Pokémon TCG Pocket: Best deck for the Alolan Ninetales Drop event

Pokémon TCG Pocket’s latest battle event is here, running from today, May 16 to May 26, 2025. This event focuses on Alolan Ninetales, a fantastic Water-type Pokémon card with an interesting weakness that makes it very helpful for diversifying the weaknesses in your deck. 

Battle Events require event-specific stamina to participate in, with one gem of stamina recovering every 12 hours. Thankfully, you won’t expend any stamina if you lose the battle, and Event Hourglasses, which reduce the timer for stamina, can be earned by completing battles for the first time alongside a few other rewards. Each card battle also has a series of Battle Tasks, which upon completion give additional rewards, as well as Chance Rewards, which is how players will obtain rare promo cards.

There are a few different ways to approach defeating the various Alolan Ninetales decks featured in this event, and some fantastic rewards for players who manage to take them all down. In this guide we’ll go over the best decks for the Alolan Ninetales Drop event in Pokémon TCG Pocket, and all of its missions, tasks, and rewards. 

Pokémon TCG Pocket Alolan Ninetales event: Best deck

Alolan Ninetales, along with many of the cards featured in its decks throughout this event, have an unusual weakness for a Water-type card: Metal. Metal-type cards are reasonably uncommon, and historically haven’t had enough support to be viable, but recent expansions – especially the Celestial Guardians expansion – have done wonders for the type. That’s why we’ve gone with this Solgaleo ex deck from our list of the best meta decks in Pokémon TCG Pocket: 

• Cosmog (2) 
• Cosmoem 
• Solgaleo ex (2) 
• Skarmory (2) 
• Sabrina (2) 
• Professor’s Research (2) 
• Poke Ball (2) 
• Rare Candy (2) 
• Giant Cape (2) 
• Rocky Helmet 
• Poison Barb (2) 

Rare Candy should let you get to Solgaleo ex fairly quickly, while Skarmory, equipped with a Pokémon Tool like Rocky Helmet, Giant Cape, and Poison Barb, will deal a decent amount of damage while you’re setting up. Once you’ve got Solgaleo ex on the field it’s basically a done deal — it can knock about any Pokémon with a static cost of just two Metal energy. Just make sure you set the deck to only use Metal energy, and not the Psychic energy Cosmog and Cosmoem generate by default. 

There are alternatives to this deck — just about any Metal-focused deck, such as Dialga ex and Melmetal, or even just any other meta-viable deck, will probably work. But there are tasks based on knocking out Pokémon using a Metal-type Pokémon, so sticking to Metal is best, and probably fastest, too. 

Pokémon TCG Pocket Alolan Ninetales event: Best low rarity deck

Some of the decks in the Alolan Ninetales Drop event have tasks requiring you to defeat the opponent’s deck using only cards of ♢, ♢♢, or ♢♢♢ rarity. This is pretty limiting, and means you won’t be able to use any Pokémon ex cards. There is one obvious choice though, and it’s quite a fun deck: 

• Oricorio (2) - Pom-Pom 
• Tapu Koko (2) 
• Shaymin (2) - Triumphant Light/Sky Forme 
• Professor’s Research (2) 
• Sabrina (2) 
• Giovanni (2) 
• Pokémon Communication (2) 
• Poké Ball (2) 
• Potion (2) 
• Giant Cape (2)

Oricorio is a very funny card that prevents any damage from Pokémon ex cards, while Tapu Koko can swap out after attacking, putting Oricorio back in the lead for your opponent’s turn. This is important because the decks that have the low rarity challenge have Crabominable ex, which the AI will prefer to use, so you can negate all of its damage using this strategy. 

Shaymin Sky Forme enables the deck to function, because it removes Oricorio’s retreat cost, effectively giving you free switches between Oricorio and Tapu Koko. Just chip away at the enemy and you’re almost guaranteed a win. We expect this deck will be the go-to for most low rarity challenges going forward, as it’s wildly effective — and a lot of fun to play. 

Find all Pokémon TCG Pocket Alolan Ninetales event Battle Tasks and their rewards below.

Pokémon TCG Pocket Alolan Ninetales Drop Event: All tasks and rewards 

Like Drop events before it, the Alolan Ninetales Drop Event has players taking on a series of increasingly difficult solo challenge battles. Also like the prior events, players will be able to earn a Alolan Ninetales promo card, alongside a few new promo cards in a new promo pack that should help fill out your decks. 

The Alolan Ninetales Drop Event offers players four solo battles to take on against a CPU, each with a specific deck of increasing difficulty from Beginner through to Expert. In addition to first-time battle rewards and chance rewards, each battle comes with a selection of tasks, such as knocking out cards with Pokémon of specific types, using cards of specific rarities, and winning within a certain amount of turns. Each of these tasks can be completed once.

Here are all Alolan Ninetales Drop event Battle Tasks and their rewards:

Beginner

• Knock Out your opponent’s Active Pokémon 1 time with an attack from a Metal-type Pokémon — Event Hourglass x4 
• Put 3 Basic Pokémon into play — Event Hourglass x4

Intermediate 

• Knock Out your opponent’s Active Pokémon 2 times with an attack from a Metal-type Pokémon — Event Hourglass x3
• Put a Stage 1 Pokémon into play — Event Hourglass x4
• Win this battle by turn 14 — Event Hourglass x4

Advanced 

• Knock Out your opponent’s Active Pokémon 2 times with an attack from a Metal-type Pokémon — Wonder Hourglass x4
• Win this battle using a deck where all Pokémon cards are of ♢, ♢♢, and/or ♢♢♢ rarity — Wonder Hourglass x4
• Win this battle by turn 14 — Wonder Hourglass x4
• Win this battle without your opponent getting any points — Wonder Hourglass x4

Expert 

• Win this battle using a deck where all Pokémon cards are of ♢, ♢♢, and/or ♢♢♢ rarity — Wonder Hourglass x5
• Win this battle by turn 12 — Pack Hourglass x5
• Win this battle without your opponent getting any points — Wonder Hourglass x5
• Win 10 or more battles — Wonder Hourglass x5
• Win 20 or more battles — Wonder Hourglass x5

Players also earn rewards the first time they clear a battle during the event, and Chance Rewards, which offer a selection of rewards with weighted odds depending on the difficulty level and are awarded after every win. 

Here are the first-time rewards for each difficulty level: 

• Beginner: Pack Hourglass x2, Promo Pack, Shop Ticket
• Intermediate: Pack Hourglass x4, Promo Pack, Shop Ticket
• Advanced: Pack Hourglass x6, Promo Pack, Shop Ticket
• Expert: Pack Hourglass x8, Promo Pack, Shop Ticket

And here are the Chance Rewards for each difficulty level, along with their likelihood of being rewarded after each match: 

• Beginner: Promo Pack (51%), Shinedust x25 (100%), Shop Ticket (38.7%) 
• Intermediate: Promo Pack (64%), Shinedust x25 (100%), Shop Ticket (48.3%) 
• Advanced: Promo Pack (80%), Shinedust x25 (100%), Shop Ticket (60.4%)
• Expert: Promo Pack (100%), Shinedust x25 (100%), Shop Ticket (75.5%)

Pokémon TCG Pocket Alolan Ninetales Drop Event: All Promo Cards

Players who earn Promo Packs during the Alolan Ninetales Drop Event will have those cards added to the gifts menu on the home page of the app, where they can be opened one at a time to receive one card out of a pool of five. Each of these cards has an equal chance of appearing when opening a Promo Pack, so the Alolan Ninetales is just as likely as the Crabrawler — it’s a 20% chance for each. 

Here’s the full list of cards in the Alolan Ninetales Drop Event Promo Pack:

• Alolan Exeggutor
• Alolan Ninetales (full art)
• Crabrawler
• Alolan Grimer
• Toucannon

Alolan Ninetales is the clear draw card here, as it’s a great addition to a Water deck thanks to its unique weakness. Alolan Ninetales’s only attack, Blizzard, deals 60 damage to your opponent’s active Pokémon, and an additional 20 damage to every Pokémon on their bench, which is pretty decent. 

Alolan Grimer is also of note, since it has an alternate move that guarantees the poison status effect on the opponent’s active Pokémon, which can be helpful in a few different Darkness-type decks. Toucannon, too, has an alternate move called Beak Blast, which has a higher energy cost but deals more damage and can burn on a successful coin flip. All other cards are simply alternate artwork variants of their main set counterparts, with no new moves or stat changes.