Do any of the following in any order, as many times as you’d like: Play a Pokemon, evolve a Pokemon, attach an energy card to a Pokemon, play a trainer card, retreat your active Pokemon, and/or use a Pokemon’s ability.Now, on each turn, you will follow these steps: Both players now reveal all of their starting basic Pokemon by flipping them face up.īelow is an example of a pretty standard starting setup. To start a game, flip a coin to determine the first player. Once you have drawn all 6 of your prize cards, you win! Every time your knock out an opponent’s Pokemon, you get to choose a facedown prize card to put into your hand (without looking at what it is first). Your opponent gets to draw one additional card every time you repeat this process, so make sure you have enough basic Pokemon in your deck when you’re building it!īefore starting a game, place the top 6 cards from your deck facedown to the left of the play area. You repeat this until you have at least one basic Pokemon in your starting hand. If you don’t have any basic Pokemon in your starting hand, shuffle your hand back into your deck and draw a new starting hand. Note, all of these Pokemon are placed face down. From your starting hand, you’ll put a basic Pokemon into your active Pokemon spot and up to five onto your bench. When you are setting up for a game, shuffle your deck and place it to the top right of your play area.Īt the beginning of each game, you draw 7 cards. Once you draw all 6 of your prize cards you win the game!Įach player brings their own unique deck of exactly 60 cards to a game of the Pokemon TCG. When you knock out one of your opponent’s Pokemon, you get to draw one of your 6 prize cards. When a Pokemon is knocked out, move it and all cards attached to it to your discard pile. When you deal damage to an opponent’s Pokemon equal to or greater than its remaining HP, it is knocked out. In this case, Pikachu gets to do 10 damage to one of your opponent’s benched Pokemon ( discussed later) when it performs that attack.
Any time you perform an attack with text under it, follow the directions stated when you perform the attack.
Some attacks, like Spark, have additional text under the name of the attack. Note, performing an attack does not mean you have to remove that much energy to use it – you just have to have it attached. Spark, on the other hand, requires at least one lightning energy and one energy of any kind to be attached to Pikachu in order to use the attack. The icon to the left of the Tail Whap attack is called colorless, meaning you can use any energy type to perform this attack. Below are the various energy types found in the game. You can play one energy per turn from your hand by attaching it to one of your Pokemon. This indicates the number and kind of energy cards that need to be attached to a Pokemon in order for it to use that attack. To the left of each attack is the energy cost. In this case, Tail Whap would do 10 damage, and your opponent would put a token indicating 10 damage on their active Pokemon. To the right of each attack is the amount of damage the attack does to your opponent’s active Pokemon. This Pikachu has two attacks, Tail Whap and Spark. Like in the digital game, you get to choose one of these attacks to perform each round. To the right of the HP is the energy type of the Pokemon, in this case Lightning.īelow the art of the Pokemon, you will find a list of attacks.On the top-right, the HP (hit points) next to the number 60 indicates how much damage the Pokemon can take before being knocked out.Next to the word basic is the name of the Pokemon, in this case Pikachu.Starting on the left, the word ‘basic’ indicates this is a basic Pokemon.There are several important elements along the top of each card: The starting version of a Pokemon is known as a basic Pokemon, like this Pikachu. Those videos are below, along with our text-based summaries that contain a bit more detail so you can reference them later without rewatching an entire video.
COMPARE POKEMON SIDE BY SIDE SERIES
The Pokemon YouTube channel created a series of quick, helpful videos to teach you everything you need to know about the basic rules of the game. The Pokemon TCG is an incredibly easy game to learn, and it’s worth doing no matter your age or experience – because it’s incredibly fun. Learning Pokemon TCG is a series of blogs and videos that teaches you everything you need to know to start playing! This series is updated regularly to ensure all information is accurate.