Ever fancied ditching the "gotta catch 'em all" routine and causing a bit of chaos instead? The Pokemon Company thinks you might. On 14 July it revealed a brand-new, officially licensed Team Rocket board game, titled お前、もしかしてロケット団？ (roughly "Wait, are you with Team Rocket?"), and this time you are the ones swiping the Pikachu.
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Set up your group for freeThe reveal came from the official Japanese Pokemon account as a single teaser, so hard details are thin on the ground. What we do know is the theme, and that is the fun part: rather than another spin on the Pokemon Trading Card Game, this is a standalone tabletop game built around joining Giovanni's gang. The teaser art shows a hooded grunt flanked by a scheming Pikachu and a Koffing, leaning hard into the Kanto-era look that fans of the original games and anime will recognise instantly.
The pedigree behind it is worth a look. The game is being made with Yoka Games, the Chinese studio best known for Sanguosha (三国殺, "Legends of the Three Kingdoms"), a hidden-role card game in the mould of Bang! that became one of China's biggest tabletop hits. Yoka's background in bluffing and secret-identity play has fans speculating that a Team Rocket game could lean towards social deduction, though The Pokemon Company has not confirmed how it actually plays yet.
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Find events near youFor now it is a Japan-only release, pencilled in for November 2026, with no English-language edition announced. That is the usual pattern for Pokemon's Japanese tabletop experiments, and it is worth remembering the company has quietly put out physical games before, so a wider rollout is not off the table if this one lands well.
If it does travel, a quick game about scheming as the bad guys is exactly the sort of thing that livens up a casual game night. Until then, Team Rocket fans finally have a reason to hope they get to lose gracefully, or win by being gloriously sneaky.
Sources: Official Pokemon (X) | GoNintendo | TheGamer
