Hi Everyone,
I've never played Pokemon TCG before but I'm looking for something to get my daughter (7 years old) into card games as I think she will enjoy them. She enjoys watching Pokemon and playing Pokemon Go so Pokemon TCG seemed like a good choice.
I looked into some Themed decks and I read that Mach Strike was very good but I was after two themed decks that would play well against each other and were fun moreso than competitive. Ones with more simple mechanics, if possible.
With that in mind, which two themed decks would you recommend?
Hi telling new players what to do is my specialty
PTCG is hands down the best intro level trading card game. so, good pick! It's really simple once you get the hang of it.
Honestly, none of these decks are terribly good ideas as just about anyone will tell you who's played for a while. If you are buying two theme decks, most people these days will tell you to combine them. Theme decks out of the box come with a ton of essentially trash (Seriously? Hippowdon? In a FAST deck?) and not enough of what you need. The ideal tends to be Battle Arena decks instead - the cards are older, but they are way better quality for a similar price, and already balanced for you. I've also found the Legendary Battle decks to be an okay 1v1, but they are complicated.
But you want to hear about theme decks.
As you mentioned,
Mach Strike (the Garchomp one) is considered the best Theme Deck on the market right now. This is because it is fast and lethal with multiple Pokemon that can actually accomplish stuff (Garchomp, Gumshoos, Lucario). Being able to do 200 damage with a Theme Deck is pretty absurd. It has a couple mechanics that take adjustment to. This is also considered the best purchase if you are looking to transition into a more competitive scene (like your local Pokémon League, please go to that), because it contains some cards that just are needed in every deck anyway (Cynthia is the big one)
Theme Decks are almost always released in sets of two as it is with one being a counterpart to the other. Mach Strike's lesser half is
Imperial Command (the Empoleon one), which ALSO can do 200 damage in a good situation. Unfortunately, it doesn't have Ascension (what makes Garchomp so fast). For context, I could have bought two of this theme deck for myself and together they would have included 50 out of the 60 cards in my current tournament deck (not a very good one, but we take what we can get). I ended up getting the cards I needed elsewhere, so I didn't have to do this. Honestly, if you are buying two theme decks, do yourself a favor and make this one of them. It's simple (your most complicated mechanic is "get a lot of Pokemon in play") and effective and fun.
The second-strongest theme deck on market as-is out of the box is probably
Tropical Shakedown (Alolan Exeggutor). Unfortunately, it is also as complicated as theme decks come, as it is a 5-color deck (I get the sense from your post you've played MTG, but otherwise it just means some cards don't work with other cards).
Personally though, with the POSSIBLE exception of Mach Strike (I've yet to lose with that to another theme deck except in a mirror), any Theme Deck can beat any other Theme Deck. So, pick whichever one you like. I can do some more matchup testing online tomorrow with Imperial Command and I'll get back to you with it's most "fair" matchup.
