Ahh

Ahh, the basics of Deckbuilding.....those were the days when no one knew how and magic had just came out....=D now we have pokemon, much more simple, strategy of the same depth though.

4 Concepts to building a Deck:

(In order of importance)

Remember, I'm not professional, this is purely opinion. But a lot of people might agree with me, and I'll tell you why pokemon are at the bottom.

We all know that trainers win the game, and seemingly weak pokemon can be made powerful with the right trainers, or other pokemon that complement the "weak pokemon" Such as, Raticate, by itself, is not so hot. Combined with something such as Jynx or Mr. Mime, or maybe just some damage to move around with curse, it can be made good. This is where my point is. ALMOST any pokemon can be made good if used in the right deck, which is why pokemon is last. Trainers, the ones that win the game. There are a few MUST trainers in every deck

(these may not necessarily be in the order importance)

1. Bill ( I myself HATE to go without at LEAST 3 )

2. Oak ( I also hate to go without at least 2 )

3. Energy Removal ( If not 4, screw it and go with SERs )

4. Comp Search ( Find anything? What else do you want? )

5. Gust of Wind ( Very few decks run smoothly without this card, also the revolutionary "strategy stopper" )

6. Lass ( People are just realizing how important trainers are, and how important STOPPING the trainers is )

To most of you, lass is a new one. True, many decks run fine without them, but those same deck are probably CRUSHED by lass. Any fine tournament deck has 18-25 Trainers. Lass can crush those.

A deck is not a deck without a strategy. A strategy keeps the deck from being a bunch of cards. A strategy is a goal to achieve at somepoint during the game, or a certain way of usually winning. In order to know WHICH pokemon and trainers to put in (other than the "basic" trainers) you need to know what strategy to have. Defensive stalls break the rules, just like energy denial, which runs without GoWs.

Strategies are also known as archetypes. The Strategy is the idea. The strategy implemented is the archetype. Basically, the strategy is the archetype in physical form. So now we know that archetypes and strategies are the same thing. Moving on,

Energy is vital to even USING your pokemon, except inthe exception of ( once again ) energyless stall. Now a days, people run 24 energy about, even rain dance, but haymakers even lower, energy trans quite low, and if they did, it would be wise to pack some LASS to stop all that ER. This is why i love Lass and even psyduck. They are able to stop unlimited amounts of decks. I mean, if you poisoned ONE pokemon in a energy less stall and they didn't want it to die, if you kept using headache with psyduck, you'd eventually wear them out because of lack of pokemon centers, and scoops. Then again, tentacool is here now, so that idea is trashed =T Unless you have multiple pokemon that use 4 energy, you probably want to stick in the 18-22 colored energy zone, and 2-3 double colorless zone. The only time you want to have 1 double is when you have at least 2 oaks and 2 comp searches, 4 doubles for when you use few pokemon and one of them relies on dbl, or lots of your pokemon rely on dbl. Moving on,

Last, but NOT least, (well kinda....but still darn important) the pokemon. The pokemon determine the quality and effective-ness your strategy is carried out. Some pokemon do the job better than other pokemon. such as, Nidoking to Beedrill, Ninetales to Charizard, Alakazam to Slowbro, Machop to Hitmonchan (is recently being proven by machop's ONE retreat cost), Scyther to Farfetch'd. These choices will either make or break you. You have to be smart with your choices, but if you go, "arcanine or ninetales?" sure ninetales is a rare, but what if you're playing with psychic/fire? if you played electric/fire with only buzz as electric you might be able to pull off 9tales, but not likely, Arcanine can rock just as well, and because he's not a rare does NOT mean he suck. Many people misunderstand that, such as Jynx to mime, that extra 10 dmg means a LOT, as jonathan ng said in his haymaker 3 review. But like i said, every choice depends sorely on your strategy, once you learn whats good for this, and whats good for that, and get your own opinions, maybe you'll be writing about this same subject that i am, but have different opinions.

Remember, no deck is the same....