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Pokemon Trading Card Game (Online) (We idle in #mtgoon on synirc) Pokemon TCG is a trading card game that came out in like 1996, inspired by the gameboy games. Then Wizards of the Coast brought it to the US. Then TPCi directly took control of the game in 2003. PTCGO is an online client for the Pokemon Trading Card Game, similar to what Magic The Gathering Online is for Magic The Gathering. That's where the similarities end though. In every way in which Magic Online is terrible, PTCGO is good. quote:
Pokemon - these are basically creatures. When you KO one you get a prize or two. You win when your opponent has no more in play or you get all of your prizes. You have one active and 5 bench slots (changeable with some cards, of course). Basics: You play these out as long as you have room on the bench. EX's are also basics but they yield two prizes when KO'd. EX's are considered to have different names from non-EX's, and you can have up to four of any pokemon name regardless of text in your deck.     Evolutions: Evolutions are played onto basics, but only if that pokemon was in play already this turn or wasn't evolved once already this turn. Mega's are the same except they end your turn unless the pokemon that's being mega evolved has a corresponding spirit link    BREAK:Introduced in BREAKthrough, BREAKs are evolutions that are placed sideways on a card, replacing its name and max hp, but adding an attack or power to the card on which it was overlaid, looking something like this:  Trainer There are four kinds of trainers: Items: Items are the basic kind of trainer. You can play them whenever on your turn and there is no restriction aside from targetting and additional costs on the card.   Supporters: Supporters are a more powerful version of items. Only one supporter can be played per turn.   Stadiums: Stadiums are persistent effects. Only one stadium can be in play. If you play one while one is already in play the old one is discarded and then the board is adjusted (through discards) to meet whatever the new board state needs to be if bench sizes change. You cannot play the same stadium when one is already in play.   Tools (and Tool-F's): Equipment/Auras for pokemon.    Ace Specs: Only in expanded and older, you can only have one ace spec in your deck because of how powerful they are.  Energy: Energy come in basic and nonbasic types. They are basically like lands in magic except they are attached to pokemon.    Ok enough of that why is PTCG any fun? Pokemon looks like vintage in deck composition, basically. The average deck is like ~15 pokemon, 10 or fewer energies, and 30-40 trainers. That means you play a lot per turn. What makes this fair though is that you can only attack with a pokemon once per turn so you're kind of limited on how fast you can win. All right so what's up with PTCGO? (probably emphasis here because I don't play this game in paper) PTCGO is basically a f2p Pokemon TCG client that has a lot of good f2p mechanics and very cheap buy-in with real money. Another upside is you don't have to play it in person and be seen as that guy in your 20s or 30s playing pokemon. This is what a competitive deck looks like (minus one shaymin that i now have). It cost me about $20-30 in codes to put together. In paper the deck is about $250 or so to put together.  How do I get some cards to play with? 1. Do the tutorial. The tutorial awards you with a Basic Yellow deck. This will be nice later if you ever want to play theme. 2. Trainer Challenge - there's a vs AI mode called player challenge that lets you play against a mildly stupid AI to earn points vs that AI player. For beating every player in one of the leagues you get some booster packs. At thresholds there you earn tokens and then a booster. You also earn cards in your three basic theme decks. You get also a booster for getting every theme deck to a certain threshold of unique wins. 3. Challenges - basically hearthstone style daily quests. Early on these can be done in player challenge modes but later on they are versus only:  Ok now you have some untradeable boosters and tokens and maybe chests. Open up your untradeables you're never doing anything with those. With your tokens you can go into the store to buy some theme decks. Each of these can be cycled back into player challenge for the one booster for 12 unique wins, but they also come with some pretty good cards. Just don't buy the XY starter ones they're garbage. The store also sometimes has promotional "blisters" for limited times. These are basically a good token outlet if they have a good constructed card. Trading - there is a trade ui that's pretty intuitive, you can look at open trade requests here:  if you choose one it goes into this  If you want to post a trade you can hit create trade and it looks like  -> then I hit done, post with some tokens (which are returned to me when the trade expires or is completed)  and then now that's listed under my trades  I got some cards now I want to battle real people online Ok now you can start playing against real players for cards. When you go into versus mode you can see a meter at the bottom that gives you rewards for earning versus points (10-15 on a win depending on relative hidden rating to your opponent).  There are four different formats: Theme: Theme is probably your best bet because theme decks are very easy to get. You can only battle with preconstructed theme decks in theme. In my experience the best decks in this format are: 1. Basic Yellow 2. Basic Blue 3. Dark Hammer They kind of have a rock paper scissors relationship where basic yellow dunks on basic blue, basic blue beats dark hammer (and just about every other deck except maybe iron tide), and dark hammer beats just about everything but basic blue but is close against basic yellow. Standard and Expanded: This will basically explain it way better than I can: http://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-news/pokemon-tcg-format-rotation-for-2016/  this is basically what casual standard looks like  Also dont worry the cards are readable if moused over Unlimited: Basically pokemon legacy/vintage. I don't touch this because it's broken as gently caress thanks to nonsense like Shiftry. There are also tournaments. These are 3 round Bo1 fights that are afaik not seeded in any way. They list entry fee and prize on the in-client page. Token tournaments give tickets and ticket tournaments give packs. What are some deck lists? Honestly TPCi has posted some good lists here and here How do I know if a card is good? High damage for low energy cost is good. 170 - 180 is a good break point because thats how much you need to KO any EX instantly. Incidentally this also means cards that are good against EX's (regi's, hawlucha) and good against basics (pyroar) can be pretty good too Zubat/Golbat/Crobat are powerful for their ability to do damage without attacking. Shaymin-EX is hilariously broken. Everything else is generally about getting through your deck as fast as possible. Because of the sheer number of draw 7's there are in this game discarding cards isn't a huge cost. More resources: Charizard Lounge- these guys kind of meme a lot but they do compile tournament results and write about some t1-t1.5 decks so that's pretty cool There's also 60cards.net and propokemon.com but they all have that dumb scg premium format for their content so I don't read them a lot. Good lists are a bit annoying to find but don't vary too much from a consistent core, basically. (If anyone knows good resources please tell me) Zoness fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Aug 11, 2016 |
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Jan 30, 2016 00:42
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Standard is rotating soon - everything between XY is going to be out of standard
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this game is very fun and i also play it. once you have a halfway passable standard deck (seriously half the round one players are theme deck + EX so even that can get to packs) tournaments give tradable packs which you can use to get poo poo you want if you absolutely want to spend 0 dollars
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Jan 30, 2016 00:49
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Oh, hey, new thread. Neat.
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Feb 3, 2016 18:59
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Ah yeah, it's that game I collected and never played as a child. Even had a foil Charizard that everyone went insane over. Might as well take the leap now, I suppose.
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Feb 3, 2016 18:59
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Oh shiiiit! New thread. If you want some games my Ign is also elblanco. I've been playing expanded a bunch lately but wouldn't mind standard too. Also happy BREAKpoint release day!
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Feb 3, 2016 19:05
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I got on at 2 am midnight and i think it was just serious grinders in the versus queues at that point  .Couldn't play Lucario/Bats properly to save my life, also can't wait to get my hands on some of those new belts  EDIT: any thoughts on 4x puzzle in night march? does that let you take out milotic or should you still leave 2 slots for milotic
Zoness fucked around with this message at 07:18 on Feb 5, 2016 |
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Feb 4, 2016 23:21
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Oh man that was my jam a while ago. Considering reinstalling  How easy is it to just grind up while f2p? I remember it being pretty limited back in the day, but that was like 2 years ago, so it's probably changed a lot. EDIT: Nice, gonna download then. Hoping I can remember my old account too  Says volumes that I'm downloading an F2P version of Pokemon, instead of Magic Online, on a whim. Fix your poo poo, Wizards. Serperoth fucked around with this message at 15:26 on Feb 5, 2016 |
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Feb 5, 2016 13:47
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A ton has changed. You can use theme decks in verses to get coins and packs and cards. Some standard decks are pretty cheap to make. I built night March fairly easily(though a ton of people freak out on me when I do play it). They just got rid of 5 card packs too, so it should be easier to build up a decent collection. Also, the current tournaments giving out the new packs seem to be giving tradable packs too.
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Feb 5, 2016 15:03
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Is the new theme deck worth getting?
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Feb 5, 2016 15:49
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Dr. Stab posted:Is the new theme deck worth getting? I spent my coins on the umbreon blister but I'll take a look when I get back up to 500. I have my doubts though, basic blue and basic yellow are kind of absurd. Oh yeah hold off on getting the water/grass theme deck for now since kricketune and lilligant are bugged. I looked over the lists and without having played them yet, Electric Eye seems to have some potentially strong plays but the big problem with both of the decks imo is they seem pretty weak in terms of card draw (Misty's Determination  ). At least Electric Eye comes with 1 Max Elixir and 1 Fighting Fury Belt Elblanco posted:A ton has changed. You can use theme decks in verses to get coins and packs and cards. Some standard decks are pretty cheap to make. I built night March fairly easily(though a ton of people freak out on me when I do play it). I have been playing nothing but night march mirrors and I feel like the puzzle variant (basically cutting the milotic package for 4 puzzles) is probably absurd but still vulnerable to all the hate cards added in BREAKpoint. Gonna try cutting down to one target whistle/pokemon catcher to mise with puzzles. Opening with two puzzles and a battle compressor is just the best feeling. Gonna be trying puzzles in some Korrina lists. Zoness fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Feb 5, 2016 |
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Feb 5, 2016 16:46
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This is a bummer. Installed the client, and the login I remember is apparently invalid. And the website requires an e-mail, but doesn't accept any of the e-mails that I could've used. At the same time, my username is apparently taken, so the account does exist.  Is there a support chat or something that I can contact?
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Feb 5, 2016 19:53
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Serperoth posted:Is there a support chat or something that I can contact? There might be a dev for this game in #mtgoon (on synirc) 
Zoness fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Feb 5, 2016 |
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Feb 5, 2016 20:01
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Zoness posted:
I some how didn't even think to use puzzles. I'll have to see how many I have. I've been having amazing pulls. FA darkrai and Skylar turned into 12 rising skies packs and 7 breakpoint packs, pulled 2 shaymins and a fa mega scizor which became 7 breakthrough packs which opened a photon wave mewtwo and fa mega howndoom. I wish I could afford real packs atm cause my luck is nuts.
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Feb 5, 2016 20:39
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Elblanco posted:I some how didn't even think to use puzzles. I'll have to see how many I have. I've been having amazing pulls. FA darkrai and Skylar turned into 12 rising skies packs and 7 breakpoint packs, pulled 2 shaymins and a fa mega scizor which became 7 breakthrough packs which opened a photon wave mewtwo and fa mega howndoom. I wish I could afford real packs atm cause my luck is nuts. I presume Mega Scizor is good? I have no idea about the meta, but I think I pulled one earlier from one of the free packs or something. Untradable though.  Also, I said so in IRC, but I love it how you rip open the package, then click on your rares/foils to reveal them. And shout outs to the help I got about my account, it was a bit roundabout, but I worked it out in the end. 
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Feb 5, 2016 23:37
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I don't care for mega scizor and scizor but people seem to be freaking out over them a bit, plus a full art is usually worth more.
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Feb 5, 2016 23:50
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M-scizor EX can tank night march pretty well, especially if it has a fighting fury belt attached (220 hp with a relevant resistance and no relevant weakness is tough) but it seems really bad vs fire dogs. I imagine there's a Zoroark/Bronzong/M Scizor-EX control deck with mega turbos and max potions. In fact if I had the scizors I'd probably try it out because the entei matchup is probably not that bad. Zoness fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Feb 5, 2016 |
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Feb 5, 2016 23:57
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Zoness posted:M-scizor EX can tank night march pretty well, especially if it has a fighting fury belt attached (220 hp with a relevant resistance and no relevant weakness is tough) but it seems really bad vs fire dogs. You had me at "Steel Control deck" One thing I dislike with low-power play (in all/most card games) is how fights are slogs. "Oh I did some damage to your guy, oh you hit my dude, let's wait for 4 energy so I can use my only attack". Then again, the actual RPG is similarly slow, so it's accurate
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Feb 6, 2016 20:36
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All right so I did the 50 win thing because I figured why not and here's what was in my box:  On the bright side I'm sure my night march variant is pretty nuts, I'm considering testing one feebas/milotic but I love the puzzle + battle compressor interaction and I'm not sure what to cut for milotic (probably acro bike I kind of hate that card)
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Feb 9, 2016 07:00
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Oh hey Generations was added at some point and was street released yesterday. I just looked at the spoiler and the M-Charizard and Jolteon look pretty dope but I really want some of those imakunis.
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Feb 23, 2016 23:28
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As someone who messes around with the theme deck format, but is still pretty clueless in general, what are some good core cards to pick up if I was looking at constructed but didn't know what to play? I've got like one shaymin ex and I think a reasonable trainer selection but have no idea what I want to build so I'm trying to play it super safe. Apologies if this is a 'how long is a piece of string' question.
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Feb 24, 2016 00:06
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Zoness posted:Oh hey Generations was added at some point and was street released yesterday. I just looked at the spoiler and the M-Charizard and Jolteon look pretty dope but I really want some of those imakunis. They English printed Imakuni?? Oh man. It's like playing the Pokemon TCG Gameboy game all over again. 
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Feb 24, 2016 00:19
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X_ThePerfect posted:As someone who messes around with the theme deck format, but is still pretty clueless in general, what are some good core cards to pick up if I was looking at constructed but didn't know what to play? The staples in this game are more often trainers/supporters than pokemon themselves, so I'll go by those - I think this is a good supporter/trainer core for any kind of generic deck, numbers are targets but the 4-ofs are best in 4's: 2-4 Professor Sycamore 0-2 Professor Birch's Observations 1 Lysandre 1 Hex Maniac 1 Xerosic 1 AZ 4 Ultra Ball 4 Trainer's Mail 4 Acro Bike 4 VS Seeker 4 Max Elixir (if your deck is playing like, 12+ basic energies) 2-4 Fighting Fury Belt 0-4 Battle Compressor Filler Tier: Judge Crushing Hammer Enhanced Hammer Red Card
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Feb 24, 2016 00:19
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How long does it usually take, after a new set gets printed, for that set to appear in the online version?
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Feb 24, 2016 00:25
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GlitchThief posted:How long does it usually take, after a new set gets printed, for that set to appear in the online version? You can get generations packs (through paper codes) online already But it's not in the in-game store because generations is a gimmicky rear end release in paper
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Feb 24, 2016 00:29
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Yea, they added generations when they added breakpoint. I can't remember though, is generations where the awesome umbreon ex is or is that fates collide?
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Feb 24, 2016 01:47
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I opened about 300 boosters over the last two days and made my first deck today, hooray! I've gone 5-1 in random vs matches but I see the OP says I have maybe twice as much energy as I should have? How are people running decks with such low amounts of energy, or are you stuffing your trainer pools with energy searches and energy retrievals?
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Feb 24, 2016 02:30
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Waldorf Sixpence posted:I opened about 300 boosters over the last two days and made my first deck today, hooray! I've gone 5-1 in random vs matches but I see the OP says I have maybe twice as much energy as I should have? How are people running decks with such low amounts of energy, or are you stuffing your trainer pools with energy searches and energy retrievals? Despite what the OP says, the average deck does not have less than 10 energy. Most fair decks (ones that rely on drawing and playing cards normally) probably start with 18-20 energy. It's not until you get into hyper-specialized decks with a bunch of combos, crazy amounts of card draw, and discard pile recursion, that you see those sorts of <10 energy decks.
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Feb 24, 2016 02:48
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Toshimo posted:Despite what the OP says, the average deck does not have less than 10 energy. Most fair decks (ones that rely on drawing and playing cards normally) probably start with 18-20 energy. It's not until you get into hyper-specialized decks with a bunch of combos, crazy amounts of card draw, and discard pile recursion, that you see those sorts of <10 energy decks. I figured as much. I've seen some really impressive decks running with a ridiculously low energy count by running very tight strategies relying on one card actually using any energy and every other Pokémon sitting on the bench for abilities, but I'm glad to hear that's not the only valid deck configuration! I'm currently running with a deck based around Trevenant Break, with Metwo EX and Mega Mewtwo EX for backup. There's an Aegislash in there too to mop up anything that didn't get taken out by Trevenant Break's Silent Fear. Four of those Psychic energies that reduce retreat cost, two of the stadiums that reduce energy cost of attacks... The rest is mostly filler with the usual Supporter cards and a few Evosodas. I'll grab a deck list tomorrow if anyone's interested in helping me tweak it? I haven't built a Pokémon deck for about 11 years! I know that running a single colour deck isn't the smartest move, but there were just too many awesome psychic types in this block
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Feb 24, 2016 02:57
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Toshimo posted:Despite what the OP says, the average deck does not have less than 10 energy. Most fair decks (ones that rely on drawing and playing cards normally) probably start with 18-20 energy. It's not until you get into hyper-specialized decks with a bunch of combos, crazy amounts of card draw, and discard pile recursion, that you see those sorts of <10 energy decks. idk what you're doing if you're not playing 30-40 trainers . 4 sycamores is very easy to get and sycamore incentivizes you to play marginal trainers (hence fillers like hammers and poo poo) just to dump as many cards as possible. When I played my sceptile EX deck with no shaymins i played like 10 grass energies tops because you can play letters to tutor for them if you really need them12 is approximately the number you need to reliably hit with max elixir and it's more important to not whiff with trainer's mail because that's like, all your consistency. Waldorf Sixpence posted:I figured as much. I've seen some really impressive decks running with a ridiculously low energy count by running very tight strategies relying on one card actually using any energy and every other Pokémon sitting on the bench for abilities, but I'm glad to hear that's not the only valid deck configuration! there aren't really significant downsides to single type decks - most competitive decks are single type or DCE only and it mostly depends on being able to cheat your energy costs (dimension valley, dark patch, blacksmith, etc) Elblanco posted:Yea, they added generations when they added breakpoint. I can't remember though, is generations where the awesome umbreon ex is or is that fates collide? probably fates collide cuz the only good eevee in this one is the jolteon Zoness fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Feb 24, 2016 |
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Feb 24, 2016 04:34
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Yesssss
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Feb 24, 2016 14:47
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Waldorf Sixpence posted:I figured as much. I've seen some really impressive decks running with a ridiculously low energy count by running very tight strategies relying on one card actually using any energy and every other Pokémon sitting on the bench for abilities, but I'm glad to hear that's not the only valid deck configuration! Actually, I recently built a deck very similar to this. It uses trevenant BREAK and gengar from breakthrough. The combo being silent fear to drop 30 on all of your opponent's Pokemon and then switch to gengar to creepshow everything to death. I only run 10 energies, one mystery and 9 basic psychic energies. The whole thing works pretty well because you should be running a metric poo poo ton of card draw anyway, and I rub a few floatstones to make switching out trevenant easier. Also with dimension valley, I only need two energies for the entire combo.
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Feb 24, 2016 17:02
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Discovered this yesterday and started playing, after having quit the TCG shortly after Team Rocket came out (so like...15? years ago). Holy gently caress is this scratching a huge nostalgia itch.
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Feb 26, 2016 02:13
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rlloyd3 posted:Discovered this yesterday and started playing, after having quit the TCG shortly after Team Rocket came out (so like...15? years ago). Holy gently caress is this scratching a huge nostalgia itch. Team Rocket was the best God drat expansion. The art on those was sweet as hell. I quit same as you, in the Gym Leaders set. The game's changed quite a bit!
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Feb 26, 2016 10:48
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What's the best thing to spend tokens on, decks? Which decks? Someone do my drat homework, please.
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Feb 27, 2016 05:09
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rlloyd3 posted:What's the best thing to spend tokens on, decks? Which decks? Someone do my drat homework, please. Storm Rider, Dark Hammer, and Electric Eye are all pretty good Theme Decks to start out. Otherwise, packs. They almost always have some sort of pack with the most recent set with a packed in promo card and coin at the same price as a regular pack, but most of the promos aren't great.
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Feb 27, 2016 05:27
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Toshimo posted:Storm Rider, Dark Hammer, and Electric Eye are all pretty good Theme Decks to start out. Awesome, thanks. I actually went out and bought the two decks from the newest expansion (Electric Eye and Wave Slasher) for me and my wife to play around with, just haven't gotten around to entering the codes yet.
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Feb 27, 2016 06:49
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rlloyd3 posted:Awesome, thanks. I actually went out and bought the two decks from the newest expansion (Electric Eye and Wave Slasher) for me and my wife to play around with, just haven't gotten around to entering the codes yet.
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Feb 27, 2016 07:13
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Poison Mushroom posted:As a general rule, if you get two of a theme deck, and mash together the best cards from it, you usually get one pretty decently playable deck for online stuff. The weakness of the precon decks is that they dabble in too many Pokemon lines, instead of just playing a bunch of a few good ones. They also tend to not have 4 of the best Trainers, either. The other problem with playing Theme decks online is that you forget that the modifications you made in real life don't appear in the game I spent ages trying to draw Vanilluxe in the Druddigon deck playing online before I realised it's not in there.
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Feb 27, 2016 14:00
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 ...that's a lot of energy.
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Mar 2, 2016 05:38
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I consider that a win. Those energy are cool as hell.
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Mar 2, 2016 05:43
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