 Hey everybody, welcome back to Magic Orthodoxy. My name is David, and this is a card game. All right, today's card game. We're gonna look at the granddaddy of them all, Pokemon. Yep, Pokemon. So if you don't know, if you've lived in Iraq, or maybe you just want to know a little bit more about Pokemon. Hey, Pokemon came out in 1996. It was originally released from a company called Wizards of the Coast, but then much later Nintendo pretty much purchased the rights to everything and now Pokemon is a Nintendo brand. This card game is for ages 4 and up. You can probably get a double starter kit. So two starter kits together, two decks, everything you need for two players for about $17, and it is a one-on-one style game. So it's one-on-one. So it's made for two players, two players only. How long does it take to play? It can go pretty fast, or it can go like 20-25 minutes somewhere in there, but I mean a lot of games I think happen pretty quick. All right, so how do you play? How do you play Pokemon? There's tons of videos out there on YouTube that want to teach you how to play Pokemon. I watched a lot of them, but really the fastest way I learned how to play it was to buy the starter kit. The starter kit has everything in it that you need. You're gonna get your coins, your counters, a full 60 card deck, which helps when they build it for you and you can kind of see what a deck looks like. And you get the play mat and the play mat has all the rules on it. When you get the double pack, you actually get two play mats. So you can have one play mat to play on, which is awesome. And if you flip the second one over, the one you're not playing on, the rules are right there. So I think if you're gonna start playing or if you have a kid in your life that wants to start playing, get a double starter kit and you'll have everything you need. But basically at its core, each player starts with 60 cards. So you have a 60 card deck, and if you're gonna build it from home, then I would suggest that you do the 2020-20 system. So you have 20 Pokemon, and make sure you have basic Pokemon in there, 20 Pokemon, 20 energy cards, and 20 trainer cards. Now that's a good way to start. It's a basic way to start, all right? And then I would also throw out there that you should have two different types of energy in your deck. So you don't want to have one deck that's all the same energy like fighting or whatever or psychic. You want to have a mix. So two, two types of energy is a good start. Now competition, competition decks, half their deck are trainers, okay? So in competition, half their deck is trainers. But it might take you a while to get to competition level, okay? And so you bring your 60 card deck out, alright? And each player shuffles their deck and draws seven cards. You want to make sure that you have a basic Pokemon in your seven because you have to start with a Pokemon. There has to always be a main Pokemon in your attack area. There needs to be an active Pokemon in play at all times. If you don't have an active Pokemon in play, when your turn begins, you automatically lose. And that is one way for your opponent to win. So you have six basic Pokemon to start with. That's your range you can have. You can file on your bench and one in active. And then you evolve them as you go. Each Pokemon has a set number of hit points, okay? And during attacks, during melees, your Pokemon reduce XP and you keep track of that with the little tokens. Now I keep track of mine with a die, okay? Because I just use every one dot on the die as 10. So if it's one, it's 10, flip it to 20, 30, 40, 50. And if you need more than that, then you just bring in a second die. That's faster for me than just moving the little cardboard pieces back and forth. They're so flimsy and they fly away. I know you can buy custom counters out there. That's great, but dice work just as well. Once your Pokemon reaches zero in its XP, it's dead and it goes into your discard pile. And then your opponent gets to draw a prize card. Now both of you start off with six prize cards. And if you end up killing six of your opponent's Pokemon or knocking them out, we'll call that knocking them out. We don't kill Pokemon. When you knock out six of his Pokemon and you get all six of your prize cards, that is another way to win. So you can win the game if your opponent doesn't have an active Pokemon. You can win if you get all six of your prize cards or you can win when your opponent runs out of their draw deck. When their draw deck is at zero, of course, the other person wins. Alright, so that's the game in a nutshell. There are three different types of cards. Obviously there's Pokemon and they are ranged in various strengths and weaknesses and powers. Of course, you have your basic and then you can evolve from there. You also have trainer cards. Trainer cards help the gameplay go so that either they hinder your opponent, help you allow you to go back to your draw pile and look, allow you to find extra cards. They allow your Pokemon to gain extra wisdom and knowledge and power. There's that. And then there's energy cards. And so the energy cards are what fuel the Pokemon and help your Pokemon do their damage. And so they need the energy to fuel their attack. So let's just say you have a fire Pokemon, then you're going to need fire energy to fuel their attack. Is it similar to other titles out there? That's hard to say because, you know, this came out in 96 and so it really kind of was the front runner when it came out. There's been copies obviously since then. I don't know if you're familiar with Soul Forge or Infinity Wars. Both of those probably have a similar game mechanic. What about expansion packs? Is there any way to make this game even more fun? Yeah, it's Pokemon. I mean, there is expansion packs, booster packs, box sets, special edition sets, gift sets. I mean, you could, there is a whole aisle of CCGs at Target or Walmart. And just look at all the stuff that's available for Pokemon. Like, like I said, start off with a starter deck and then build from there. You know, I wouldn't start with boosters. Start off with a starter deck so that you can begin to play. Okay, I think playing is the key. I see lots of kids collect Pokemon cards and then I always ask them, do you play the game? And they always say no. They just collect the cards and they always toss the trainers and they always toss the energy. And I'm like, ah, this is a card game. You play this game. Kids just go through their binders. And they're like, look at all these Pokemon I've collected. I'm like, yeah, but it's a card game. You play this game. It's to be played. And so there is a fun element to collecting it. I know there is a fun element to collecting it. And my son did collect it when he started. But I was like, come on, it's a CCG. Let's play this game. And so, yeah, watch a couple of the other videos out there online just to find out the rules a little bit better. But like I said, if you buy a starter set, the two decks set, and you can get them on Amazon. I've seen them on a first sale at Target. Go pick those up and it'll teach you how to play. It's the best way to learn. Is it fun? It is totally fun. And I think the fun part is the more you play it, the more you start to see how you can evolve it. It is totally a strategic game because it is all about deck building. It's you building your deck and them building their deck and then who's better, right? So there's tons of strategy in this. And I think the more strategic the game is, the more fun it is. And the variety of Pokemon that are out there, of course, the variety of trainer cards that are out there, their cannon of information is just so big because this game has been around for so long. So there's just so much out there, you know, it's a lot of fun. Another way that you can save money, and if you want to jump into this, is go out to eBay and find people who are selling lots of common cards and uncommon cards. Of course, there's rare, ultra rare, things like that. But if you want to just get a stack of commons or a stack of energy cards, go out to eBay and find someone who's selling a lot. And I mean that by A, space, L-O-T, a lot. A lot of cards, right? They'll sell you a big stack of commons for 10 bucks, you know, or whatever. And it's going to be so much faster and cheaper than going through boosters. Obviously, you'll get some rares and some ultra rares and boosters and that's fun too. If you want to get into it, get your feet wet fast. I would say buy a bunch of commons and some uncommons and a big stack of energy cards from eBay and then go for there. It's a lot of fun. I'd love to answer any questions you might have in the comment section below, although I'm still kind of new to this too. I've only been playing for about a year plus. So yeah, tell me what you think of Pokemon and if you play it yourself. And maybe, what's your favorite Pokemon to play? Alright, thanks, bye.