What are your odds of pulling an RGB Mew in the English version of Pokémon 30th Celebration? One stats nerd watched 4,063 pack openings on live influencer streams, recording every card in every slot, to work out the pull rates and card slot patterns. But they’ve got a vital message they want to share, about their own data and anyone else’s – the rarer the cards are, the less you can trust the numbers!
The stats nerd in question is Discord user @Tommy13 – we found their work in the r/PokemonTCG Reddit. The headline pull rates for opening any card of a particular rarity are as follows:
- RGB Rare: not enough data to be certain
- Futuristic Rare: 1 in 100 packs
- Special Illustration Rare: 1 in 20 packs
- Classic Collection: 1 in 10 packs
- Illustration Rare: 1 in 5 packs
- Double Rare: 1 in 4 packs
Or at least, those are what Tommy13 believes the true rates are. The actual pull rates they observed in their sample of 4,063 pack openings were:
- RGB rare (observed): one in 4,063 packs
- Futuristic Rare (observed): one per 99 packs
- Special Illustration Rare (observed): one per 18 packs
- Classic Collection (observed): one per 9.8 packs
- Illustration Rare (observed): one per 5.2 packs
- Double Rare (observed): one per 4 packs
While Tommy13 observed one RGB in 4,063 packs, they believe the pull rate could be anywhere from one in 718 to one in 23,016! But how can the numbers vary so much?
Remember, Tommy13 saw a random selection of boosters, and we don’t know if the sample they saw was representative, lucky, or unlucky. They’ve got a good example: “if the true pull rate were 1 in 908, then getting one live hit in 4,063 packs is as surprising as getting 4 heads in a row” – not an expected result, but something you’ve no doubt done while playing Pokémon TCG.
What Tommy17 is a lot more certain about is the slot order for the packs. They’ve identified several pools of cards that only ever appear in certain slots, and which will be useful for identifying resealed packs. There’s a lot more detail in Tommy’s original post, including some great infographics with more details on the card lists, but the basic outline of packs is as follows.
- Slot 1 – opening commons. There are 23 unique cards that can only appear in this slot.
- Slot 2 – second common. There are 23 unique cards that normally only appear in this slot, but can be bumped up to slot 1 by a hit in slot 3.
- Slot 3 – third common, or hits. There are 22 unique commons that normally only appear in this slot, but can be bumped up to slot 2 by a hit in this slot. Illustration Rare and Classic Classic Collection Rare cards can appear in Slot 3.
- Slot 4 – rare slots. Ordinarily this slot is filled by rare Legendaries, but it can be bumped by Double Rares, Special Illustration Rares, Futuristic Rares, and RGB rares.
- Slot 5 – all Pikachu, all the time.
When you’ve got your hands on some boosters, we can’t wait to see your pulls – share them in the Wargamer Discord community!
Source: Wargamer
