Pokémon Trading Card Game

Pokémon Trading Card Game
	File:Pokémon TCG Logo.png; File:095 Metagross ex.jpg A typical Pokémon card.; This card features Metagross ex from EX Power Keepers.
Publishers	Wizards of the Coast; (October 1996 - July 2003); Pokémon USA, Inc./Nintendo; (July 2003 - Present)
Players	2
Setup time	< 3 minutes
Playing time	~ Varies1
Chance	Some
Age range	10 and up
Skills	Card playing; Arithmetic; Basic Reading Ability
	1 Games may take much longer or shorter depending on a deck's play style. 2Strategy and complexity of play depends greatly on the specific deck's play style and level of competition.

This article is about the card game. For the video game, see Pokémon Trading Card Game (video game).

The Pokémon Trading Card Game is a collectible card game based on the Pokémon video game series, first introduced in Japan in October 1996, then North America in December 1998. It was initially published by Wizards of the Coast (wizards), the company that produces Magic: the Gathering. Although Wizards of the Coast lost the licence to publish the game in July 2003, sets continue to be published under the jurisdiction of Nintendo and Pokémon USA, Inc. (PUI).

Game concepts

The game is centered on the concept of the Pokémon battle. All Pokémon cards have attacks and Hit Points (HP); by doing damage to the opponent's Pokémon equal to their Hit Points, the player can knock them out and send them to the discard pile.

Victory conditions

There are three different ways to win a game:

The first type of victory condition is to retrieve all six "prize cards," which are set aside from the top of the deck at the beginning of each game. Each time a player knocks out an opponent's Pokémon, he or she takes a prize card and puts it into his or her hand. Pokémon-ex cards, introduced in EX: Ruby and Sapphire, are more powerful than their non-ex counterparts, but allow a player who knocks them out to take two prizes instead of one.
Second, a player loses if his or her active Pokémon (the one currently conducting battle) is knocked out and he or she has no other Pokémon in play.
Third, because a player must draw a card from the top of the deck at the beginning of his/her turn, he/she loses if there are no cards remaining in the deck at the beginning of his/her turn. (Just the same as most TCG game)

Card types

There are five types of cards in the Pokémon Trading Card Game: Pokémon cards, Energy cards, Trainer cards, Supporter cards and Stadium cards. All are important to victory. A player's 60-card deck may only contain four cards with the same name, with the exception of basic Energy cards.

Pokémon cards are the basis of all decks. Without them a player cannot play the game, since both players begin the game by placing a basic Pokémon in the active position on the playing field. All Pokémon cards depict a Pokémon from the video games. Each player may have up to six Pokémon in play at a time: one “active” Pokémon and up to five on the bench (these are considered to be in reserve, but they can still affect the gameplay). Most Pokémon feature attacks that reduce the HP of the opponent's active Pokémon, or occasionally, their benched Pokémon (a few can do no damage at all). The vast majority of these attacks require Energy, which comes in the form of Energy cards, though few Basic Pokémon need no Energy to perform a weak attack.

Energy cards are cards attached to a Pokémon to enable it to attack. There are two types of Energy cards: basic Energy cards and Special Energy cards. There are eight different basic Energy types: Fighting, Fire, Grass, Lightning, Psychic, Water, Darkness and Metal. Until recently, only the first six Energy types have had corresponding basic Energy cards; although Darkness and Metal energy are now considered basic Energy types, they could previously only be provided through Special Energy cards (basic Metal and Darkness basic Energy cards were introduced with the Diamond & Pearl expansion). The difference between Special and basic Energy cards is that basic Energy cards only provide one Energy of the specified type, while Special Energy cards have additional benefits (described in additional text on the card) and varying Energy provisions.

Most attacks require a certain type and amount of Energy, depending on the type of attack and the Pokémon using it. If an attack requires a certain type of basic Energy, then that type of energy must be attached to the Pokémon, whereas if the attack has a Colorless Energy requirement, that requirement can be met by any Energy card. Because of this, Colorless Energy requirements are considered an advantage on many cards. Colorless energy is not a basic Energy type, nor a Special Energy type.

Trainer cards are support cards that allow players to do something to enhance the game. Some can remove damage counters from Pokémon, remove energy from the opposing Pokémon, or revive Pokémon that have been knocked out. There are many other types of Trainer cards.

Of particular value are "draw" cards and "search" cards. In the normal course of play, players can only draw one card per turn from the deck. However, cards like Professor Oak's Research, Steven's Advice and Copycat let a player draw several new cards in a turn, while search cards like Dual Ball, Lanette's Net Search, Professor Elm's Training Method and Celio's Network let players search through their decks for a particular card or cards. Championship calibre players know that in order to win games consistently, their decks must contain good draw power and search power. Beginning level players often do not realize the value of Trainer cards, but experienced tournament level players pay particular attention to the Trainer engine in their battle decks.

There are also some cards that are two of the types in one card. One card that originated in the Base Set can be played as both a Trainer card and a Pokémon card (similar Trainer cards would follow in expansion sets) and some cards in can be played as Pokémon or Energy cards. Future cards have been shown to be both Pokémon and Pokémon Tools, a subset of Trainer cards.

Pokémon types

A simplified type system was used for the trading card game. Instead of 17 types of Pokémon, only nine exist. Seven were in the Base Set, and Darkness and Metal types appeared when Pokémon Gold and Silver introduced the Dark and Steel types. The types usually follow this pattern:

TCG type	Color	Video game type(s)
Grass	Green	Grass, Bug, Poison
Fire	Red	Fire
Water	Blue	Water, Ice
Lightning	Yellow	Electric
Psychic	Purple	Psychic, Ghost, Poison¹
Fighting	Dark orange	Fighting, Rock, Ground
Darkness	Black	Dark
Metal	Silver	Steel
Colorless	White/Light gray	Flying, Normal, Dragon

^ Diamond and Pearl introduced non Delta-Species Poison-type Pokémon on 'Psychic/Ghost' type cards.

Most Pokémon have only one type. However, EX Team Magma vs Team Aqua introduced Dual-type Pokémon, which have two different types. All existing Dual-type cards have either Darkness or Metal as their secondary type.

Weakness and resistance are determined by the type of the attacking Pokémon (unlike the video game series, where they are determined by the type of the attack used). Originally, Pokémon that are weak to another type take twice the base damage in an attack, while resistance decreases attack damage by 30 points. However, new Pokémon cards (starting in the ‘’Diamond & Pearl’’ expansion) state how much damage they take from an opponent’s attack if weakness or resistance applies.

If a Pokémon has two types, both of those types are calculated as far as weakness and resistance are concerned. For example, if a Pokémon has weakness to two types, and a Pokémon that is both of those types attacks, that attack will do four times its normal damage.

Sets

With the release of Diamond & Pearl Mysterious Treasures on August 22, 2007, there are currently 33 different Pokemon TCG sets released in English. These sets have a vast range of sizes, from Fossil (the smallest at 61 cards), to Aquapolis and Skyridge (both the largest, with a total of 182 normal cards, 182 reverse-foil cards and four box toppers - 368 cards each in total ). Only eleven of these sets (EX Deoxys and all subsequent sets) are legal in the current Modified Format, which all major tournaments are played under. As well as that, all sets released previous to EX Holon Phantoms will be unplayable as of September 1, 2007. A rarely played format is Unlimited, where all cards ever released in English are legal (except oversized cards such as large box topper cards).

Early in the game, sets were released in seemingly random intervals, but ever since Nintendo took over the production of the sets, there has been a constant stream of 4 sets per year, released at 2.5 to 3.5 month intervals. In Japan, sets are now being released one every four months, due to the increased set sizes.

The current 32 released card sets are: Base Set, Jungle, Fossil, Base Set 2, Team Rocket, Gym Heroes, Gym Challenge, Neo Genesis, Neo Discovery, Southern Islands, Neo Revelation, Neo Destiny, Legendary Collection, Expedition, Aquapolis, Skyridge, EX Ruby and Sapphire, EX Sandstorm, EX Dragon, EX Team Magma vs Team Aqua, EX Hidden Legends, EX FireRed & LeafGreen, EX Team Rocket Returns, EX Deoxys, EX Emerald, EX Unseen Forces, EX Delta Species, EX Legend Maker, EX Holon Phantoms, EX Crystal Guardians, EX Dragon Frontiers, EX Power Keepers, Diamond & Pearl, and Diamond & Pearl: Mysterious Treasures.

Every few sets, new types of cards are introduced to the Pokémon Trading Card Game. Several of these include: Dark Pokémon (Team Rocket); Owners' Pokémon and Stadium cards (Gym Heroes); Darkness-type and Metal-type Pokémon, the second generation, and the new Pokémon Tool card (Neo Genesis); Shining Pokémon (Neo Revelation); Light Pokémon (Neo Destiny); Supporter cards and Technical Machines (Expedition); Crystal-type Pokémon (Aquapolis); Pokémon-ex (EX Ruby & Sapphire); Dual-type Pokémon (EX Team Magma vs Team Aqua); Pokémon-* (EX Team Rocket Returns); Delta Species Pokémon and Holon's Pokémon in EX Delta Species; Pokémon Lv.X, the separation of Trainer, Supporter and Stadium cards, and the addition of Metal and Darkness as Basic Energy types (Diamond & Pearl); and most recently, the new “Pokémon with Berry” cards in ‘’Diamond & Pearl: Mysterious Treasures’’, released in North America in August 2007.

These changes, along with yearly format rotations, make for a constantly evolving game.

Pokémon Organized Play Program

In addition to the collectible aspect of the card game, Pokémon USA Inc. (PUI) has also created Pokémon Organized Play (POP), which is in charge of the organization of an official League program, where players can battle others in local environments and earn player points, 2-card booster packets from a promotional set, badges, stickers and other materials. These are run by League leaders and owners.

A League Leader may assist in organizing the league, while a League Owner is the one officially in charge of the league, reporting to the Organized Play program any results and/or problems every seven weeks. The leagues run in yearly cycles, based on a certain aspect of one of the Pokémon Game Boy games: the current cycle is based upon the Kanto league area.

Prereleases are organized just before each set is released. Usually, they are run on the two weekends before a set is released in stores. Prereleases are the source of the 40-card Limited Deck. Prereleases used to be considered competitive events by PUI, but due to repeated claims of cheating (ie. bringing cards from a previous event to get an advantage), and arguments against the amount of luck inherent in the event, PUI made the decision that it was better to make the events less competitive (by removing prizes for winners, etc).^{[citation needed]}

Tournament play

POP also runs a tournament program, in which individuals age 18 or over may become Tournament Organizers (TOs), who can sanction and run tournaments. Players in a tournament are split into three age categories: Junior (born in 1996 or later), Senior (born in 1992-1995), and Master (born in 1991 or earlier). These tournaments play a number of rounds, where players will play a standard game against each other and wins and losses will be recorded. In most tournaments, there are a number of Swiss-style rounds where players are paired up against others of similar win/loss ratios, usually from their own age group (this does not always occur in smaller events, though). Afterwards, there will either be a cut of the top record-holders (usually the top 25% of an event) where players will play best two out of three matches, and the loser gets eliminated (standard tournament bracket style), with an eventual winner.

POP runs a season for these tournaments, which allows players to earn larger prizes and play in a more competitive environment in comparison to League. These range from City and State Championships, all the way up to the Pokémon World Championships, the single invite-only event of the year. Players can earn invites to the World Championships by winning or ranking high at National Championships, having a good Premier Rating (based off the Elo rating system, which allows players to win or lose points at any City Championship or higher-level event), or by qualifying in the Last Chance Qualifier. The World Championships is a two-day tournament, with one eventual winner in each age group, the winner of the Masters Disivion age group is generally noticed as the best player in the world for that season.

Some of these methods are only used in the USA, as PUI and POP are based in the USA, but they are represented by local distributors who provide the Organized Play program to their own country.

Major tournaments under Wizards of the Coast

Tropical Mega Battle

On August 26 - 27, 2000, forty-two Pokémon trainers from around the world united at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Honolulu for the Tropical Mega Battle, an international communication event for the Pokémon Trading Card Game sponsored by Creatures Inc., Media Factory and Wizards of the Coast Inc. In an effort to transcend language and communication barriers through entertaining game-play, the Tropical Mega Battle brought together children aged 14 and under from the United States, Japan, France, Italy, Canada, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, for two action-packed days in scenic Honolulu, Hawaii. Children participating in the Tropical Mega Battle received invitations through Qualifier tournaments, DCI rankings, and other events in their respective countries.

Events throughout the weekend included competitions facilitated by translators for groups of children representing two different languages in each group; a group photo and an opening ceremony featuring remarks from Hawaiian government officials; and a harbor cruise awards ceremony for the winners of the World Communication Match. Jason Klaczynski, 14-year-old Orland Park, Ill., resident, was honored as the Master Trainer of the Tropical Mega Battle after winning the final round of the World Communication Match against fellow Pokémon trainer Toshiya Tanabe of Sapporo, Japan.

Super Trainer Showdown

The Super Trainer Showdowns were large Pokémon TCG tournaments held in the United States by Wizards of the Coast. These tournaments were frequently bi-annual and were open to the public. Each tournament consisted of three age groups; 10 and under, 11 to 14 years old, and 15 years old and over. Each Super Trainer Showdown was preceded by a series of Qualifier Tournaments held in cities around the United States and abroad in which players in the 11-to-14 and 10-and-under age groups could win trips for themselves and a parent or guardian to the Super Trainer Showdown event. To date, there have been four Super Trainer Showdowns: one in Long Beach, CA, one in San Diego, CA, and two in Seacaucus, NJ.

Competitive play outside of the United States

Although PUI tries to keep Organized Play as equal as possible all over the Earth, there are some notable differences in how POP is run outside of the USA.

Pokémon Card Laboratory (PCL)

The Pokémon Card Laboratory (PCL), located in Japan, is the ultimate authority on any matter relating to the Pokémon Trading Card Game. It can declare rulings on any in-game circumstance, issue errata, change card text after publishing, and change the basic game rules, although the latter three rarely occur. PCL is also the company that designs new cards and runs Organized Play in Japan. In short, PCL designs the game itself.

Some recent events suggest that PCL also has the ability to override PUI on any Organized Play related changes anywhere in the world. Without specific knowledge, however, this is a somewhat speculative statement.

Pokémon cards in Hong Kong

Pokémon in the UK

Pokémon TCG Retail distribution in the UK is currently run by Esdevium Games Ltd, and Organised Play by its partner The Place for Games. The UK has one of the largest player bases outside the US and Japan.^{[citation needed]} Its players have performed admirably over the past few years at the World Championships, including a 4th Place for Fares Sekkoum in the 10- division (2006), a Top 16 place for Jake Arnold in the 10- division (2005) a 7th Place for Sami Sekkoum in the 15+ (2005), a Top 16 finish for Yacine Sekkoum in the 15+ (2006) and a 10th place finish for Faisel Kahn in the 15+ (2005).

Usually held in June, the UK Pokémon TCG National Championships have been in Woburn Safari Park for the past 2 years. In 2006 around 70 players were invited to play in each age group, with approximately 55 players per disivion in 2007. The prizes have included Nintendo DS consoles, televisions and invites to represent the UK in the World Championships.

Smaller City Championships, and for the first time in 2006 UK Pokémon Regional Championships, are held between November and April. These were held in Hull, London, Bournemouth, Manchester and Glasgow.

The game is most popular in the southeast of England, but leagues can be found all over the country - including Glasgow, York, Manchester, Norwich, Harlow, London, Bournemouth, Exeter, Crawley, Rainham and many more.

Banned cards

Although PUI currently refuses to ban cards regardless of how over-used they become, a number of cards were banned under Wizards of the Coast.

Sneasel

The first card that WotC banned was Sneasel from the set Neo Genesis. Sneasel was banned before it ever became legal for play outside of Japan because of the enormous effect it was having on organized play. Decks with Sneasel were winning almost every major tournament, making all other decks uncompetitive. Sneasel's ability to abuse the new Darkness Energy cards (which increase the power of all Dark-type attacks by 10), no weakness, a free retreat cost, quickly powered-up attacks, and the ability to do enormous damage made it an outstanding card. In short, Sneasel was faster and more powerful than any other card in the game at the time.

Slowking

Coincidentally enough, the only other banned card printed in a normal set was also from Neo Genesis.

Slowking from Neo Genesis had a Pokémon Power that allowed its user to flip a coin whenever the opponent played a Trainer card, and if that coin was heads, the Trainer card would return to the user's deck without affecting the game. In the Japanese version of the game, this Power could only be used while Slowking was active. When the card was translated to English, however, the card was translated incorrectly. The English version of the card not only allowed its owner to use the Power while Slowking was benched, but the power was cumulative, meaning players could flip a coin for each Slowking they had in play every time their opponent played a Trainer card, and if even one was heads, that card would have no effect.

While the Japanese version of the card was barely playable (Slowking is not a good attacker, and is easily KO'ed when active), the English version was overpowered because a player could place one or more Slowking on the bench, prevent the opponent from playing any Trainer cards, and play a stronger Pokémon as an attacker.

Slowking dominated the 2002 World Championship (the only world Championship not run by PUI) and, as a result, WotC announced that the card was no longer legal for any format as of Jan 1, 2003. This was a very controversial move, because the card was banned outright, instead of errata being issued to correct the mistranslation.

_'s Pikachu

_________'s Pikachu (commonly known as 'Birthday Pikachu'), was Promo Card number 24 printed by WotC. The effect of its attack, Birthday Surprise, says, "...if it is your birthday, flip a coin. If heads, this attack does 30 damage plus 50 more damage...". WotC banned this card quickly after its release, because there was no quick, easy way to check that it was actually someone's birthday whenever they attacked with the card. Disproving liars who wanted to do a lot of damage for a few energy turned out to require much more effort than it was worth. The Japanese version of the card has red text in the margin stating its illegality. It is one of the few Japanese cards with this message that was produced in English, most likely because of its immense popularity with collectors.

Currently, PUI organized play has no banned cards (the bans that WotC placed were removed when PUI took over the game). Their only limitation is that cards must have the normal English or Japanese card back to be playable. Because of this, the only significant unplayable cards under PUI are the cards printed in the promotional World Championship Decks. These cards are supposed to be printed as a promotional item, and not meant to help people collect large numbers of rare and valuable cards that were played in these decks; because of this, none of the cards printed in the decks are allowed in any competitive events.

Misinterpreted rules regarding coin flips with sleep attacks made some players skeptical of single flip recovery. In tournament rules, this confusion is cleared up.

External links

Official Pokémon TCG site

Pokémon TCG Website is the official website for the Pokémon TCG. It is the official US source of the Pokémon Organized Play program, where one can acquire information on local leagues and tournaments and find local distributors.

Unofficial Pokémon TCG sites

PokéBeach Includes high-quality image scans from all sets old to new, regularly updated news and exclusive news, a forum and Pokémon TCG chat room.

PokéGym has Pokémon TCG news, information, trading community and a massive and extremely popular forum for discussion of the Pokémon TCG. Home of the Pokémon TCG Compendium, the only source for all official card rulings from Pokémon Organized Play.

Pojo.com is a Pokémon resource for the Trading Card Game and Video Games, with a forum. Also home of the popular Card of the Day.

Pokepedia. Comprehensive, searchable Pokémon TCG database. Has a decklist builder, trader base, event mapper, and more.

CCGDB.com A card search engine for the Pokémon Trading Card Game, as well as several other TCG systems.

Wiki sites

WikiKnowledege guide (Previously hosted by Wikibooks)