

When it came out the cartoon was on daily and we were all still playing the original Nintendo game. I didn’t play this game as much as I played Magic the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh! or the Buffy the Vampire Slayer CCG but I do really enjoy it. This is more accessible than most CCGs so you should be good, it was designed with kids in mind after all. Ease of Teaching & AccessibilityĪs with all CCGs, or even card games you can play with hands face up and/or build a nice simple deck with easy to use cards. The art is great and makes all the Pokémon and accessories look really good. It would be hard to get the art wrong when they have a massive catalogue of cartoon images to pull from. I think Wizards of the Coast printed this in the beginning so they already had a style to follow. The rulebook is pretty good but as I’d already played several similar games that make it easier to understand. It’s all random so it doesn’t matter but still, rules are rules! You have to layout your prizes AFTER you draw your hand of cards, not before. This card game has the 1v1 trainer fighting which makes thematic sense to me. Back in the day I also enjoyed the CCG Gameboy game which was really good fun! I played the originals on the Gameboy and I’m still playing Pokémon Shield on the Nintendo Switch today. If your opponent can not draw a card from their deck.If your opponent runs out of Pokémon in play.There are 3 ways a player can win a game: There are some actions to do here on some cards, but mostly it just ends your turn and now your opponent takes a turn. The attacking player picks one of their prize cards at random and puts it in their hand.

Discard it and all attached cards and replace it with one from the bench. Poison – Add a poison counter, that Pokémon takes 10 damage at the end of a players turn.Ī Pokémon that takes damage equal to its health value is knocked out. Paralyzed – Card is turned sideways and can’t attack or retreat until the end of that players turn. A failed coin flip sees the Pokémon attack itself for 20 damage! Flip a coin at the end of each turn to see if they wake up.Ĭonfused – Card is turned upsidedown and can only retreat or attack on a correct coin flip. Some attacks and effects add a status to the defending Pokémon: Status EffectsĪsleep – Can’t attack or retreat. Double the damage if the defender is weak to the attack’s type and reduce the damage if they are resistant to it. Each of the Pokémons attacks will have an energy requirement so that many of the correct energy cards need to be equipped.įollow the instructions on the attack and put damage on the defender. You can attack your opponents active (defending) Pokémon with one of your active Pokémons attacks. Use the power of the active Pokémon by just doing what it says! 3 – Attack Phase The switched out Pokémon has all their damage counters and status effects removed. Switch the active Pokémon with one from the bench by discarding energy cards from the active Pokémon equal to their printed retreat cost. These are the cards you use to activate their abilities and attack. For example, you can put a Charmeleon card on Charmander, then later Charizard on Charmeleon.Īttach an Energy card to a Pokémon. There is a limit of 5 here so you need to have space.Įvolve a Pokémon you have in play by playing the next evolution on top of that card. This is where you do all of the things including:Īdd a basic Pokémon to the bench.
#Pokemon trading card game playr full#
Players take turns playing a full round which is divided in 4 phases: 1 – Draw a Card The next 6 cards in the deck are laid out as prizes off to one side, face down.Ĭhoose a random start player, all players flip their active Pokemon and bench face up. Then they pick up to 5 basic Pokemon to put on their bench face down, behind the active one. Players choose a basic Pokemon from their hand as their “Active Pokemon” face down. Players shuffle their deck and draw 7 cards and can redraw if they don’t have any basic Pokemon in their hand but I’m not going into THAT much detail in this post. Pokémon TCG Game PlayĪll you need here is a deck of 60 cards and something to mark damage on your Pokemon.

I haven’t played it for ages, but I’m going to give you my thoughts about it now.Įach player plays the role of a Pokémon trainer that use their Pokémon creatures to battle the opposing trainer. The Pokémon Trading Card Game is a classic TCG from way back when and it’s still going strong today.
