Pokemon releases 'Pokemon Duel' out of the blue

Did anybody hear anything about this before yesterday?

Presumably this wasn't just dropped without any indication of its impending release but I for one heard nothing of Pokemon Duel until it was suddenly available to download on both Android and iOS. 

And so, I fired it up last night to play a little. The thing crashed so much that I didn't really get anywhere because I kept having to go through the tutorial over and over but from what I saw I was intrigued. 

While Pokemon has its main series of games and the Trading Card Game (as well as Trading Card Game online) it seemed as though they felt they should be making more money - and so have invented a board game. 

While this is free to play and they even go out of there way to say that it can be completed without spending any money whatsoever, it is essentially built on a freemium frame whereby you pay 99p for some extra gems (at this point I don't really know what gems do - but it appears to be linked to the shop). I assume it cuts down on what times that are assigned to unlocking 'boosters'.

But if I had to guess, this app is the jumping off point for turning this into a proper tabletop game which requires you to by amiibo-style chess pieces to play - and with over 700 Pokemon this could be a massive money machine. I have no sources to back that up but seeing as the Trading Card Game picked up after the Gameboy Color and PC tutorial games were released, I wouldn't be surprised. Considering they can level up, I'm not sure how this would translate to a physical figure based game (maybe amiibo based) but so far I like it.

The gameplay can seem basic at first but there are "fusions" which add conditions to your Pokemon. The first you'll encounter is "rare metal" which adds EXP that can be absorbed from other Pokemon - which is a little bit cannibalistic but it's not a million miles away from trading Pokemon for candy in Pokemon Go.

As your Pokemon grows, it can make certain attacks stronger. How this affects moves that conditions (poison, paralyse etc.) is yet to be seen. I've got a bit more playing to do.