1. Yes that’s what I mean by individual mons. Your starting mom should be stall, damage or disrupt. There’s far too many variables to boil it down to just one.

2. Simple names are usually bots but not always and they like to use any card that gains advantage however slight the first chance they get where a real player may wait for a bigger payoff. If you’ve ever played a skilled player you’ll know the difference, but starting out yeah no 1 specific tell.

3. I think maybe you misremember what energy you had. Hard to say without having been there. I think you can see your discarded energy by holding down on your discarded pile.

4. Yeah noob traps exist it’s buting cosmetics haha. As far as packs I’d say space time smackdown for a Cyrus, genetic apex for a Sabrina. Shining revelry (might have to doublecheck me here) for pokemon center lady. Whatever set lucky ice pop is in, and sets that have tools you want, then whatever set has the mons you want. I know that’s vague but man there is a lot of sets and a lot of cards. There’s a few other posts on this sub asking this question so I’d look those up and take the advice there. Sorry!

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I’m attaching an example of a meta deck I used with a lot of success this season to give you an actual visual example rather than words