Guide to Building Competitive & Budget Decks

[Machamp The Champion]

Building a Competitive Deck​

Hi there, folks! Machamp the Champion here. In this thread, I’m going to give you the low-down on how to go about making a Competitive TCG deck. (If you're looking for the Building a Budget Deck guide, scroll down below this post.)

First, you’re going to need some card(s) to base your deck around. If you don’t base your deck around some sort of idea or cards, how are you going to make the rest of the deck? For this guide, I’m going to use the Virizion/Genesect deck as an example. The focus of this deck is to use Virizion EX’s Emerald Slash attack early in the game to get Energy onto your Genesect EXs to deal some big damage later in the game with Megalo Cannon, and the G Booster Ace Spec.

They both have excellent Abilities as well. Virizion EX’s Verdant Wind prevents all Special Conditions done to your Pokémon with Grass Energy attached, while Genesect EX’s Red Signal lets you switch your opponent’s Active Pokémon with 1 his or her Benched Pokémon when you attach a Plasma Energy to Genesect EX. These Abilities give the deck tons of extra utility and really round out the main Pokémon.

Since these Pokémon can beat a wide range of decks by themselves, we can start out with just 4 Virizion EX and 3 Genesect EX. The reason we’re playing the maximum number of Virizion EX is because it’s essential to have in play on the first turn so you can start using Emerald Slash turn 2. We also want that 1 G Booster in the deck, since it doubles the damage Genesect EX can deal, with only having to discard 2 Energy. This card is the biggest reason this deck is so strong.

• 4 Virizion EX
• 3 Genesect EX

• 1 G Booster

Your deck also might want some starter Pokémon if your main Pokémon need a lot of Energy, or need a lot of support. This particular deck already has a starter Pokémon, in the form of Virizion EX, so we can skip this step.

Next, we need the Energy cards. Without Energy, our Pokémon can’t attack at all! Since we only have Grass types, we can just start out with 10 Grass Energy. When you use Emerald Slash, you take them out of the deck, so you’re going to need a lot of Grass Energy in the deck to compensate for that. Genesect EX’s ability also relies on Plasma Energy, so we can go ahead and play 4 Plasma Energy as well. These won’t be too obtrusive, since both Virizion EX and Genesect EX have 1 Colorless Energy in their attack costs. Let’s take a look at our list now.

• 4 Virizion EX
• 3 Genesect EX

• 1 G Booster

• 10 Grass Energy
• 4 Plasma Energy

Our next step is possibly the most important one of all: your draw support. Without draw support, you’re just gonna be getting 1 card each turn, and you’re going to run out of options in your hand extremely quickly. Most decks share the same type of draw support, so this step is pretty simple. But you’ve still gotta know your deck before throwing in 14 supporters. Let’s go over the main draw cards in the format and see which ones this deck would benefit from most.

• Professor Juniper/Professor Sycamore. This Supporter allows you to discard your hand and draw 7 cards. This is the most popular draw Supporter in the format, as it allows you to get a large, fresh hand of 7 new cards, with not a very big drawback.
• N. This is the second biggest draw card right now, next to Juniper/Sycamore. It forces both players to shuffle their hands into their decks and draw cards equal to the number of their remaining prize cards. This supporter gives you a nice, safe form of draw early on, but later on it can disrupt your opponent by leaving them with only 1 or 2 cards.
• Colress. This card makes you shuffle your hand into your deck and draw a card for each Benched Pokémon in play. This card is fantastic later in the game, as can draw you an astonishing 8 to 10 cards. Unfortunately, early in the game this card will often only draw 1 or 2 cards. Definitely not something you want at that point in the game.
• Skyla. Skyla allows you to search your deck for any Trainer and put it into your hand. This card has insane versatility, unlike all the other draw cards, which just get you random cards from your deck. However, getting only 1 card sometimes isn't enough from a draw Supporter.
• Bicycle. This one is the only Item here that draws you cards. It allows you to draw until you have 4 cards in your hand. Bicycle is great for tearing through your deck at lightning speed, but with it only drawing you 2-3 cards each, it’s extremely prone to leaving you stuck with a bad hand you can’t recover from.
• VS Seeker. VS Seeker is another Item, but it's a little different from Bicycle. This one allows you to get any supporter from your discard. While it doesn’t directly draw you cards, it adds a lot of versatility, since it can become any Supporter you’ve already played. The only issue is if you haven’t already played a useful Supporter, VS Seeker is useless.
• Shauna. This is the final draw card that sees a lot of play. It simply shuffles your hand into your deck and draws you 5 cards. This card’s really only useful if a big chunk of the above draw cards don’t fit well into your deck. Shauna’s got a nice and simple effect that no deck really hates to play, but it’s not a particularly strong form of draw either.

So, the question is which of these draw cards our deck can take advantage of? As I stated previously, 14 is a good number of draw cards that usually allows you to draw them throughout the game. This deck doesn’t need to be very conservative, so 4 Juniper/Sycamore is fine in here. We also have no issues with N, so we can play 4 of them. Skyla is also a great card in here. The deck doesn’t require you to constantly draw multiple cards, and the deck has room for a lot of Items to make Skyla even more versatile, so let’s go ahead and put 4 of those in here.

Next, we have a choice between VS Seeker and Colress for our last 2 spots. This deck has no real issues with Juniper/Sycamore, N, or Skyla, and there’s another Supporter we’re playing that I’ll talk about later, so VS Seeker would be a fine card for this deck. But Colress is not a bad option either. Being able to play with large hands while searching for 1 card with Skyla each turn is a great combo. You could go either way here, but let’s go with VS Seeker for the sake of this thread. Alright, now let’s take a look at our current list:

• 4 Virizion EX
• 3 Genesect EX

• 4 Professor Juniper/Sycamore
• 4 N
• 4 Skyla
• 2 VS Seeker

• 1 G Booster

• 10 Grass Energy
• 4 Plasma Energy

Next, we need to add some utility to the deck. Sure, we can draw cards, and we can deal damage, but our deck has no other options besides that. You want to play utility cards that help fix problems you often run into when playing games with the deck.

Muscle Band is just a great card in any deck. Adding 20 additional damage for no real drawback is not an offer we’re going to turn down. The deck is often moving its Pokémon around, and doesn’t like discarding its precious Energy, so we’re gonna play 4 Switch to help avoid paying Retreat Costs. Ultra Ball increases the chance you’ll draw a Virizion EX turn 1 to attach to, and a Genesect EX you can Emerald Slash onto turn 2. It’s really the only great Pokémon search card right now, so you’ve pretty much gotta play 4 of these cards.

One of the big issues this deck runs into is not drawing a Virizion EX on the first turn, thus you have to attach a Grass Energy to your Genesect EX. The issue with this is you have to wait another full turn before you start using Emerald Slash, which holds you back quite a bit. The best way to fix this problem is Energy Switch. This card allows you to move Energy off of Genesect EX onto Virizion EX, allowing you to use Emerald Slash quicker, and gets your Genesect EX attacking quicker. It can also allow you to string together multiple G Booster attacks, which is very threatening to any opponent.

Another issue this deck has is losing your G Booster too early. You want to take prizes fast, right? Well, G Booster certainly allows you to take them faster. If your opponent knocks out your Genesect with G Booster, or plays a Startling Megaphone, that’s it; your G Booster is gone. Thankfully, there’s a great card we can play that helps you get back your lovely G Booster: Shadow Triad. It allows you to get a Team Plasma card from your discard back into your hand. G Booster is indeed a Team Plasma card, along with Genesect, and Plasma Energy; 2 cards you can get that make Shadow Triad more versatile. It can also be retrieved by VS Seeker, which makes it much easier to access when you need it.

Then there’s Professor’s Letter. While yes, you only have 1 type of basic Energy, Skyla can search for Professor’s Letter, but not your basic Grass Energy. With this card and Ultra Ball, Skyla has access to nearly your entire deck, giving you many more options when you play a Skyla. The last great utility card we’re gonna add is Jirachi EX. If you don’t have a Supporter in your hand, but you do have 1 of your 4 Ultra Balls, you can use them to search for Jirachi EX and get a fresh new hand with Juniper or N. Not using Supporters for several turns in a row can leave you far behind, and likely lose you the game. Having more options of getting them is quite helpful. The key word here being options; the more options you have, the more likely you’ll be able to handle your opponent’s deck. Let’s see how our deck is doing now:

• 4 Virizion EX
• 3 Genesect EX
• 1 Jirachi EX

• 4 Professor Juniper/Sycamore
• 4 N
• 4 Skyla
• 2 VS Seeker

• 4 Switch
• 4 Ultra Ball
• 3 Muscle Band
• 3 Energy Switch
• 2 Shadow Triad
• 1 Professor’s Letter
• 1 G Booster

• 10 Grass Energy
• 4 Plasma Energy

So now we’ve got all the tools this decks needs to function properly, but we’ve still got 7 spots left in the deck! Well, now that our deck functions just fine, we should think about adding some tech cards. Since Virizion/Genesect is a popular deck, other decks will be teching against you, so you’ve gotta tech against them right back. Yveltal decks have been very popular, so a 2-2 Raichu XY line would come in handy quite a lot. Since we’ve got Raichu in here, some Double Colorless Energy would be nice to help pay for Raichu’s Energy cost. 2 of those should be fine.

And now, since we have Double Colorless Energy, a Mewtwo EX might end up being useful. Lucario EX can be quite troublesome for this deck if you don’t play a Mewtwo EX in here. Garbodor’s Garbotoxin Ability shutting off your Abilities is also annoying. 2 Startling Megaphone would help weaken Garbodor’s influence on this deck. And since this deck has a good amount of space in it, we might as well add in a couple Enhanced Hammer, too. Special Energy are quite popular, so slowing down all those decks that play them can win you games on occasion. Now with all our techs added in, let’s take a look at our list now:

• 4 Virizion EX
• 3 Genesect EX
• 1 Jirachi EX
• 2-2 Raichu
• 1 Mewtwo EX

• 4 Professor Juniper/Sycamore
• 4 N
• 4 Skyla
• 2 VS Seeker

• 4 Switch
• 4 Ultra Ball
• 3 Muscle Band
• 3 Energy Switch
• 2 Shadow Triad
• 1 Professor’s Letter
• 2 Startling Megaphone
• 2 Enhanced Hammer
• 1 G Booster

• 10 Grass Energy
• 4 Plasma Energy
• 2 Double Colorless

Well, the deck may look fine now, but there’s one problem: We’ve got 65 cards in the deck! Looks like we added too many cards. But that’s okay; now that we know all the cards we want in the deck, we can eliminate the cards we don’t need as much as the rest. Well, we should probably start out by taking out some of our techs. It’s important to not interfere with your draw and utility cards too heavily; otherwise your deck will be inconsistent and won’t be able to execute the core strategy.

Not many decks play Lucario anymore, so Mewtwo can go first. Enhanced Hammer is useless when your opponent doesn't have any Special Energy in play, so we can cut both of those, too. Garbodor isn’t big enough of a threat to play 2 Megaphone, so we can go down to 1 just fine. And finally, now that we’ve added 2 Double Colorless for our Raichu, we can afford to cut a Grass Energy to compensate for our extra new Energies. Now let’s take a look at our final list:

• 4 Virizion EX
• 3 Genesect EX
• 1 Jirachi EX
• 2-2 Raichu

• 4 Professor Juniper/Sycamore
• 4 N
• 4 Skyla
• 2 VS Seeker

• 4 Switch
• 4 Ultra Ball
• 3 Muscle Band
• 3 Energy Switch
• 2 Shadow Triad
• 1 Professor’s Letter
• 1 Startling Megaphone
• 1 G Booster

• 9 Grass Energy
• 4 Plasma Energy
• 2 Double Colorless

There we go! We’ve got our 60 card deck ready to play. Now that we’ve made it, it’s important to test the deck thoroughly. By playing the deck more, you’ll be able to find out what cards don’t work well for the deck, and what cards you might need instead of them. It’s especially important to play against popular archetypes; you’re going to be playing against these decks often, so if your deck has a lot of trouble with a popular deck, you’re going to want to adjust your deck to handle that match up better. Even if your deck runs smoothly, that doesn’t matter if it can’t take 6 prizes against any of the top decks.

And that’s all I’ve got for building decks. I recommend using this procedure with any deck you decide to make. Even if your deck doesn’t work well when you’re first starting to play it, that doesn’t mean it won’t be good once you’ve tested it enough. But, yes, there are some decks that just won’t work no matter how much you test it, unfortunately. I hope this guide has helped you and your deck building skills!

 

[Machamp The Champion]

Budget Deckbuilding​

Hi there, folks! Machamp The Champion here. In this guide, I’ll be covering the topic of budget deckbuilding. Of course, everyone wants to have a competitive deck that’s able to compete with the top players, but you may not always have the money. This guide does not cover budget competitive decks, for example, a Night March deck, but budget budget deck; sort of like a theme deck that’s built competently and won’t draw horribly every game. If you do have the money for a competitive deck, or even a slightly competitive deck, the post above this one should prove more useful. If you don’t have the money for a competitive deck, keep reading on.


The first step of building a budget budget deck is to look at the cards you currently have. If you don’t have any cards at all, I recommend looking at this thread first.

The first card type you should look at is the Trainers. Trainers are the heart and brains of any Pokémon TCG deck. Here you can find a thread that includes all the best Trainer cards that competitive decks use. Most of these cards will work just as well in a budget deck. Above all else, you want the highest supply of draw cards possible (maximum of about 14). Most of these draw cards are Supporters (Professor Sycamore, N, Colress), but some can be Items (Roller Skates, Bicycle). Besides draw cards, pretty much any Trainers you can find should be useful in a budget deck, as long as you don’t put too many in there (maximum of about 10, or 18 if you have a high amount of draw cards). Take a look at a competitive decklist to get a better idea of how many Trainers would be too many. For a competitive decklist, one is located at the bottom of the above post. Some good examples of Trainers that will always be useful are Ultra Ball, Switch, Muscle Band, and Hypnotoxic Laser.

As for Pokémon, ones of the same type work well together, so take a look at which types you have the most of; odds are you have some good Pokémon of those types. Colorless can be paired with anything, of course. Of those Pokémon, you want to look for the Pokémon you have the thickest lines of. Even if you have a good Toxicroak, it’s not going to be helpful if you only have 2 Croagunk and 1 Toxicroak. For a Stage 1 line, a 3-3 or 4-4 line is about right. As for Stage 2 lines, they are very difficult to set up without proper set up cards. If you don’t have very good support Trainers, I would advise not playing Stage 2s at all. If you do have proper set up, a 4-4-4 line or a 4-2-4 line (if you have Rare Candy) would be optimal. Fully-evolved Basics can be played in any count, since they require no prerequisites to be played.

When looking for a Pokémon line, definitely take into account how good that card is. Even if you have a 4-4 Kingler line, it won’t matter because Kingler isn’t a very good Pokémon. If you don’t have any good, thick lines of Pokémon, try trading for more copies of the good Pokémon you have the most of. A Pokémon’s Energy cost, damage, HP and Pre-evolutions are all important factors. Basic Pokémon with high HP (including Pokémon EX) are usually Pokémon you want to be playing in your deck, since they’re super easy to play down and power up compared to Evolutions. More often than not, Legendaries fit all the criteria listed above better than anything else.

When choosing your Pokémon, you’re going to want either 1 or 2 types in the deck. Any more than that and it will be too difficult to draw the correct Energy types when you need them. 1 type will be more consistent than 2, but 1 type will make handling the type your type is weak to more difficult, so it really depends on what Pokemon you own, and your personal preference.

Energy cards should be pretty simple. Just make sure you have enough of the types you’re playing, and you’re good. Theme decks are a good way to get Energy of types you don’t have. If you’re playing 2 types of Pokemon, and aren’t sure what split you should have of Energy cards, take a look at the Energy costs of the Pokémon you’re playing. If your deck has this Hypno in it, and this Mienshao in it, you’d want to be playing more Psychic Energy than Fighting, since Hypno needs 3 Psychic Energy for its biggest attack, while Mienshao only needs 1 Fighting Energy at the maximum.

Now, it’s time to decide what counts of each card type you should include. This mostly depends on what kind of Trainers you have. I’m going to assume you have at least 20 decent Pokémon to play in your deck, since you really don’t need to own that many cards to have that. Generally, you should try to get the optimal amount of Trainer cards first, then split the amount of Pokémon and Energy in half. You can increase the amount of Pokémon the higher number of Evolutions you have, and vice versa for having less Evolutions.

Once your deck is complete, go ahead and try it out! When playing, take note of which Pokémon you’re using the most/least, and which Trainers you’re using the most/least, and replace the cards you’re not using as often. As always, you should be trying to trade for/buy better Trainers and Pokémon whenever possible. Unless your Pokémon are really outdated and bad, I recommend trying to buy good Trainers before anything else. They allow you to really get the most out of your deck, and let you see more of your deck much quicker. Again, this thread is the best place to find what cards you should be buying/trading for first.

And that’s all I’ve got for this guide. I hope this will prove helpful to you!