Say Hello to Pokémon TCG

Welcome! If you've ever opened a pack of Pokémon cards and wondered what to actually do with them, this is the right place to start.

The Pokémon Trading Card Game is a two-player battle game where each player brings a 60-card deck and races to win 6 prize cards. You take prize cards by knocking out your opponent's Pokémon. First to all six wins.

That's the whole game in two sentences. Everything else is texture — and that texture is what makes it fun.

What you'll actually do

A game of Pokémon TCG looks like this:

• You and your opponent each draw a 7-card opening hand
• You set up your Active Pokémon (the one that's fighting) and up to five Benched Pokémon (the ones waiting their turn)
• On your turn, you draw a card, play stuff from your hand, then attack
• When you knock out an opponent's Pokémon, you take a prize card
• First to all six prize cards wins

Games usually last 15–30 minutes. Once you've played a few, the rhythm clicks fast.

Standard vs Expanded

You'll hear two formats mentioned a lot:

• Standard is the current competitive format. Only cards from the most recent two-or-so years are legal. The card pool rotates every year, which keeps the meta fresh.
• Expanded uses a much bigger card pool stretching back further. Played less often, with more flexible rules.

If you're brand new, you only need to care about Standard. That's what Dexter checks against by default, what tournaments use, and what most modern decks are built for.

Where Dexter fits in

Half the game is what happens at the table. The other half is deck building — picking 60 cards that work together. That's where most new players get stuck, and that's exactly what TCG Dexter is built for.

By the end of these lessons, you'll have:

• Built and analyzed your first deck
• Saved it to your library
• Learned the vocabulary you need to talk strategy with other players

Ready? Let's start with what a Pokémon card actually looks like.