Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

SImple and complicated decks - noob needs help ;-)

G

Gwaihir75

New Member
Hello,

my 7 y.o. son has started to play Pokemon TCG. I'm looking for pretty cheap and simple decks (I mean decks with simple strategy) for his junior category. He is playing gyarados atm with abomasnows. I'm not sure if it is best for him, so I'm looking for other options.

On the other hand when I have to go with him and practice with him, I would like to have some deck, that has complicated strategy and might be competitive even for BRs for master category. So far I have T-tar deck to test my son's knowledge of the game.

Thank you very much.
 
Hmm, noob decks, (thinks)
... Kingdra or machamp. Fast stage 2 decks are the simplest decks in the format right now IMO.
Just get your attacker out ASAP and hit for nice and consistant damage.
Masters decks? i would say flygon/tech or Some SP deck like luxray/something.
Does that help?
 
Machamp is a great deck to start with. Kingdra is a little more skillful because you need to really know what you are discarding. Then move on to LuxNape or something.
 
Beedrill! Very very simple to play, cards are easy to get and it's fun and competitive to play.
 
Thanks for info. I guess I will test how can my son handle machamp and/or beedrill decks (we have some beedrills). And I will test flygon or maybe staraptor FB, absol G or luxray. Is any version of staraptor (SF or FB version) competitive or at least have some chance for fun play?

BTW how do you test your decks? Are you also printing card images and put them into sleeves with normal card?
 
I test decks at league. If i havent a card for my deck, i borrow it or i say that card y is card x. But it only works if your opponent accepts this(mostly it works)

In my opinion staraptor isn´t good as mainhitter, but you can use it as support(the fb x one).
 
YOU CANNOT confuse a learning experience with a competitive learning experience.

Do NOT make the mistakes I've made trying to "teach" your child to play competitively BEFORE he/she even gets an opportunity to enjoy the game non-competitively.

Focus on FUN first. Make random stuff that doesn't involve alot of PokePower setups and advanced set-up strategy.

Young Beginners LOVE theme decks. They don't have the competive experience to even care about how their deck sets up. They just wanna play. It's exciting for them if they even get to evolve!

My mistake (I'm hoping it's not too late to be yours as well) was getting my daughter involved in tournament play too soon. She used to wake up at 5 a.m. and get ME up asking "Daddy, you want to play Pokemon with me?"

She had a great spirit for playing the game ... win or lose... didn't matter; she just wanted to play.

I absolutely ruined that spirit being Overzealous and getting her to learn complicated strategies and decks and taking/dragging her off to tournments.

Just play.

Kids don't care about how Focused a deck is or metagaming... just sit down and ENJOY playing with your child.

DO NOT build a deck and hand it to your child (that's a crippling black hole).

Theme deck your child. Direct them on ways to make small improvements to that theme deck:

removing random pokes and adding a thicker featured poke line
maybe adding colorless attack support
more trainers/supporters (a few at a time so it's Exciting to finally hit one!)

The BEST way to ENABLE a child is to let them see a gradual effect of deck modifications.

It's good for them to experience the frustration of not getting cards they need or a deck being slow to set up.
They need to experience losses, so they have a tolerance for the nature of the game and they won't LOSE IT whenever their deck is overpowered or is just inadequate.

I'm going to have to write another "Parents of Pokemon" type article. I think I've made enough mistakes since the last one to be of some use to new PokeParents ... lol

OH .. .and to directly answer your question.

A grass with special conditions. (i.e. Venasaur)
Being able to continually inflict conditions makes the kid feel like a shrewd little wizard. :)
 
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^ Wow, I really wish I had this advice about a year ago. I feel EXACTLY the same way. Your child will develop his own sense of play style over time. I probably ruined it for my son by thinking he wanted to be competitive at such an early age. He really didn't. They just love big, strong Pokemon and don't care too much if they lose. There is definitely a right way to do this. I am convinced of that.

Fantastic advice, Rogue. And a Parents of Pokemon article would be very welcome. Good luck.
 
I guess I haven't made such mistakes. We have psychic deck my son has made according his wish (gardevoir Lv.X, mewtwo Lv.X, crobats, skuntank G, Toxicroak G) and he learns how to improve his deck. We are also working on his Gyarados deck. So far we have been to just 1 prerelease (Rising rivals) and we (i had to help him) have managed to loose 2 matches and win 1 - but it was absolutely random and neither I nor my son knew anything about deck building ;-). But we were pretty lucky - the guy who lost the match with us won republic championship in senior category and went to worlds 2009. The game was about pure luck - each of us got 6 boosters, everyone opened booster, chose 1 card and move booster right or left. So we had 60 cards, then we had to build 40 cards deck with 4 prize cards with our own energy cards. Pretty interesting but not real tournament, but my sun was very happy.

Now we are going to visit some beginner tourney in standard format with our modified deck ;-) I hope it will be fun ;-)

Grass sounds nice - my son loves the idea of 170hp leafeon X :) But it might be harder to learn. We were talking about Venosaur approx. 1 hour ago :) Beedrill are also nice - 120dmg for 1 energy is nice. So is gyarados with its 90 dmg for free. I guess i will try to make some decks and let my son to choose what to play.

And a Parents of Pokemon article would be very welcome. Good luck and thank all of you.
 
I can suggest Gengar its very easy but it can be exspensive which you are looking for cheap decks but gengars are easy to run...just throwing it out their
 
One of the pokeparents I speak with says that Scizor (accelerate attack) + Cherrim (Sunny Day pk-body) is a good deck for young ones and his daughter finds it fun. He tried to get his son to use Blissey (MT), but the boy objected because Blissey was too pink so the dad added a Lucario (MT) to it and it worked fine :lol:

Rogue Archetype said:
My mistake (I'm hoping it's not too late to be yours as well) was getting my daughter involved in tournament play too soon. She used to wake up at 5 a.m. and get ME up asking "Daddy, you want to play Pokemon with me?"

I absolutely ruined that spirit being Overzealous and getting her to learn complicated strategies and decks and taking/dragging her off to tournments.:)
Click to expand...
In an attempt to argue in your defense, you didn't have a league too close to you, right?

League time is great for fun. 2nd to that, playtesting with friends outside of league is also very fun because you all know each other. Even though the tournament may have been memorable, a lot of my memories are from playtesting with friends.
 
ShadowCard said:
One of the pokeparents I speak with says that Scizor (accelerate attack) + Cherrim (Sunny Day pk-body) is a good deck for young ones and his daughter finds it fun. He tried to get his son to use Blissey (MT), but the boy objected because Blissey was too pink so the dad added a Lucario (MT) to it and it worked fine :lol:


In an attempt to argue in your defense, you didn't have a league too close to you, right?

League time is great for fun. 2nd to that, playtesting with friends outside of league is also very fun because you all know each other. Even though the tournament may have been memorable, a lot of my memories are from playtesting with friends.
Click to expand...

I agree that Scizor (Accelerate attack) and cherrim (Sunny Day) is a fun deck to run because i ran it for a while and it works very well!!!:thumb:
 
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