Pokémon TCG Pocket Deck Building Guide

Pokémon TCG Pocket is quickly becoming very popular, and there are now a growing number of packs and cards available creating more and more options to build decks. Hopefully this guide will help you in your endeavours to build better ones!

Limitations

• Every deck contains 20 cards.
• Cards with the same name can only have a maximum of 2 copies.
• You may only have a maximum of 3 energy types.

Card Types

There are currently 4 types of cards available:

Pokémon

Pokémon – The main cards in your deck, they come as basic Pokémon or stage 1 or 2 evolution. Once played they permanently remain on the battlefield until knocked out by your opponent. Some Pokémon have stronger EX forms which often have extra abilities and boosted HP and attacks however they will give your opponent an extra victory point if defeated.

Every Pokémon has their Level (Basic/Stage 1/Stage 2) and Name in the top left of the card and HP and Type listed in the top right of the card. Under this is the Pokémon image and any Moves the Pokémon has with their associated energy cost. Below this are the Pokemon’s Weakness and Retreat cost and finally the Rarity in the bottom left. 

Pikachu

#94

Supporter

Supporter – Various Trainers and NPCs from the Pokémon world. You can only play one of these on each of your turns and they do a one time only effect and are immediately discarded.

Misty

#220

Pokémon Tools

Tool – Special form of item which can be permanently equipped to a Pokémon in order to boost it in some way.

Rocky Helmet

#148

Items

Item – Various handy one use only items that come in many forms from Potions to Poke balls! Multiple of these can be used each turn.

Potion

#1

Key Thoughts

• There is no such thing as a ‘best deck’, every Pokémon has a weakness and every deck can be beaten, every battle is different due to having different starting hands. However there are ‘well built’ decks and not so ‘well built’ decks.
• Battles tend to be over within 15 turns, with the first 5 turns being the ‘early’ phase of battle, turns 6-10 being the ‘middle’ and 11-15 being the ‘end‘.

The early phase is where you will most likely play your basic Pokémon, get them charged up with energy, evolve them, manoeuvre your and possibly your opponent’s Pokémon on the field and maybe even get some early damage in.

The middle phase is where you will use your battle tactics to try and gain an advantage on the opponent, this might include ensuring you are the first to take a victory point, ensuring your opponent can’t follow their own tactics or many other different ways of playing a battle, some decks are quite unique in their strategy, it’s always good to experiment!

The end phase of battle is where you or opponent land the final blow to take your victory points up to or beyond 3 and win the battle. It is important to note that this is not ALWAYS how things happen. It is possible to win earlier than this or even for battles to go on longer, this is just the typical way in which battles unfold. Also, if at any point you or your opponent do not have a Pokémon in play you will automatically lose the battle.

Identifying a key focus or strategy is a good place to start, this often begins with choosing a main Pokémon or Trainer you want the deck to focus around and then picking other Pokémon/Trainers/Items that compliment your main choice and help it to achieve victory as quickly as possible. Often 2 (or more) Pokemon work very well together and identifying these situations can be very advantageous.

Example Deck Build – Blaine Deck

This deck takes the Trainer card Blaine as the main focus. This Trainer boosts the attack of a Ninetales, Rapidash or Magmar by a juicy +30 for the next attack. So if we choose Ninetales and Rapidash and use 2 copies of each and 2 copies of their basic form we have 8 Pokemon in our deck. Including 2 copies of Blaine we already have half of our deck built!

In order to ensure we get at least 2 basic Pokémon on the field early we should add 2 Poké balls and to ensure we get as many cards in our hands as possible we can add 2 Professor’s research. Nearly all decks will benefit from having 2 Poké Balls and 2 Professor’s Research, getting the cards you need on the field as early as possible is necessary for victory.

So that puts us on 14 cards. Thinking about how this deck should work tactically we are aiming to get our Ponyta in the active spot early, evolve it, and charge it up as quickly as possible whilst putting a Vulpix on the bench and subsequently evolving and charging that up as well. The Rapidash can then do as much damage as possible before switching into Ninetails to do mega damage boosted by Blaine.

This deck actually aims to win during the middle phase of battle due to low energy requirements and boosted attacks. The glaring weaknesses of this deck are the HP of Ninetales and Rapidash. With this in mind our last few deck spots are given to 2 copies of X-speed which will allow us to switch our Pokémon for free and 2 copies of the tool – Giant Cape to give our flimsy Pokémon a bit of an HP boost.

Finally 1 copy of Sabrina and 1 copy of Cyrus, both very useful Trainer cards, not many decks go into battle without at least 1 of these. For this deck, the Sabrina can be used to either move a charged Pokémon away from the active spot to save taking some damage or to pull a weak Pokémon into the active spot to get a surprise victory point early on.

The Cyrus can be used later in the battle to pull a damaged Pokémon into the active spot in order to win the battle. Note also that this deck does not include an EX Pokémon so the opponent must knock out 3 of your Pokémon to win whereas if you can take an early point and then knock out an EX Pokémon with a boosted attack from Blaine you can win very early on!

Handy hint! So long as the 1d, 2d and 3d versions of these cards are used this deck will work against most AI solo battles satisfying this battle task as you go…