This weekend, my son and I learned to play Pokemon-The Card Game. He’s 6.5, and has been collecting the cards for a while. I thought we might as well learn how to actually play. The rule book was easy enough to follow, but of course, we came up with a stack of questions. I also could use some advice.
I found surprisingly little helpful information online. What I found either reiterated exactly what was in the rule book (not helpful) or discussed high-level competitive game play (also not helpful at this point). Or at the very least, assume that you already are really familiar with all the cards and terms and also with this type of card game in general. (I’ll get there, but at this point, I have no clue.) If anyone knows of a resource, I’d love to know about it. In the meantime, I turn to you.
First, the advice:
We didn’t do so well building decks out of his card collection, so we bought a pair of theme decks to get started with. His seems to be stronger than mine for a number of reasons, but the problem is that I’m creaming him every time. Obviously, as an adult, I have major advantages over a 6 year old that can’t read nearly well enough to interpret the cards. We have been playing open-hand so that I can help him and so that he also has the advantage of being able to see my cards (not that’s he quite gets how to work that advantage yet).
He’s been a great sport about losing, but I’d like to find a way to equalize the stakes without messing with the game mechanics too much. After all, the goal is to learn how to play. Also, it would be really unsatisfying for him to “win” if he knew it was because I wasn’t attacking him when I could, etc.
We have been drawing 10 cards at first instead of the usual 7 so as to offer more options as we’re learning. Upon reflection, however, I realize that that benefits me far more than it does him because I am better able to capitalize on any increased opportunities. Do you think having me draw 7 and him draw 10 to start would help? That would make things easier on him, but be better for me in terms of learning how to play properly.
The other thing I thought of was requiring me to knock out more Pokemon than he has to in order to win.
I did weaken my deck a bit to put me at more of a disadvantage. For example, I took out a 60hp Pikachu with some good attacks and put in a 40hp Mareep with lame attacks. But there’s a limit to what I can do in that regard without it becoming kind of silly.
As far as I can see, the above adaptations would be good as they don’t affect the game mechanics all that much and they also could be scaled back as he gets better at the game. Also, he won’t have to unlearn any “house rules.”
Does anybody have any thoughts on the above or additional ideas about how to give him more of an advantage over me?
And some specific questions (I’m sure I’ll have more later):
–According to the rule book, when an attack puts a defending Pokemon to sleep, then each player flips a coin after his or her turn to see if the Pokemon wakes up. Is the coin flipped right after the sleep attack? In other words, if I put my son’s Pokemon to sleep, do I flip a coin right away, and possibly wake it up before my son takes his turn, or does my son have to take his turn before the first coin flip?
–Can you get a Pokemon off the bench other than by playing it and having it knocked out? I assume that there might be some special cards/attacks that allow you to un-bench a Pokemon, but is there a way other than that?
–My son has 4 Larvitars in his deck. IIRC they have 50 or 60 HP. These evil little creatures have an attack called “Rock Slide.” It requires only 2 energy cards, and puts 20 base damage on me plus 10 each on 2 of my benched Pokemon. This attack seems to be much more powerful than the attacks of other basic cards with similar levels of HP. Is this Larvitar just really powerful, or are we figuring things wrong?
–Is there any way to get rid of damage other than by using a trainer card like “potion” or by using a “healing” attack specific to that card? Or are you pretty much stuck with whatever damage you’ve got?
And lastly, does anyone know of a source for general strategy information for new players? Online would be good. I’ll buy a book if necessary. The online sources I’ve found have, again, been about very specific high-level strategies. I’m looking for stuff that’s more like “how do you decide how many cards to put on the bench” and “when’s a good time to play X trainer?” I’d also like to find some opinions on generally what cards are good/better to have in the deck as we trade things in and out of our existing decks.
Thanks in advance!