Pokémon Card Design: An Ode to Pack Fillers

It's easy to wonder why pack fillers even exist in card games, outside of "because you have to buy more packs to get the really good cards." Which is one of the reasons, of course, but there are also genuine structural benefits to having pack filler.

Today I'm going to go over some of the most "boring" cards of the Base-Fossil era, and why I think they make the game as a whole better by existing, in ways that a more explosive design simply couldn't.

Seaking is peak pack filler. Two attacks that don't have effects. A middling HP. The attacks are exactly on curve.

But it secretly has several key roles. First, it fits well in Dodrio decks as a counter to Fossil Magmar. Goldeen even has a free retreat cost, so you don't really need extra pivots.

Second, it's a water type that doesn't benefit from being in a Rain Dance deck. Its attacks are so cheap that it seems silly to charge up a few Seaking instead of an Articuno, but that's the point. It's not meant for Blastoise decks.

Third, it's secretly one of the most efficient water-type attackers. Waterfall does damage at a rate of 15 per energy, eclipsing everything except Dewgong and Gyarados in terms of damage per energy spent!

It's also pretty splashable, since its attacks never require more than one Water Energy. Because of these traits, Seaking fits well in low to the ground multitype builds that no other water type can neatly slot into. It's still a middle-of-the road pack filler card, but it's being used as glue to fill in the gaps that the type would have if it didn't exist.

Ponyta is another excellent pack filler card. It's famously the only fire-type basic in the format that can do decent damage for only one Double Colorless Energy.

Despite the measly 40 HP, Ponyta sees niche play as a way to hit opposing Scyther. It doesn't require as much deck space as Charmeleon or Flareon, and doesn't require any actual Fire Energy like Fossil Magmar.

It has become one of the faces of the Base-Fossil donk deck, which prides itself on being able to switch into an attacker for every occasion.

This isn't a role that the more interesting cards of the format can fill. It's strictly Ponyta's job. And its pack filler evolution is the ONLY fire-type with no retreat cost, as a bonus.

These are some of the ways a pack filler card can be meta-relevant or secretly interesting, but what are some of the design benefits from the developer's point of view?

A pack filler card might explore a design space cautiously so that future cards can expand on it. Searching your entire deck for any card has historically been a problematic effect in card games, so they tried to be careful when designing their first search cards.

That's why Computer Search has a painful discard cost (but was still broken), and that's why Poké Ball requires a coin flip. If you think an effect might be too powerful, printing a guinea pig first can put real data on the table for you to work with in the future.

A pack filler card can also be designed to be "tempting." Pokédex makes an interesting offer to the player. You don't actually get to draw any cards, but you do get to choose what order you'll draw several cards in.

This gets the imagination racing, looking for ways to break it. Everything that draws a card becomes a potential combo piece. Arguments can break out on playgrounds over whether the card is good or a noob trap. All while the card itself has an implied meaning; a Pokédex in the context of this franchise represents new beginnings. It NEEDS to be a card.

Pack filler cards can also serve as a mechanical introduction to a game's themes and archetypes. Magic famously has "signpost uncommons" that are intentionally designed to teach players what the playstyle of a certain color combination is in any given set from the modern era.

Poliwag isn't a very interesting or powerful card, but it does make the player immediately wonder how they can get the most out of Water Gun.

What's the fastest way to get Water Energy onto this card? Poliwag's purpose, along with several cards like it, is ultimately to guide the player over towards Blastoise, the flagship of the water type. It does this without ever asking the player to crack open a flyer or a guidebook. That's the power of signposting.

"Bad" cards also exist to challenge the player in some way. A lot of the joy of card games comes from deckbuilding. If every card is obviously synergistic and slots cleanly into a deck without any compromises, you exert no brainpower when putting together your stack of cards.

But a card like Machoke almost reads like a challenge directed at the player. Can you keep damage off this 'mon long enough to make Karate Chop worth using? When do you cast aside Karate Chop in favor of Submission, a move that actively makes the other move weaker?

He reads like a challenge because he IS a challenge. He's meant to make you think, the same way a crossword puzzle or a maze makes you think. And finally finding an application for the card feels almost as good as knocking out Chansey.

For some pack filler cards, being bad is part of the charm of the card. Beating your opponent's Gyarados with Scyther might feel cool and stylish, but beating it with BUTTERFREE of all things? Oh ho, now you're cooking with gas.

Winning with a bad card can give players a rush that they might have not had otherwise. You've beaten your friends before, but have you beaten them with only Magikarp and Caterpie? Sometimes bad cards can present new opportunities for a player to flex a little and show off.

And sometimes a pack filler card just exists to be loved. Look at Cubone. He's crying while staring up at the stars. Are you really going to pick on poor little Cubone? Are you really going to Slash a sad little orphan just for a Prize Card?

The Pokémon TCG, more than any other TCG, is famous for its art and its creature designs. My favorite art piece in the entire Base-Fossil format is Butterfree, an objectively awful card.

And my favorite pokémon? Sandslash. Pray for me, because he never gets good cards. But he's out here trying his best, dammit.

While it's fun to talk about balance, power level, and tier lists, I honestly think there are only a handful of "badly designed" cards in the entire Base-Fossil format.

I tried to make a Kingler deck work because summoning an army of increasingly angrier crabs just sounded funny to me. I still gaslight myself into believing that Beedrill is playable in some capacity, just because he has the highest damage of any poison-inflicting move. I unironically thought Dugtrio was a good card when I was younger, and I still have a nostalgic attachment to this trash card.

Bad cards often fulfill roles that good cards can't fill. They also keep the gameplay simple and make deckbuilding harder, which I personally think is the best of both worlds. It's nice to puzzle through your new deck list at your own pace, and it's nice when games are snappy and quick.

More and more, card games are veering toward a design philosophy that favors cards so interwoven with each other that the deck practically builds itself. Then the challenge of the game all gets frontloaded into the gameplay, which can be more tedious than fun sometimes.

Maybe for some people, that's the way of the future. But I personally don't like watching my opponent play a game of solitaire for ten minutes because their deck is full of synergistic powerful cards that all activate each other. So I can appreciate that Pokémon has kept their TCG simple all these years, helped in no small part by these boring workhorse card designs that people take for granted.