In Pokémon TCG Pocket a new set has been released. However, 2 cards can only be collected temporarily with a placeholder.
What kind of set is this? On July 30, 2025, the new set “Wisdom of Sea and Sky” was released in Pokémon TCG Pocket. The stars of the new set are the two legendary birds Ho-Oh and Lugia from the 2nd generation of Pokémon, both of which are available as Ex-cards in the new set.
If you are lucky enough to obtain one of the two cards in the rare immersive variant, there is one thing that will certainly catch your eye: Both cards currently have no artwork and are only present as placeholders in the game. And there is a simple reason for that.
Use of “false reference materials”
Why do the cards have placeholders? The artwork used for the immersive Ho-Oh card seems to be a plagiarism by a fan. The fan art was published by lanjiujiu in 2021 and has striking parallels to the variant that made it into the game.
Since there appears to be a similar problem with the Lugia card, this card has also been temporarily removed from the game.
If you want to see both variants of Ho-Oh for yourself, you can find a comparison between the fan art and the card on X.
What do the developers say? There is already an official statement from the developers of the game, which you can also read on X. It states, among other things:
“We discovered that the card production team provided the illustrator, who was commissioned to create these cards, with false reference materials as official documents. As a result, both cards have been replaced by a provisional placeholder, which the team is actively working to replace with new graphics as soon as they are ready.”
What do the placeholders look like? You can see what the placeholders look like in another post on X. Here, the placeholder version of the immersive Lugia Ex card has been uploaded.
In addition to the usual information on the card such as the name of the card, the attack, details on weakness, retreat costs, and rarity, there is only the text “New Art Coming Soon” found where you would normally find the image.
Besides collecting the cards, battling is also a major aspect in Pokémon TCG Pocket. To ensure you have a good chance and don’t go down mercilessly, you should know which decks are among the best in the game. We have compiled them for you: Pokémon TCG Pocket: the best meta decks in the tier list.
