After the tutorial you will choose one of the starter decks to begin your journey. Quite frankly, these decks are not very good. In order to beat all of the Club Masters and the Grand Masters you will be modifying this deck a lot. Eventually you might even scrap it entirely and start a new deck from scratch. This page should guide you in make the right changes to your deck to make it more powerful. Remember that a lot of these are just suggestions. Everyone has their own style and will benefit from making choices that reinforce that style.
Rules For Every Deck[edit]
There are a few rules that are true for every deck.
- A deck must be exactly 60 cards.
- There are no limits on how many Basic Energy cards you can put in your deck.
- The deck must have at least 1 Basic Pokémon.
- You can only have a maximum of 4 of any Pokémon, Trainer, or Special Energy card.
The maximum of 4 rule is based on the name of a card. For example, even though there are 4 different Pikachu cards you can't have 4 of each, you can only have 1 of each, or any combination of them that results in you having 4 total in your deck. Flying Pikachu and Surfing Pikachu however are cards with different names. You can have 4 or each of them in addition to the 4 regular Pikachu you have in a deck. The only Special Energy card in this game is Double Colorless Energy, so that's the only Energy card you have to worry about following this rule with.
Official Suggestions[edit]
Both this game and the paper game have always given their suggestions on how a deck should be structured. In this game one of Dr. Mason's emails will share them with you. With time, competitive decks have regularly defied these suggestions. However, in this game most of the opponent's decks follow these suggestions. You should find success with a wide range of decks that follow these suggestions and some of the more advanced ones.
- Around 14 Basic Pokémon.
- Between 20 and 26 Energy cards.
- Balance the number of Evolution Pokémon.
- e.g. If you have 3 Basic Pokémon, have 2 of its Stage 1 and 1 of its Stage 2.
Advanced Deck Building[edit]
These suggestions will defy the official suggestions the game gives. These are strategies to deck building competitive decks have developed over the years.
Choose A Primary Strategy[edit]
Your primary strategy for your deck is how your deck aims to win. Your strategy might be to stall the opponent from getting knockouts with constant healing, eventually decking them out. Another one is getting a strong attacker on the field and powering it up with all the Energy it will need for the rest of the match. You'll find yourself using some Trainer cards and supporting Pokémon to be able to do this consistently.
For example, you might choose to have Blastoise as your primary attacker. Its Hydro Pump attack has a high energy cost of 3 Water energy, but its Pokémon Power, "Rain Dance" allows you to attach as many Water energy as you want from your hand to a Water Pokémon on your field, including itself. The attack also does 20 extra damage if you attach two extra Water energy to it. Getting Blastoise out and powered up can be your primary strategy all by itself, but just throwing some Squirtle, Wartortle, and Blastoise into a deck with a bunch of Basic Water Energy isn't going to cut it on its own.
Add Supporting Pokémon[edit]
Going all in on your primary strategy is risky. A Pokémon that needs to evolved can get knocked out in its Basic or Stage 1 form. Your opponent might have resistance to your main attacker which will hinder knockouts and give your opponent time to retaliate. However, many different types can make choosing your Energy counts complicated. If you need different types it is a good idea to see if you can find some that require more Colorless energy than adding too many additional types. You should probably have several copies of at least one secondary attacker. It's also a good idea to take a look at the Pokémon Powers available and see if any of them give you an advantage by including them.
How many supporting Pokémon you should add depends on how many Pokémon are needed for your primary strategy. A Stage 2 strategy is dedicating around 8 Pokémon so you probably don't want more than another 6 supporting Pokémon total. If your primary strategy relies on a Basic Pokémon though, you might put up to 10 supporting Pokémon in the deck.
Following our previous example, it is common to pair Blastoise with Fossil Articuno. In fact this inclusion usually changes the primary strategy from "Build up Blastoise and attack with it," to "Evolve a Blastoise and use it to power up and attack with Articuno." This lets your Blastoise you put a lot of investment in stay on the bench safe from most attacks while you can put a bunch of Articuno on the bench and have them powered up by the time the active one is knocked out. Another example, Dodrio's "Retreat Aid" Pokémon Power reduces retreat costs by 1. This can help you move around your different type attackers without losing as much energy or using as many Trainer cards. It wouldn't matter in the Blastoise/Articuno deck as much however since you don't have to worry about the 1 energy per turn limit.
Trainer Cards[edit]
These should be the bulk of your deck. Especially in this game where the only restriction on playing them is if you can do what is written on the card. They let you do all sorts of stuff. You'll always want some combination of the draw cards Professor Oak and Bill. Computer Search is a powerful card that costs 2 cards from hand to the discard pile, but in return gets you any card from your deck. Often a combination of Energy Removal, Super Energy Removal, Energy Retrieval, and Super Energy Retrieval are included. Item Finder is Computer Search but you get the card from your discard pile. Gust of Wind can pull a weak Pokémon into the active spot for a knockout. This is usually the hardest part of building the deck just because there are so many powerful Trainer cards. You might find your self cutting Pokémon or Energy cards just to fit another copy of a Trainer card into your deck. Just be careful you don't overdo it and wind up with too few of the other card types to actually pull out a win.
Going with the Blastoise example some more, You will certainly want to put a bunch of "Pokémon Breeder" in your deck. This lets you evolve a Squirtle directly into a Blastoise skipping the Wartortle stage entirely. This also means you don't need a bunch of Wartortle in your deck now. It's common to see 4 Squirtle, 1 Wartortle, and 3 Blastoise in a deck that also has breeder, turning the game's advice on its head. You'll probably want Energy Retrieval and Super Energy Retrieval to get back energy lost from an opponent playing Energy Removal, and you probably want to play your own Super Energy Removals since you don't care as much when you have to give up that energy to hinder your opponent. Professor Oak's discard effect isn't something to be too scared of here either. If you discard a hand that has no Water energy in it, you're pretty likely to draw a bunch off of it and be able to attach them all that turn. Just watch your deck size, and try to keep a count of how many energy are in your deck, discard pile, and prizes.
Fit Your Energy In[edit]
How much energy you should put into your deck is extremely debatable. You'll probably be changing this number the most to try and figure out a count that lets you have energy when you need it, but not have more than you can use in your hand at any time. Attack costs also factor in to this equation. If all of your attacks take 4 energy, you need to have more energy in the deck so that you can find them and attach them as soon as possible. However, if your attacks only cost 1 energy or 2 Colorless energy you might find yourself with as few as 6-8 energy. Things get complicated if you have more than two types of Pokémon that require two different types of energy that aren't Colorless.
As always we'll use our Blastoise deck as an example. Its attack costs are high so you'll want a good number of energy. Let's say at least 9 to have the ability for 3 Articuno to be powered up to use the Freeze Dry attack at the same time. This might be the tightrope you choose to follow in other decks, but our pal Blastoise changes the math. Once you have one out, you aren't limited to playing one at a time. There's no longer such a thing as "too many Energy cards in my hand," because you can just play them all down. With 16 energy cards you can have all of your Articuno in play and all powered up to use Blizzard if you need that extra fire power. You could choose to power up your Blastoise instead of one of the Articuno in case it gets pulled into the active spot by a Gust of Wind. Of course 16 is pretty high, you might want to give up some of those slots for more Trainer cards.