How to Build a Basic Pokémon Card Deck

While one of the great things about the Pokémon trading card game is that you can build different styles of decks to try different winning strategies, you need to start somewhere if you're a beginner.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Pokémon cards

1. Gather a bunch of Basic Pokémon cards (labeled as such above the Pokémon's name on the card). To assure yourself of having lots of Energy cards for your Pokémon, try to keep your monsters to only one or two energy types, such as "fire" and "grass."

2. Add to these Basic cards some matching Stage 1 Evolution cards (look in the top left-hand corner to see what it evolves from). These allow your monsters to grow in strength.

3. Match up those Stage 1 cards with a few Stage 2 Evolution cards. You should have around 20 Basic and Evolution cards in all.

4. Pick 25 to 30 Basic Energy cards that go with the Basic Pokémon you've chosen. Attaching these to your Pokémon allows it to employ these powers.

5. Include some Trainer cards in your deck. A Trainer card looks totally different from Pokémon and Energy cards. The big tip-off is that it will say "Trainer" in big, bold letters at the top of the card. Trainer cards add a twist to the game by causing various types of action to occur. You should have roughly 10 of these.

6. End up with 60 cards in all.

Tips & Warnings

• When playing Pokémon, you may only have four of each type of Pokémon and Trainer in your deck.

[danielkeller]

on 7/26/2008 http://www.pokeswap.com Here you can trade your Pokemon Cards with others and they have a way to make sure that you will receive your cards, guaranteed. You can trade your doubles and create a wish list of all the cards you really want

on 8/8/2006 One of the best Pokmon cards to use, in the ex delta species, is Dragonair and Dratini, found in the breakthrough deck, as they have two resistances: fighting and grass.

on 7/3/2006 You should use some energy removal trainers. These cards can be very annoying to your opponent, especially when you see them struggling to get some energy cards. Also Super energy removals work well with the energy removal, this is what I call the "shut down" type deck. It makes it hard for your opponent to get their evolution cards powerful, which is good for you.

on 6/30/2006 Make sure to have a theme around you card deck. If you deck doesn't flow(you don't get cards you need when you need them) that means you need to focus your deck around a type, or two types that go well together. Don't put a bunch of types into one deck, because if you do you won't get the energies you need when you need them.

on 11/22/2005 Try not to have more than 2 kinds of Pokemon EX, as it will help your opponent if you add too many. For those who don't know, if Pokemon EX is knocked out, you get to take 2 Prizes.