There has never been a better time to get into the competitive TCG scene

[Hands]

I've been in and out of this hobby/game since 1999 and at no point have I ever known it to be better for new players than it is now. I'll highlight the reasons below and hopefully convince some of you to give it a shot.


Pokemon TCG Live

Live is free, entirely free. There's no premium currency, there's no trade feature like on PTCGO so people can't pay to play via eBay and get masses of playable cards that everyone else is grinding for. It's just free. And best of all, when you join, the game gives you a stack of decks, all of which are watered down versions of actual competitive lists. And you keep those cards, so you can easily optimise the lists as you unlock more and more cards. The credit system lets you craft specific cards you want so you don't have to go through endless packs. It's not without its cons though, Live is known for its bugs. But it's free and constantly updating so the technical flaws can be given a bit of leeway I think. It's a great place to learn the game without any actual investment.

Trainer Toolkits
Every year TPCI has started releasing trainer toolkits, these are fantastic items that come with dozens of key cards for the current format, four packs, damage dice, sleeves etc. These are an invaluable resource for players starting out, and even as a fair-weather veteran of the game I still usually pick them up. The 2022 one came with 2x Lumineon V, 2021's came with 2x Crobat V. This is huge because cards with comparative effects (Shaymin EX, Tapu Lele GX) used to run around the £40-60 mark, and were necessary for 99% of competitive decks. To get two of them in a kit that runs at £20-30ish is a huge benefit. It also massively lowered the market value of Crobat and Lumineon, making them £3-7 instead of £40-60.

We don't know what will be in 2024's kit yet, but the likelihood is it will be Squawkabilly ex. 2023 had Arceus V and Arceus V Star, two incredibly competitive cards.

League Battle decks
Alongside TTKs we now also get very, very decent League Battle decks. The most recent one to release is Gardevoir ex, which isn't too far from the meta list for Gardy and out of the box would be completely viable to take to league with you. Prior to that we had Mew VMAX (now rotated) which gave you just over half of what you needed for the incredibly potent meta Mew list. We also had Palkia League Battle Deck, that gave 3x Bibarel (huge draw support) Manaphy (most commonly seen bench protection) Radiant Greninja (huge draw support and viable bench sniper) 4x VIP Pass (these were running at about £12 a playset before the palkia league battle deck dropped) and 4x Irida (best supporter card for water decks in the game). The league battle deck for Gardy is a fantastic place to start, and Gardy is one of the decks entering the Twilight Masquerade format that's holding a lot of its current strength.

Cheap and viable Meta decks

TPCI has given us a handful of cards that make for incredibly cheap (for a TCG) options that fit into the meta. Temporal Forces gave us Ancient Box, a deck running around £25-40, Snorlax stall will cost you around £20-40, Great Tusk Mill is sitting around £18-30. Even the bigger meta decks are now all sub £100 (except for turbo hands, which is a bad deck anyway).



What about expensive staples?

There are still some price problems with the game, the ACE SPECS are mostly expensive, with the best in format ACE SPEC (Prime Catcher) being a £20-25 cost for the single card. The saving grace is you can only play 1 Ace Spec per deck, so you'd only ever really need make that investment the once. You also don't need it, both counter catcher and Pokemon catcher are in format, and whilst objectively worse, both can fill a similar role to Prime Catcher. But shop around a little, you'll find things cheaper than the average price quite a lot. Never be afraid to make an offer on eBay, worst they can do is say no. Check car boot sales (and yard sales for those in the states) and use websites like https://www.cardmarket.com/en/Pokemon to find the best price on loose cards.

 

[Setsuna]

Oooo, yes! As someone who's been trying to get back into the TCG as of a couple months ago I wanna talk about this!

Pokemon TCG Live

Live is free, entirely free. There's no premium currency, there's no trade feature like on PTCGO so people can't pay to play via eBay and get masses of playable cards that everyone else is grinding for. It's just free. And best of all, when you join, the game gives you a stack of decks, all of which are watered down versions of actual competitive lists. And you keep those cards, so you can easily optimise the lists as you unlock more and more cards. The credit system lets you craft specific cards you want so you don't have to go through endless packs. It's not without its cons though, Live is known for its bugs. But it's free and constantly updating so the technical flaws can be given a bit of leeway I think. It's a great place to learn the game without any actual investment.

I agree fully. Live isn't the greatest program out there, given the technical glitches and a couple issues I've had with matchmaking on ranked (being at 120 and being paired up to 520 being the worst) but it is genuinely great and makes the game super accessible. The fact it's also on mobile makes it easy to pick up whenever you have the time, and it's easier than ever to get the competitively viable cards. I don't believe anything most people will play will cost an unhealthy amount of time/resources due to just being able to exchange credits for cards. I've known some people who are intimidated by the idea of going to local card shops or things like League Cups or Regionals, so being able to just open up Live and practice through that is good for people. It's a huge step up from how PTCGO was.

I was incredibly surprised to see things like Prize Packs being given out, and learning that I could actually pull most meta-relevant cards incredibly easily from them, and that they were things other people genuinely wanted to trade for or buy off me. Things like Baxcalibur, think I pulled a couple Iono, they were all good and being given out very easily and accessibly. It's so much different now than having to rely on having to pay something like 20 bucks for a copy of that one card you need because it's hard to get.

I'm also very hopeful that a lot more people in a lot more places have been able to form more local communities. Before I stopped playing for a few years, the biggest Regionals I can remember attending had something around 300 Masters, and it was a shock to hear that the one I recently attended had over 1000. There's been a massive boom in the amount of people learning the game and as someone who's made a lot of friends through my local PTCG community it seems like it's easier to find good people through the game. I want that to be a motivator for people to start playing as well. It's a trading card game, the social aspect is so huge and so wonderful.

What about expensive staples?

There are still some price problems with the game, the ACE SPECS are mostly expensive, with the best in format ACE SPEC (Prime Catcher) being a £20-25 cost for the single card. The saving grace is you can only play 1 Ace Spec per deck, so you'd only ever really need make that investment the once. You also don't need it, both counter catcher and Pokemon catcher are in format, and whilst objectively worse, both can fill a similar role to Prime Catcher. But shop around a little, you'll find things cheaper than the average price quite a lot. Never be afraid to make an offer on eBay, worst they can do is say no. Check car boot sales (and yard sales for those in the states) and use websites like https://www.cardmarket.com/en/Pokemon to find the best price on loose cards.

Ace Specs are sort of a double edged sword in that aspect in my opinion. Stuff like Prime Catcher is very valuable but the fact you only have to pay for one is nice... unless you want more than one deck with that Ace Spec built. I think we're fortunate enough for the Pokemon TCG to be a game where there's often either expensive cards or staple cards, they don't overlap too often and if they do there's often cheaper options that don't require those cards. I will always advocate for buying from and selling to any local card stores (as long as they're not charging ridiculous prices ig) to help support whatever local community there might be, but often buying from things like yard sales or from people who used to play or collect can still be useful. There are cards people will have in old collections that could still be playable nowadays.

 

[Hands]

Oooo, yes! As someone who's been trying to get back into the TCG as of a couple months ago I wanna talk about this!



I agree fully. Live isn't the greatest program out there, given the technical glitches and a couple issues I've had with matchmaking on ranked (being at 120 and being paired up to 520 being the worst) but it is genuinely great and makes the game super accessible. The fact it's also on mobile makes it easy to pick up whenever you have the time, and it's easier than ever to get the competitively viable cards. I don't believe anything most people will play will cost an unhealthy amount of time/resources due to just being able to exchange credits for cards. I've known some people who are intimidated by the idea of going to local card shops or things like League Cups or Regionals, so being able to just open up Live and practice through that is good for people. It's a huge step up from how PTCGO was.

I was incredibly surprised to see things like Prize Packs being given out, and learning that I could actually pull most meta-relevant cards incredibly easily from them, and that they were things other people genuinely wanted to trade for or buy off me. Things like Baxcalibur, think I pulled a couple Iono, they were all good and being given out very easily and accessibly. It's so much different now than having to rely on having to pay something like 20 bucks for a copy of that one card you need because it's hard to get.

I'm also very hopeful that a lot more people in a lot more places have been able to form more local communities. Before I stopped playing for a few years, the biggest Regionals I can remember attending had something around 300 Masters, and it was a shock to hear that the one I recently attended had over 1000. There's been a massive boom in the amount of people learning the game and as someone who's made a lot of friends through my local PTCG community it seems like it's easier to find good people through the game. I want that to be a motivator for people to start playing as well. It's a trading card game, the social aspect is so huge and so wonderful.



Ace Specs are sort of a double edged sword in that aspect in my opinion. Stuff like Prime Catcher is very valuable but the fact you only have to pay for one is nice... unless you want more than one deck with that Ace Spec built. I think we're fortunate enough for the Pokemon TCG to be a game where there's often either expensive cards or staple cards, they don't overlap too often and if they do there's often cheaper options that don't require those cards. I will always advocate for buying from and selling to any local card stores (as long as they're not charging ridiculous prices ig) to help support whatever local community there might be, but often buying from things like yard sales or from people who used to play or collect can still be useful. There are cards people will have in old collections that could still be playable nowadays.

Yeah the play packs are absolutely brilliant. We used to have them years and years ago (like 2003-2006) but the contents in those were mostly crap. The fact that the new ones are virtually just playable cards is awesome.