New to Competitive Play: A Few Questions

[Burst Ezel]

hi, im new to Pokebeach and also to competitive play! So, i have a few questions to ask:
1: can your active pokemon attack or can your bench pokemon also attack?
2: how do you build a competitive deck? How many pokemon?trainers?energy? This is because i thought you put a lot of pokemon instead of trainers.
3: what is a night march deck's purpose/playstyle?how do you counter it?
4:Any other tips you would consider useful to help me!

 

[bbninjas]

Moved from the TCG Competitive to TCG Help & Advice as the OP is looking for help. ~bbninjas

 

[bbninjas]

1: can your active pokemon attack or can your bench pokemon also attack?

Only your Active Pokemon. The only way Benched Pokemon can attack would be retreating or otherwise swapping your Active with 1 of your Benched.

2: how do you build a competitive deck? How many pokemon?trainers?energy? This is because i thought you put a lot of pokemon instead of trainers.

There's not exactly a method to building a competitive deck, nor are there numbers for each type. However, there is normally 8-18 Pokemon; 30 or so Trainers and up to 10 Energy. You will generally run a low number of Pokemon or little amounts of different Pokemon so you can execute an underlying strategy much better. You can check out these winning competitive decks and see the cards and numbers they use.

3: what is a night march deck's purpose/playstyle?how do you counter it?

NightMarch is an fast, aggressive deck that aims to setup as quickly as possible and hit 1-hit KOs on EX Pokemon for a single attachment. It is generally countered by decks that can take multiple KOs in one turn and/or can Item Lock. Trevenant BREAK and Greninja BREAK decks are good at this.

4:Any other tips you would consider useful to help me!

If you want to get good; you will need to practice lots, talk around with the community and be observation to pick up things yourself.

 

[21times]

Hi Burst - I think I'm in a pretty good position to give you advice as I just started 3 months ago and am totally addicted.

It's hard getting started, everything is very new and exciting and you're trying to drink from a firehose while at the same time running on a treadmill that's going way too fast. All I can say is enjoy the discovery and the newness because once you start figuring it out, you'll look back on this time with fondness.

Having said that, expect to lose some as you're starting out. It's hard, not knowing what cards you want exactly and even harder trying to figure out how to get them. I would definitely watch online matches on youtube. Just search for whatever pokemon you're interested in, and you'll probably find a bunch of videos people have uploaded, all chock full of really imaginative combinations and interesting ideas (which, as an aside, is part of why I hate Night March - all of these Night March decks are exactly the same, there's no creativity). These are all veteran players who (for the most part) have learned through experience the right time to play the right cards. I've learned a ton from watching them, that's one thing I would absolutely recommend.

I look at the deck garage here at PokeBeach as well as other (less quality) sites and compare deck lists. I find it fascinating that two decks will have the same pokemon but many different trainers. Learn the different trainers, spend time thinking about how you might be able to use them with your Pokemon.

Finally, play as much as you can, and try not to concede, even if things look grim. You always learn more from your losses, and probably every other day I have a game that I'm able to pull off even though I'm several prize cards down. Go have fun in the moment, and good luck. Oh, and always run 4 VS Seekers.

 

[bbninjas]

This isn't the thread to discuss about Night March - if you want to discuss Night March, use a different thread in the Competitive Play. I have deleted these posts and I will warn anyone who continues to argue about Night March, meta creativity or whatever else, in this thread. 21time's opinion is absolutely fine - it was an opinion and wasn't false information, and should not have been nitpicked in the first place. ~ bbninjas

 

[Burst Ezel]

thanks for the help!