Pokémon TCG Pocket celebrates its first anniversary by discovering the power of generosity

Since the beginning, I have been quite vocal about my dislike of Pokémon TCG Pockets' greedy tactics. Well, it seems that The Pokémon Company has eased up a bit, as for the one-year anniversary, they are implementing a new share function and increasing the range of tradeable cards.

To start with, the share function, which is more like a gift, really. You will be able to send a card to a friend once per day, which is nice. You can only gift cards from 1 to 4 diamond rarity, so you can go giving away all your best ones, but it's still a nice way to round out your collection.

Onto trading. Soon, you can trade cards from even the most recent expansion, and even better, there will be more rarities that you can trade from. Diamond 1 to 4, as well as 1-star, 2-star, and Shiny 1-Shiny 2, will be available to trade. Finally, some Wonder Pick news. Cards you are missing from the latest expansion will appear more often, and there will be an indicator showing how many of each card you have. 

Now, obviously, I am a big fan of the trading function being expanded. It will help everyone round out their collections, and you won't have to spend hundreds of pounds to try and pull that one card you want. But then you have to balance it with the potential negatives. It might affect the competitive nature of Pocket.

We all know that if you jump into a player match, you will run into one of potentially five meta decks. With this expanded range, these top decks will become more abundant. Although maybe that will be a good thing. It will force people to experiment more and potentially find more meta-busting decks.

It is hard to say which is most likely to happen, but on balance, I think these updates will be quite positive. 

Pokémon TCG Pocket is available to download from the App Store and Google Play.