Pokemon board game Oomae, Moshikashite Rocket-dan? launches November 12

The Pokemon board game Oomae, Moshikashite Rocket-dan? (お前、もしかしてロケット団？) launches in Japan on 12 November. The announcement also includes a new promotional video featuring Megumi Hayashibara, Shin-ichiro Miki and Inuko Inuyama, the Japanese voice actors associated with Team Rocket in the Pokemon anime.¹²

A hidden-role Pokemon board game

Players take on roles including Gym Leader, Gym Trainer, Challenger and Rocket-dan member. Everyone except the Gym Leader keeps their role hidden while the game progresses, forcing players to work out who is pursuing which win condition. The official promotional video shows people playing around a table, with the hidden Team Rocket member signposted as part of the game’s central mystery.¹²

The release is built around social deduction rather than a conventional head-to-head Pokemon battle. Players must complete their own objectives while reading the behaviour of everyone else, making the identity of the Rocket-dan player the key twist. The title’s Japanese name roughly translates as “Are you perhaps Team Rocket?”

The new promotional video

The video is presented through the official Pokemon YouTube channel and features the three actors who voiced Team Rocket’s Jessie, James and Meowth in the anime. That gives the announcement a direct link to the franchise’s familiar cast while keeping the board game’s role-play premise at the centre.¹²

Our opinion

A hidden-role Pokemon game is a smart fit for Team Rocket’s constant mix of disguise, deception and theatrical plotting. The premise should be immediately understandable to fans, while the secret roles give the board game a reason to exist beyond a standard Pokemon-branded battle system. The real test will be whether the win conditions create satisfying accusations and reversals once the novelty wears off, but the concept has a stronger hook than a simple character-themed tabletop release.