Just as I was getting tired of Pokemon GO (It took me a lot longer than it took most people), this game popped up. I haven’t fought PoGo gyms too much lately, and have been hardly even doing anything except pressing the GO+ button on my drive to and from work. Quite boring and grindy as I only have a few Pokemon remaining for dex completion, mainly just walking them as my buddies for candy.
Then arrives Pokemon Duel. Whereas Pokemon GO requires you to get up and go out and about, and is aided in large amounts by living in or frequenting larger cities, Pokemon Duel is your standard video game played wherever you happen to be at any time.
I have been playing it a few days and actually find it quite interesting and fun. Fairly familiar “deck” building similar to building out your party in the Pokemon main series video games. So many deep level strategies with the figures’ various abilities, figuring out which plates work best with them, and what figures have synergistic effects and strategies. The thrill of opening booster packs. Sure like PoGo you can be heavily aided by throwing money into it, but just like PoGo you can be perfectly fine without as well. I will do the same that I do with PoGo and not add any money into this game either. This one does have leader boards and such though, so anyone extremely competitive would probably find it hard to place top 50 without spending money, which I think is great for the company.
Quick comments on my current party so I can see how I develop over time.
Current Party:
Greninja EX - Awesome 3MP attacker.
Glaceon - Freeze ability is nice and also 3MP
Shuppet - ghost can move through other figures and 3MP allows for great surrounds and goal captures
snorlax ex - tank with high attacks, great defender, 1MP
-pikachu (r) - gold move is nice, paralysis and decent attacks, 2MP
salamence - fly over can be great at times, high attacks in general and decent 2MP
Here is a pretty great guide for starters to keep you from making mistakes early. Also see the rest of the guides stickied to the sidebar, some great info if you find yourself confused as the tutorial leaves a lot out. Pokemon Duel Reddit Guide
Anyone else playing?
Edit: formatting
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Soooo the ground/fire gym just started which is exciting…
Anybody else give it a try yet?
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Hey! I have this game. I’m on a small hiatus to finish some projects that are time consuming, but here is my team.
I’m limited by my unwillingness to spend money on it. 
I’m with you there. I have never put money into free apps. Never will. Just looking at the store on this one, I think they do an awful job of getting money out of people anyways. With how gracious they are with gem giveaways (especially during launch week and gym events) coupled with how expensive the gems are and how bad of pulls you can get from the boosters, you would have to drop hundreds of dollars of real money to assemble a team you want with any guarantee through building your guys with material. I am currently sitting on 1500 gems in hopes they bring back the guaranteed ex sextuple boosters some day.
Here is my team:
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I gained master rank (2300) a while ago, was lucky to get moltres fairly early on. I bulldozed through the flying gym and had some great pulls in all the boosters gained from that. Metagross, Mew and Articuno are recent pulls that have helped me get over the top. Now I can deal with deoxys/reuniclus teams very well.
Gym events I go a little crazy on, but normally I just login to get my daily challenges done and to unlock my daily booster as well as keeping up on time boosters as well as possible. Usually 4-5 matches a day that I play over lunch.
@funmonkey54 I have always been a huge fan of both chess and poker and I feel like this game is a hybrid of the two, with Pokemon merged in there as well! Tons of strategy involved as far as not only deck building goes choosing your figures and plates, but also match by match pitting the correct figures against each other and finding your best matchups game by game. Knowing where to place guys, how the various abilities can work to your advantage etc. Amazing game in my book. 10/10 would recommend and always do recommend. I have a few co workers who are into it almost as heavy as I am and we are all really competitive. Really makes it a lot of fun.
@gottaketchumall I agree fully with your assessment of how good the game is.
That said, it’s expensive. They’re charging the same price as the real product but you don’t actually get anything. I hate that. And you absolutely need specific figures to compete and be relevant.
If they relaunched the physical game, I would buy in hard.
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I really hope they give this another shot as a physical game. I’m in the same boat, can’t justify spending real money on pixels at this stage
It really doesn’t require it at all! Half an hour a day or so for a month or so and you will be able to put together pretty solid decks! Even less with more lucky pulls. Especially if you play heavy during the gym events. You get a figure per win and with some luck can stack up the ex’s. I am around 2700 rank and while most decks have deoxys, reuniclus etc. there are many mish mash decks and I even see the occasional non ex deck. You can’t go wrong with a couple shuppet(UC), vibrava(uc) hurdle jumps, swap spots etc. Poliwag and poliwhirl are beasts for their rarities as well. I haven’t spent a cent but I started a few days after launch and have about 35-40 ex’s already.
How? I played every day for well over a month and I have three EXs. I really think you were exceptionally lucky.
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I guess the best way to quantify “luck” is to just see the ratio. I have 500 duels total which I can see from my records. (more than I would have guessed.) I have had the app for ~70 days. So about 7.5 duels per day. I just checked and I have 24 ex’s, but I know I fused a few such as mew for the Clvl so say I had 28. 28 from 500 duels, probably 1/2 or slightly more of those being gym duels which rewards a figure per win. 3 of my ex’s came from the guaranteed ex boosters when they were around at launch.
EX odds are listed at 4% for the boosters. Lets say 1 figure per win though it may be higher as a single win can get time boosters that provide a few figures, but losses get nothing. My win % is over 50%. 500 figures opened at 4% ex odds would lead to an expectation of 20 ex’s. I am over that, but again I would be dead on 4% if you assume 1.4 figures per win which may not be too far off.
Maybe I just suck at the game. Distinct possibility.
Lol. What is your rank/elo? I actually forgot to include all the single booster tickets that I opened through both the gym event rewards and the monthly ranking. I qualified both last month and this month for 15 bones tickets for my monthly rank. So that means I have likely gotten closer to the 700 figures that would place me squarely at 4%.
Well, I’ll answer when I’m playing again. Haha. I haven’t played this month but I let a little boy I was babysitting play so it’s probably rough at the moment. I’ll be back into it in May. 
For those playing there are guaranteed ex sextuple boosters back in the shop for 300 gems. The best deal they’ve had and it hasn’t been around since launch. Glad I saved up 1500 gems, but I got all duplicates unfortunately. Time to Clvl a few of them I guess.
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To add, for anyone not minding putting a few bucks into the game; one of my coworkers just took advantage of their gem deal available only for the next week in celebration of their 1 year anniversary of the games original Japan launch. Almost 900 gems for about $9. Enough for 3 of the guaranteed ex sextuple boosters. Normally those would cost $39.99 and without the sextuple boosters around, idk how anyone could possibly justify buying the gems at normal prices. The $39.99 could easily get you no ex’s and only 4 rares. Now at least it guarantees you 3 ex’s if you go that route.
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Yeah, standard gem prices are a joke.
Lugia EX
Moltres EX
Latios EX
Latias EX
Metagross EX
Delphox EX
From three sextuples. Holy guacamole. Worth.
Huge nerf to deoxys and reuniclus decks… Awesome. I think I will be able to crack 3000 rank in the coming week or two now. Even with tropical energy I was having issues. Deoxys A dimensional slip gives wait 3 and is a 3 star purple negating a lot of ties. Cosmo energy and reun respins require partners to be on the field to work as well as reun respin only working while attacking, not defending.
I am expecting a lot more diversity in the decks that I see which I think is extremely healthy for the game. Hopefully too many of the big spenders don’t get too salty over the nerfs and leave the game taking their $$$ with them though.
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It’s unfortunate because Deoxys was the only T1 team I was even close to having. There’s no practical way to acquire specific EXs in the game so I’m just damned to the low 2K range until I get lucky.
I’ll probably engage the topic more if I ever pull the components to a legitimately competitive team.
@funmonkey54 i’ll be here talking to myself until then! The new grass guys are beasts. I hope that it eventually evolves to a meta where no single figure is OP and rampant across all decks, but where there are 5-6 guys that one or two of them about makes every deck and then maybe 20 or so that you see frequently but not all the time and then bits and pieces here and there. I like diversity.
Right now I think that is what we will have once this update hits. I mean I see guys in my range 2600-2800 with poliwag decks, ghastly/shuppet decks etc. Some of the new abilities make it really fun and interesting.