Pokemon TCG Pocket’s New Rarity May Spell a Bright Future for Shiny Fans

To the delight of many fans, Pokemon TCG Pocket has released yet another booster set in March. Since the mobile game’s release in late October last year, Pokemon TCG Pocket has consistently released new cards every month, apart from November 2024. Gradually, players have been able to obtain plenty of their favorite creatures between each set, like Lucario, Mew, and Arceus. The latest pack has brought in Paldean Pokemon, but the biggest and literal shining feature of the new miniature set is the addition of Shiny Pokemon cards.

The phenomenon of rare differently-colored Pokemon has intrigued many players over the years, and the Pokemon Trading Card Game has never hesitated to include them in sets. Having shinies represented by the usual rare cards found in trading cards themselves makes sense, but the accomplishment of getting a Radiant Charizard holo isn’t the same as catching a full-odds shiny Charmander for many reasons. Pokemon TCG Pocket seems to want to make getting shinies in its mobile version of the card game into a proper hunt by giving the rare critters their own designated rarity.

Shiny Pokemon Having Their Own TCG Pocket Rarity Means More in the Long Run

Why Pokemon TCG Pocket’s Unique Shiny Rarity Matters

In the physical Pokemon Trading Card Game, Shiny Pokemon have been implemented in many different ways. As TCG sets follow their own rarity scheme, there’s plenty of balancing with the percentage rates and production of each card to do per set without including any shinies into the equation. The physical Pokemon TCG has tried to make this balance work, with Hidden Fates serving as one of the best sets to pull this off, while some Sword & Shield sets in the past capitalized on Shiny Pokemon in all the wrong ways. Including Shiny Pokemon in the existing TCG has been a subject of debate for some time due to these balancing and rarity issues. It’d be better to experiment and find this balance in a newer version of the game, which is exactly what Pokemon TCG Pocket provides.

Where the physical Pokemon TCG has to worry about production, planning, and making sure there are rare cards that are worth hunting for, Pokemon TCG Pocket doesn’t have to worry about any of that. The act of pulling cards is simulated like one would expect of a mobile gacha game, which lends itself well to adaptive rate-ups and adjustments on its own. This means that the exclusive shiny rarity in Pokemon TCG Pocket can not only come and go, but also remain between packs that aren’t fully shiny-focused.

Players Might Get to Hunt For Pokemon TCG Pocket Shinies More Often

Pokemon TCG Pocket has already been rather flexible with the number of cards and even rarities that sets have included. Genetic Apex featured three crown cards while Space-Time Smackdown and Triumphant Light only featured one or two, respectively, for example. There’s plenty of room to add a shiny variant to as many EXes as DeNa wants to, and they’d sit between regular diamond cards and the full art. Players may be feeling discouraged by the rates for the shiny cards now, but that may be because Shining Revelry focuses on the rarer cards. Not being able to pull the cards seen on the pack is naturally discouraging, but that may change if players manage to get a shiny EX instead of the standard one in other packs.

The rarity of shinies in Pokemon TCG Pocket sits in the perfect sweet spot where regular holos and full arts are unaffected by any shinies DeNa includes, which makes them the perfect rare surprise when opening a pack. Similarly to Pokemon TCG Pocket‘s hidden immersive Mew card, this gives a proper chase aspect to finding shinies in packs, just like players might in the mainline Pokemon games. As long as any future cards found in the shiny rarity remain just literally shinier than their counterparts, then players can enjoy their pulls with the extra rush of finding a rarer Pokemon along the way without the stress of the current pack.