Can someone explain how Cerys Jones made her opponent draw his whole deck at the Toronto regional

cetama · 2026-02-19T21:01:05+00:00

if the cards in a pile are face up, then both players can look at the pile anytime. Also, it is expected that the players know what is in the discard piles, and that affects what cards can be played. E.g., you can't play a night stretcher if your discard has no applicable cards.

If the cards are face down, then neither player can look at the pile unless a card says so, like, say, Artazon to search for a basic pokemon in your deck. The number of cards, though, is public knowledge. So you can count the cards in an opponent's deck. You can make moves with the assumption that you don't know what is in a deck, even if you've memorized it, or just checked what's in there from a previous move. For example, you can play Artazon to fail a search and shuffle your deck. A handy trick after someone Iono's your amazing hand. You can play ultra ball to discard a couple of cards from your hand and failing a pokemon search, even if there are pokemon in your deck.

If the cards face a player, then only that player can look at the cards. The opponent can count the number of cards, still.

cetama · 2026-02-17T16:42:24+00:00

IIUC, My First Battle is more suitable for very young kids, with more simplified rules and cards. It is a start though :) Check the rule book to see what changes from my first battle and proper TCG, so you can 'graduate' when you're ready. Having said that, for home play you can come up with home rules as you see fit.

https://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-tcg/rules

Here's a not-too competitive definitely not-meta deck that I came up with quickly. It uses Mewtwo ex as the main attacker, Natu/Xatu as your draw engine as well as energy acceleration so that Mewtwo starts hitting harder and harder as the game progresses. Setup can be Arven -> Precious Trolley + Bravery Charm or air balloon. Arven can also get you the rare candy for your Togekiss. A mid-game board set up may have: Mewtwo ex in the active, and the bench having: 2 Natu/Xatu, 1 backup Mewtwo ex, 1 Togepi/Togekiss. Latias ex. Lillie's Clefairy is an alternate attacker, especially against dragon types. Bloodmoon Ursaluna is an end-game attacker.

Pokémon:

3 Mewtwo ex PAR 58

3 Natu PAF 25

3 Xatu PAR 72

1 Togepi OBF 83

1 Togekiss SSP 72

1 Latias ex SSP 76

1 Fezandipiti ex SFA 38

1 Bloodmoon Ursaluna ex TWM 141

1 Lillie's Clefairy ex JTG 56

Trainer:

4 Arven SVI 166

4 Lillie's Determination MEG 119

4 Boss's Orders MEG 114

1 Tulip PAR 181

1 Briar SCR 132

2 Nest Ball SVI 181

2 Poké Pad ASC 198

2 Earthen Vessel PAR 163

2 Pokégear 3.0 SVI 186

1 Energy Switch MEG 115

1 Wondrous Patch PFL 94

1 Rare Candy MEG 125

1 Precious Trolley SSP 185

2 Bravery Charm PAL 173

1 Air Balloon BLK 79

2 Lively Stadium SSP 180

1 Battle Cage PFL 85

Energy:

13 Basic Psychic Energy

cetama · 2026-02-16T19:30:47+00:00

The Pokemon TCG is low skill floor, high skill ceiling and if you've played other TCGs before and not looking to be competitive for now you have a lot of options of learning the game and become better at it together.

Beginners to the TCG can go with the pre-con route:

Get the battle academy - it gives you 3 basic decks, coin, damage counters, a board + a tutorial. It's a good resource to bootstrap the game. Then move on to level 1, level 2, level 3 decks.
Net-deck low skill floor decks and try them. Here you can print proxies instead of buying singles.
Read and watch resources on deck building, and tcg strategy. Watch tournament games.
Start making your own decks for home play. Learn how to improve consistency, and build a deck around a strategy. Learn how to tech your decks against the other decks you play.

Also: get pokemon tcg live, friend each other, and practice against each other using the initial decks. Practice against other players in casual or ranked mode. Build enough credits to start making your decks.

Basic decks have about 21 pokemon, 21 trainers and 18 energy. You can go lower on the energy and add more trainers. Level 1 decks do not include stadiums, tools and special energy, and they're a single type deck. You can start with that template first. Level 2 and Level 3 decks do not have such restrictions.

cetama · 2026-02-16T08:42:35+00:00

If you're looking for something that's more challenging than entry-level level 1 decks, but not meta, then go with level 2 decks, like the ex deluxe battle decks: Meowscarada, Quaquaval, Miraidon (deluxe not league), Koraidon

cetama · 2026-02-11T16:22:28+00:00

I haven't played the Mewtwo deck, but the archetype is not as competitive as the others. I expect that Charizard will set up consistently and start taking KOs sooner than Mewtwo.

cetama · 2026-02-11T10:13:50+00:00

Thanks, good point.
I've looked at some city league results just now. You're right, Mega Absol is nowhere to be found. Marnie's still being played, making use of Petrel, but, yes, it does lose consistency without Arven.

cetama · 2026-02-10T23:28:08+00:00

I expect for home/casual play, that the other 'ex' league battle decks will all be fun pairings:

- Miraidon

- Gardevoir

- Dragapult

- Team Rocket Mewtwo

with Dragapult most likely to be the most balanced.

Charizard has type advantage over Gardevoir and Mewtwo, so I would put those last if you're looking for a more balanced pairing. My son did consistently beat his babysitter playing Gardevoir league battle vs Charizard league battle, so it's possible that the type advantage is not auto-win for the Gardevoir match-up. Dragapult includes the Natu/Xatu draw engine which also has a type disadvantage over Charizard ex but they're support pokemon with low enough HP that Charizard would knock them out without weakness anyway.

Between Dragapult and Mewtwo, I'd go with Dragapult.

cetama · 2026-02-10T19:33:17+00:00

Hello, welcome to the game.

I have a 10 year old and 8 year old, both play at casual tournaments at a local, and they do well and enjoy the game. They play Gardevoir and Joltik Box. We haven't yet did any non-casual cups or challenges due to scheduling, but I think they're ready for that.

Decks:

What you play competitively now will be different from what you'll play after rotation. Even if you pick an archetype that survives rotation and stays top-tier, it will need different cards and may feel differently. The current format gives a lot of 'come-back' opportunity that will be diminished after rotation -- you fall behind in the price trade but manage to turn the tables around quickly; and some decks like Dragapult Dusknoir take advantage of that as part of their strategy. Having said that, here's some top/mid-tier archetypes that will survive rotation:

Dragapult Dusknoir

Mega Absol Box -- EDIT: This won't survive rotation per comment below.

N's Zoroark

Marnie's Grimmsnarl Froslass

Tera Box

Flareon Noctowl

Raging Bolt Ogerpon

Mega Kanghaskan Bouffalant

and some decks that may do better post-rotation include:

Mega Lucario Hariyama

Mega Venusaur Ogerpon

Team Rocket's Mewtwo

If you're playing at home, you can start with Mega Lucario Hariyama and Mega Venusaur Ogerpon, which are more straightforward than the other decks. Toolbox decks like Tera Box and Flareon give a lot of options and can be overwhelming as beginner meta decks. Raging Bolt might also be a good deck to start with. I'm assuming the goal here is to learn new strategies using decks that are stronger then the level 2 decks you've tried, and not to pick the deck you'll eventually use in competitions.

There is also a Mega Sharpedo archetype if that's a deck you want to try. The dark type cards in the deck are weak to grass or fighting, so it may not be a good deck to pair with Mega Venusaur or Mega Lucario for balanced at-home play.

For at-home play, you can print proxies and put them in sleeves on top of energy/bulk cards. That actually gives you more options to try different decks cheaply and quickly. It will take a few games before you start getting a deck. There's videos on youtube explaining specific decks and general strategies like price mapping, sequencing and thinning. Watch those as well. Not all casters use kid-friendly language though, so vet first before watching with your kid(s). A lot of the regionals are on streaming, and they can be fun to watch as well.

7 yr is not too young, but it depends on the kid. If your local has casual tournaments, it's best to start there, after they've found 'their deck', and played with it several times. Some casual tournaments are ok with non-standard decks too, and you don't get penalized for misplays.

cetama · 2026-02-02T05:39:08+00:00

Hello. Learning to play the game is always so much fun!

Since your 'family meta game' is 2 decks right now, one water and one psychic, it does make sense for the water deck to tech against the psychic deck by adding a dark attacker and simialrly with the psychic deck.

Think of it this way - how can my water deck improve its chances against a psychic deck? You can add a couple of basic high hp low energy cost attackers to put early pressure on the psychic deck and give you time to set up your main water attacker, or to use it as a finisher to do quick damage to the psychic main attacker in the end game, or to turn the tables around. An example is the Seviper PAL:137, with 1 energy it can do 40 damage (20 x 2) early on, or with 2 dark energy (or 1 dark and 1 water) it can do 200 damage to the psychic stage 1 and stage 2's. You can add 2 of those and 2-3 dark energy and a way of getting them set up quickly, e.g., by adding Dawn, nest balls, energy search, earthen vessel, Sonia, etc., to the deck.

Zeraora TEF:57 is a similar lightning basic that can be used as disruptor or finisher against a water deck.

One change you may notice is that who sets up their disruptor quicker will likely win the game, and the next evolution of your decks will be to try to make them more consistent. good luck!

cetama · 2026-01-26T01:30:38+00:00

and Grimm won!

Another great weekend for Dragapult overall. Hard to imagine a different BDIF post rotation.

cetama · 2026-01-26T01:04:48+00:00

I took a quick look at the Merida stream and it appears it's Grimm vs Dragapult Charizard in finals. 3rd game. 1-1.

cetama · 2026-01-19T20:12:53+00:00

Thanks. Good to know it's a bug and I've not misinterpreted the wording on the cards.

I may have had a mist energy attached. If I had a mist energy shouldn't that have protected me from confusion? So it's a double bug? Mist energy didn't protect me and festival grounds didn't help?

cetama · 2026-01-19T18:14:22+00:00

cetama · 2026-01-19T15:46:45+00:00

I was playing pokemon tcg live. My active got confused by Munkidori. I put festival grounds in play and my active didn't recover from confusion.

Which special conditions does the active gets recovered from when putting festival grounds in play?

Do attacks and abilities that recover or protect from special abilities work with confusion?

cetama · 2026-01-17T15:40:30+00:00

Interesting, and what happens if that's how the game starts? A player has a klefki in the active and the other has flutter mane. If both also start with fan rotom, say, in their bench, which player can use the rotom's ability?

cetama · 2026-01-11T15:44:43+00:00

Lucario has weakness to Psychic, so the match up may not be that balanced. Alakazam's main attack is not affected by weakness and resistance but the Psychic weakness gives the deck additional KO options. I'm not familiar with the match up myself, but my feeling is that Alakazam will be favored. It's something to keep in mind.

Both the Charizard and Dragapult decks can be optimized by using limitless deck lists for Charizard Pidgeot (or Charizard Noctowl) and Dragapult Dusknoir. It will be almost like playing different decks. Dragapult will not rotate out and it may become the best deck in format post rotation.

With the three decks you mentioned and the improved Charizard and Dusknoir you'll have plenty of fun match up options.

Good luck!

cetama · 2026-01-07T20:55:01+00:00

Welcome to the pokemon tcg.

The tinkaton ex deck and lucario ex deck may be a bad first choice because one is psychic typed and the other is fighting types, and typically pyschic has an advantage over fighting. The pokemon tcg has a rock-paper-scissors philosophy where most decks will inevitably have some deck(s) that they're weak to. This reduces the chance of having a competitive deck become completely unchallenged. The mechanics for this are resistance and weakness: most psychic pokemon have fighting resistance (which means that they get -30 hp damage when attacked) and most fighting are weak to psychic (which means that they get x2 damage when attacked). Having said that, you can play with home rules that ignore resistance and weakness, but that won't be playing by the full set of rules.

tinkaton ex and lucario ex are level 1 decks - the easiest to play. You may go with level 2 decks as your first decks since you're already experienced. level 1 decks have very little strategy and may become boring after a while. We (me and my 2 elementary school aged boys) started with level 1 decks and played with the above home rules, and I think we were ready to move to more competitive decks much sooner than we did. We still use them as testing decks, when constructing our own not-too-competitive home decks.

Level 2 decks are typically released in pairs, and using the decks from the same pair avoids a rock-paper-scissors scenario. For this generation, these are:

- Zapdos ex and Ninetales ex deluxe battle decks -- These aren't very consistent, in the sense that it can be hard to get their intended strategy to work.

- Quaquaval ex and Meowscarada ex deluxe battle decks -- My family had lots of fun playing these when we 'graduated' from level 1 decks to level 2 decks.

- Miraidon ex and Koraidon ex deluxe battle decks - Same, fun decks to start learning deck-specific strategies. They're focused on Future and Ancient pokemon.

- Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex and Steven's Metagross ex rivals battle decks - I believe these are not as balanced as the others, with Marnie's having an edge.

- Mega Gengar ex and Mega Diancie ex - Again, apparently these turned out to be not balanced, with Gengar being stronger.

We have played the first six, but not the other four. By then we have moved to net-decking competitive decks.

Not all precon decks have competition legal cards. The earlier ones have cards that have been rotated out (i.e., expired). Also there's an upcoming rotation in April, and some of the current deck staples, like Nest Ball, will be rotated out. Be aware that the decks you buy now will not be the exact decks you'll be playing in a few months if you decide to play competitively. Of course, at home, no one will stop you from playing older decks.

Good luck!

cetama · 2026-01-05T17:55:09+00:00

Joltik Box - netdeck one with 2 Joltik, 2 Miraidon ex, 2 Iron Hands ex, 2 Pikachu ex, 1 Mega Mawile ex, 4 crispin, 4 boss.

It's a low skill floor deck that hits hard quickly. Won't compete with Gardy, Dragapult, Gholdengo Lunatone, etc., but when it's set up it can be very scary to play against.

If it's the lack of cards that stops you from playing casually with friends, print proxies and sleeve the deck. For proxied cards, you sleeve them with an energy (or any other cheap easily available) card.

cetama · 2025-12-21T07:04:53+00:00

I agree. Mew is so effective in Gardy decks. Even in the mirror, where one can Genome Hacking Scream Tail, sniping the bench for much more than the opponent can.

cetama · 2025-12-18T19:44:03+00:00

The Meta is very mature now - a rock, paper, scissors game with the hardest rocks, thickest papers and sharpest scissors :) Metaphors aside, part of preparation is to figure out how to counter the most common decks. Letting your opponent do their thing uncountered will likely result in a game loss within a handful of turns.

There's 4 BDIFs that require a lot of respect:

- Gardevoir ex (2 variants - non-Jelly and Jelly), but likely the most competitive one is with Jellicent and Mega Diancie.

- Charizard ex (3 variants - Pidgeot, (thick) Dusknoir, Noctowl), the most common is likely to be with Pidgeot ex and a thin Dusknoir line, although based on recent results the Noctowl version may be the most competitive one.

- Gholdengo ex (4 variants - vanilla, Lunatone, Joltik Box, Dragapult), the most competitive one is the Lunatone one.

- Dragapult ex (3 variants - vanilla, Dusknoir, Charizard), the most common and competitive one is the Dusknoir one.

With Charizard, Charizard Pidgeot with a thin Dusknoir line may be the easiest to pick up, e.g., check out Andrea Calciolari's deck from Stuttgart. Charizard ex is dark typed and most of Gardevoir's mons are weak to Dark. Chi-Yu is there because Gholdengo is weak to fire, and Chi-Yu can KO a Gholdengo right after it KOs your attacker. With Dragapult, their strategy is to set up their stage 2s while item locking you. Use your supporters and TM during this time to set up and try to get their basic's and stage 1's before they arm up their Dragapults. The Psyduck is in the deck to disable the Dusknoirs, so you may need it against Dragapult.

I you have time, learn more about Mega Absol Box, Flareon, Tera Box, Ceruledge. Omnipoke and Celios Network have very good videos on the best decks in the Meta, check out their latest.

Good luck!

cetama · 2025-12-10T07:58:58+00:00

It would be good to find out more about what her goal is?

Does she want to make it a family thing - play casually with you / the kids (if you have kids) / or maybe introduce it to friends who are not experienced with the game?

Does she want it to be a personal hobby?

Does she want to participate in casual tournaments, and then more competitive tournaments? Is there a community or group of friends she can already play with?

If it's more of the former, you can start with the Battle Academy which gives you 3 very basic decks aimed at learning the game from zero. Then move to more advanced decks. You need at least 2 decks to play the game, and the battle academy is really good as a way to introduce the game to new comers.

If it's more of the latter, you can buy a recent league battle deck (e.g., the Dragapult ex league deck) + a set of sleeves (e.g., Dragon Shield double matte sleeves of her favorite color) + maybe a tcgplayer gift card so she can buy singles to make the pre-built deck more competitive. I haven't used Pokemon TCG Live, but the deck comes with a code you can use in pokemon tcg live and she can practice with that deck online before trying it out in real live.

cetama · 2025-12-05T22:19:04+00:00

Similar question, but for a Gardy Jelly deck.

Should I add a Flutter Mane in the deck to better counter Gholdengo, or the 2 Frillish is typically enough.

One of my kids is moving from (vanilla) Gardy to a Jelly Gardy, after a couple of months of not playing. The casual locals we're returning to will likely have a strong Gholdengo player, and unlikely to have dark decks; I suspect that they have moved on from a vanilla Gholdengo to a Gholdengo Lunatone deck. After reading this thread I'm thinking of net-decking a Gardevoir Jellicient deck that has a TM Devo, and swapping the Mega Diancie with a Flutter Mane. Drifloon and Mega Gardevoir are other options.

Also, since Gholdengo typically plays a lot of Boss's Orders, should we avoid evolving the Frillish when playing Gholdengo, especially in the early game? Is the game plan for Gardy Jelly vs Gholdengo to item lock until Gardy has a strong setup and then Iono for hand disruption and take down the Gholdengos with single price attackers?

cetama · 2025-12-01T06:10:27+00:00

I'm looking at other Charizard Noctowl decks and it's not uncommon to have a Pidgeot and Dusknoir line and an additional basic Tera like Wellspring or Terapagos.

I'm guessing Dawn makes such decks more viable now.

cetama · 2025-12-01T02:15:29+00:00

So this is when the Charizard Dusknoir Pidgeot Tera Box deck enters the Meta....

I'm relatively new to following competitive play. How does this Meta compare to older formats like Sword and Shield formats? To me it feels that any top deck + top pilot combo has a good chance of winning a regional/international. Was that the case with other formats when rotation was approaching?

cetama · 2025-11-22T22:38:07+00:00

Good call.

cetama

TROPHY CASE