Pokémon TCG Pocket’s new expansion is the game’s biggest misstep yet

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The Pokémon TCG Pocket received a fresh booster pack today, which typically occurs at the month’s end. Usually, this would excite fans – a new pack means new cards to collect and a growing card collection – but the Deluxe Pack ex has left players with little to celebrate.

The Deluxe Pack ex booster expansion is a departure from previous releases. Rather than introducing hundreds of new cards, it primarily features cards released over the past year. While it includes a small number of new full-art cards and some alternate foil versions of older cards, it won’t change the game’s current strategies. This is because all the cards in the pack are mechanically identical to those already available from previous expansions.

As a big Pokémon fan, I was really excited to hear about the Deluxe Pack ex booster! The Pokémon Company said it’s another chance to collect those awesome older Pokémon ex cards, and that’s exactly what I’ve been wanting. What’s even better is that each pack is *guaranteed* to have a card that’s Pokémon ex or even rarer! I did notice they’re a little smaller – only four cards instead of five – but honestly, getting a guaranteed Pokémon ex more than makes up for that difference. It’s a great deal!

This would be true if these packs were simply another chance to find older Pokémon ex cards, as The Pokémon Company claims. However, that’s not how it works. Even though the new and old sets look exactly the same, and the cards themselves say they belong to both sets, cards you get from Deluxe Pack ex don’t count towards completing the older card collections. For example, if you pull an Incineroar ex from a Deluxe Pack ex, it will be marked as found in the Deluxe Pack ex collection, but not in the original Celestial Guardians collection where the card first appeared.

The strange thing about this is that these new cards do factor into other parts of the game. For example, if you get an Incineroar ex card from the Deluxe Pack ex booster, it will contribute to finishing the loaner deck and theme deck, and also count towards all related themed expansions. This applies to cards players already collected, too – many players logging in today will discover that a lot of the challenges and themed collections for the new expansion are already completed. It seems the only thing not connected is the card dex itself.

Man, it’s *so* frustrating when you’re close to finishing your card dex in Pokémon TCG Pocket! I mean, yeah, the cards I pull from the new set will help me in battles, but honestly, collecting is the whole point of this game. And when I’m just a few cards away from completing a dex… it’s a real nightmare trying to find them. Pokémon ex cards are the worst! They’re usually way rarer, and it costs a whopping 500 pack points to craft just *one* of them. That means I’d have to open at least 100 packs to get a single card I need! It’s seriously a grind.

The Deluxe Pack ex is huge, containing nearly 400 cards in its collection. While many of these cards are from previous sets, the pack has its own separate collection, meaning cards from older sets don’t count towards completion. To fill the Deluxe Pack ex collection, you’ll need to collect almost 400 different cards specifically from this pack.

It’s already tough keeping up with the game – they release new expansions every month, so you’re always chasing the next big thing. But it gets even more frustrating because this new Deluxe Pack expansion is only available for a month! Once October 29th hits, it’s gone, and you won’t be able to get any more cards from it. The Pokémon Company says it *will* come back eventually, but that leaves a lot of us with an unfinished card collection for a long time, and no way to fix it until then. It’s a real bummer!

It’s mathematically impossible for someone who doesn’t spend money to collect all the cards before the set is removed. A typical player can open two card packs daily, yielding about 240 cards over 30 days. However, the set contains 379 cards, leaving them significantly short. While a player could use pack hourglasses to increase their card acquisition, even obtaining 379 cards that way wouldn’t guarantee a complete set. The probability of getting every unique card from that many packs is incredibly low – practically impossible.

To add to the problem, Pokémon cards in your collection are marked with the set they originally came from. For example, if you only have one Incineroar ex, and you got it from the Deluxe Pack ex, you currently can’t trade it, because the game doesn’t allow trading cards from the newest sets. This also raises worries about trading in the future – imagine needing just one more Pokémon ex card from Extradimensional Crisis to complete your collection, so you add it to your wishlist and try to trade for it. There’s a 50/50 chance you’ll receive the Deluxe Pack version of the card instead of the regular one you need, and unfortunately, there’s no way to avoid getting that version.

Wonder Pick sometimes incorrectly marks cards as “owned” if you’ve gotten them from the Deluxe Pack expansion, even when you’re currently selecting from the original set. This makes it difficult to keep track of which cards you actually have. It’s a confusing situation now, and it’s likely to become even more problematic as more packs are released.

Right now, it’s difficult to say for sure why the card dex is in this state. It could simply be a bug that will be fixed in a future game update, completing both card dexes. Alternatively, it might be a deliberate attempt to encourage spending by capitalizing on players’ fear of missing out (FOMO) and the game’s strong collecting community that has developed over the past year. Regardless of the reason, it’s obvious that this is the most significant mistake the game has made so far, and it could alienate a large, active, and previously satisfied player base.

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2025-09-30 12:47