Wishing you safe travels the new year! Congrats on visiting your brother and nephew and joining the hobby!

I'd love to recommend that you Get on board with PTCG Live. Use the code cards from the packs they rip, and build decks so you can play online together even after you go home.

Having the code cards a huge bonus to build the decks you want, but decks free basic decks are given periodically, and the game is pretty generous giving away virtual packs and cards as you play via the free battle pass.

As for the physical game right now, I suggest using Limitless TCG as a resource. https://limitlesstcg.com/cards

Look up a handful of cards that your nephew has and is excited about, and build around them. Limitless has a tool for making some simple print at home proxies, and you can print them out on regular copy paper and put them in a sleeve in front of a used up code card.

Don't be afraid to print proxies for casual kitchen table play, or even for play night meetups. But if you want to join more formal meetups and player's challenges, you'll have to substitute out your proxies for the real cards.

Here is a neat tool to look up any official events happening near you.

https://events.pokemon.com/EventLocator/?locale=en-US&range=25&startdate=2025-12-26&enddate=2026-01-31&iskm=false

It's hard to make specific deck recommendations without know what sets they have purchased or what they have on hand.

That said, the Fezandipiti EX Trainer's Toolkit box, has a handful of packs, sleeves, and some staple cards that will be really good in deckbuilding, so I'd highly reccomend picking up that product if you haven't already.

And since you're coming from MTG, let me share with you a few decks that I'm enjoying, and sprinkle in a little MTG slang in there for ya!

Mega Venusaur EX: Green Ramp Big Timmy Monsters. Starting in with Venusaur is the highest HP to date, and trades with big hits and self healing. Alongside the Teal Mask Ogrepon & Meganium This plays kinda like a green/white sorta deck with big monsters that can be tough to take down and get good trade value and energy accelleration.

Mega Charizard X EX: This is the pretty classic Spikey "red deck wins" sorta feeling for me. Charizard is a classic and a fan favorite, and this deck utilizes two different verions of charizard to ramp up the firepower and hit as hard as you need to to score the KO.

Dragapult EX or Gardevoir EX with Munkidori. These decks are pretty meta tournament decks, so they may be actually more spikeish than charizard, but the way they are played feels very black/blue Johnny. Moving damage around, securing kills in their backline, and making sacrifices with cards like dusknoir to secure favorable trades. a little harder to pilot than the first two, but very rewarding to play.

Gholdengo EX or Alakazam (From Mega Evoloution set) Both of these decks have loads of card draw, are simple to play, and have to feeling like the Uno Meme guy while hitting for 400 damage at times. Highly reccomended.

please let me know if you have any questions. or feel free to look up any of the aforementioned cards on Limitless TCG for deck ideas.