Discussion Trying to Take Next Step

[TheAman]

A year or so ago, my stepdaughter (then 8, now 9) decided she wanted to get into Pokemon. I used to play Magic back in the day, but never had any pokemon experience. So I bought us some theme decks, and we started playing each other. I did once bring her to the local store to play casually, but we never really got serious about it. She seems to want to get a bit more serious now. She knows the basics, can play, but isn't great with strategy. So here's my question for you guys: how would you go about getting more serious about it?

My thought process was to buy a couple of budget standard decks (that would still be good post-rotation), start playing more often at the local store, and see how that goes. I figure having a semi-competitive deck to start out with would make the game more interesting for her as opposed to taking a beefed up theme deck in and probably getting killed. Would you think that's better than building decks ourselves? Also, what decks would you recommend? Ideally these would be ones that wouldn't be too complicated to play. Any other advice would be very much welcomed.

 

[Marowhacker]

I would suggest beginning with a deck that's fairly viable since it's good to get a feel for the meta early on, however I wouldn't dive straight in to tier 1 decks since some of them get a little complex. A favourite of mine is Lapras-GX, since it usually needs to only run 1 or maybe even no tapu Lele, and it has a fairly simple strategy to it. Only problem is that Rough Seas will rotate soon, however it can easily be replaced with a a combination of Lana and Brooklet Hill. I won't go fully into detail, but here's a starter list: https://m.imgur.com/a/2h0f8

Again, there are plenty more budget meta decks such as Passimian, Gyarados and more - hey, even decks like Sylveon and Tapu Koko could be considered budget for nowadays standard. Hope I helped!

 

[Vulpixy]

There's a pretty nice list of tiered decks on this site: http://www.pokebeach.com/forums/threads/standard-meta-tier-list.138572/

I would say for taking the next step, Ninetales GX seems pretty fairly straightforward. The deck aims to attack the opponent's bench, making it difficult for the opponent to keep something safe while they build up.

Volcanion EX is a little more complex, but once you get the basic cycle down it's not too bad: flood your bench with Volcanion EX, use power heater to beef up basic fire pokemon's attacks, take prizes. There's two variants going around now: One that uses Hoopa EX and Sky Fields (soon to rotate) to get set up quick, and then there's one that runs Brooklet Hill and the Starmie from Evolutions for energy cycling.