This is excellent news for trainers who are starting to tire of Pokémon TCG Pocket. Since its launch on October 30, 2024, the simplified mobile version of the Pokémon trading card game has been releasing expansions without ever offering anything truly revolutionary. Aside from the addition of trainer trading – a welcome feature but widely criticized for its excessive restrictions – Pokémon TCG Pocket is content to offer new cards, always more beautiful, certainly, but rarely capable of upsetting the balance of the games. Yet, the app boasts of offering a fast-paced and intensive variation on the rules of the physical card game, meant to motivate collectors to get into battle.
But after several months of launch, it's clear that the formula is struggling to reinvent itself, despite two major expansions and three sets of themed boosters. The most recent releases, however, seem to follow a strategy aimed at bring TCG Pocket closer to the original TCG. More and more mechanics borrowed from the physical card game are being introduced in this mobile version to try to energize and diversify the gameplay. After a Helio card recalling the functioning of the Boss Order, or an adaptation of the Mashynn card, the Super Candy arrives in the Astral Guardians boosters to turn the meta of Pokémon TCG Pocket upside down for good.
Let the era of evolving Pokémon begin
On paper, evolving Pokémon have never been unplayable on TCG Pocket. But with the arrival of Super Candy, the pace of the games promises to accelerate and the basic Pokémon-ex may well be relegated to the background. According to the logic of the video game franchise, evolved creatures are (generally) more resistant and more powerful than the others. This rule therefore applies to the card game, in which evolving Pokémon have more life points and more devastating attacks. This is not surprising, since it takes at least three turns to land a Charizard, for example.
But the Super Candy allows you to bypass some rules to make the evolution mechanics more efficient. It works in the same way as the physical card game. The item allows you to place a Level 2 Pokémon in your hand on top of the corresponding basic Pokémon, without having to go through Level 1, an effect that cannot be used during the first round, nor on a basic Pokémon that has just been put into play.
Thus, certain Level 2 Pokémon formerly considered Too weak because they are too slow to put into play will be able to come back to the forefront. Ever faster and more aggressive archetypes also called "turbo decks" will start to dominate online games in the coming days. So prepare to replace the structure of your decks and watch for the effects and attacks of evolving Pokémon that you might have ignored in the past.
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