Pokémon TCG Pocket Deluxe Pack: EX Has Everyone Furious

03.10.2025

Since its October 2024 launch, Pokémon TCG Pocket has followed a steady rhythm: new booster packs arrive each month, adding dozens of cards that shift the competitive landscape and give collectors fresh goals. For the game’s one-year anniversary, however, the developers shipped an oddball expansion that breaks the pattern — and predictably, many players are upset.

The unwieldy-titled Deluxe Pack: ex, which debuted on Sept. 30, discards several conventions that previously defined a typical TCG Pocket set.

Where previous expansions usually add 100–200 unique cards across one or two boosters, Deluxe Pack: ex lists a staggering 353 cards in a single booster — yet most of those cards are reprints from earlier packs. Crucially, any card you obtain from Deluxe Pack: ex only counts toward the new Deluxe collection; it does not retroactively complete the original set where that card first appeared. For example, if you still need Lugia ex from the Wisdom of Sea and Sky expansion, pulling it from Deluxe Pack: ex will not mark it as collected for Wisdom of Sea and Sky.

There are other departures. Standard boosters historically yield five cards; Deluxe Pack: ex boosters only give four. The trade-off is that every pack guarantees at least one four-diamond-or-higher card, increasing the odds of scoring a full-art or a powerful ex card.

Most consequentially, the Deluxe Pack: ex is time-limited and will be removed from availability on Oct. 30. Previous expansions have remained purchasable indefinitely, so this expiry imposes a hard deadline on players trying to finish that specific Deluxe collection. Although many of the cards remain accessible in their original sets, the limited window creates pressure for completionists.

Complicating the situation are Pack Points, a currency earned by opening boosters that can only be spent on packs from the same expansion. Developers Creatures Inc. and DeNA said in a statement on X that “Points earned won’t expire even if the provision period for that set ends,” yet if the pack itself vanishes after Oct. 30, players worry how they’ll actually redeem those points. Read the statement on X.

Altogether, many collectors view the expansion as a slap in the face — especially those who play purely to “catch ’em all.” If you only do the two free daily pulls, it’s mathematically impossible to complete the Deluxe Pack: ex collection before the set expires. Even with four cards per pack at a rate of two packs per day, you fall far short of 353 unique cards unless you spend Poké Gold or grind premium challenge rewards like Hourglasses. And that assumes every pull yields a new card; actual drop rates make full completion by free play effectively unattainable.

Free-to-play players say the expansion amplifies a familiar live-service problem — favoring spenders — and they’ve been vocal about it.

On the game’s subreddit, one self-described free-to-play player warned that “the Deluxe ex set is ‘breaking the spell’ of chasing a complete collection and might be an off-ramp out of the game for players like me.” See the original post.

Some community members argue the set can help players recover missing cards, but a more common complaint is that cards pulled from Deluxe Pack: ex should also credit the collections they originated from instead of being siloed into a duplicative Deluxe roster.

Players have also flagged how the set complicates competitive deck-building. The game surfaces newest-expansion cards first when you browse your collection, so the Deluxe Pack: ex effectively bumps previously released cards — many of which you already own — to the top of the selection. That makes it harder to track card releases chronologically or to see which cards defined past meta periods.

“It really is just issue after issue with this set,” one Redditor observed about the deck-editing friction. The top response to that thread bluntly summarized community feeling: “This set truly is a dumpster fire.” Thread · Top reply.

A post resharing the Pack Points announcement sparked a string of sarcastic replies: some joked that developers would hand out a token amount of Shinedust as compensation, while others quipped about resuming premium subscriptions. Many have called for “universal Pack Points” so currency earned from any expansion could be spent across all sets. One user summed up the anger succinctly: “‘From that set’ FUCK YOU DENA.” Post · Excerpt.

Requests for comment to Creatures Inc. and DeNA went unanswered in time for publication.

I’d stepped away from Pokémon TCG Pocket for a few months and returned this week curious about what I’d missed — and of course, I logged in right as this expansion hit. In theory, Deluxe Pack: ex should be useful for players like me who want to catch up. In practice I mostly received duplicates of cards I already owned despite limited play over the summer.

Since launch I’ve opened 18 Deluxe Pack: ex boosters using Hourglasses accrued previously. Below are the unique cards I obtained (duplicates excluded), with those I already owned highlighted in bold: