New to TCGO - What should I be aiming for?

Hi guys,

After watching a few unboxing videos on YouTube, the fire inside me that motivates me to get cool cards has reignited. I'm also poor, so this means that I must resort to TCGO. I'm mainly playing for fun, it's a pretty chill game, but as a competitor I also like winning (I don't want to get too obsessed with this is what I'm trying to say).

Currently I have no clue what I'm supposed to be looking for in packs and stuff. I played a bit like 4/5 years ago when there was that X-Ball Mewtwo-EX and the Bouffer Bouffalant, and I have it in my account (lost the actual card when I moved, I think). I have currently built a deck with it (Expanded format or something), but I have no idea what's good and what's not and with all this GX stuff running around. I'm not looking to build some super top tier deck, but I probably want to get my deck working better so it can at least handle some of the people on the ladder who have like 20 GX/EX cards and just crush me. I've played a handful of Versus matches today, and I've only lost because my computer ran out of battery or because I got terrible RNG with coin flips, or due to the aforementioned people who have semi-legit decks.

I currently have (garbage, don't judge):


Here are some questions I have (the only good card right now is this Mewtwo-EX, and also the Steelix-EX, but I'm going to be building around this Mewtwo right now unless I pull something super):
- What kind of cards should I be trying to get?
- Which booster packs should I be buying to try and get the cards I need?
- Which Trainer cards benefit my deck the most?

Thank you all in advance for your help.

Right now just anything that looks interesting. Your ELO rating on the TCGO should drag down as you keep losing to EX/GX crammers and you'll not face them so much, as getting the EX/GX cards without actually buying physical cards is going to be a pain, as the physical booster packs all come with code cards that you can enter into the game, choose not to redeem, and then trade them like in-game currency for various cards. Mewtwo EX is going to be a pain to acquire more of if you're going the free to play grinding route.

other than that it's 7 minutes to midnight and my processing power on this is gone to the point that the above migth be poor/ill-informed advice

maybe ddrox or someone can come in and offer up some advice

Different decks work for different people. So when you start to find a deck that works for you strive to make it work better. Some people like to play slow games, others like to play tricky games, some like to play POWER games. :) So find what works for you.

Honestly I'm right there with you. I'm a VERY casual player when it comes to PTCGO. But when I was playing a lot more, I was running a deck based on Yveltal EX from the XY base set and Lugia EX from the Ancient Origins set. They do damage based on how many energies BOTH Active Pokémon have. I'm not sure how relevant a deck like that would be now though. This was before Break cards even came out.

I tend to play in spurts - I'll play a lot for a few weeks/months, then get bored and drop it for a few months (or years). Personally whenever I get back into it, I like to play around with a newer theme deck for a while before getting back into building my own decks. They don't have whatever "special" cards (like EX's) are out, but I've found that it gives me a general idea of how gameplay has changed, and I also get lots of strategy ideas. And unlike boosters, you know exactly which cards you're getting, so it's easier to get specific cards that you want/need. I only just got back into playing again in the last week, and haven't attempted to build or play with my own deck in a year or so (right around the time BREAK was released), but in the past I've built fairly successful decks almost entirely from cards I got from theme decks. In one fairly memorable (and terrifying) battle a couple years ago I managed to beat somebody who'd loaded their deck with EX's using a modified Solar Strike


You're also more likely to be evenly matched deck-wise when playing with theme decks in versus mode, which makes it easier to win tokens and buy more card packs. And when you've had a losing streak in the other formats sometimes it's nice to get your confidence back by going back to theme decks for a bit lol

Unfortunately theme decks really don't give any kind of indication of what the meta will be once you move on to decks you've built yourself, but it's a good place to start.