In this guide I will discuss the most optimum strategy for opening packs in Pokémon TCG Pocket. This strategy allows you to unlock all cards as quickly as possible. I will focus on the original trio of packs, Genetic Apex, but this guide should apply to all other packs. I’m also going to discuss how long it can take you to unlock all of the cards as a free to play player.
Should You Collect All Cards in Pokémon TCG Pocket?
If you play TCG Pocket mainly for the battle mode, you don’t need to collect all of the cards to have a competitive edge. In this sense, Pokémon TCG Pocket is only minimally P2W, and you can build a competitive deck without much time investment. Collecting all cards is purely for game completionists – but be warned, it will take a serious amount of time to unlock all the cards!
How Do You Get Cards?
In TCG Pocket there are four main ways of receiving cards. These are by opening packs, wonder picks, pack points, and trading. Occasionally you will also receive cards from the developers.
Opening packs
Every 24 hours you get to open a new pack, which contains five randomly selected cards. Which pack you choose from the carousel doesn’t matter so you can press the skip button if you want to speed up the pack opening process. Hourglasses, which can be purchased in the store either by using daily rewards or with real money (via gold), will reduce the amount of time you must wait until you can open your next pack. You can only have two packs ready to open at any time, meaning you need to open packs at least once every 24 hours in order to not waste time.
Wonder picks
Wonder picks let you see packs that others have opened (both friends and random players), and allow you to receive one of them. The card you receive is randomized, so you essentially have a one-in-five chance of getting your desired card. Crucially, the rarest cards (3-star and crown) can’t be received via wonder picks, so if you are looking to unlock all cards this method is mainly used to achieve daily rewards. However, they occasionally offer promo cards that can’t be found elsewhere.
Pack points
Every time you open a pack you get 5 pack points, which can be used to buy cards from the same pack series. For example, if you open a Charizard pack, you can use points to buy cards from Mewtwo and Pikachu Genetic Apex packs, but not other packs.
Trading
Pokémon TCG Pocket’s trade system is wonderfully convoluted, with a range of complicated mechanics and restrictions in place ensuring this isn’t as smooth as players would have hoped. The most optimal way to use the trading method is to only trade1-star cards, which is the highest card (in Genetic Apex) that you can trade. If higher rarity cards can be traded then you should always choose those first. If you don’t have any friends to trade with you should be able to find some willing trade partners on the PTCGP subreddit.
TCG Genetic Apex Pack Odds
Each of the three Genetic Apex packs have unique cards that can only be found in that specific pack. The rarest three cards, Crown cards, can be pulled in all packs. To see which card appears in what pack, go to the My Cards page. Bizarrely, the rarest cards are hidden from this view so you will need to tap the view order toggle at the top of the screen, tap on the magnifying glass and select both options under “Card Dex View Options”. Tapping on a card will show you which pack it belongs to.
When you open a pack you will receive five random cards. There are predetermined odds that decide the rarity of the cards in your pack. You can see these odds by going to Offering Rates, at the bottom of the pack opening screen. The cards appear in any order in the pack, meaning you can receive a rare card anywhere in your pack.
Genetic Apex card odds
Slots 1–3
◇: 100%
Slot 4
◇◇: 90.000%
◇◇◇: 5.000%
◇◇◇◇: 1.666%
★: 2.572%
★★: 0.500%
★★★: 0.222%
👑: 0.040%
Slot 5
◇◇: 60.000%
◇◇◇: 20.000%
◇◇◇◇: 6.664%
★: 10.288%
★★: 2.000%
★★★: 0.888%
👑: 0.160%
This means that you will receive a crown card once every 500 packs on average.
Rare/ God pack odds
When you open a pack there is a 0.05% chance (1 in 2000) that it will be a rare pack, also known as a God pack. Every card slot in a God pack has the same odds.
★: 40%
★★: 50%
★★★: 5%
👑: 5%
PTCGP Pack Opening Optimal Strategy
With the daily login rewards, and other rewards such as shop tickets, you will average around 2.5 pack openings a day as a f2p player. Based on the odds above, you can already start to see how long it will take to unlock all of the cards in just the first card series of the game. But if you are intent on getting all of these cards, you should know the best strategy, to avoid wasting time and items.
Two star, three star, and crown cards are all that matter, as all other cards will be pulled hundreds of times by the time you finish your set. So this strategy is designed to optimize pulling those cards.
- On the My Cards screen, search for all cards with rarity of two stars and above. Tap on each card that you haven’t pulled and make a note of which pack it can be pulled from.
- Open packs that have the most missing cards. For example if you need 6 from Charizard, 5 from Pikachu and 3 from Mewtwo, open Charizard packs until you have 4 left, then switch to Pikachu etc..
- Use pack points on crown cards first, then once you have all the crown cards, use them on three star and two star cards from the pack you need the fewest of. This allows you to get all of the unique cards from a pack more efficiently.
How Long Does it Take To Pull All Cards?
Following this strategy and assuming 2.5 packs a day, we can calculate how long it will take to unpack all cards as a F2P player.
Assuming you are impossibly unlucky, and must solely rely on pack points to receive rare cards, it would take you 3,860 days to collect every card.
The average time it will take you to receive all the cards in the Pikachu, Mewtwo, and Charizard Genetic Apex packs is 576 days.
So as you can see, it takes a long time to get all the cards in Genetic Apex, and with new pack series released every one to two months, it’s likely a F2P player will never be able to complete their collection. But don’t let this put you off playing, PTCGP is a great way to enjoy this popular card game on the go. Be sure to follow DGR for more Pokémon TCG Pocket news and much more!
