Team Rocket Grunt – Shining Revelry
Date Reviewed: April 3, 2025
Ratings Summary:
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Otaku
The third best card of Shining Revelry is Team Rocket Grunt (A2b 072, 091)! This Trainer-Supporter has you flip a coin until you get “tails”. For each “heads” you flipped for this effect, you randomly discard an Energy card card from your opponent’s Active Pokémon. Team Rocket’s Grunt is available at both the ♦♦ and ★★ rarities.
There are no effects in the Pokémon TCG Pocket that refer to Trainers. There are three cards with anti-Supporter effects. Gengar (A1 122) and Psyduck (A1 057) have single Energy attacks that do a little damage while preventing the opposing player from using a Supporter during their next turn. Gengar ex (A1 123, 261, 277) can prevent your opponent from playing Supporters while it is Active, via its Ability. None of these are currently competitive, but I hate not mentioning them.
You only get to use one Supporter during your turn (and none at any other time). So, is it worth risking that on a card effect that fails half the time? Such Supporters often weren’t worth it the full TCG, but in Pocket? I originally ranked Misty (A1 220, 267) as the third best Trainer card of Genetic Apex, and if anything, it’s even better now than it was back then. Plus, I opened by saying Team Rocket Grunt is the third best card of this set. I wouldn’t be backing out of that now, would I?
Don’t answer that.
You normally only get a single Energy attachment per turn. Energy is used to pay for attacks and Retreat Costs. While not every form of Energy acceleration has proven competitive, several have. What’s more, one of those is Misty, a flip-until-tails Supporter. Which means that now you may be wondering why Team Rocket Grunt isn’t higher on the list.
I read an article explaining how players were overestimating Team Rocket Grunt. It was a bit too fixated on statistics. The short version is that yes, you should expect Team Rocket Grunt to do nothing half the time. Arguably more than half; not just because you shouldn’t count on having even “average” luck, but because you’ll sometimes flip more “heads” than your opponent has Energy attached. Or you won’t draw Team Rocket Grunt when you actually need it.
Nevertheless, it’s a good card! Far from a deck staple, but it’s another of those cards you should at least consider running in just about any deck. It’s not the equal opposite of Misty. Even ignoring the differences in the effects, like Misty working with your choice of your (W) Pokémon while Team Rocket Grunt automatically targets your opponent’s Active, Misty is about trying to power something up ahead of “schedule”, while Team Rocket Grunt is about denying your opponent their second use of attached Energy. Unless you’re lucky and they power something up while active.
Fortunately, Energy attachments are so important in this game, that discarding even one Energy after something has already used it to fuel an attack can still swing the entire game! The fact that it could, however unlikely, strip the opposing Active of all Energy means there is almost always hope that Team Rocket Grunt can turn the game around. Almost? Sometimes, no amount of Energy being discarded will matter, whether you’re winning or losing.
It also isn’t always about desperation, either. Even if I want to use a Supporter most turns, there aren’t enough generically useful ones worth running in a deck to make that happen. Unless you’re going to KO it anyway, Team Rocket Grunt can still be handy just because it’s often something you can use. Excluding, of course, when an opponent is able to hide behind a low Energy attacker or no Energy meatshield.
Rating: 3.5/5
Team Rocket Grunt is not a new deck staple. It might be the new “21st card” e. g. that last card you almost ran, but didn’t. I think it is better than that, but it does require shrewd deck building… or a lot of extra playtesting to learn the hard way. I’m reminded of a deck building principle; a card doesn’t need to help you win all the time to be worthwhile, it just needs to win you more games than it costs you. Or even just win more key games than it costs you.
That’s the kind of card Team Rocket Grunt is: it might cost you a game because it isn’t [insert other Supporter] or even [insert other card]. If your deck is about raw power, you probably don’t need Team Rocket Grunt. I found it useful when the combos for my combo decks were slow to show. When my attacker needed to score a 2HKO, but would otherwise have been 2HKO’d first.
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