Matthew BaileyFor game 20 of the “Bailey Family Sorta Summer Board Game Bonanza” I thought it fitting to not pick just a board game but a juggernaut that has swept the Bailey household over the last few months and that is the “Pokemon Trading Card Game.”
Now I am going to be coming at this in a couple of different perspectives. Specifically, I am going to be talking about the “Battle Academy” as well as the game as a whole.
Now firstly some background on me. I have dabbled over the last 25 years or so in Magic the Gathering the arbiter of CCGs (Collectable Card Game) and in the last 8 years have gotten quite heavily into Hearthstone which is a digital-only CCG.
I have resisted Pokemon for years for both myself and the kids as I knew I would get drawn in… but here we are.
I am going to do my best to come at this as a board game player, and a parent but also as someone with some knowledge of Collectable Card Games.
So Pokemon is essentially a CCG based on the popular video game series. What that means is you play the game with a deck of 60 cards made up of pokemon themselves, energy cards which let the pokemon do their attacks and trainer cards that allow you to twist and bend the rules of the game to make your specific deck work.
The Battle Academy is a fantastic starting point for the game and can be looked at as a board game in its own right. With it, you get 3 basic decks to play against each other, a board to lay everything out nicely (and make it more board gamey), damage tokens, a coin to flip for heads and tales (think the old POG kinis) and an excellent tutorial booklet that’s one of the best tutorials I have ever used in a board game.
So looking at the battle academy in a vacuum it’s a fun game. It plays well and it is a good intro to playing other CCGs. The decks that come in the box are super simple as you would expect but there is a lot of fun to be had here.
but that’s how they get you… that’s how the kids want more…
Or in my case, that’s how daddy wants more and has probably spent a good £150 in the last month or so on getting more “stuff”
The game is endlessly expandable with sets being released all the time and here in lies the issue (which is the same for all CCGs) which is that if you want to go to your FLGS (friendly local game shop) and play in a tournament you will need to have a decent deck and those do not come cheap.
Jack(7) and to a lesser extent Toby(4) have had a fantastic time playing this and I know this is going to be a firm feature moving forward but to get a decent deck is far too expensive and considering “standard” play means you can only use cards from the last 4 sets you have to continuously buy more cards to keep playing.
In a vacuum, however, playing amongst friends with similar decks it’s good fun. You can buy V decks for about £15 each that are similar in strength to the ones found in the Battle Academy to give more variety.
While I have not played Pokemon at a high level I do find the general gameplay a bit too simplistic and it also feels very snow bally and once you get behind it’s almost impossible to come back.
Another thing which is really nice about it is each thing you buy comes with a QR code that you can scan into the digital version to give you either the cards you bought (in the case of a premade deck) to an equivalent pack (in the case of boosters). This is a really nice alternative meaning you can take your collection and play digitally as well. There is also a large market for the codes which case be bought online for dirt cheap if you want to expand your digital collection.
My biggest issue however with this and most CCGs is the difficulty to obtain the rare cards and the fact for a competitive deck you often need 4 of each of them. They have started to reduce that with the advent of “radiant” cards in the newer sets that can only be 1 but that’s in its infancy.
Now Hearthstone which is where I spend my personal CCG time these days is a digital card game based around the “World of Warcraft” franchise. The reason I love this game is that because you can only have 30 cards in your deck (except in one situation when you can have 40) and only 1 of each super rare card getting a decent deck is not too difficult. I spend about £50 on hearthstone 3 times a year and have literally every card I want or need.
It’s also annoying when your 7-year-old opens a card you know is worth about £50 but you would be a terrible parent to ebay it without their knowledge 
You will also need to sleeve your cards because there is an insane amount of shuffling in this game.
So do I recommend Pokemon?
Well, that’s a hard question to answer.
As a starter set the Battle Academy is great but you will likely want more. You can then buy some more V decks but they all play very samey and before you know it you are selling a kidney to buy that Rainbow coloured Vmax.
The inclusion of digital content definitely sweetens the deal. I still think Hearthstone is a better game both in terms of gameplay and value but that’s digital-only and there is something nice about holding real cards.
So yes there’s my non-review brief delve into Pokemon
Normal service resumes tomorrow.
