Xatumi, spragels, Volkin, Willow, Raven, ursiiday and Travinium —these are the seasoned competitive players we turned to in order to answer the burning question: which decks truly dominate the emerging metagame of Pokémon TCG Pocket?
For over three weeks, these players have dedicated countless hours to the game, relentlessly playing from New Zealand, fine-tuning strategies, experimenting with different decks, streaming their journey, and competing in tournaments. We reached out to them to get their thoughts on what the current tier list should look like. After synthesizing their feedback, we compiled an up-to-date ranking of the strongest decks shaping the metagame since TCG Pocket’s soft launch.
Nota: We’re still in the early days, and this list as well as their opinion will certainly change in the coming days and weeks.
Introducing the polled players
Xatumi
I don’t Raise Pokemon, Pokémon Raised Me
spragels
The Content Cowboy
ursiiday
I’m live every day on twitch
Volkin
Gacha gaming creator making the move to PTCGP for the love of all things Pokemon.
Raven
Streamer & Professional Caster focusing on card games!
Travinium
Owner of the First TCG Pocket Tournament Server and Pocket Legends League (PLL)
Click on their profile to access to their platform!
Genetic Apex format week 3 - Top players Tier list
Top tiers
Pikachu EX still holds top spot as an extremely reliable allrounder. The list with Raichu & Surge gives it some extra punch from the bench to take on some of the tankier Pokemon. Mewtwo is still performing well but its power level relying so heavily on getting to Gardevoir smoothly keeps it from being the best. Starmie EX is keeping the meta from being too greedy with explosive early turns but is kept in check by PikaEX being so strong right now.
Personally I think the Voltorb/Zebriska variant is the best over the Lt. Surge. It's really strong, has bench snipe, a 70 damage one prize attacker, Zapdos Ex can hit for upwards of 200 damage (though I do NOT trust coin flip based damage) and Pikachu can pretty consistently hit 90 damage. It's a nice and consistent deck that can hit for a lot.
Mewtwo is the best in the game and the reason is consistency. All you need is 1 Mewtwo, maybe 2, and to find a Gardevoir line. I would say Pikachu is below Mewtwo in some senses, with having to use Zapdos sometimes makes the deck inconsistent and make you lose games you should’ve won. But Pika carries this deck so hard and the fact it stomps on another deck in water makes it S tier.
Basically Misty is broken, Pikachu is a solid counter so it's there, and Mewtwo is also very good. In general I’d say most things are mid and a few are insane.
Pikachu EX is only as high as it is because it performs well against the other top decks. Against the rest of the field it actually isn’t the most impressive, it just has solid matchups among the best decks right now.
High tiers
Charizard hits for SO much - there isnt a single pokemon that survives to his big attack, but it feels like it needs a third basic in it and I cannot figure out what it should be. The problem is, so many of the R Pokemon discard energy when they attack, which means when you're fighting with one attacker, you can't be making another which is why setting up with Moltres becomes so important.
Charizard has a low floor but a high ceiling -meaning easy to brick and lose to Sabrina but if you set up right there is nothing they can do to win. The bulk of Charizard allowing it to live anything in the game except another zard means if you get 5 Energy on it, you can bring it in and land 2 kills for game when most threatening decks have an EX. Also the 60 damage Slash lines up well to punish a lot of basics and save energy for the big Crimson Storm.
Shout out Nothing but bangers for winning a tournament with Venusaur but it’s entirely unreliable. You need to get a stage 2 and you need to wall up until you get to that point and I think if you’re playing against an ok R player the deck just dies.
There are many versions of Marowak and it's very F2P friendly. Running it with Sandslash can put less reliance on the flips but the RNG of Marowak EX to lose a game 25% of the time to double tails is why i cant put it higher. This deck has a great matchup to the Pikachu deck and a lot of the stage 1s you can play with it have over 90 hp which make is ok against Starmie. Besides that, you can clutch wins from unwinnable positions with a double heads so i think the spot is fine for it.
Marowak is up there because it’s insanely good against a top meta deck in Pikachu ex. But it can have some troubles with W and Mewtwo because of the inconsistencies with the main card itself.
Middle tiers
Exeggutor EX's ability to dish out 80 damage by turn 2 for only 1 energy investment so long as it hit's head's is enough to combat even the most meta of decks. By turn 3, you could potentially KO a Mewtwo before it even get's online, if you're lucky.
I don't believe in Exeggutor, but I do see it has some results, so I can't discount it. I am not a big believer in your ATTACK damage being coinflip based.
Promising decks
Blaine is a good mid deck because it can beat top meta decks like Mewtwo and Pikachu with its aggressive line but loses pretty easily with other aggressive archetypes like Starmie water or Marowak fighting
Deck to look out for, Alakazam & Weezing. This deck has the ability to tank some of the top meta decks long enough to get Alakazam built up to end the game, this combined with it not running EX Pokemon keep it in the running for being a top deck!
Alakazam is a good rogue deck? I don’t know entirely on that statement. The deck has a lot of micromanaging and can die to two Sabrina‘s. But overall a good mid tier choice for the thinker.
Any decks not mentioned in my list are because I simply believe they aren’t strong enough to keep up with the listed decks, or that their archetype isn’t refined or optimized enough to evaluate fairly. An example of this is Weezing Koga stuff, I don’t think it's found its “ideal home” yet.
I am a firm beliver in Koga Bounce. After partaking in one of largest tournaments for Pocket yet, and bringing a Meta Pikachu Deck, I found the only archetype that really gave me trouble was the Koga Bounce, Poison Stall strategy. It's extremely hard to counter when your opponent can just bounce for free.
A big thanks to all of them! Each one have a different take on the tier list, so check their platforms to know more about it.
