Mandatory base pokemon in 1st hand

Yan_Ue5

After several days of testing, we (New Zealanders and transplants🫡) realized that the game automatically gives us a basic pokémon in our starting hand !

By abusing this “hidden rule”, it's possible to have the pokémon we want right from the start, if we put just one basic pokémon in our deck.

Of course this affects the deckbuilding and the balance of the entire game.
Is this voluntary? Or are you planning to remove this rule to make it like the classic TCG and grant an extra draw to the opponent for each hand without a basic pokémon?

PokemiiAC

oh wow!

That’s overpowered

DoubleCure

So basically there is no "mulligan" in TCG Pocket? lol

I bet that this is a must change thing for the final release… otherwise I can just imagine how players will take advantage of this "new mechanism". If stays like it is definitely has the potential to make the game unbalanced and monotone.

cadwa

Well exept for a few decks (like Articuno / Misty), I feel like it doesn't have that much impact

Yan_Ue5

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/comment/53347#Comment_53347

For now i feel there is not much impact indeed. 😯
But when the game will become bigger (with more players and more cards) it might be a good thing to consider the mulligan rule. 😉

DoubleCure

They are already exploiting this with 2 decks, the Articuno ex deck you mentioned and also the Zapdos ex deck, both use the same single Basic Pokemon strategy.

In the future this can be even more problematic as better Trainer cards and basic Pokemon are released.