Pokémon TCG

Each player has a 60 card deck and six prize cards set aside face down. You knock out your opponent's Pokémon, and each knockout lets you take a prize. Take all six and you win. It is the cleanest win condition in any major card game.

It is also the friendliest to learn. There is no stack, no priority, no instant-speed interaction: on your turn you do your things, then you attack, then it is their turn. That simplicity is why it works for a nine year old and still supports a world championship.

• One Active Pokémon fights. Up to five sit on your Bench, safe but usually not attackable.
• One Energy attachment per turn, from your hand. This is the only real resource limit and it is the pacing of the entire game.
• Evolution: Basic to Stage 1 to Stage 2, and you cannot evolve a Pokémon the turn it was played.
• Weakness and Resistance modify damage against certain types, and decide a lot of matchups.

• Pokémon cards: HP top right, type symbol beside it, attacks with their Energy costs, retreat cost at the bottom, and Weakness and Resistance in the strip above it.
• Trainer cards: Items (play as many as you like), Supporters (ONE per turn, and they are the strongest cards in the game), Stadiums (one in play, affects both players), and Tools attached to a Pokémon.
• Energy cards: Basic Energy, which you can run in unlimited quantity, and Special Energy, which does extra things and counts toward the four-copy limit.
• Rule Box Pokémon (ex, V, VMAX, GX and friends, depending on era) hit harder and give up TWO or more prizes when knocked out. That trade is the central tension of deckbuilding.

1. 1

   Draw a card

   Always one. If you cannot draw, you lose.

2. 2

   Do your stuff, in any order

   Put Basic Pokémon on your bench, evolve, attach one Energy, play Item cards freely, play one Supporter, play a Stadium, use Abilities.

3. 3

   Retreat, once

   Pay the retreat cost in Energy to swap your Active Pokémon with a benched one. Once per turn.

4. 4

   Attack

   Pick one attack your Active Pokémon has the Energy for. Apply Weakness and Resistance. Place damage counters.

5. 5

   Turn ends

   Attacking ends your turn immediately, so do everything else first.

Setup at the start of the game: both players draw seven, and each must have at least one Basic Pokémon. No Basic means a mulligan, which lets the opponent draw an extra card. Then each player places an Active and any Bench Pokémon face down, and sets six prizes.

Exactly 60 cards. The classic beginner distribution is roughly 15 to 20 Pokémon, 25 to 30 Trainers and 10 to 15 Energy, and every experienced player will tell you that new decks run too many Pokémon and too few Trainers.

• Pick one or two attackers and build the whole deck around getting them Energy quickly.
• Four copies of your key draw Supporter, always. Consistency beats power.
• Include a way to switch (Switch, Escape Rope, a low retreat cost Pokémon), or you will lose games to being stuck Active.
• Count your Energy carefully. A deck with three-Energy attacks and only eight Energy cards does not work.
• One or two Stage 2 lines at most for a first deck. Evolution takes turns you may not get.

• Standard rotates: only recent sets are legal, so the format refreshes every year. This is what most tournaments use.
• Expanded is a much larger pool going back years, played at some events.
• Pokémon TCG Live is the free digital client. It is the fastest way to practise, and it grants codes from real packs.
• Sets come out several times a year, each with new mechanics and a chase card or two.

Collecting and playing are almost two hobbies here. Graded vintage cards trade for enormous sums, and the competitive format mostly ignores them. Both are valid, and the pack opening dopamine is the same either way.

The card game does not tell a story the way a manga does. What it has instead is thirty years of the Pokémon world rendered by hundreds of illustrators, and a set of running references that reward attention.

• Base Set (1999 in English) is the origin point: Charizard, the holo pattern, the era every collector means when they say "vintage".
• Card art frequently continues across a set. Trainer cards show the world outside battles: shops, gyms, kids on bikes, the professor's lab.
• Full art and illustration rare cards are commissioned as pieces of art first and playable cards second, which is why they carry the market.
• The regions and characters come from the video games, so if you know Kanto, Johto or Paldea, the cards are telling you where you are.

Pokémon on this platform is collect-only. Packs pull from real published sets, ingested from the community API, and the cards you pull are the real cards with the real art.

• Open packs from the card shop in Discord. Base Set was our first shelf, and more sets get published over time.
• Cards land in your public binder on the website.
• Set completion is tracked, so chasing a full set is a real goal here.
• Bolts only. Nothing costs real money.

• The official "how to play" page and the current rulebook PDF, both free.
• Pokémon TCG Live to practise for free against real opponents.
• Limitless and similar sites for current decklists and set spoilers.
• Ask in our Discord. Post your pulls, someone will tell you what they are worth and whether the deck works.