for sharing!
That’s what I’ve been doing with my machamp deck, I get machamp pretty often since I can somewhat manipulate what cards I draw thanks to the pokedex
i keep seeing people talk about this use case for pokédex and it’s NOT GOOD 😭😭😭
This just isn't something ever worth a deck slot
@@SmugsfromSplitstill better than putting Red Card
@@tomasdiethelm6553 And explain to me exactly why you think going -1 in card economy for low-quality knowledge (it is a 20-card deck format) is better than the interruption tool that goes possibly very positive in card economy
I actually succesfully use Pokedex with Gengar EX. The amount of times I had Haunter - Gengar as next cards so I hold the pokeball to not shuffle the deck are crazy, or the other way around - I don't need the next three cards so I pokeball and there's a decent chance to get the cards I want sooner.
Its currently the most consistent way of looking for evolutions since I already run all the other draw cards. Best way to avoid bricked hands, unlike running 2 Sabrinas 2 Giovannis in every deck
this.
Bro is finally hearing about brainstorm fetch tech
Sabrinas also are not that great late game because by then you probably have a Pokémon you want to sacrifice or that could hit a powerful attack. They are good, but late-game they may not have the good effect you want.
Recently I just got my first Gardevoir from Wonder pick, I had bad luck in my packs..
And so with only 1 Garde I made the Mewtwo deck and filled the spot with Pokedex, which somewhat increase the consistency of finding that only Garde.
And so, I even placed one copy in my Blaine deck, since it's very crucial to draw that Blaine, and since that deck it's not energy hungry I'm only running 1 XSpeed.
So yeah, I do enjoy Pokedex, it's not the best but it helps thinking in the turns ahead, I think I'll try Blastoise with it too next!
pokedex pre pokeball shuffle is super underrated if you have room for it but I can't justify running more than one copy since it's only truly useful in pretty specific scenarios
10:20 This happens to me all the time. Opponent plays Red Card and I'm like "Sweet! Burn the trash and give me 3 new chances at what I've been looking for" 90% of the time, I get a better hand than what I started with.
I think he didnt know when to play a red card. I dont know it help me or not, but many times when a pokemon evolves to stage 1 looking for stage 2, i would just play it, hoping he shuffles the stage 2 into the deck
Nobody uses it right either and its already bad 😭 some people red card my 3 without me even cluing to what i have
@@Thatguyyoudontknow594 usually they pair with handscope, players playing with 1 pokemon like 2 Articuno EX Deck, would have it, but normal decks with more than 2 pokemons including evolutions does not have enough space to insert another 2 hand scope cards with the decks they are going with
Tangela is just waiting for a good Tangrowth (ex maybe) to drop. As a stand alone basic is pretty terrible, but if it had a strong evolution you could make a Tangrowth/Liligant in theory
The Raticate-line is especially sad, because the Doduo line is just so much better. Their only downside is, that in the current meta a Lightning weakness is pretty devastating
I feel like Nidoqueen should do +10 damage for each nidoran, then +30-50 for it’s evolutions, so that you get max value out of Nidokings, but it’s not a requirement
though your suggestion is a nice buff, it's too complicated when compared to other cards in the game.
A more likely fix would be giving Nidoqueen the ability to evolve a Nidorino into Nidoking for 2 dark energy.
@@TostonDePana You made a good point, I think the best value is +20 for every Nido Family, like Pikachu, instead of x30, it be base 60 +20 for each Nido family
@@TostonDePana My thought is Maybe reworking how Nidoran F works, and making it into Darkness Caterpie, Spending your attack just to get 1 NIdoran M just isn't worth in a 20 card deck with no specific support. Maybe that'd make other Darkness decks too consistent? But I doubt it.
The problem with a lot of these Pokémon (low hp, high energy requirements, etc.) is the mere existence of EX cards. With EX cards being as good as they are, not many other cards get a chance to be viable.
Private game password: NOEX
Thats why they balance it by being 2 points if you knock out an ex pokemon
@@ValetinoLovebird That's a bit moot. I feel like people either throw out their EX when they've lost 2 points already (thus losing any pokemon will lose the game), or are in a position to sweep you from getting to something that can challenge it.
A water deck that opens with Starmie EX needs something that can oneshot, or stun it. Anything less, and it will retreat for free. By the time you get a pokemon that can do either, they've built an answer, and you've invested a lot to get there. Most of the pokemon that can answer an EX, are another EX.
Arbok and weezing will consistently beat any deck in the game
@@Soumein There are few ways to beat an EX, another EX, Sabrina, Status, Ability that switch out / remove active pokemon or sneakily execute a weak bench pokemon. Those are the methods I can think off, probably there are more methods in the future like energy removal or someting
I’ve been running Mienfoo/Mienshao in my Charizard deck. (Switched out the Ponyta/Rapidash I had in there). I put it in playing around for a counter to pikachu, but found it is often incredible as there’s a lot of decks running colourless basics with 60hp. Opening fighting into a colorless has on a few occasions let me KO their only Pokémon on turn 3. It’s also nice with charizard to get one early KO because then u can just charge the Char to 3 or 4 energy to Crimson Storm an EX once for the win. THAT ALL SAID, it’s just fodder against Mewtwo which is everywhere, and while I originally added them to bump up my chances vs electric, because PikachuEX has so much health I feel like they’re only useful half the time against Pika anyway. But there’s something there. They feature in my wins more often than not, just hard to work out if adding them over something else has caused any of my losses. I get a kick out of the odd combo though
I would consider running golbat as well, to deal with the mewtwo matchup
Yeah, Mienshao and also Golbat, as someone else mentioned, are pure anti-meta cards. They'll probably fall off fast as soon as the next full set lands, but for now they have a niche.
@@Joyboy_J.R. I've been considering running the Zubat line in my Machamp ex for that very reason. Shame Golbat only has 70 HP and still has one retreat cost.
Jake: I'm sorry for saying Pokemons
Also Jake 0.1 secs later: Pokemons
I like the very VERY rare case when I have pokedex, pokeball, and oak in my hand all at once. I use pokedex to look at the top of the deck and see if I want to draw or shuffle draw, shuffle with pokeball, and then draw with oak. Not good enough to use up a valuable slot, but when I have nothing else, it's better than red card
Yeah great combo there
Always seems like when I use red card, the opponent always draws professor's research and one other good top deck. Glad you talked about it. Can lose games as easily as it wins.
I want to like meinshao but to me it seems only suitable for hard tech options like sniping weezing arbok decks before they get started or something
Spragels: "Gyarados isn't doing that much"
Me here having a blast playing double garyados with starmie which destroys opponents
Gyrados + Misty is a sick combination
@@ValetinoLovebird Fr I literally destroyed a Charizard player just cause I got 3 head on misty on Gyarados and killed the moltress before it can do major inferno dance
@@srijoybhowmick3098that's just misty getting heads being broken, not gyarados. Also starmie carrying.
@@arsia. Well that is true but still fun destroying enemies
@@ValetinoLovebirdmisty is either you hit and you win or you flop and you lose
4:04 *proceeds to say pokémons again*
I had a double take and I’m still not sure, but I choose to believe it was intentionnal 😂
Jake is a masterful troll/comedian. Don't even get me started on Jake 2. Still got the B-tier.
On purpose
What about the tangela pronunciation?
Tang-ella instead of Tang-uh-luh
I like it, I like it a lot
The problem with colorless is that almost every hard "is colorless". Most decks only use one type of energy, and with 20 cards, makes a lot of sense. So they just have a higher cost for nothing.
Colorless can still help offset a deck from having every Pokémon with the exact same weakness. Although they'd be better at it if resistances were also a thing in this game.
@@EmeralBookwise Yes, but with no resistances and only 20 cards, where less than half of them will be the final pokemon, it's still irrelevant
@@TheLMBLucas: I don't think it's entirely irrelevant. Especially not early on when a player is still building up their collection and might not have enough cards for a fully mono color deck.
I mean, Farfetchid in particular is incredibly splashable.
@@EmeralBookwise When you are brand new to the game (or new account), it throws a couple of dozens of packs at you. At that point it's easy to build like a Blaine deck or Sandlash with something else, which is better than using Swanna.
Farfetch'd was good when everyone had shit cards, now it's more like a free prize for the opponent and a troll Pokeball for the player.
@@TheLMBLucas: Maybe, but personally I'd prefer to stick to just the two free daily packs for Genetic Apex, while saving up my pack hourglasses to get a head start on the next set whenever it drops.
Red Card gas a few problems going for it. The first is you'll never really know if you helped or harmed your opponents hand unless you run Hand Scope, which is a terrible card in it's own right.
The second is 20 card decks. With decks being so small the longer the game goes on, and the more cards your opponent plays makes late game Red Cards less effective than early game ones.
3 energy cost on low/unreliable damage is so, so sad. With costly retreats on top!
No added effects?
No abilities??
Where's the strategy? Yikes...
The fact they made some Pokemon so utterly boring & unusable.
Such lost opportunities
@@bubuxviv there are loads of examples- Parasect, Gogoat, Swanna, Dubwool to name a few :/
@bubuxviv I said "to name a few"
@@rewind_kitsunetrue. Some cards are just worse versions of others. I get the need for filler but it’s a little sad.
It's even worse here than the real TCG. I wish all cards could be playable. If a card just has a weak attack with no text, strategy or even a gimmick, what's the point of the cards existance?
I feel like the reason why the effectiveness/usefulness of some cards varies so greatly is that the devs were just throwing stuff at a wall to see what sticks and that they are gonna use that information as a reference for the power level of future cards
however, regarding the problem with stage 2s, I think they *have to* give us some way of "cheesing out" stage 2s, or else the meta is gonna be run by stage 1s/basics before long
I gotta say, I've been helped more often than not by an opponent using Red Card on me. Just earlier today it helped me out tremendously. I had an Omanyte and Staryu on my bench, the Red Card gave me an Omastar, Starmie EX and Misty. I was very happy with my new hand!
I haven't had the chance to use it in a real match yet, but Mienshao would be great counter-strategy in a Mewtwo EX/Gardevoir set by providing cheap damage, covering the Dark weakness, and having enough HP to tank at least 1 hit from anything earlygame that requires under 3 Energy (besides Pikachu EX) before going down while giving your Ralts and Mewtwo time to set up. Theoretically this would help against Electric Decks and opposing Mewtwo EX decks running Meowth.
Unfortunately I haven't ran into an opposing Mewtwo or Dark deck yet so I haven't use Mienshao.
Pokédex should really let you put the cards back in any order. It still wouldn't be a very strong card, but a lot better.
I think the problem with Gyarados is that by the time you have set it up (barring a lucky Misty) the opponent is setup and the resource denial isn't effective. If it cost 2 energy and did maybe 50 damage, the resource denial would allow you to wither down the opponent's Pokemon. Would pair nicely with Pidgeot in case they try to set up a bench Pokemon. I think one Pokemon that doens't get enough credit is Persian, another fantastic resource denial card that nets you card advantage on the way. Seen as there's no discard pile recursion in this game, a discarded evolution could end the game. There are lots of deck ideas to try but maybe a Psyduck/Aerodactyle line for more of a control deck. Could run red card just to mess with their card advantage and increase the chance of hitting an important card that might be in their hand after it resolves. I don't have the Persians to try this deck but I'd love to see an iteration of the deck
Gyarados would be good if it had at least 160-170 hp because then it could tank a psydrive and then hyperbeam which would then deny a psydrive next turn.
Wow such a nice Idea!
I have all the pieces lol
You’d be better off running Fearow at that point. While it doesn’t have as much HP it only takes two energy, deals 50 damage, AND it’s colorless.
Only 2 energy for a guaranteed removal would be so busted, when Fearow at the same cost requires a coin flip
Considering running Gyarados also requires the trash that is Magikarp, however, I'd think it would maybe be fair enough just to reduce the Energy cost from 4 to 3. Then again, in the future we might have better Magikarps which help search out their own evolution and could maybe break that, although we will almost certainly have better Gyarados by then too.
Mawile is similar and a low cost basic. Just gotta flip well.
Imagine if Psy Report was Mew's ability instead.
@HahnKirby I get the idea but for a stage 1 that's way to op
I had a lot of fun just throwing Meinshao and Golbat into every deck for a week when everyone was spamming pikachu and mewtwo ex decks. So often they'd win me games by hitting 60 repeatedly due to weaknesses. Ended up making a dedicated multi-type deck after that but things like whimsicott just never saw any use when nobody ran things weak to grass.
Seems to have been a lot more deck variety the past week though so targetting common weaknesses hasn't been too fruitful.
10:40 just today I had a bad 1-card hand. my opponent used Red Card and they have me a Pokeball, Professor's Research and some other 3rd card.
Dumb opponent
I run mienshao in a deck with starmie ex. It’s sort of like to counter electric decks. Especially good against pikachu decks. 1 energy to start doing dmg and apply pressure (+20 dmg if against electric). Then bring in starmie to deal the finishing blow. Not too bad of a deck!
I like it!
Mienshao was one of my staples when I first started playing. The Mien line is extremely helpful to early game players who don’t have a lot of cards
Its attack can be used with any single energy to provide meta-relevant fighting coverage to any deck. Makes it a really good active mon if you have to move first. Frankly stunned it's on his list.
@@WelshPolitoProject yeah that being on the list tells me a lot lol. bro doesnt cook like i thought sadly
Absolutely, it being on this list is INSANE. It's pretty good.
As a long time card player I can tell you, hand disruption of any kind is invaluable and no card is in their deck is useless. They may have a 5 card hand but unless you're playing supporter lock, much of that could be evolutions ready to play, Misty's to accelerate, Sabrina to disrupt. You're almost always better off dropping them down to 3 even at a 4 card hand because in the end, it's still 1 less resource they will have. They may get more basics set up earlier, but without the support to get them going, if you're playing aggressively, They will feel the effects of the card denial.
@@thatoneguy4783 Disagree. Firstly, that one card difference is made equal by the fact you had to sacrifice a card in order to hold and play red card at all. Secondly, some cards are just worth significantly more in this game, namely stage 1s & 2s which in many cases are essential to even have a chance at a win. Clearing a whole bunch of relatively weak cards at the risk of giving them the one or two cards they need to secure the win is just too risky imo. You only need to play the game to notice this, as so many people have commented red card is frequently advantageous for the person it is used against. There are niche situations where you have a higher chance of making it work such as immediately after an opponents stage 1 evolution but before a stage 2, but even then it's a dice roll, and is frequently just going to be beaten out by a card with near guaranteed use value.
As you said, no card in the deck is useless. In a _20 card game_ , you usually wind up getting what you need in very few turns or have an easy pivot, and most of the time someone is red carded they just get those cards right back because shuffling 12 cards is barely a shuffle.
But keep spreading the word that red card is good, I love when it's wasted on my decks :)
7/10 times red card actually HELPS me lol
Ngl I loved how you corrected yourself on plural "pokemons" still being just "pokemon" and then preceded to say "pokemons" anyway lol
I think of Mienshao the same way I think of Rapidash; if you're going first, it does decent damage on your first attacking turn because you can evolve it straight away. Rapidash has more HP and a supporter to buff it more, but it's been decent in my Fighting decks when I didn't have a lot of other fighting cards to run.
3 things:
1) As someone else said, Mew being bad is a good thing, but I do wish it was a colorless energy to use the Psy Report. Kinda sucks it can only really get played in psychic decks.
2) I think there should be a trainer card that combines Hand Scope and Red Card into one. Something like, “View your opponents hand. Choose whether to shuffle it back into their deck and draw 3 cards, or your opponent draws a card.” Something along those lines. Maybe that’s dumb but hey.
3) I’ve been using Mienshao in my Machamp deck and it’s been performing well. The problem is that Dugtrio is the same card with a better effect. The colorless make it feel like it would be better is something like an Aqua deck, or even a Psychic deck as a Dark deterrent, but it’s probably just not worth it as dark decks are so rare and Psychic has so many powerful options.
9:54 The only time I could see myself using the Pokédex card is if I needed to decide between using the professors research and another supporter card; seeing which 3 cards are on the top of my deck to determine whether I should use the professors research to get those cards, or using giovanni or Sabrina to do extra damage or swap out the Pokemon. Very situational though
Hey nido queen is pretty solid Pokemon. It's starting form can just call nidoran to the bench is like free real estate 😂. And u can set up nidoking using nidoqueen. Also if u planning to set up nidoqueen. Just from just one nidoking u can get like 80+ 50 extra damage. Ie 130 damage and it is pretty insane.
Man, the poke flute would be an amazing idea! An item card thats so specific but unlocks the absolute potential of a support card. On top of it, imagine we get a cool snorlax EX at some point? It would be super fun, strong or balanced, and the problem with Snorlax is how it can 100% kill guarantee your death in the end if you only have 2 pokemon and you get sabrina forced into it.
But i really love Snorlax and and i always try to make it work. I think with a good number of basics you maybe can work around that and you need to be extremely careful. Also never play it with EX cards, you really need the 3 prize points to work with it.
If they made a Great Ball supporter card that pulls stage 1s I would be overjoyed, even if it had a one-per-deck or coin flip requirement
yea I really tried to run snorlax as a tank but I would lose because I just couldn't switch him out, so I ended up running articuno instead (similar health less retreat and more consistent damage
12:05 Mienshao + Golbat + Whimsiscott all in 1 deck is a sleeper budget deck.
They’re all colorless 1 energy, allowing the player to use any energy, while providing type-counters (fighting, dark, grass)
I saw an interesting Mienshao + Starmie deck. I don’t know that I super love it, but it does have really good early tempo.
I'll check it out!
at least tangela has tangrowth potential. i hope they dont do my viney boy dirty. theres some lovely paper tangrowths
Yep, Mienshao is great to spash fighting for type advantage against normals, dark, and electric types. It’s cheap and fast and use it with Weezing or weezing and Zapdos for 3 color deck. Didn’t even know this mon that well before playing this, but it has def grown on me since using it.
A cool card would be if nidorina was able to call the rest of nidoking family into ur hand. That would make it much easier to have the synergy between the two.
It's so weird that Nidoran F can only search for Nidoran and not any pokemon of the type like Caterpie.
I honestly don't agree with your gyarados pick, I have a deck built with him being the main focus. I build him up, while having greninja on the side for extra dmg.
I used Mienshao a lot before getting other fighting pokemon and it's great for early damage and chip while you build something else. In my case I used it with Marowak and Grapploct. Only needs 1 energy to both attack and retire and 40 damage early game while other Pokémon need more energy to land an attack is great for early advantage. You can change it at anytime when your other Pokémon are ready and people don't want to waste Sabrina on a weak Pokémon
Great vid. Normal types taking Ls left and right lmao
Porygon evolutions should be good
@@F0XD1E I hope so. I love p2
I feel like cards like Mawile, Gyarados and Fearow would be really interesting with the energy removal, especially vs. decks that want to have that consistent energy flow like char ex and mewtwo ex, but it's just so hard to get them to that point. I wonder if an EX of any of those would help with that? Give them more HP and more time to do their thing. Having a Mewtwo out and having an entire energy or two removed would be pretty devastating while also dealing a not insignificant amount of damage.
I ran Mienshao in a Gengar/Alakazam deck early on (before the meta really settled, mainly due to not having 2x Clefable yet) and while it was not great, it had some positives. It hard countered the Dark decks that would beat psychic. If you start with Mienfoo on T2 then Mienshao on T4, it kills Arbok & Weezing (With Giovanni). I think it looks worse than it is, because Psychic is so strong in the meta right now. Golbat is seeing play in decks and its a straight downgrade from Mienshao, so if the meta shifted I could see it being better.
One card I think you missed would be Rhydon. Melmetal is Niche at best, and has more HP, a really good active, higher damage, and a lower retreat cost, plus its stage 1 can cheat the energy to maybe cheese the opponent. I don't think there's any deck that could make Rhydon even sort of manageable. I honestly think they would have to buff Rhyhorn/don's hp by like 50% to even start considering the card which is wild
Nidoqueen requires way too much setup to be good, and getting even a single Nidoking can be a pain. It might work in very stall heavy decks that can let you setup on the bench, but I am not surprised we don’t see these decks in today’s meta. Very inefficient.
Yeah. Maybe it'd be a bit better if Nidoran F searched for all Darkness Pokemon and not exclusively Nidoran M? It's hard to justify ever using Nidoran F's attack when PokeBall and Oak are 2 ofs in nearly every deck.
Mienshao, I used in a misty water deck when I started out as a counter to lightning type pokemon. Later, when I got more water options, it came out. It did some decent work while I used it.
Red Card can be effective if you can wait to play it after your opponent has both used their Oaks and/or Pokeballs AND has more than three cards in their hand. You can negate the card advantage that they had gained. Tough to time this though, and Red Card becomes dead weight if that situation never arises
Meinshao has worked well for me in my Polywrath deck for psychic coverage. :O
the thing with gyarados is that I think its powerful in the case of centiskorch, charizard and mewtwo where they discard down due to their powerful attacks and then you stop a consecutive turn use of their ulimate that way. That being said, probably better just to focus on murder murder
Yeah gyarados has two issues. One, magikarp dies to almost everything so just that is a hurdle. Two, it doesn't work unless you pull off a great Misty. Even a one energy Misty doesn't really help gyarados with 4 energy attack only, like imagine if it had a 3 energy attack it could maybe do something.
I just hope they make a gyarados EX that is actually playable, though I'm sad because 1* gyarados art is great.
The other thing is that even if you get a really good Misty, you might not have Gyarados. So now you have a lot of energy on the easiest card to KO in the game. Super risky.
I've been playing a NidoQueen deck and the issue is not the energy or the evolution, but the fact that you have to choose the support. The deck works, but you have to run or Meowth to speed up or kanghaskan to put pressure on the early game.
However, with only 6 slots on your deck and being forced to run two oak and two pokeballs, you have only 2 other options.
You need speed x to remove the nidoran bad positioned, but you also get a lot of value from sabrina. You also can use red card to slow down your opponent.
Also there is no way you make a 3x0 because you need to have your colorless pokemon killed to get your nidoking or nidoqueen on position.
I think something would help the deck a lot is if nidoking did 10 more damage. Nidoking always feels that he is 10 short on life or 10 short on damage when you are forced to play it. Poison is not that big of threat to Venusaur X or Lapras X and Charizard X can punish you before dying to poison.
Nidoking is really great against no ex decks that rarely have a huge pokemon and also really hurts mewtwo decks.
But a great ball like card ( choose monsters from deck) or a dark energy misty like card can change everything for the deck.
Have you tried runnin one less Nidoquen line? 12 investment into only 2 lines feel like too much.
I tried Mienshao in a Dragonite deck because it requires a single colorless energy and that's what I was looking for to apply early/mid-game pressure while I tried to get Dragonite online. I figured it was a bonus that a fighting type in that deck would throw off my opponents.
It works... ok. The problem is Weezing exists. If you run Weezing ability only (no dark energy in the deck) it does apply less pressure than the 40 damage Mienshao, but it requires 0 energy. So it comes online faster, it takes 0 resources from Dragonite, and it's bulkier.
Given that Weezing works even without any energy I just have a hard time imagining any color deck where Weezing doesn't work better than Mienshao... unless maybe you really need something that hits with fighting damage, I guess...?
Am running a one energy cost deck in the old TCG on gameboy it's pretty okay. But wow they debuff pokedex was it always like that? In the old school game pokedex let's you see 5 cards&rearrange them but to just look at 3 cards in your small 20 size deck seems like a waste.
I feel like a lot of the normal type Pokémon are still balanced around colourless energy cards counting double. If there was the option to take double colourless energy, things like snorlax or chansey or even Swanna would make a lot more sense
Gyarados full art is so cool. I want it to work so bad.
Same. My favorite mon and one of my favorite cards…but it’s sooo bad. We’ll eventually get an EX version just don’t know when
@@xxWicKedWayZxx idk, if it get EX, it would be different art, no? (I really like this one) Maybe more support card. like more reliable energy ramp than Misty?
I like gyarados. Yea it takes a tone of energy, but I think the losing one energy thing can be more impactful than you think sometimes. Hitting tanky mon trying to get to that 4 energy. He can force someone to keep committing energy to their active mon instead of the bench. I do wish they would change the wording on the card that you got to pick which pokemon lost the energy
I know! It can be extremely disruptive against Mewtwo EX decks because the whole strategy is to be able to use its psydrive consistently via Gardevoir. Even losing one energy can give you the time to take it out and win the game. Honestly, I am surprised someone haven’t found a way to make this card work to counter Mewtwo, Charizard decks.
It's so funny to see Tangela in this video after I beat an Articuno ex that got 4 energy with misty LMAO (Hypno and Venomoth carried Tangela so much)
It's a pretty bad card tho I feel like if it has more HP like 100 - 120 HP and heals 20 while doing those 40 damage it could be pretty good as a basic.
I'm using it just because I like it along with scyther the other 2 mentioned earlier and 1 Pinsir.
The thing that I like about this game being so much based around luck is that you can win with like any card, sure probably will often won 2 or 3 of 10 matches if it's a bad card but you can win if you just make it work with other cards and that's awesome in comparison with normal TCG.
I ran into a Nido Deck and I guess the other had really good luck, as they had the King and the Queen out in no time and wrecked me. Was a fun match.
I never use red card, but I live in fear of it. It can affect how I play, e.g. it can discourage me from using Professor's Research on turn 1. I hope that my opponents live in fear of red card too. It means I can get its actual benefit (fear) without even having it in my deck!
Great point
Just some random ideas on how to use the worst cards mentioned in the deck. Forgive me if there any similar cards that can do these ideas better.
Tangela - I assume you would use this with a Butterfree deck to get more extra health to stall an extra turn or two to stack energies.
Ditto - Would probably work as a fun gimmick in a Dragonite/Dual type deck. Basically to hold any energies that are no use to any of your Pokemon on the field. Probably the most useful as an EX Pokemon counter.
Mew - Defiantly an early game only Pokemon while you set up your team similar to Meowth. Basically to see what Stage 1 & 2 Pokemon your opponent has and playing Red Card when you know their about to set up evolution.
Gyardos - With Misty that 4 energy investment doesn't seem to bad. The 150 HP should withstand most powerful attacks giving you 200 damage if you attack twice. The energy removal is super useful for stopping bench Pokemon from gaining energies while the opponent needs to invest energies into their active Pokemon to attack. Meaning if you defeat the active Pokemon while the bench has no energy investment, the rest of the battle would be super easy. The only downside I think is Magikrap because you do risk it being your only Pokemon at the start of the match, or dragged into play by Sabrina.
Tangela is probably also designed for a future Tangrowth drop, since most Evolving pokemon are more disappointing than their non evolving equivalents. Especially since it has the same effective HP as Tauros until you use Absorb for a 3rd time, Tangela does less damage than Tauros too, which means Tangela is only really worth it with Erica or searching for it with Caterpie
Rattata and Raticate are really funny to me because it's literally the statline of Rattata and Raticate from the original run of those cards from the TCG. They're really bad in the context of PTCGP, but when they first released way back when, they were not terrible early mons, though they did get outclassed pretty quickly.
Rattata actually lost of it's most important boons in TCGP, Base Set Rattata had free retreat, and having something like Super Fang on Raticate would give it a niche. In TCG Pocket though They're just worse Doduo and Dodrio, especially when Dodrio does get that coveted free retreat.
@starmangalaxy2001 Ah, true, I had forgotten about the free Retreat. And Super Fang. I used them all the time in the TCG, surprised I had forgotten, tbh.
Would Rhydon also fall under the same category as Gyrados then? 4 energy stage 2 pokemon with a 100 damage hit (but Rhydon has even less hp at 120). When I got it I thought it would be so strong since I'm still working on building up my Fighting Deck but it definitely did not feel good 😅
I ran gyarados along with blastoise ex for the pvp event and it got me to the 50 wins. Misty is the saving grace for it. Yes it's a gamble but it's worth it. And losing the energy is relevant. I've had a lot of games against mewtwo ex where it prevented the psydrive. Or i've sabrina'd out the dragonite and managed to discard the energy they only have one of and aren't getting back next turn. If they're setting up on their bench I'm usually just killing the active, meaning they need to keep things around to switch in that aren't their setup to prevent them from losing that energy, and i'm just getting points. The math with most attacks means well timed potions keep it alive after 2 hits from most things. In my experience at least it's been a bit of a terror.
the meinshao is good in Mewtwo decks as it's an answer to some dark type decks. Since there isn't any strong dark types that can be made in basic or stage 1, meinshao can kill them before they evolve. and since it's a two stage and requires one energy it's a small amount of space in your 20 card deck. That's about it is it the best no, but it's like a B-Low A Tier for me and works quite well.
When we get ranked it will probably be best of 3 so I'd expect a 3-5 card sideboard. Mienshao is probably going to be a huge counter to Pika, it can one shot all the basics in the deck that aren't zapdos and Pika ex has to have a full bench to kill it. Right now the game is the wild west it's still so early to really judge how some of these cards pan out.
Gyarados is good with misty bc you get an energy advantage and shut down the opponent
A potential energy advantage. But yeah, the Misty card is broken if RNG-sus favors you.
funny thing about skiddo is that your opponent will think its safe to tank it tho
Hold off evolving it until third energy, then surprise the defending pokemon with the 70!
Gogoat is pretty tanky itself too, with 120 HP.
Yeah, but why run Gogoat over Parasect, which just does an extra 10 damage.
if the effect of Mew's attack was just a once-per-turn ability, Mew would be so much better. it would still be a low HP mon that's an easy victory point for your opponent if you pass with it in the active slot, but at least in theory you could protect it by retreat it after you use the ability.
Mienshao was a good fighting deck filler for me while I was still working to get all the cards I needed to build the deck I wanted. And I think that’s kind of the mindset with a few of the cards on your list like Rattata and Chansey and even Tangela: they’re to help beginners get started until they get enough bigger and better cards.
I actually slot meinshao and golbat with a starmie EX deck, and it does very well into meta decks like pikachu and mewtwo. Meinshao early game puts great pressure into pikachu decks early and sets you up for one shots for your starmie EX. The fact that it requires only 1 colorless energy makes it pretty flexible in which deck you can slot them in.
Do you think they'll add a supporter that helps with coin flips? Like getting a second chance flip or something (Couldnt combo with Misty)
Snorlax is actually a pretty nice wall to gain time for building strategies; 150 HP for a base pokémon are insane
Sabrina:
Love your channel! I use Pokedex alongside pokeball to shuffle the deck sometimes, but half of the time you end up just not using it at all 😅
dude i just made a gary sleep deck, LOVE it. its a TON of fun and ive mostly gotten wins. running two hypno line, 2 gary line, and 2 regular lapras. its just a game of making the most use of every energy you get and using sabrina well to try and manage energy off what theyre building and using hypno to keep applying energy and stall.
There’s an interesting strat with Pokédex where when you aren’t running a deck where you need poke balls to pull all your pokemon you can run pokeball and Pokédex, use pokedex to see your next pulls and then pokeball if they are bad draws, comboing this with profs research also goes kinda crazy. It’s good for decks with fossils or something like machamp.
We all know that Gogoat will be the GOAT of Pokémon Pocket when it’s all said and done.
I love seeing a lot of these cards you'll just never see in game and how they can be improved to be more viable
Red Card is one of the best cards in the game. You just have to know how to use it.
An example is I play a Dragonite deck. Dragonite has 160 hp. Mewtwo ex does 150 damage. A good Mewtwo player who sees I’m playing Dragonite is going to hold onto Giovanni, so they can one shot Dragonite the turn I bring it out. So, everytime I bring out Dragonite when playing against a Mewtwo deck, I play Red Card to get rid of their Giovanni.
You can make similar plays to stop Sabrina. Most decks run 2 Sabrinas. So if your opponent hasn’t played Sabrina yet and a situation comes up where Sabrina would really mess up your day, there’s a good chance your opponent has been holding onto a Sabrina waiting for such a situation to come up. So you can play Red Card to prevent them from playing Sabrina.
It’s also a good counter to Stage 2 cards. If your opponent has had Charmander on their bench for 3 turns and then suddenly evolves it to Charmeleon, there’s a good chance they’ve had Charizard in their hand for a while and were just waiting to draw a Charmeleon. So you can get rid of the Charizard that’s coming next turn by playing Red Card.
Or Stage 1 cards. Did your opponent just attack with Mankey and do 10 damage to themselves? They probably have a Primeape in their hand that’s going to hit you for 100 damage next turn. Get rid of it with Red Card.
Even if you’re not someone who’s good at making reads like that, Red Card can still be good by just playing the odds. If your opponent has 5 cards in their hand, and you get rid of them and give them 3, you’ve lowered the chances of them having the card they need, because they’re less likely to have it in a hand of 3 cards than they are in a hand of 5.
There are certainly very specific situations where it can be handy, but by the time you have a fully loaded dragonite they're down to 5 cards in their deck, so "shuffling" that deck usually accomplishes squat. Not to mention there are plenty of people who evolve or attack just to... well, evolve or attack. So trying to "read" those moves is going to fail you half the time. It's just not that effective in a game with 20-card decks. Especially when damn near every deck runs 2 pokeballs and 2 professor oaks.
IF you're very familiar with the meta decks, can identify them early, and put the work in to card count discard piles and what-not, it _can_ be effective, but at this point in the game I've found it more effective to save those slots in my deck for more consistently useful cards.
@ I’ve gotten Dragonite out and fully powered by turn 4. If you’re not getting him out until your deck is almost out of cards, chances are you’ve already lost the game.
Reads are a thing in virtually every competitive game and are a necessary skill if you want to be a good player. You have to make reads in Pokémon even if you don’t use Red Card.
Don't know if people would agree with me. I feel like if they made the mew card have an ability move to reveal the opppenants hand if the mew is in the active slot, then have the attack be its own thing. The card wouldn't be as bad, but not broken or OP. Somthing like the wheezing card with their Gas Leek Ability.
@@andrewsikes1517 I would have loved an usable Mew if i could obtain it in a doable way like every other card (maybe with a basic Holo version in Mewtwo pack with the Immersive being just aesthetic). With the Cardex requirement, funnily enough, the worse Mew is the better the game becomes for F2P and low spender players.
I was musing the other day about a colourless energy but typed cards deck but the options are not there for it. I think it can be fun like the funny coins no EX deck I set up.
The point of Mienshao is to play the same role as Golbat: Colorless attack of an extra off-Typing. It is arguably better, since its match-up is into the more prevalent deck.
Jigglypuff makes sense because Wigglytuff is a 60 attack 2 energy with 100hp. Its pretty quick for most decks needing an offfset of their main character. If you go second and have the setup, its a hard card for the opponent to get rid as the first set without taking big damage.
In the start for the dolo PvP, Raticate was definitely a nice early game mon to get everything going along with Farfetch'd
In your opinion, what's a good wall with the lowest retreat cost?
Snorlax in Dragonite is pretty great tbh. The only time I've had issues with Snorlax is when opponents realize it's gonna take me 4 turns to swap him out, but so far in like 95% of games, people repeatedly attack into it until it dies and I never even have to think about the retreat. A surprising amount of people just Sabrina it, and help me with it lol. I think it will get worse as people get better at the game, but rn, as a wall I've had a ton of success with it
I remember when I was playing the expert bots and I faced against nidoqueen. It took like a whole 45 minutes cause the bot kept on pulling out nidorans and their evolution as they had a infinite amount of them
My thinking on red card is that it's supposed to be used in conjunction with the periscope, you check to see if their hand is good or bad first and then slap them with the red card if they have anything problematic. In decks where your focus is only 2 pokemon lines, you have room for extra items and they can come in handy slowing your opponent down if your hand isn't looking hot either
i use a chansey and a butterfree to take a shit ton of hits to setup my high cost cards like gyarados and charizard
How is Nidoqueen bad?? I have been swept SO many times by this deck. The amount of damage it can do with one attack is insane.
@@lucarudloff687 while I don’t think it’s one of the top 10 worst cards, it’s definitely something that can be super hard to set up. Definitely don’t think it’s horrible tho
I think Lickitung deserves to be higher on the list, honestly. While I understand it's funny to see a big number when you get a rare streak, its effective damage is capped by the current HP of the defending Pokemon.
Against a target with infinite HP, its expected damage with each attack would be exactly 60. (The math on this isn't too bad, as long as you know the sum of the infinite series (1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8...) is equal to 1. You can think of Lickitung's attack as having a 1/2 chance of doing that first 60 damage, a 1/4 chance of adding a second 60 damage, a 1/8 chance of doing a third 60 damage, etc.) That's already not great for three energy. But once you've exceeded the defending Pokemon's current HP, any additional heads do nothing for you.
So for example, against an undamaged Mewtwo EX, you have a 50% chance of doing 0 (T__), a 25% chance of doing exactly 60 (HT_), a 12.5% chance of doing exactly 120 damage (HHT), and a 12.5% chance of doing 150 damage (HHH). That gives you an expected damage of (0 * 0.5) + (60 * 0.25) + (120 * 0.125) + (150 * 0.125) = 0 + 15 + 15 + 18.75 = 48.75. For three energy! Maybe not the worst card in the game, but definitely a contender if you ask me.
As for Red Card, the only time I feel safe using it is if the opponent has been waiting for a while for the Stage 1 evolution for something they're trying to build up to Stage 2. If the opponent plays Ralts immediately and then doesn't play Kirlia for a while, they'll probably have a sizeable hand by that point, which means they're likely to have the Gardevoir. At that point, Red Card seems like a reasonable play.
I've seen a lot of opponents throw it out on turn 1 against me, and it's like... sure, you put me down a card, but you also went down a card yourself. That's not card advantage.
Saying Gyarados is bad is definitely a skill issue because you completely ignore the fact that you only lost 1 point when he is defeated and his ability is a threat to any deck require a lot of Energy for attack such as Mewtwo and Articuno.
4 energy for a 100 damage attack gives your opponent a lot of opportunity to develop their attacker with enough energy that removing 1 each turn does not disrupt nearly enough. Gyarados requires Misty cheese to be actually threatening, as that allows it to come online before your opponent is swinging with their big attackers.
Source: Tried really hard to make Gyarados work. Starmie-ex, Frosmoth, even Hypno shenanigans. Only time Gyarados actually won games is either my opponent bricked or I got a lucky Misty. And a LOT of games lost because Magikarp is easily the worst Basic in the game, aside from maybe Ditto.