[TCG] A Rough Guide to Deck Building

[TCG] A Rough Guide to Deck Building - Printable Version

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A Rough Guide to Deck Building - w2gMk - Dec 5, 2016

Hello my frands, it is I, w2.

Today I am going to show you how to build a decent Pokemon TCG deck. I'm hoping we can build a solid place for pokemon TCG discussion, so I shall make this guide Smile

. This guide will mostly apply to the online trading card game, which is a free download found on the official pokemon website riiiiight here! After all, you don't really want to drop some Benjamins on real life cards if you're just starting out playing. The Free TCGO is a much nicer place to begin. Smile

You can still buy the cards if you want though, don't let a random internet person tell you how to spend your m0n3y. The real life game uses these same cards so its pretty much the same.

A fun and engaging card game, the Pokemon TCG is a very nice card game that has endless strategies and play styles. Nearly every card you find has a legitimate and powerful use in a deck, and as such requires suitable strategies. Some decks win by taking prize cards which is 6 cards from your deck which you obtain by knocking out your opponents pokemon, while others win through disabling your opponent. This may be from causing your opponent to lose all their cards, resulting in a loss, or discarding all possible energies an opponent has, thus causing a forfeit. I am going to go over important cards no deck should be without as well as cards very useful to many decks, special support pokemon, examples of bad decks, what to avoid in deck building, how to build a decent deck, ways to obtain cards you want, both expensive and inexpensive, and some internet resources to help you improve.

Important Cards

The cards mentioned in this section are quite important to a pokemon deck. These cards are commonly referred to as skeletons, because they are in every deck. You cannot escape these cards. These Trainer cards will include Supporters which can only be used once per turn, item cards which can be used at any time so long as you have them, Stadium cards which give both players added effects ranging from healing water and electric pokemon once per turn all the way to allowing pokemon to use them oves of their previous evolution, and finally item cards, which you attach to pokemon~ These tools give effects to pokemon which can strengthen their damage output, or even allow them to move about freely.

Supporter Cards 1: Professor Sycamore and Professor Birch's Observations

These two are the most vital Supporter cards. 99% of every deck requires them at the very least. They draw you cards when you need them, so you can continue your turn when you otherwise wouldn't be able to. Freeing up a dead hand, and getting you further ahead of your opponent. First, we shall look at Professor Sycamore.

Professor Sycamore is a Supporter card which discards your hand in exchange for 7 cards. This is a very powerful card, allowing you to discard an otherwise useless hand, and giving you a fresh new hand to continue your turn with. Sycamore will be a great asset in early to mid game set up play, but has a few downsides. Should you use Professor Sycamore, you are going to be throwing away valuable cards at some point. Now this may be for the greater good, but this costly exchange could cost you an entire game, potentially discarding multiple sycamores, other supporter cards, pokemon, stadium cards, item cards, energy cards, and more. With many cards being hard, if not impossible to shuffle back into your hand or deck, Sycamore has very powerful downsides to go with the highly valuable upside. You should have 3 to 4 at all times.
Professor Birch's Observations is an alternative to Professor Sycamore. Instead of discarding your hand to draw more cards, you instead put your hand back into your deck before drawing cards. Professor Birch's trade off is a little more pleasent than Sycamore, however his draw support is limited to a coin flip. Felling lucky? Well Birch is for you. Should you flip heads on a coin you'll be rewarded with 7 cards. Should you be down on your luck, a mere 4 cards. Birch is a little less desirable for a deck, but he pairs well with some pokemon. Octillery for example which I'll touch on a little later, allows you to draw up to 6 cards every turn. In combination with Sycamore, Octillery's support can be massively destroyed. With Birch however, Octillery can only profit. It's card support won't be wasted as Birch merely shuffles cards back into your deck, and should Birch land you a tails, Octillery can fix that right up. If you are not running a deck based around Octillery's card support, I recommend using Professor Birch's Observations above Professor Sycamore. However, using both in one deck isn't a bad thing. If you're using Professor Birch's observations by himself, I recommend 4. Shoudl he be used with Sycamore, I recommend 2.

Now we will move on to less important supporter cards which are still incredibly valuable to any deck. These are more useful in disrupting your opponent, setting up pokemon, and obtaining specific cards.

Supporter Cards 2: N, Lysandre, Pokemon Fan Club, and Wally

N, Lysandre, Pokemon Fan Club, and Wally are incredibly useful cards. 2 are needed in most decks, 2 are needed in inexpensive decks. All very powerful. I shall now start with my favorite card, the great equalizer known simply as N.

N is a supporter card which similar to Professor Birch's observations, shuffles your hand into your deck and allows you to then draw 1 to 6 cards, depending on how many prize cards you have. While this might seem bad, N has a great secondary use. He works on your opponents hand as well. Should your own hand be stuck, and you see your opponent drowning in cards, N sees how unfair this is, and makes your opponent shuffle their cards into their deck as well. Should they also be winning, they now have less cards than you do. Its perfect. He destroys your opponents hand, while giving you a more favorable hand. Perfect for the beginning of a match, N pairs perfectly with Professor Sycamore, is a perfect middle ground between using Professor Birch's Observation's devine coin flips. A staple of many decks, you should have an N on hand at all times. I usually cram my deck with 4, however you can get away without using any.
Lysandre, the man with a plan, forces your opponent to switch their active pokemon with one of your choosing from their bench. Should you have an unfavorable match up, a need to knock down their pokemon setting up on the bench, or need some time, Lysandre fixes all these problems. He is needed in 100% of all decks. I recommend 2 at all times.
Pokemon Fan Club is highly recommended for inexpensive (or budget) decks. These decks will usually contain basic pokemon which can evolve further, such as chikorita, but also works with many EX pokemon based decks. In expensive decks, Pokemon Fan Club will almost always be replaced with Hoopa EX, which has an ability similar to the effects of pokemon fan club. Since we are just starting out, pokemon fan club is going to be our choice here. When played, Pokemon Fan Club will allow you to pull 2 basic pokemon of your choice into your hand. You can immediately place them onto your bench should you have the space. Sometimes you just need pokemon, and this card is the best supporter to use. Guaranteeing you 2 pokemon you need while also allowing you to check if any of your pokemon are prize cards, this kickstarts your momentum and set up in a game where a common problem is you only have 1 playable pokemon.
Wally is a great great addition to a budget deck. Only usable on a deck without EX pokemon, Wally will help get you your evolution cards. Don't be stuck wasting Sycamore's, junking vital cards, for the 1 in 50 shot of finding your evolution card when you can play Wally! With the unique ability to evolve a pokemon the turn you place a pokemon on the field, Wally is very valuable should you find your deck to be a bit slow to evolve pokemon. I recommend 2 Wally.

Now that we have some very important Supporter cards to begin our deck's skelington, I shall now move on to Item cards. Item cards are very important. They allow you to obtain supporter cards, obtain other item cards, evolve pokemon, deevolve pokemon, bring back discarded cards, and even attach more energy to your pokemon. I'm going to show you the most valuable, and useful item cards.

Item Cards: VS Seeker, Trainers Mail, Ultra Ball, Max Elixir, and Switch

VS Seeker, and Trainers Mail are the most powerful item cards in the game. You need both of them, and they are sickeningly good, and they must be used together. Depending on your main form of draw support however, will change the quantity of each in relation to each other. Finally, its ball time. Ultra ball is the default ball most decks should run.

VS Seeker is a tool card which allows you to reuse spend supporter cards. This essentially gives you MORE supporter cards than you otherwise would have. Need another Lysandre but don't have one? VS Seeker has you covered. Need an N that you used previously? Don't worry with VS Seeker you got ya boy N on speed dial. The best part about this item however, is its relationship with the professional card burner himself.... Sycamore. Sycamore as previously mentioned, has a big drawback of flushing other supporter cards. VS Seeker remedies this problem. Now, Sycamore actually did you a solid, allowing the VS Seeker to have those burned supporters readily available. Did Sycamore burn your one and only N in your deck? Don't worry, VS Seeker now has him any time you want. Should you have Professor Sycamore as your main draw supporter, you should use 4 VS Seekers. If you use Professor Birch's observations, you can use 2 to 3 instead.
Trainers Mail helps prevent your hand from being stuck. Looking at the top 4 cards of your deck, you can grab any trainer card you find there, minus another trainers mail of course. You can also find other Item cards, stadiums, and tool cards. Depending on how many VS Seekers you use, the amount of trainers mail you use will change. If you have 4 VS Seekers, use 2 Trainer mails. If you have fewer, add one more trainer mail for every missing VS Seeker.
Ultra ball is by far the most useful pokeball card available. Very few decks won't run Ultra balls. The exception to this will be Water decks which should always have dive balls (which find ANY water pokemon for free). The ultra ball allows you to find any pokemon in your deck. Mega pokemon, basic pokemon, pokemon EX, BREAK pokemon, if they are in your deck, ultra ball can grab it. The downside to this is you must discard 2 cards in your hand. This works as a downside but also a plus side. With a Sycamore the downside is nullified, as you'd discard those anyway. I recommend 2 to 4.
Max Elixir can be a literal game saver. You look at the top 8 cards of your deck. Should you find a basic energy there, you get to throw it on a basic pokemon. Perfect for early game set up and emergency late game set up. This allows you to use 2 energy in one turn (possibly more if you have multiple in your hand) or if you have no energy in your hand even after using Sycamore, Birch, or N, may save you and get you that energy.
Switch is a wonderful card. Many decks will run at least 1. Switch allows you to switch your active pokemon with one on your bench, regardless of retreat cost. Free retreat is a powerful game changer, allowing you to swap a battle ready pokemon into play, or get an active pokemon to safety.

We shall now move to Tool cards. A subset of item cards, Tool cards are attached to your pokemon to give them added benefits. These range from giving them energy, damaging your opponent should they attack you, increase health points, and even increase how much damage you can put out.

Tool Cards: Fighting Fury Belt, Spirit Links, Float Stones, Experience shares, and Bursting Balloons

Fighting Fury Belt is a strong item in the TCG. Only applicable to basic pokemon,(if you plan on evolving, fighting fury belt isn't going to work) this increases a pokemon's Health by 40 points, and allows them to do 10 more damage. An incredibly powerful tool, this works best on cards such as Regice, and Lugiawhich will be shown later. I recommend 2 if you plan on using them.
Spirit links, while they won't be used in budget decks, are still worth mentioning. These tool cards allow mega pokemon to not end their turn upon evolving. Without a spirit link, no pokemon capable of mega evolving can continue their turn upon evolving. Spirit links are vital to any mega pokemon deck, and take precidence over all other Tool cards. I recommend 3 to 4.
Float stones are very important to decks whose pokemon have very high retreat costs. Float stones allow pokeon with this tool attached to have 100% free retreat. No wasting energy. Should a pokemon have over 2 retreat cost, and isn't vital in damage output, float stones are incredibly useful in countering Lysandre. Some decks even require float stones, and a few pokemon have abilities which pair so well with float stones you'll never see them without it.
Experience share is pretty cool. If you got room for it I recommend using one or two. Should a pokemon with a basic energy be knocked out, the holder of this tool will be given 1 of the energies. This works well with support based pokemon as they will probably be knocked out, which will give a more deserving pokemon a free energy. This also works for backup pokemon for when the first pokemon you had battle ready gets knocked out.
Finally we have bursting balloon. A horrific tool card to face, should the holder be directly damaged while this tool is attached, the attacker will get a face full of boom, taking 60 damage. There is one slight tiny little detail you cannot overlook however. It only works for one turn. So use them carefully. These are capable of destroying an opponents basic pokemon early on, and can put a pokemon later on in range of being knocked out the following turn. Incredibly annoying, easy to use, bursting balloons are something everyone should watch out for.

Stadium Cards

Stadium cards right now are incredibly important. They put effects on both players that can boost your abilities while potentially harming your opponent's. Very important today, few decks can get away with having no stadium cards. I will show the 6 most used stadiums I see.

These stadiums are abundant, and the best part? There's tons more like them, each of which benifit completely different decks, pokemon, and playstyles. Learn what they all do because there are too many to list, and too many to describe. Also remember this:You can use your opponent's stadium If they have rough seas, and you have water pokemon, or electric pokemon, you can use their rough seas. This applies to other pokemon as well. Never forget this.

Support Pokemon

Support pokemon are as they sound. They support your team whether it be by drawing more cards, statusing opponents, shutting down other abilities, locking your stadiums, or preventing opponants from using tools. Support pokemon are incredible, and are vital to any deck. Below are some common support pokemon which you may want in your deck. These specific ones are quite cheap and relatively easy to obtain. and the best part? You only need one or two of them.

Magearna is my favorite of these 9. These support pokemon are incredibly useful in any deck. Regice especially. Regice alone can defeat an entire deck based around EX pokemon. His second attack causes all attacks from EX pokemon to do literally nothing to it. I recommend having at least one of these on any deck that doesn't have its own fighting EX pokemon. Just watch out for Hydreigon EX as it ignores Regice's immunity.

These support pokemon are going to be the literal most valuable support pokemon you will ever see. Finding one yourself will probably have taken all the luck left in you for the next 10 years. These are 100% guarenteed to be on all high quality pokemon decks.

These 2 are scary pokemon. Shaymin EX allows the user to have draw support just from being put into play. It is for this one reason that it is the most valuable card in the game right now. The real life card costs anywhere from $50 to a full $100. Hoopa here, is a staple for EX based decks. He works like Pokemon Fan Club, except for EX pokemon and you get up to 3, and it works for mega evolutions not just basic EX's, and all you have to do is put it into play. These pokemon can be shut down completely by Garbodor however. Hoopa unlike shaymin however, can be picked up at walmart. Yep, thats right one quick trip to walmart with $22 can get you one real card, and 2 digital cards thanks to the code inside. Just so you can find it, it looks liek this: [Image: 50316714?wid=450&hei=450&fmt=pjpeg]

[Image: 50316714?wid=450&hei=450&fmt=pjpeg]

Bad Decks, and What Makes Them Bad

When one begins their journey into pokemon TCG, you will generally be equiped with a deck that looks like this.
[Image: xy-steam-siege-theme-deck-gears-of-fire-..._image.jpg]

[Image: xy-steam-siege-theme-deck-gears-of-fire-..._image.jpg]

This is a theme deck. Of the 60 cards within this pre made, ready to use deck, 30 are pokemon, 12 are trainer cards, and then you have 18 energy cards. OF the energy cards there are 11 fire energy, and 7 steel energy. This is a bad deck for a multitude of reasons which I will list now.

1: There are too many pokemon.
With so many pokemon in this deck, you'll never have an empty bench. But you'll hardly ever find the cards you want or need.
2: Too few Trainer cards.
Trainer cards are what really makes a pokemon deck. Having so few trainer cards is horrible. Considering how any of them could be locked away as prize cards, having so few trainer cards is so inefficient that you will lose within 5 turns in most games unless your opponent is also using a similar deck.
3: Too many Energy cards;Too varied
Energy is important. You can't play without them. But having too much energy will leave you with a hand full of energy, and no pokemon to put them on. This deck also features 2 different specific energy types, which isn't always bad, but there's too much of multiple energy. You'll be pulling energy you can't use too often leading to a dead hand.

Now here is how to avoid making a bad deck.

Bad Front Lines

When it comes to your battling pokemon, if you are using evolution based cards, there are a few sets that just do not work out. Prize card locks, and Sycamores are mainly the reason why. The lines in which to avoid is this.

Pyramid Schemes: Yep. These lines look as they sound. Consisting of 3 or 4 basic pokemon, 2 stage 1 evolutions, then finally 1 single stage 2 pokemon (a 4-2-1 line) pyramid schemes are horrific, and are featured in many premade decks. The odds that your stage 2 pokemon is locked in your prize cards is incredibly high, and once it is in there well... now you don't have your main attacker. The deck has now failed at doing what you wanted it to.

4x4x4: This is not good. Too many evolutions and too many basic pokemon. These are going to limit how many supporting pokemon you can viably have, and will jam up your hand fairly often. The only good thing about it is you're always going to have your evolutions. But at the cost of momentum. No good.

2x2x2: Not enough basic pokemon. The odds of all your basic pokemon becoming prize cards is really high. Avoid this.

Now, building a good deck. Follow this and your deck should be viable.

Get your vital trainer cards.

They are vital for a reason. Gather the trainer cards mentioned above. Sycamore/ Birch, N, Lysandre, VS Seeker, Trainer Mail, Ultra balls, and maybe max elixirs. These are the foundation of your deck. Without these, you're going to have a bad deck, and a bad time.
Chose your main offensive pokemon, your back ups, and your support pokemon.

You need to find the pokemon which will be doing the most of the damage output. For the best damage output, your attacker should be able to output at least 210 damage over 2 turns. The focus point of the deck will be this pokemon. You're allowed 4 of them, but sometimes 3 will do. Whether this is an EX pokemon, or an evolutionary line, you need a focus. I recommend having a line of 3-3-3 or 3-3-2 if you want a stage 2 pokemon line such as metagross. This frees up space for supporting pokemon. Your back up pokemon and support pokemon should never exceed 4 cards. If your backup can evolve have 2 basic pokemon, then 2 evolutions for them. If your backup pokemon doesn't evolve, I recommend 1 to 2. An example of a backup pokemon are Regice, and Zoroark which function in any deck. For support pokemon, what you chose depends on your offensive pokemon, but they too should follow the 2-2 line, or 2-0 line. This results in around 11 to 15 pokemon. This is really all the pokemon you need. With everything, there are of course exceptions to this. Pokemon decks such as Despair Ray mega gardevoir, or the mighty Vespiquen deck may require many more pokemon to function properly. EX based decks may require larger back up attacker numbers, but they should also not exceed 15 pokemon.
Chose your energy wisely.

For this section we will be using the below Klinklang for our example, with the backup of Zoroark, and Regice.

There are many many types of energy in this game, and there are varients to each energy type. Knowing what energy your pokemon are using is essential. As you can see, Klinklang requires 2 steel energy, and one colorless energy. If we look at our support pokemon, Zoroark, and Regice, we can see the only other energy type we really need is water for Regice. So our energy will be steel, and water. If you look at the steel energy variation, we will find Shield Energy.

As you can see, shield energy only works for steel pokemon. Since our main attacker is steel it is a good idea to use these. You can have a max of 4 of these special energy in your deck. So we will take 4. Now Zoroark and Regice currently haven o energy to fight. Not good. So we are going to need more energy. Considering Zoroark needs 2 colorless energy and Regice needs 2 colorless energy as well, we can add more steel energy. We're going to use 7 steel energy, which is enough to power a Zoroark, a Regice, and a Klinklang outside of the Shield Energy. Now, we need a water energy for Regice. We will use two water energy, for a total of 12 energy. When it comes to energy, 11 to 15 total energy is what you should go for. Anymore and you're likely to have too many energy clogging up your hand.
Finalizing your deck.

Okay so now you have 15 pokemon, and 12 energy. 27 total cards, nice. Now with our vital trainer cards we will have 4 Sycamore/Birch, 6 VS Seeker+Trainer mail, 4 N's, 2 Lysandre's, and lets go for 4 Ultra balls. That's 20 trainer cards totalling 47 total cards out of the 60 we need for a deck. That leaves us a lot of room for more Trainer cards. Here is where you chose your extra supporters, tools, stadiums, and items. Cards like Wally, Chaos Tower, Float Stone, and Switches are now what you will use to carefully craft your final touches. The final 13 cards are fully changable. Use what you deem necessary. Take note of what you really could have used to win a game that you lost. There are many more cards out there which aren't mentioned. Be sure to read up on them and take note. Some item cards do the same things as supporter cards, which you might need more than the supporter, such as EvoSoda.

Now you see all these cards, and now you're here looking at me wondering "wow, these are a lot of cards, I don't have a lot of these, how do I get these cards??"

Well this is based on the TCGO. If you're not using TCGO and are playing real TCG there's always Ebay and walmart, and your local card shop. But for the TCG this gets a bit more complicated.

In the pokemon TCGO you are rewarded coins for your battles. These coins can be used to buy 10 count digital card packs. They cost 200 coins each. Simply open up card packs to get your cards. This will take a while however. Some cards can come from the premade theme decks which cost 500 coins each. Please take note, no cards obtained this way are tradable. To get cards capable of being traded, you need to win packs from tournaments, or buy real life packs, and use the codes inside to get free tradable packs. Don't be scared off though. There are tournaments which only allow premade theme decks. No one gets any advantage from their deck here. They are all of equal grade. Win your tournaments, and obtain your card packs. Now to get cards not readily available from the decks, or card packs there is the trading option. Be weary however, there are some terrible deals on the trading market.
One way to obtain specific cards on the trading market is fairly simple. Use Card packs you win from tournaments. These are the only currency you will find in the game. Trading packs for cards is the best way to obtain what you're looking for. Trainer cards generally go for 1 pack for 1 card. Same with most EX pokemon. Non EX pokemon such as Klinklang you can get full lines of for a single pack. Some pokemon cards however, go for very many card packs. A single Shaymin EX (as shown above) can cost you over 20 card packs. Trainer cards like the Professor Sycamore shown can go for similar prices.
So collect your tradable packs, and get what you want. Have fun, git gud, and have a nice day.

Some important places you can go to get inspiration, or to learn will be listed here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pkmntcg/ It's reddit. It's TCG. Nothing more to say, you can go there and ask away.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC18Y2Z7TqLHFvg4Fk3UkbRg This channel is by far my favorite TCG channel. Our friend Donald will cook you up a nice delishus deck to feast your eyes on, as he teaches you how cards work in the decks he builds, which he then shows how to be played. He builds decks that are both price friendly, and competitive as well as uber decks you might see next world championship. Quality Youtuber. Oh, and he makes good music too. So yeah.

I am no expert, so if there is anything I did not mention, please do tell. Is there a way to improve this guide? All words welcome. Also if you managed to read all of this without getting a headache congrats, you're awesome.

RE: A Rough Guide to Deck Building - mitchmaster24 - Dec 12, 2016

I've been playing TCG for over a year now. I moved to TCG after I saw last season's VGC format wasn't good. This is very accurate. I know alot about the game, have played irl with high level players at my card shop. I can't believe Shaymin EX is like $70 now it's ridiculous but a fun game that I love. I'm here to help for anyone that needs TCG help. I just won't help you build an Yveltal/Garb deck Kappa

RE: A Rough Guide to Deck Building - w2gMk - Dec 12, 2016

(Dec 12, 2016, 12:39 PM)mitchmaster24 Wrote: I've been playing TCG for over a year now. I moved to TCG after I saw last season's VGC format wasn't good. This is very accurate. I know alot about the game, have played irl with high level players at my card shop. I can't believe Shaymin EX is like $70 now it's ridiculous but a fun game that I love. I'm here to help for anyone that needs TCG help. I just won't help you build an Yveltal/Garb deck

I know right??? You could practically build a whole deck, maybe multiple decks for the cost of one shaymin, its 100% cray cray man

RE: A Rough Guide to Deck Building - Justin - Dec 12, 2016

(Dec 12, 2016, 04:07 PM)w2gMk Wrote:
(Dec 12, 2016, 12:39 PM)mitchmaster24 Wrote: I've been playing TCG for over a year now. I moved to TCG after I saw last season's VGC format wasn't good. This is very accurate. I know alot about the game, have played irl with high level players at my card shop. I can't believe Shaymin EX is like $70 now it's ridiculous but a fun game that I love. I'm here to help for anyone that needs TCG help. I just won't help you build an Yveltal/Garb deck

I know right??? You could practically build a whole deck, maybe multiple decks for the cost of one shaymin, its 100% cray cray man

I think i pulled a shaymin on stream. at the time it was like $30.

RE: A Rough Guide to Deck Building - jouzea - Dec 14, 2016

I played yugioh before I think I got this. Are there any banned cards? Restrictions? Will I be able to believe in the power of cards in Pokemon TCG? I actually did play TCGO but I thought I was only able to play basic decks.

Btw you should add that the monthly pokemon newsletter usually have codes you can use for TCGO. I just notice them a while ago.

RE: A Rough Guide to Deck Building - w2gMk - Dec 14, 2016

(Dec 14, 2016, 01:10 AM)jouzea Wrote: I played yugioh before I think I got this. Are there any banned cards? Restrictions? Will I be able to believe in the power of cards in Pokemon TCG? I actually did play TCGO but I thought I was only able to play basic decks.

Btw you should add that the monthly pokemon newsletter usually have codes you can use for TCGO. I just notice them a while ago.

The only banned card I know of is this gem of a gameplay destroyer.
[Image: XY4_EN_99.png]

It's banned in all sanctioned tournament play, and on the pokemon tcgo. The only other card I know of that's banned is Imunaki's doduo, which is fairly... useless.
[Image: XY12_EN_112.png]

If it was legal however, many tcg players would be getting rickrolled by me, personally. Smile

Restrictions depend on what format you play. A theme format only allows theme decks, like the default decks you get in the TCGO, while standard allows current XY packs, Expanded allows Black-White and on. Legacy I believe allows the use of all cards ever. Many XY packs however get rotated out of standard, and into Expanded, such as the pokemon trainer card AZ, which is no longer usable in Standard. Confusing? Yes. Easy to find answers? Nope.

In regards to believing the cards, those aren't where the heart of the game lies. The heart of the game... lies in the coins. (pretty sure the coins are weighted for tails 75% of the time)

I didn't know about the pokemon newsletter... I'm going to have to look at that later.

RE: A Rough Guide to Deck Building - mitchmaster24 - Dec 29, 2016

(Dec 12, 2016, 05:54 PM)Justin Wrote:
(Dec 12, 2016, 04:07 PM)w2gMk Wrote:
(Dec 12, 2016, 12:39 PM)mitchmaster24 Wrote: I've been playing TCG for over a year now. I moved to TCG after I saw last season's VGC format wasn't good. This is very accurate. I know alot about the game, have played irl with high level players at my card shop. I can't believe Shaymin EX is like $70 now it's ridiculous but a fun game that I love. I'm here to help for anyone that needs TCG help. I just won't help you build an Yveltal/Garb deck

I know right??? You could practically build a whole deck, maybe multiple decks for the cost of one shaymin, its 100% cray cray man

I think i pulled a shaymin on stream. at the time it was like $30.

I so regret not buying my 4 Shamil when they were only $30. Mistakes were made. Sorry wallet