Team Rocket's Ambition hits Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket August 26
The next Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket set is called Team Rocket's Ambition. It arrives on August 26, and the first cards and the official trailer are out now.
Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket has a new set on August 26, and it belongs to the bad guys. It is called Team Rocket's Ambition, and the official trailer for it is above.
The theme is exactly what the name says. The set is built around the Pokemon that Team Rocket uses, and the card art leans into the group itself. The Pokemon Company says the artwork includes the Team Rocket logo and pictures of Team Rocket grunts working on their schemes. Grunts are the ordinary members, the ones who do the plotting and lose the fight.
PokeBeach has the first cards that have been shown, and Dexerto is keeping a running list. Both note that more are still to come, so treat any card list you see this week as partial.
What B4a means
Pocket calls this set B4a. That numbering is the game's own, and it does not match the physical Trading Card Game at all.
The set before it was Ruler of the Skies, which was B4 and landed earlier this month with 233 cards, deck sharing and a new top rarity. A letter tacked onto the end of a number has usually meant a smaller follow-up rather than a full expansion. Nobody has announced how big Team Rocket's Ambition is, so that is a pattern, not a promise.
What a five-day warning tells you
The gap between the reveal and the release is short. That is how Pocket has run since launch: reveal a set, ship it within days, keep the app busy.
For players it means the useful window is now. If you are saving in-game currency or hourglasses for a set you actually want, this is the point to decide. Once packs are live the pressure to open immediately is the whole design of the thing.
Cards from a villain team have a habit of being popular beyond their strength in a match. Team Rocket is the most recognisable group in the entire franchise, older than most of the people playing Pocket. Expect the art to move more than the numbers on the cards do.
Pocket, if you have not played it
Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket is the free phone version of the card game. You open two packs a day at no cost, the matches are shorter than the real game, and the decks are 20 cards instead of 60.
It is a different game from the physical Trading Card Game, with its own sets, its own rules and its own card pool. A card you open in Pocket is not a card you own on cardboard.
What we do not know yet
The set size is not announced. Neither is the exact rarity spread, or whether any of the systems added in Ruler of the Skies get extended. The trailer sells the theme rather than the mechanics.
We also do not have the full card list. What has been shown is a first batch, including new Pokemon ex and Trainer cards. The rest normally lands in the two or three days before a set goes live.