I would never have trusted The Pokémon Company to make a decent F2P version of the TCG. Somehow, it's actually fairly solid. /continues playing
this on the 3DS, Wii U, or phones?
Windows, Mac, and iPad.
huh
It starts you with simple decks, and has both an "offline" mode where you punch the locals at your fictional card shop's League,
and then an actual online mode where you punch real players.
The money-spending component comes up in two very different ways:
You can buy Tickets that let you compete in tournaments that drop boosters, whose contents you can then trade;
and you can go buy certain physical cards, which come with codes to get those cards in the game.