What makes a legal deck

Before you can play a deck, it has to be legal. There are only four rules, and every one of them is checkable in about ten seconds.

This lesson is about the rules. Which 60 cards to pick is a much bigger topic — that's what the rest of Dexter is for.

1. Exactly 60 cards

Not 59, not 61. Exactly 60.

Every card counts: Pokémon, Trainers and Energy all come out of the same 60. There's no separate Energy pile the way some other card games do it.

2. At most 4 copies of any card name

That second part catches people out. If Ultra Ball has been printed in six different sets, you still get four Ultra Balls total — not four of each. Different art, different set code, same name, same limit.

3. Basic Energy is unlimited

The one exception to the 4-copy rule. Run as many Basic Energy cards as you want.

Special Energy is not exempt — it has a name and an effect, so it's capped at 4 like everything else.

4. One ACE SPEC card, total

Not one per name. One ACE SPEC in the whole deck. Pick your single most powerful card and that's your allowance spent.

Standard legality and regulation marks

Those four rules make a deck valid. Playing in Standard adds one more: every card has to still be in the format.

Look at the bottom-left of any recent card and you'll find a small letter — the regulation mark. Once a year, the oldest marks rotate out and stop being Standard-legal. Everything with a current mark stays.

Two wrinkles worth knowing:

• Basic Energy never rotates. It has no regulation mark and it's always legal.
• Trainer cards go by name, not printing. If a Trainer has been reprinted with a current mark, your older copy of that same card is legal too — even though the mark on it has rotated. This does not apply to Pokémon, whose different printings have genuinely different text.

Next: how a game actually starts.