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Route 1: How to Play Pokémon TCG

Does this sounds familiar: You like Pokémon and enjoy collecting the cards and seeing your favourite Pokémon and Trainers. You have all these cards but you can’t help but ask: what else can I do with them? Worry no more, we are here to guide you from picking your starter Pokémon, or well, starting deck, to playing at the World Championship.

Picture of Alex Kivitz

Alex Kivitz

Picking Your Team

Let’s start with what to do with all your Pokémon cards. There are some rules for building your very own Pokémon deck. First of all, your deck must contain exactly 60 cards. Additionally, you can include a maximum of four cards for any specific Pokémon name in your deck. Even if you have two different Psyducks like the ones below, you can only have four cards named Psyduck in your deck. This could be two of each or just four copies of one of them. This is true for all cards except Basic Energy Cards which can be included in your deck without any quantity limit.

Next, each deck must have at least one basic Pokémon, but preferably there will be more. In addition to basic Pokémon, there are also stage 1 and stage 2 Pokémon. These are your Pokémon evolutions. Let’s take a look at a fan favourite, Charmander. Charmander is a basic Pokémon as denoted by the basic tag in the top left corner. We then have Charmeleon and Charizard representing the stage 1 and stage 2 evolutions.

Each Pokémon also has their own elemental type, health, weaknesses and resistances, and retreat costs. A Pokémon’s elemental type dictates what type of damage they do. Charmander and Charmeleon for example deal fire damage, and the Charizard shown below would deal dark type damage. A Pokémon’s health shows how much damage they can take until they are knocked out. The weaknesses and resistances modify how much damage they take from attacks. Charmander, for example, takes twice as much damage from water. And finally, the retreat cost shows us how much Energy you have to remove from a Pokémon to swap it from your active spot with one of your benches Pokémon.

 

Potions and Pokéballs

Next, we have the Trainer cards. These cards come in all forms and also play a vital role in boosting your team’s abilities. These cards often have instantaneous effects and go straight to your discard pile, however, some may also stay in play. Trainer cards come in the form of Items, Supporters, Stadiums, and Tools.

Items are often single–use effects that aid your Pokémon or your gameplay. A common item is a Pokéball, a card that sometimes allows you to search your deck for a Pokémon to play as if you were throwing out a Pokémon to use in battle. Other items directly affect your Pokémon, like Potion, letting you remove damage from an injured Pokémon. These cards are played with the text on the card followed, and then these cards are placed in the discard pile.

 

Supporter cards operate very similarly to Item cards except these cards are often a lot more powerful. These cards often change the flow of the game, allow you to find specific tools on your deck, or even reshape your or your opponent’s hands. One of the most powerful supporter cards now is Iono. She makes each player put their hand at the bottom of their deck and draw cards equal to the number of Prize Cards they have left. She’s a strong comeback mechanic. Powerful effects such as these are balanced by the fact that you may only play one supporter card each turn, and the player going first may not play one on their first turn.

Stepping up a bit in complexity, we have Stadium cards. These are Trainer cards that stay in play and grant a specific effect. These effects can affect the field or give players a special action to use during their turns. Gapejaw Bog is a good example of a passive ability damaging Pokémon as players play them, and Artazon is an example of a Stadium card players can utilise on each of their turns. There can only be one Stadium in play at any time. If a player plays a Stadium card while there already is one on the field, it replaces the current Stadium which is then sent to its owner’s discard pile.

Finally, we have Pokémon Tools. These supporter cards act similarly to Energy cards and attach to a Pokémon. Pokémon Tools give Pokémon special abilities, boost their stats, or let them use a one-time use ability. There is a wide selection of tools each with their own unique effects to meet your individual needs. An important detail to remember is once a Tool is attached to a Pokémon, it cannot be removed unless a specific card or ability allows you to remove it. A Pokémon may only have one Tool attached at a time and unlike a Stadium, you cannot play a second Tool to remove the first one.

How Do You Play Pokémon TCG?

Now you have a deck and you’re all set up to play, but how do you play? Pokémon is a turn-based game similar to how battles work in the Pokémon video games. At the very start of your turn, you draw the top card of your deck. After that, the game structure becomes less defined, giving you greater freedom to choose your next moves. There are several actions you can take and cards you can play. Let’s dive into setting up your game and how your turns will look.

The Pokémon Stadium

Let’s take a look into how you set up the game and how you win. Looking at the field, each player has designated zones to place cards in. Your main play area is divided into the Active Spot where your active Pokémon stays, and the Bench. Only the Pokémon in the Active Spot can attack, however, you can pay the retreat cost on the active Pokémon to swap it with a benched Pokémon.

The Bench is where your other Pokémon stay until your active Pokémon gets knocked out or you swap places yourself. Your Bench can only contain up to five Pokémon at a time. We also have a designated area for your Stadium card, your deck, and your discard pile.

You may have noticed that there is a Prize Card section. This leads into how you win a game of Pokémon. At the start of the game, you draw seven cards and put any number of basic Pokémon from your hand into play. Then you put the top six cards of your deck facedown in the Prize Card area without looking at the cards. As you defeat your opponent’s Pokémon, you take one Prize Card from your field to your hand per Pokémon defeated. Some Pokémon reward more than one Prize Card when defeated. You win the game when you take your final Prize Card.

 

Playing Your Turns

The first thing you can do is to play a Pokémon. You can put a basic Pokémon from your hand onto your bench if there is an empty place. You may only have up to five Pokémon on your bench.

You may also choose to evolve a Pokémon in your play area. This can be done on the bench or the active spot. To evolve Pokémon, you play out a stage one evolution on top of the corresponding basic Pokémon or put the stage two on top of the corresponding stage one Pokémon. Notably, you cannot evolve a Pokémon on the turn it was played, and you can only evolve each Pokémon once per turn. You can’t go straight from Charmander to Charizard unless a specific card allows you to. You can, however, evolve multiple Charmanders into Charmeleons if able.

When you evolve a Pokémon, all attached cards and damage counters stay on the card and are now attached to the evolved Pokémon. The new Pokémon does not have any of the original Pokémon’s moves unless stated otherwise and all burn and poison conditions are removed after evolving. Finally, in most cases, neither player can evolve on their first turn.

Once per turn, you may play an Energy card from your hand and attach it to a Pokémon you control. Energy cards are essential to playing the game and are what is used to check if your Pokémon can attack.

Not only can you play cards from hand, but sometimes your Pokémon can activate special abilities while they’re in the field. These abilities are different from attacks, as they can be used whenever you want, and often the restrictions on these abilities are on the card themselves. Let’s take a look at Pidgeot EX. Pidgeot’s ability allows the user to search their deck for any card and put it into their hand. The ability itself also references that it can only be used once per turn and can’t be used if another Pokémon has already used it.

Pikachu! Use Thunderbolt!

 

The final step of your turn is attacking. If you cannot attack, you can also choose to simply pass the turn to your opponent. But how exactly do you attack in Pokémon?

 Let’s take a look at Pikachu. Pikachu has two attacks it can use, Charge and Thunderbolt. To the left of each attack is the cost of the attack. You need to have the required Energy to use the attack. Charge only needs 1 electric Energy attached to Pikachu, while Thunderbolt needs 2 electric and 1 Energy of any type. If you have the correct amount and combination of Energy, you can select the attack and use it. 

Most moves deal damage, but as you can see, Charge does not do any damage. The damage is listed to the right of each move. Thunderbolt deals 200 damage. To the bottom, you see weaknesses and resistances. If the opposing Pokémon is weak to electric types, it will take extra damage. When you use a move, you also need to perform the text of the move, and in Thunderbolt’s case, you would have to remove all the Energy from Pikachu after using the attack. This is different from charge where you would not have to remove the Energy. After using an attack, the Energy stays on the Pokémon unless it says otherwise. Once you perform your attack, your turn ends and it is now your opponent’s turn.

 

 

TM130 Helping Hand

Here is a quick recap of your standard turn structure. Steps 2-4 can be done interchangeably and more than once. You can play a Pokémon and then attach an Energy Card. You could play a Trainer and not even play a Pokémon. How you play and the order you play your cards is entirely up to you.

  1. Draw a Card,
  2. Play available Pokémon and evolutions,
  3. Play your Trainer cards,
  4. Attach an Energy Card from your hand to a Pokémon,
  5. Attack (If able).
 

What's next?

Now that you know how to play, it’s finally time to start looking through your cards, build a deck with your favourite Pokémon, and start playing some games. From here on out you’ll probably want to start finding Trainers in the wild to play against. The next stop on your Pokémon Journey is finding out how and where you can play Pokémon in your area, meet new people, and maybe try your hand at winning your first badge.

Read more Pokémon articles!

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