This is the YMMV page for the Game Boy Color game based on the trading card game. If you were looking for subjectives for the actual paper card game, see Pokémon Trading Card Game.
- Anti-Climax Boss:
- Every one of the Grand Masters besides Courtney. They center their decks around their signature Legendary cards, who are all Awesome, but Impractical; Dragonite relies on coin flips for its attacks to work, and Zapdos and Articuno's attacks do damage to random targets (Zapdos can even hit its own teammates), so feel free to laugh as Steve knocks out his own Pokémon. Aside from their Legendaries, the Grand Masters mostly prefer Pokémon with high energy attacks, which means they'll quickly stall as they dump lots of energy into their Pokémon only for it to be KO'd. Ronald has the powers of all four Legendary cards, but seems to have included them in his deck just for bragging rights, as he only runs Fire energies and thus his Articuno and Zapdos exist to use their Pokémon Powers and soak up damage while his Eeveelutions do all the heavy lifting for him.
- Vilrich can very often become this due to Artificial Stupidity with deck-burning, which makes it more likely than not that he'll deck out.
- Even Better Sequel: The second game is much longer and has more cards, allowing for more diverse strategies. It also has an actual plot, and the characters get a little bit more development. It's a shame that it never got an international release (though there is a Fan Translation for those interested in playing it).
- Fridge Brilliance: In the 2nd game, GR Island's Game Centre features the Castle, a gauntlet of successive matches against Chess-themed opponents. You duel a Pawn, a Knight, a Bishop, a Rook, and a Queen, following the order of relative strength among chess pieces... but as the Queen herself points out, there's no King piece. In Chess, the King is around the strength of a Knight or Bishop; following that logic, a King duelist would either be an Anti-Climax Boss after the very powerful Queen, or would have to be jarringly included between the Knight and Bishop duels. Alternately: there’s no King in the Game Center because the entirety of GR Island is ruled by King Vilrich, who stays in his own castle.
- Game-Breaker:
- The good old-fashioned Blastoise Rain Dancer deck works just as well as it does in the real game. Get a Blastoise into play, abuse its Pokémon Power to attach as many Water energy as you like to your Water Pokémon, and go clean house. Even on its own, Blastoise can pump itself up to a base 40 damage attack once it hits the field, with the potential for it to hit 60 damage with two more energy on it.
- You can do some absolutely evil combinations by adding the Promotional Mewtwo, which allows you to get two energy cards from your discard pile, and Mr. Fuji, which allows you to shuffle back your Pokémon and your energy back into your deck, greatly reducing the risk of deck outs.
- Legendary Zapdos
is utterly broken when used by a skilled player. Its special attack "Big Thunder" deals 70 damage to a random Pokémon in play other than Zapdos, ignoring weakness and resistance. So, just play no other Pokémon, load Zapdos up with Electric energy, and then zap the enemy to death. - Normally, you can only draw one card per turn. If you have Bill, which is the Pokémon equivalent of Yu-Gi-Oh's Pot of Greed, it allows you to draw two additional cards. If you have Professor Oak, you can discard your entire hand and get 7 turns' worth of cards, which works amazingly when your hand consists of a single Professor Oak. Have multiple Professor Oak cards and don't want to discard all of them? Have Gambler, which shuffles your entire hand back and coin flips you either one card or 8 cards. It's basically mandatory to have 4 Bills in your deck and multiple of Professor Oak and Gambler, and while they do increase your risk of decking out, they make it far easier to find the cards that you do want, which leads to...
- Haymaker decks. In fact, if you start with a Charmander & Friends deck, you can immediately run soft Haymaker with supporting Diglett for a 2 Fighting energy move that causes 30 damage and Rattata, which has a 1 Colorless energy move that causes 20 damage. They're frail until you evolve them, which is problematic, except the payoff is Dugtrio having a 4 Fighting move that causes 70 damage, like Courtney's Legendary Moltres, but without the downside of missing half the time, and Raticate keeps Bite, allowing you to hit Pokémon like Mr. Mime (which, outside of a few edge cases, cannot be hurt by any move dealing 30 damage or more, which counters Haymaker) while also giving Raticate Super Fang. Super Fang causes half of the Pokémon's remaining health to disappear, allowing you to three-shot any Pokémon with 100 health or less. But the real hard Haymakers are rare cards like Scyther, which has a 3 Colorless move that causes 30 damage (or 60 with a one turn setup), Hitmonchan, which causes 40 damage for 2 Fighting and 1 Colorless, and Electabuzz, which causes either 30 or 40 damage for 1 Electric and 1 Colorless. They are far easier to set up than Dugtrio because they don't require an evolution, and any Colorless requirement can be solved with either any energy card or a Double Colorless Energy, allowing you to set up easier. An example: You can start a game off with Scyther as your active Pokemon, use a Grass Energy turn one to double the power of Slash, and DCE on turn two to give it the required energy to do 60 damage. Additionally, with the cards from Charmander & Friends, your deck starts off with being able to evolve Charmander into a Charmeleon, which also has Slash, allowing you to spam 30 damage moves from your second turn onward; it's just slightly more impractical to setup than Scyther is, but for the most part, hits just as hard.
- You can also use the same idea that Murray has; stall. It's very slow, it's very boring, but it's extremely powerful. Evolve Abra into Alakazam on your bench to let you move damage counters and use Mr. Mime to prevent you from taking damage from attacks that do 30 or more damage. Have Switch to move Pokémon without paying the retreat cost and Scoop Up to move your injured Pokémon back into your hand, removing all damage in the process. You can also stack energy cards on any Pokémon you want to use Mr. Fuji on to put them back in your deck with your Pokémon, making it effectively impossible to deck out before your opponent. But what Murray doesn't abuse is Pokémon like Magmar and Lickitung. Lickitung has Tongue Wrap, a 1 Colorless energy 10 damage move that flips a coin and causes paralysis if you land on heads, preventing the opponent from attacking or retreating (unless they use Switch, Scoop Up, or evolve). Magmar has Smokescreen instead; while it requires specifically 1 Fire energy and doesn't paralyze, it still forces the opponent to flip a coin when they try to attack; if it lands on tails, their attack fails. Both of them also have very respectable health pools - Magmar has 70 HP and Lickitung has 90 HP, allowing you to survive most attacks in the game, and Alakazam can move that damage to the rest of your party as much as you want during your turn. Add in Pokémon Center, which heals your entire team at the cost of all your energy (but when the move you want is only one energy card, it's effectively free). Add in Pokémon like Chansey, who has both 120 HP and their own 2 Colorless move that prevents it from taking damage on a coin flip, and you can shrug off any attack outside of a Charizard's Fire Spin, healing every turn back to full health, while making it extremely annoying for your opponent to attack you, especially with any moves that require their own coin flips to work.
- In the sequel, Lv. 30 Dark Machamp breaks most decks over its knee. On top of being deceptively easy to bring out for a second stage mon (The Boss’ Way being a free search for Dark cards), it has respectable damage in a two energy move that deals 30 damage. But the real reason it’s busted is Fling, which throws the opponent’s active Pokémon and every card on it back into the deck. Due to the AI never planning around it even if it’s on the field (Fling only works if there’s at least one benched Mon), it’s an immediate get out of jail free card unless your opponent is bricked, and aside from a few opponents like Queen and her Haymaker deck, it’s borderline impossible to recover from until it’s too late to matter.
- The good old-fashioned Blastoise Rain Dancer deck works just as well as it does in the real game. Get a Blastoise into play, abuse its Pokémon Power to attach as many Water energy as you like to your Water Pokémon, and go clean house. Even on its own, Blastoise can pump itself up to a base 40 damage attack once it hits the field, with the potential for it to hit 60 damage with two more energy on it.
- Demonic Spiders: Mr. Mime is an extremely annoying card to go up against, and it's used not only in That One Boss Murray's deck but later matches with The Rival. Its Pokémon Power makes it immune to all damage greater than 20, making it impossible to one-hit KO despite its 40 HP, and it's often combined with Alakazam to move what little damage it takes to the Bench. If you don't have or draw Switch, you can be forced to lose Energy retreating something that can't hurt it, or worse, be stuck against it until you're KO'd, and if nothing on your bench does 20 or less damage... Its Meditate attack is deceptively dangerous too, doing +10 damage for each damage counter on the target, essentially giving it compounding damage.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: Check the main page.
- Suspiciously Similar Song: The Club Leader Duel music has an identical bassline to Waterfront by Simple Minds
- That One Boss:
- Murray, leader of the Psychic Club in the first game. His deck is based around stalling, playing key monsters such as Chansey and Snorlax to soak up damage with their massive HP pools, using Switch to return them to the bench without losing energy, and Scoop Up to return them to his hand and negate all the damage they've taken. On their own, they can just take attacks or attack, but Murray can also use Alakazam's Pokémon Power to transfer any damage he takes to any of his benched Pokémon (like Chansey or Snorlax). Even worse, Murray can use Pokémon Center to heal all the damage you've manged to inflict on his active and benched Pokémon. Losing to him because of a Deck Out is very possible. On the other hand, if you load your deck with colorless types resistant to Psychic, beating him because of a Deck Out is also possible, since he loves using Kanghaskhan's "Fetch."
- Michael, an ordinary Fighting Club member, runs something very close to the infamous Haymaker deck archetype, featuring Hitmonchan, Electabuzz and Magmar, along with Kanghaskhan for high HP, covering Psychic types, and draw power.
- Grand Master Courtney's Legendary Moltres has the power to add Fire Energy to her hand, making her extremely likely to get out Moltres and power up her Pokémon effectively. Its 70-damage coin flip attack is also a hassle.
- Hiderō/Bernard, leader of the GR Fire Fort, in the second game boy game. His "special rule" is easily one of the most unfair in the game: Fire type Pokémon have no weaknesses! Why is that so unfair? Well, unlike the other masters' rules, there's pretty much no way to possibly use this to your advantage, since his deck doesn't have any Water cards to hit your Fire types' weaknesses. So basically, it's just The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard disguised as a rules change. His deck is by no means bad either, and with no weaknesses to exploit the only real strategy is just to play really, really well or hope his A.I. Roulette gets handed the Idiot Ball.
- Also from the second game, Queen uses a variant of the infamous Haymaker deck, which was the dominant deck in the early days of the real life TCG for its simple efficiency of unevolved Pokémon with plenty of HP and respectable damage output, backed up by lots of powerful Trainer cards. Since all the Pokémon are fully evolved, they tend to hit relatively hard from the get-go, and have high HP. But since they're also all basic Pokémon, they don't need any setting up beyond some energy cards. Unless you get very lucky or are running a similar deck, she will give you a lot of trouble.
- That One Level: In the second game, the Colorless Altar is a frustrating area to go through, even if you're experienced with the game. Each opponent will randomly choose four of a certain card/Pokémon you need in your deck to face them. On one hand, you can manipulate the RNG beforehand (what cards they ask for aren't chosen until you talk to them so you can just save and reload for the right choice) which helps a bit; On the other hand, if you don't have any card they ask for? You're gonna have to go back and grind for the right card packs until you get what you need. Not only that, but the deck requirements can make it a pain to even try and cheese through these opponents, especially with Nishijima's heavily defensive deck. There's a reason that even the best speedrunners in this game lose runs to this place.
- Viewer Gender Confusion: Even though 'Murray' is a male name, his long hair and purple top give him a feminine appearance.
- Woolseyism:
- Occasionally attack name translations differ from the main video game series' to better fit the context of the card game move's effects; for example, "Nenriki" (literally "willpower") is "Confusion" in the video games (it has a chance of confusing the opponent) and "Psyshock" in the card game (it can cause paralysis).
- The Fan Translation of the sequel is one of the very rare examples to change character names, most likely so that the characters that debut in this game don't have names that stand out too much. Like in the main series, but the unlike the first Trading Card Game, they are given Punny Names based on their specialty (so the Grass Fortress leader is Parker, the Water Fortress leader is Brooke, etc.)
