How do you play Pokemon cards?

The trading card game genre is huge, with everything from Magic: The Gathering to the Digimon TCG vying for your attention. One of the biggest names in the game, though, is Pokémon. Selling billions of cards in the last 25 years, people collect, trade, and, most importantly, play the Pokémon Trading Card Game in droves.

But what is the Pokémon TCG, and what do you need to get started in the Pokémon TCG, build your own decks, and complete your first game? Here’s everything you need to know.    

What is the Pokémon TCG?

Assuming you’re a complete newcomer, the Pokémon TCG is a trading card game. This means you collect cards from booster packs and other products, and combine them to make a deck you go up against an opponent with. Trading card games are endlessly customisable – literally, as there are more potential decks in Pokemon as there are atoms in the universe – and are full of different strategies to explore and cards to discover.

TCGs such as Pokemon divide the game up into expansions. These are released multiple times a year – similar to DLC in a video game –, and include brand-new cards to keep things feeling fresh and balanced. For instance, the most recent sets for Pokemon have been Silver Tempest, Lost Abyss, Astral Radiance, and Brilliant Stars, and all have introduced or built on mechanics that are big parts of the current ‘metagame’ – or top, competitive strategies.

The Pokemon TCG in particular is a one-on-one game where you and your opponent do battle with Pokemon, with victory going to whoever can combine Pokemon, Energy, and Trainer cards together to knock out enough of their opponent’s Pokemon. It’s a game about strategy, resource management, and even has elements of mind games as you attempt to bait your opponent into giving you advantages.

The Pokemon TCG differs from lots of other TCGs in that it also has a much larger element of random chance than something like Magic: The Gathering or Yu-Gi-Oh!. Not only do you need to draw the right cards in your deck, but many of them also have attacks that rely on flips of coins or looking through the top few cards of your deck. This simultaneously makes Pokemon remarkably beginner friendly, and also provides big deckbuiding challenges to those who want to find ways to circumvent that chance.

What you’ll need to get started

To get started with playing Pokemon cards, you’ll need two things: a deck, and a flip coin.

Your deck is the actual cards you bring to the table, and which cards you’re allowed in your deck will depend on which format you’re playing. The Standard format is by far the most popular one in organised play, and only allows cards from the last few years of the game (at the time of writing, those with ‘D’ or ‘E’ stamps in the bottom-left of the card).

The other two big formats people play are Expanded, which can use almost any card released since the Black & White expansion, and Unlimited, which, as the name suggests, is very much ‘anything goes’. While Standard is king in organised play, Unlimited is most likely to be the format you play casually at home with your friends.

Building a deck can be a daunting task for newcomers, as you need to have a careful balance of every type of card and an attention to the overall strategy of your deck. This is one of the things players enjoy the most about the Pokemon TCG, but if the thought of constructing your own deck sounds intimidating, there are a number of preconstructed decks available, such as the recently-released V Battle Decks. These won’t be top-tier competitive decks, but are quick, easy, and still incredibly fun ways of getting into the game.

The second key item you’ll need is a flip coin. A lot of things in Pokemon are decided with the flip of a coin, such as who goes first or how effective certain attacks are. A regular old coin will do when playing casually, but various Pokemon TCG products – such as Checklane boosters or Elite Trainer Boxes – include specially-designed ones that both look great, and are verified to be legal in organised play.

There are a few other accessories that, while not necessary, can improve your experience:

• Sleeves protect your cards and can customise your deck. Elite Trainer Boxes come with packs of sleeves, or you can buy them separately from brands such as Ultrapro and Dragon Shield.
• Playmats are softer surfaces to put your cards on. Many of them include gorgeous-looking art, and some even designate the various areas you need to put everything from your deck to your bench and prize cards.
• Deck boxes allow you to more easily transport your decks to and from events. Taking a number of decks when you go to play is always a good idea, and putting them in boxes is much safer than sticking an elastic band around them.

How many cards to play Pokemon?

Across the whole of the Pokemon TCG’s history, there are well over 13,000 cards for you to pick from. However, making sure you have the right cards in your deck is crucial.

Your Pokemon TCG deck should have a total of 60 cards. Unlike some other games, this is a strict number, and you cannot go under or over 60. To make it even tougher, organised play will generally only allow you to submit one deck for an entire tournament, so you’ll need to ensure you’re picking the right cards for your strategy.

Pokemon follows something called the “rule of four”, meaning you can only use four copies of cards with the same name. This rule does not include basic Energy cards, of which you can have any amount. This means that, regardless of if the cards do different things, you can’t have four cards called ‘Slaking’ or ‘Kyogre’ in your deck. However, if that name is modified in any way by mechanics like V, VMAX, VSTAR, or ex, they don’t count as the same card. You could have four cards called ‘Meowth”, four called ‘Meowth V’, four called ‘Alolan Meowth’, and four called ‘Galarian Meowth’ in the same deck… if you were a really big fan of Meowth.

Another caveat to this rule are Radiant Pokemon, a recent addition to the game. Radiant Pokemon are more powerful, shiny forms of classic Pokemon, but you’re only allowed one Radiant Pokemon in your deck, regardless of type. That means you could have a Gardevoir and a Radiant Gardevoir, but you couldn’t have a two Radiant Gardevoir, or a Radiant Gardevoir and a Radiant Steelix, in the same deck.

While every deck will have a different ratio of card types to suit its purposes, when starting out it’s always good to follow the 2:2:1 structure: two-fifths of your deck should be Pokemon, two-fifths should be Trainer cards, and one-fifth should be Energy. This means you’re aiming for 24 Pokemon, 24 Trainers, and 12 Energy as a good foundation, and you can adjust it to your specific needs from there.

If you’re familiar with other TCGs, you may have heard of ‘sideboards’. These are cards that sit outside your deck, and can be swapped in between rounds to adjust your strategy. While sideboards are fairly common in card games, the Pokemon TCG does not use them.

When you start a game of the Pokemon TCG, the top six cards of your deck will be put to one side and become your prize cards. Knocking out your opponent’s Pokemon will allow you to put one of your prize cards into your hand, and the first to take their last prize card wins the game.

How to play Pokemon TCG?

You have your deck, you have your opponent, and you’re ready to sit down and play your first game. Now what?

Before either player has shuffled their decks or drawn their cards, one player must flip a coin. If you win the coin toss, you get to decide whether you go first or second. If you lose, your opponent does instead. From there, both you and your opponent put the top six cards of your decks aside as your prize cards, and then draw a further seven to make your starting hand.

While other TCGs have various mulligan rules to allow you to draw a new opening hand, Pokemon only allows it if you have no basic Pokemon in your hand. You must reveal your hand to your opponent to confirm you have none, then shuffle it back into your deck and draw another seven cards. Both players repeat this process until they have at least one basic Pokemon in their hand.

The final bit of setup is placing one basic Pokemon face-down on the field as your active Pokemon. The Active Pokemon is the one you do your attacking with, and, in turn, is also the one your opponent can most reliably do damage to themselves. You are also allowed to put up to five additional basic Pokemon face-down on your playing field. This is known as your bench, which serve as your Pokemon in reserve. If your active Pokemon is knocked out when you have no more Pokemon on your bench, you immediately lose the game.

Once your hands, active Pokemon, and bench are all set up, both you and your opponent turn all your cards face-up, and the game begins for real. The first player begins their

On your turn, you can do a number of things:

• Attach one Energy card to either your active Pokemon or one on your bench.
• Play one Supporter Trainer card, and any number of other types of Trainer card. If it is the first turn, and you went first, you cannot play a Supporter card.
• Use Pokemon’s ability.
• Evolve a Pokemon by putting the next card in their evolutionary line on top of it. For example, if you have a Porygon on your bench or as your active Pokemon, you can evolve it once per turn by putting a Porygon 2 on it.
• Retreat your Pokemon. Retreating swaps your active Pokemon with one on your bench, and generally requires you to discard the specified number of Energy cards attached to it. You are only allowed to retreat once per turn.
• Attack. Most attyacks require your Pokemon to have a certain number of Energy cards attached to it, and will have a specified amount of damage listed to the right of the name. If you are going first, you cannot attack on your first turn. If you do attack, your turn immediately ends once damage is calculated.

Keep in mind that this is an incredibly simplified explanation of how a single turn in the Pokemon TCG is carried out. If any cards in play change these rules (such as Frosmoth’s ability to put Water energy on any Water-type benches Pokemon), it takes priority over the general rules.

An important aspect of the Pokemon TCG to consider are type resistances and type weaknesses. On the b bottom of every Pokemon card, you will see a list that shows what types it is strong and weak to, and to what extent. Weakness shows how much extra damage that Pokemon will take from attacks of the specified type – for example, Staraptor has a x2 weakness to Electric-type attacks, and so will take double damage. On the other hand, resistance reduces how much damage you take – Staraptor’s got a -30 resistance to Fighting-type attacks, and so will subtract 30 from the total damage to dealt to it.

Eventually, either you or your opponent’s Pokemon will have its HP reduced to zero. At this point it is knocked out and moves to its owner’s discard pile. Depending on the type of Pokemon, the player who knocked it out could take one (for most Pokemon), two, or even three of their own prize cards and put them into their hands. The player who just lost a Pokemon will then choose which Pokemon from their bench to put into the active zone, and the next turn begins.

As mentioned, if there are no Pokemon to swap out from your bench when your active Pokemon is KO’d, you immediately lose the game.

There is a lot more to learn about the Pokemon TCG. From metas and strategies to combo decks and obscure synergies, a big part of the game is about learning what makes your deck tick and finding ways to build around its strengths. Endlessly satisfying, why not pick up a few packs and get started with playing the Pokemon TCG today?