How does pokemon card game work

Younger kids say, JK to grade one tend to just collect and trade the cards. As they learn to read , they may also want to play the trading card game. The point of collecting the cards is to build a powerful deck of 60 that will help you win battles against other trainers. But your kid might just be interested in collecting the cards he likes best or deems most valuable.

Theme decks also come with a coin and cardboard markers that can be used in gameplay when deciding which player goes first or when counting damage, but you can also use die instead.

Cards also come in booster packs of 10, in tins or blister packs. These are cards you use for the items, supporters and stadiums you can use during a battle. Feeling Burned by Burned? We run through how status effects work and how to get rid of them. That's without mentioning the great sense of nostalgia a lot of players feel when they go back to a world and series of games they enjoyed when they were younger. Even so, learning to play a competitive collectible card game of any kind can be a confusing task for total newcomers.

At the beginning of a game, players can flip a coin to see who plays first. When each turn begins, the active player draws a card from the top of their deck; if you run out of cards in your deck and can't draw on your next turn, you lose. Unless an item card like Rare Candy specifies otherwise. Two things to note here — you lose the game if you have no cards to draw at the start of your turn , and if your bench is full, you cannot play more basic Pokemon.

If you cannot declare a new active Pokemon from your bench, you lose the game. As your active Pokemon takes damage and gets closer to being knocked out, you may want to pull it back and replace it with a different Pokemon from your bench. Doing so is called retreating. This indicates the amount and type of energy you must discard from a Pokemon in order to move them to your bench.

When you move a Pokemon to your bench, select one of your benched Pokemon to become your active Pokemon. To the left of the retreat cost, notice the words weakness and resistance. If a Pokemon has a weakness, they take double the damage from attacks by Pokemon of the matching type that is, if the attacking Pokemon has the matching symbol on the top right of their card. If they have a resistance, they reduce the total damage taken from Pokemon of that type by 20 damage.

Along with playing additional basic Pokemon on your turn, you can play evolutions of your basic Pokemon! You can play a Stage 1 Pokemon on top of the corresponding basic Pokemon and a Stage 2 Pokemon on top of a corresponding Stage 1 Pokemon. This is called evolving your Pokemon. When you evolve a Pokemon, all attached energy and any damage on the previous version of the Pokemon remain with the evolved Pokemon.

Note, you cannot evolve a Pokemon on the same turn that it enters play. This means that if you evolved Charmander into Charmeleon, you would have to wait another turn before you could evolve Charmeleon into Charizard.

Along with Pokemon and energy cards, decks also include Trainer cards. There are various types of trainer cards, including items, tools, supporters, and stadiums. Items usually have an immediate effect and then are placed in your discard pile. On your turn, you can play as many items as you like! Tools attach to your Pokemon and stay in play. While you can play as many in one turn as you would like, each Pokemon can only have one tool attached to them. Supporter cards function like items, in that they usually have an immediate effect and are then placed in your discard pile.

The caveat is that you can only play one Supporter card per turn. There are three card types in Pokemon TCG , as previously mentioned. Players will have to use them to their best effect to gain advantages in battles.

The Pokemon cards are the most important cards for a player, with players building their decks with Pokemon that they believe would have great synergy with each other. Up to four copies of a Pokemon card with the same name can be used in a deck. Trainer cards provide support for the player through a variety of effects which will either benefit the player or harm the opponent. Similar to Pokemon cards, up to four copies of a Trainer card can be used in a deck.

Energy cards are the ones that fuel the actions of the player's Pokemon. Players can attach one Energy card per turn to their Pokemon, and choosing which Energy card to attach to which Pokemon is one of the most critical decisions to be made in the game. There are also Basic Energy cards and Special Energy cards, which have additional effects on top of attaching Energy to the Pokemon.

Name: The name of a Pokemon card determines how many of these cards you can play in a deck. Even if two cards have completely different abilities but have the same name, they will count as two copies for that Pokemon card. Hit Points HP : This signifies the amount of damage that a Pokemon card can endure before it is knocked out.

Damage on a Pokemon is represented as physical counters placed on the card, with each counter standing for 10 points of damage. Pokemon Type: The symbol indicated for the Pokemon card's type determines any bonuses that certain types of Pokemon receive as well as damage modifications caused by weaknesses and resistance.

There is no limit on how many types of Pokemon can be used in a deck, but since Pokemon cards can only use their abilities if the player draws and attaches the proper Energy card, it is best to limit decks to contain two or three types of Pokemon. Evolution Stage: This indicates how the Pokemon card can be played.