by Finn, Grade 7
You may be saying to yourself “Finn, didn’t you already make an Interesting World article on Pokémon cards already?” Yes, you’re right, but that was about collecting Japanese Pokémon cards, I’m going to focus about playing the actual game and the aspect of deck building. So, now you know, let’s get into it.
Deck building? What does that have to do with playing the actual game?
Most trading card games require you to build a deck in order to participate in actually playing the game, and Pokémon isn’t an exception. Your deck is your key for executing strategies/combos with a mix of Pokémon, Trainers, and Energies. So, deck building is very important to the game itself.
Ok, but how do I build a deck?
In order to build a tournament legal deck, you need to have 60 cards exactly, no more, no less. These should be a mix of the previously mentioned Pokémon, Trainer, and Energy cards. And only certain sets of the games are allowed, with the upcoming legal sets only including the set Sun and Moon: Team Up and any set that comes after that. Other side sets (Let’s call them that, that’s not their actual name.) like the Detective Pikachu set are tournament legal (With a few exceptions.) and most promo cards are too, also with a few exceptions. Once a new set is released, they usually become tournament legal after about 2 weeks, giving players enough time to understand the set and possibly get their hands on some of the cards. As a little side note, all of the McDonalds set cards are legal if they’re functionally the same as a card in one of the official tournament legal sets. And, you can only have up to 4 cards with the same name, so you can only have 4 Pikachus but you can also have 4 Detective Pikachus. And I believe that’s about everything.
Now, for building a deck. There’s 3 ways you can make a deck: Edit a theme deck, build off one card, or just use an established deck. Using an established deck is easy enough, only costing as much as the cards inside and sleeves do. In fact, you can even use the deck in the image in this article, the ADPZ deck, since the deck revolves around the Arceus, Dialga, and Palkia Tag Team GX card and the Zacian V card. Editing a theme deck is also easy, you just buy a theme deck with a few packs or an Elite Trainer Box preferably, and then you open the packs and try to make a deck off of that, with if you got an Elite Trainer Box taking care of other materials needed to play. But, the best and most customizable way to build a deck, is by building a deck off of one card. This could be any card you want if it has a good ability and you have a way to complete one of the 3 win conditions: Taking all of your Prize Cards, running out your opponent’s deck so they don’t have any cards left to draw, or defeating all of your opponent’s active Pokémon and Pokémon on their bench. So, I did that recently and here’s the deck I created (Note: This deck hasn’t been tested yet since I don’t have all of these cards, but I’ve doubled checked and all of these cards are found in sets that are tournament legal, so if they aren’t good, they’re at least legal.):
4 Rillaboom Vs
4 Marnies
3 Professor’s Research
4 Boss’ Orders
4 Shuckles
3 Cramorants
4 Energy Spinners
3 Quick Balls
3 Energy Switches
11 Basic Grass Energy
5 Basic Water Energy
3 Team Yell Grunts
3 Energy Retrievals
2 Reset Stamps
3 Switches
1 Shaymin (Prism)
I may eventually change up this deck, but this is what I’m making currently.
Any suggestions for helping to make a deck?
Go to various websites that have a database of a lot of cards and sets so that you can decide what cards go well with each other. As for buying singular cards, I would recommend sites like eBay and TCGPlayer. eBay has better deals, but could be fake cards meanwhile TCGPlayer is very reliable for official cards, but it could cost a bit more. Once you get those cards, try to find a friend or family member to test your deck with. You can even do this online with mods for a game called Tabletop Simulator, allowing you to use all sorts of modern cards and loads of cards that may not be printing anymore or even tournament legal.
And that’s deck building for you. The trading card game is a very interesting game, and deck building for it is too. So if you’re interested, the rules are relatively easy to understand and deck building is an enjoyable experience, so enjoy it.