No honest person can resist the attraction of Pokemon Gold. That’s why Pokemon TCG Pocket’s Wisdom of Sea and Sky expansion set is going all in on generation two when it arrives on July 29.
This set will be one of the game’s larger offerings, featuring more than 200 cards. I’m sure that has the most ravenous collectors breathing a sigh of relief, since the past two expansions — Eevee Grove and Extradimensional Crisis — have both had smaller complimentary card lists to build on Celestial Guardians’ generation seven theme.
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Though the full card list isn’t available yet, we know Wisdom of Sea and Sky’s chase cards will be generation two’s legendary birds Ho-Oh and Lugia, while the addition of Umbreon and Espeon Ex variants will add more options for Eevee decks. Generation two starters and baby Pokemon like Togepi and Pichu are also prominently featured in the base set, which is a fun nod to the series’ introduction of pocket monster breeding.
Most importantly of all, the new set introduces one of the most important — and rarest — Pokemon ever. Gold and Silver’s elusive raging sea monster was the first shiny Pokemon most trainers ever saw, changing forever how a number of players (including myself) would interact with the series.
The hunt for the red Gyarados begins
In the remote northern areas of the Johto region, you can find the Lake of Rage. This is the home of one of the rarest Pokemon alive: a Gyarados that’s become a local legend with its different hue and particularly bad anger issues.
The red Gyarados was the perfect addition to generation two: It served as an implicit explanation of shiny Pokemon, which were a new feature in the mainline Pokemon games, while also giving players a special, powerful monster to add to their team.
It’s a formative moment for anyone who picks up and plays Pokemon for the first time, and it’s one of the best hooks to explain the appeal of the franchise nearly 30 years after its introduction.
Pokemon TCG Pocket’s initial generation two set paying homage to the red raging sea beast makes a ton of sense in this regard, and it’s indicative of thoughtful set design from developer DeNA.
Red Gyarados doesn’t look like it’ll be all that powerful in the mobile game, but the beautiful (and bombastically glittery) card art will endear it to many trading card collectors.
Pokemon TCG Pocket’s trading system gets overhauled
Say bye-bye to your trade tokens, because the mobile trading card game is getting a complete trading system overhaul soon. The changes to player trading will arrive July 29, launching concurrently with the Wisdom of Sea and Sky expansion set.
As trade tokens are phased out of the game, you’ll have the opportunity to convert this obsolete currency into pack hourglasses and stardust. This trade-in will be available for one year, so there’s no rush to dump your tokens immediately — just don’t forget to get your value’s worth.
You’ll still need to spend in-game currency to make a trade, but now you just have to spend stardust — this is what you spend to unlock flairs that activate when you play your Pokemon in battle. Whereas there were very few ways to earn trade tokens, you earn stardust every time you open a card pack, making this a much more accessible resource.
Since you’ll need more stardust than ever to consistently trade with your friends, developer DeNA is doubling the amount you gain when you pull cards you already have.
The mechanic of extra cards being consumed during a trade is also being done away with completely. It was silly that trading put you at a card deficit, so now you’ll be able to make one-to-one swaps with other players.
A wishlist is being added so you can indicate which cards you want to trade for with purely online friends. Since there’s no way to chat with other players in Pokemon TCG Pocket, this will create a way to communicate before sending a trade offer. You can add up to 20 cards to your wishlist at a time.
There will still be restrictions on trading that stymie how much I utilize the feature — the highest rarity cards you can trade are one-star full arts, and new set expansions still have a temporary trade ban applied to them until they’ve been out for a couple of weeks. It’s nice to see DeNA take steps toward making this feature more useful, though, because the original iteration of player trading was so costly and restrictive that it didn’t feel worthwhile to engage with it.
