Hello lovely denizens of the Internet, I'm back with another opinion piece that aims to help the newer players in the audience. Since I didn't manage an update last week, this week is much longer than I had originally planned, with a scheduled weekly update from there on (probably each Friday). If I can manage that as well as getting back to a daily CotD review then we'd better check that sky hasn't turned red to herald the end of life as we know it!
 
Self-depreciating jokes aside, today I'd like to cover the basics of deckbuilidng. For most players, the building of your first deck marks a milestone in your skill and you growth as a member of the Poke'mon community. It also marks the point at which you learn that certain cards just don't fit together, no matter how much you try.
 
Since the new rulebooks have omitted the old deckbuilding rules (which is a capital crime and should be punished!), I'll restate them here. A Poke'mon deck must contain exactly 60 cards, at least one of which must be a Basic Poke'mon. No more than 4 cards with the same name, aside from Basic Energy, can be put into the same deck.
 
That is all very simple, although there can be a bit of confusion over the exact names of cards and the odd card that breaks the rules (the old Shining cards were restricted to one copy each, for example). If you aren't playing Unlimited, the only cards you need to worry about are Poke'mon EX (which count as different names from their normal versions) and Poke'mon Legend (both halves count as having the same name, so no more than 4 halves in total).
 
Now, the very first step is to decide what you want to do with your deck. I'm guessing that 99% of you just said "I want to WIN!", which is an admirable goal that makes for exciting games and is probably why you're here in the first place. To the 1% of you who said "It's not whether you win or lose, it's how much you mess with the other guy!", I applaud your sense of humour (I happen to heartily agree with the sentiment) but Jedi Mind Tricks will have to wait for a future article. Never give up trying in the meantime though!
 
So, you've decided you want to win. In Poke'mon, there are 3 ways to do this:
1. Draw all of your Prizes
2. Knock Out your opponent's last Poke'mon 3. Make your opponent run out of cards
 
If you manage any of the above before your opponent does the same to you, then you win! But how to go about it?
 
Well, first pick which of the three you want to aim for. Drawing all of your Prizes is the most common route because pretty much everyone who plays likes to collect Poke'mon cards absolutely loves the feeling of crushing and/or obliterating small, defenseless critter with their maniacally overpowered Harbinger of DOOM! Or is that just me?
 
Option number 2 is a lot harder to build around. We only recently received a Poke'mon that finally made discarding cards instead of dealing damage into a viable strategy (thank you so much for Durant!) but the for a smaller collection, building a reliable 'mill' deck probably isn't an option.
 
Door number 3 is the least tried of the three. Sure, if you play at the absolute cutthroat edge of the Unlimited format then it is actually the only strategy, but otherwise the only card I can think of that removes your opponent's Poke'mon without getting a KO is Seeker. Seeker is a great card, but it won't allow you to remove all of the Poke'mon your opponent plays just so you can take out the only one remaining without any other work involved. So taking out the lone survivor is more of a shortcut to victory condition #1 rather than a strategy of it's own.
 
Having made our choice for a path to victory, we get to the fun part. The second step is deciding what specific strategy you are going to use, which in most cases is some sort of combination you have thought of between two or more cards, usually Poke'mon (although Trainers and Energy play an important part as well). As an example, I'm going to do a walkthrough of building a ReshiPhlosion deck (hich subscribes very heavily to victory condition #1).
 
The idea of ReshiPhlosion is to use Reshiram's Blue Flare attack to beat the living daylights out of any and all opponents while Typhlosion Prime uses its Afterburner Poke-power to take discarded energy and reattach it to Reshiram, relieving you of the need to waste turns while you attach more energy to fuel the heavy discard cost. As a bonus, you can also power up the Outrage attack with the damage counters that Afterburner places on Reshiram, as well as quickly recover when one of your Reshiram cards gets Knocked Out.
 
Now, Reshiram and Typhlosion are the two most important cards so we want lots of them in our deck. A full set of 4 Reshiram and a 4-3-3 (4 Basics, 3 Stage 1 Poke'mon and 3 Stage 2 Poke'mon)  line of Typhlosion takes up 14 cards out of the 60 we are allowed and gives a good chance of getting both of them into play early. however I think we should add a few more Poke'mon, as only having 8 Basics in the deck leads to a lot of lonely starting Poke'mon who are in danger of being KOed before you can play down any of their friends.
 
We've decided on our main combo so the next step is to find some supporting cards. The next card I'm going to suggest is Ninetales HGSS. It has a lovely Poke-power called Roast Reveal, which makes you discard a [r] energy in your hand in order to draw 3 cards. As well as allowing you to draw extra cards so that you can play your other Poke'mon faster, Roast Reveal allows you to dump energy into your discard pile so that Afterburner can attach it to Reshiram for faster attacks. A win-win!
 
After adding a 4-3 line of Ninetales we have filled 21 slots out of 60 and raised the number of Basic Poke'mon to 12, so now it's time to choose some Trainers. A good rule of thumb for new players is the 24-24-12 rule (24 Poke'mon, 24 Trainers, 12 energy) but in this case you want to focus on having several Reshiram and Typhlosion in play at once, so we don't need anything else and can use the extra space elsewhere.
 
Let's start with some cards that will search out Reshiram and Typhlosion for fast play. A set of 4 Poke'mon Collector is a must to fill your Bench in preparation for an evolution spree, as well as to find extra copies of Reshiram. 3 Poke'mon Communication will help to find the all important Ninetales and Typhlosion as fast as possible, while 3 Rare Candy will help get Typhlosion into play a turn earlier.
 
The above cards are used for 'consistency, which means they are meant to give you extra options when you get unlucky. Other Trainers you add to your deck may have a more specific purpose, such as dealing with a threat directly (the famous Poke'mon Catcher and Lost Remover are good examples) or letting you break a rule (Switch gets you out of all sorts of sticky situations by retreating when you can't do it otherwise).
 
I'm sure you have your own ideas about what Trainers would work well in a ReshiPhlosion build, but here are the rest of my picks:
 
A set of 2 Switch and 3 Poke'mon Catcher will allow you to move Poke'mon about at will, while 2 Revive will make sure that Reshiram doesn't stay in the discard pile any longer than your energy does. 2 Copycat are great for refreshing a bad or empty hand, while 2 Sage's Training will allow you to dig deeper into the deck for any cards you need as well as discard more [r] energy for Typhlosion. Adding 3 Pluspower gives you the edge when you face off against other Tao Dragons and larger Poke'mon so keep them aside for optimum damage! Finally, throw in a Super Rod to get lost evolutions back into your deck and a pair of Junk Arm to reuse any Item cards you really need while providing another discard outlet for Typhlosion to abuse.
 
So after all of that, we have 21 Poke'mon and 27 Trainer cards (8 Supporters and 21 Item cards, which is a good mix that avoids having too many Supporters in hand together when you can't play them). All that is left is to add 12 [r] energy and you have a deck! This particular build focuses on having a lot of cards devoted to setting up Typhlosion and Reshiram as quickly as humanly possible so that the severe beatdown can begin, but it is very light on tricks to disrupt the opponent as well as suffering from the very real possibility of running out of cards in the deck. Also, if your opponent manages to play some kind of disruption on your Poke'mon then there aren't any options aside from brute force for getting away from it. Still, if you are looking for a straightforward deck and prefer the security of unstoppable force then you can't go wrong with ReshiPhlosion!
 
Of course, the above list is just an indication of what you can do with the interactions between Typhlosion and Reshiram. Plenty of players skip out on Ninetales completely in order to fit more Trainers and compensate with extra copies of Sage's Training, while many players now include a Mewtwo EX or two in their ReshiPhlosion deck. Rocky Helmet is another popular inclusion that I missed here, as is burned Tower.
 
Fortunately, it will be pretty easy for newer players to learn these things for themselves because as well as allowing plenty of room to experiment, the pieces of the ReshiPhlosion build are pretty easy to come by. Typhlosion was released a s a promo card as well as being in the same set as Ninetales, and you can also find Ninetales in the Call of Legends set. Reshiram has now been reprinted 4 times in various sets, decks and promo boxes so there really is nO excuse for not having at least 1! Finally, most of the Trainers mentioned above are either easy to obtain or have cheap counterparts (Dual Ball instead of Collector, Poke'Ball instead of Communication, Poke'mon Reversal instead of Catcher, etc).
 
As always, if at first you don't succeed then try again. Playtesting is the only way to improve a deck because you can't know what will or won't work if you haven't played it! Experience will teach you how to achieve the fine balance between consistency cards that set you up and TecH cards that eliminate weaknesses in your build but cost precious deck space so that you can feel the thrill of victory. Until next time, happy gaming!
 
As always, any comments and feedback can be directed to mattezhion2@y7mail.com, with guaranteed replies even if it does take until the next Ice Age!