I will admit it: I roll my eyes when I catch some manga on TV. I don’t like it as a drawing style. And obviously I’m too old to like it.
But still I am curious, what makes the Pokémon TCG so succesful? Would I have loved it as a kid? How complex is the TCG? And will I have to play it with my nephew in a few years from now?
The basic facts are easily available on wikipedia. Released 1996 in Japan based on the video games, 1998 in the USA by Wizards of the Coast. Since 2003 Nintendo’s own Pokémon USA company took over in the USA. I remember it as being the first game to beat Magic as the best-selling CCG/TCG for quite some time (according to the list in the Scrye magazine).
Despite losing that place back to Magic, Pokémon is still on ofe the most succesful TCGs. The 40th set, the new Platinum base set, has been published in February. The last 12 sets are legal in tournament play in the so called Modified format.
How does the game work? It’s a battle game, where the active Pokémon of each player does the fighting. Additional Pokémon are played on the bench. If a Pokémon is defeated, it is knocked out and the succesful player draws one of his six random prize cards. One wins, when the opponent loses his active Pokémon and he doesn’t have a reserve Pokémon on the bench, or when he succesfully claims all of his prize cards, or when the opponent runs out of cards.
The resource for attacks are energy cards, which are attached to a Pokémon and discarded to use them. So a good chunk of the deck has to consist out of energy cards in order to use the more powerful special attacks. A Pokémon has a given numer of hitpoints, complexity is added by different energy types and Pokémon which are especially vulnerable or resistant to certain energy types.
Fun is added by higher generation Pokémon, which are more powerful than basic Pokémon, but can only be played on the matching basic Pokémon. So there is a mechanism to upgrade characters. I can imagine that this is fun. I’m not sure that there are several different paths for basic Pokémon to evolve, but I would guess so. One has to focus on few different basic Pokémon to pull off evolutions into second generation Pokémon. I liked character development in the form of replacing cards in Babylon 5, where the starting characters could be replaced by more powerful versions from later in the show.
What I don’t like from a strategist’s point of view, that a lot of actions an attacks involve coin tosses to evaluate the exact number of damage. I believe that CCGs in general are random enough by random card draws. Though it is more kid friendly, because the worse deck can win with some luck in the coin tosses. I personally like random elements as an excuse for losing. But still a bit frustrating if the perfect deck just doesn’t do much damage because of bad luck.
I can imagine playing this with a nephew despite the graphics, which are clearly targeting children. Then again I wonder if TCGs aren’t too expensive for kids. If you are interested in a good mix out of energy cards, basic Pokémon, higher generation Pokémon and support cards for a beginner’s deck, I guess you can ask some experienced ten-year-old and have more success than with calculating probabilities.
Well, one can wonder why they didn’t publish this with graphics which appeal to all age groups. The strategic depth should suffice for older gamers, but the theme and the graphics will not. Tournament play is divided into age groups, where the oldest players are 16 and older. I can very well understand that this isn’t a hobby which one gives up easily. For people who start with TCGs in that age, Magic is probably much more attractive.
For the TCG fan, who wants to know it all. The game play explained in a neat multimedia presentation: http://www.go-pokemon.com/tcg/howtoplay/demo/
