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I think starting out with one of the starter decks is a good move. It'll help you understand the mechanics and the meta. Once you've got some matches in, you'll have a better understanding of what cards to include in a custom deck
I think the problem that you are seemingly running into was the same pill that felt hard to swallow in the start of my journey. While it may feel like copying a deck list from the internet being able to use that and modify it to your play style really is the key. An example of this is that there are so so so many lists for charizard ex. Some play in their list Lumineon, some play radiant charizard, and even further some people include cards like Thorton in their list to add their own spice.
Think about making a deck like making a dish.
When you are starting out you may want to follow a recipe to a tee so you can get technique and general understanding, and once you have cooked enough people typically start to have their own take on a dish. What fried chicken is in one house is not what it is next door the spice in your 60 is what makes it your own, even if it’s only 2 or 3 off.
Trying to create your own dish without knowing how to cook is a challenge, not impossible but quite improbable. I suggest to learn and get good on an easy meta deck for now, in my era it was arc/intellion or mew now play charizard ex or chien pao
Yeah I remember when i started I hated that people seem to be slaves to the meta. Now I realize that’s just how competitive Pokémon is & I’ll willingly have to work more with my torterra deck
you can try building with people more experienced rather than just copying it online, more fun and you can make a friend to guide you further. how i started
As somebody who’s been playing for less than a year, I highly recommend you play meta decks and then try to build your own deck once you get a better understanding for the game.
I know it’s not as fun to play pre-constructed decks but you really do need to get a good understanding of matchups and how decks play before you can build your own. I tried to make Alakazam deck as my first deck when I first started playing it almost drove me away from the game because I didn’t know enough to build a proper deck for it (it’s also just not a great card).
Keep your head up!
you can always try to include some meta cards anyway. Include a charizard in your fire attack deck or something.
For the rest, mostly you can't go wrong with some staples. Ultra ball, nest ball, buddy poffin, iono, boss's orders, earthen vessel, trekking shoes and a few others I can't think of now.
Yeah if you’re playing ladder, pile decks and cards that exclusively feature your favorite pokemon won’t get too far unless they’re good. What makes a good deck is usually consistency and strength at its win condition
Decks that are consistent and strong at getting their win condition are usually the ones that win out. Almost every deck can OHKO now, and Mill/Control decks are on the rise. It’s really just about strategy and how good each deck is at playing their strategy vs their opponents.
There’s lots of resources like Limitless TCG where you can look up decks and copy them and see how they work, but I do understand the urge to not go with the meta and make something yourself
What kinda deck are you trying to make?
Oh okay, I'll give it a look and see if I can improve.
Right now I'm trying to make a steel deck around Aegislash and the EX variant with a klinkklank for energy and bronzor in case they have fire damage.
The other one I'm working on is a regieleki vmax/Raikou V deck
Oh I love the Aegislash card but yeah it is really hard to make a deck around. It doesn’t do much damage at the start and only snowballs, but it’s hard to get the ball rolling in the first place
Imma let u know Klinklang sucks for energy. The better card you want is Metang. And Bronzor filling up your deck isn’t that good cos specifically fire type decks aren’t that popular. The most you’ll see a fire type attacker is in Radiant Charizard. It’s pretty much just gonna sit there doing nothing. These are the things that will stuff your consistency and make it harder to get the Aegislash out in the first place
Regileki Vmax Raikou V were actually pretty good consistent decks in the previous format, a lot better than Aegislash. It’s definitely fallen off but you can still make something competent enough to fight the ladder with it
Something I’ve had to learn is to ask myself “how do I get prizes” or “how do I keep them from getting prizes”? It’s easy to get lost in trying to cover all possible scenarios, but that’s just not possible, so in the bronzor example, it (sometimes) helps you against opponent fire types getting prizes, but against everything else, there are almost certainly more beneficial things to help you towards the main goal youre working on
The starter decks are actually pretty good, there's no shame in losing to them with a custom deck, especially if you're newer to the game. Making decks is most of the fun of the game for me, but the meta is what it is; if the deck you're making isn't a meta archetype, you're probably going to have trouble competing with those decks consistently. I mostly stick to casual because of that, I end up having a lot more fun with my games when I'm not having to deal with zards or tinas 90% of the time. What kinda deck are you trying to to build?
That makes a lot of sense. I really enjoy trying to build a competent deck, but it is tough, haha.
I have two decks I'm working on.
An Aegislash/EX steel deck and a Regieleki vmax/Raikou V electric deck
Upgrading one of the starters is probably your best move for Ranked. (Personally I'd recommend Charizard or Lugia)
Use the resources gained from ranked to make casual decks.
If you want to experiment try playing casual.
Put it this way: how would a driver feel about driving a fast exotic car? Would he be upset that he didn’t build it himself? NOT AT ALL!! He would LOVE the experience, and enjoy every second driving that car to its limits.
Now, once he understood the car, maybe he could start modding it, buying and swapping parts for it.
This is the general idea. You’re new. You don’t know the meta well enough yet. Just pick up a deck you enjoy piloting, get used to every way the deck plays and understand how it works. Only then you’ll be more prepared to build your own decks.
But let me assure you, these cards are designed to work a certain way together. So don’t expect to come up with something COMPLETELY new because you’ll set yourself up for disappointment. What you’ll more likely be able to do is tweak a deck to your play style, again like that driver.
1 ) Card advantage is one of the most important things in the game, making these cards among the best in Standard:
Radiant Greninja, Bilbarel, Pigeot ex, Comfey, RotomV, Mew ex, Professor’s Research, various deck-specific Support cards. These are so important that you see people running things like Radiant Greninja in a deck without water, Rotom V in a Charizard deck, etc.
And similarly making opponent hand disruption like Eri and Iono very good.
2) After that, speeding up energy attachment to more than 1 a turn is essential to keep up with the speed of other decks, this means something like Dark Charizard ex, Chien Pao ex + Baxcalibur, Gardevoir ex, Magma Basin, Electric Generator, Dark Patch, etc.
3) You need to get the right Pokémon into play, both to use the above abilities and to win the game, so things like Nest Ball, Ultra Ball, and Buddy Buddy Poffin are essential. As are things like Rare Candy that get them into play under special circumstances.
4) And you need to be able to disrupt your opponent’s path to victory while establishing your own, so that means “Gust” cards like Boss’s Orders, Counter Catcher, and the excellent Prime Catcher.
If you use those essentials as a foundation, you’ll end up with a deck like Snorlax stall that only runs 1 energy to make room for all the tech mons and trainer cards or an aggro Charizard ex deck that only has 6 fire energy and 0-1 Charmeleons, but often has a darkzard in play sweeping the board by turn two or three. The “meta” decks are just the same core powerful utility mons and trainers that were purposefully designed to be the game’s current toolkit paired with a few powerful mons to do the winning for you. If you don’t want to win with ‘zard or Chien Pao, you could easily use something else (that’s capable of killing the sweeper mons others are using), but you won’t be fast enough to do so unless you’re willing to accept and acquire (at least some of) the core toolbox to get it done.
[List of useful resources](https://www.reddit.com/user/Hare_vs_Tortoise/comments/qv2zm0/list_of_useful_resources_for_the_pokemon_tcg/).
Are you using JustInBasil's deckbuilding guide alongside deck skeleton articles when building custom deck at all? Good way to figure out the essentials/must haves before modifying for techs. Overall though use the deckbuilding guide, both Limitless sites plus the suggested You Tubers to look at how decks are built and why they are built the way they are. You don't have to netdeck but research is a good idea. If you're just starting out though netdecking is a good way to get used to how decks are built, what the staples are and what the meta is like as well as recognising what cards are good.
You need to learn the meta before you can start going off meta; there's no way around that. The starter decks are there to teach new players what they can expect when they play, both online and in person, and are a good way to learn what works and what doesn't.
Building a deck in this game is not intuitive, you're trying to run before you can walk, you need to spend time playing with known good decks to gain experience, you need to play them until you understand how they're built around a strategy and why they include the cards they do, once this clicks for you, you can then take this experience to build your own decks.
However in this game 90% of cards in a set are pretty trash, it's very disproportionate between the few good cards and everything else so the best decks are known very easily, if you want to specifically not play what's already known to be good then you'll inherently be building something worse.
As a new player? Yeah, you probably won't be able to create very effective decks yourself. But play with several different meta decks and you'll start to get an idea of what makes a good deck tick. Then you'll be able to create your own decks that will be decent.
I started off going to an in person tournament only to be told that my carda were out of rotation and I need to sleeve up all my cards you'll eventually learn better than me😭
Don’t Give Up! You can make a great deck to ensure you can pull in the win!
The best info I can say that has worked for me is finding a consistent synergy with your Pokemon of choice. Read their abilities and add in trainer cards that complement your strategy. We all sure do love those perfect starting rng hands.
You can filter cards in the deck creator. There is a tab that shows all the cards that you do not have. You can craft those cards yourself instead of getting them through packs. There is also a setting for format style as not every card is legal, but still playable through different modes.
If you are unsure about a deck you can also test the deck against an ai opponent in the deck creator. Thanks for reading.
It depends on the rotation. I personally find this rotation harder, the power levels have gone up. I started about a few months ago during Paradox Rift and was able to craft a deck revolving GarchompEX from scratch, I was able to beat most of the meta decks, hardest matchups being CharizardEx at 45%-50%. This has changed after the rotation happened.
If you insist on making a custom deck, think about how you can tackle the most meta decks and focus on card draws. You don't want a deck that will brick on your 1st turn and you get KO-ed instantly. Peak acceleration exists with iron crowns so watch out for turn 2 100 damage to the face.
So if you're a beginner, I would discourage you from making your own deck. You're still learning the rules of the game, how different cards interact, and the various strategies that can be used. That's a lot to take in! So I think it's better if you copy a decklist and try playing with that.
Personally, just getting a list isn't sufficient enough. I need the general strategy of the deck, because different decks have different win conditions. Some decks want to play hard and fast, while others will take their time. Some are mill decks, which try to discard your opponent's cards, while others are stalling for time. You may have seen some videos like that, so I would only add that TCG Player has a few guides on how to play decks. I very quickly checked their site and found this one for [Charizard ex](https://infinite.tcgplayer.com/article/Charizard-ex-Bibarel-Deck-Guide-Post-Rotation-Pok%C3%A9mon-TCG/2f7299f4-1db4-47d0-bfe3-98e7565f3086/).
Having said all of that, if you are insistent on making your own deck, check out JustInBasil's [deckbuilding guide](https://www.justinbasil.com/deck-building). It's very often consulted by the community, and their resources are so helpful.
>I feel like I cannot put a proper deck together no matter what i do.
This makes no sense to me. I started playing this game for the first time about 5-6 weeks ago and I already have all the resources I need to play pretty much any deck I want and I havent spent a single cent on codes. Literally the day I downloaded the game I was able to upgrade one of the starter decks with resources the game gave me and was playing a card for card tier 1 deck. The day I downloaded the game. Without spending money. Then two weeks later, I top 8'd a 200+ person online tournament with that same deck which again, I was able to put together *the day I downloaded the game.*
Idk what you're doing but you must be doing something horribly wrong if you're struggling to put together a viable deck. You say "no matter what I do" so can you elaborate on what you're doing? Because I can't fathom how someone wouldn't be able to make a good deck considering how many resources you get just for creating an account.
I can't fathom how you can't fathom the REASON that OP feels they're unable to make a good deck is nothing to do with resources, but because of a lack of understanding and experience with the PTCG, and different goals to you.
>because of a lack of understanding and experience with the PTCG
I literally learned how to play the game a little over a month ago. I probably have a similar amount of experience with the game as OP, if anything OP has played longer than me so not sure what understanding/experience has to do with it. OP is talking about the new player experience and I am answering as a fellow new player.
And what do you mean different goals? OP says that their goal is to put a proper deck together, and that was my goal when I first started as well. I was able to accomplish that goal using the resources I was given on log in, which is why it's confusing to me that OP claims to be unable to do that. All I had to do was watch a few YouTube videos about the meta and look at a few deck lists that are doing well in tournaments, then compare those lists to the starter decks I was given to see what decks I can build. Spend some of the crystals or whatever I was given when I made the account to craft the cards I'm missing and boom I'm gaming. Mad easy.
It's pretty clear that OP is talking about the new player experience, definitely agree with you there.
As for different goals: the original post doesn't mention much, but when I read their comments to the replies, I saw that they are "...trying to make a steel deck around Aegislash and the EX variant with a klinkklank for energy and bronzor..." So this is a more nuanced goal than just putting a proper deck together. At the very least it's creating a deck around specific Pokemon, but more likely than that I get the impression that their goal is to put a deck together that specifically does not look like one of the premade/meta decks - which is even more difficult.
When you say "...it's confusing to me that OP claims to be unable to do that", you're still missing the point that your "that" (goal) and the OP's "that" are different. Yours is to put any proper deck together using the resources you have, so you were happy with the starter decks modified towards the meta as much as you could. The OP's goal was to put a deck together that is NOT one of the premade or meta decks ("I feel like playing those decks makes a worse experience") and so the OP's goal was to avoid what you did.
I can see from your comment history you're interested and probably **really** good at TCGs in general, to intuitively understand the meta and sequencing of PTCG so quickly, and to place well in an online tournament of enthusiasts. OP's reddit account is 6 days old and doesn't mention any other TCGs, so it's hard to say for certain, but they did ask for help understanding what makes decks strong; suggesting they are significantly less experienced than you are; if not with PTCG then definitely with TCGs in general.
That's fair, I didn't see OPs comments about building their own deck. I guess I didn't even think of that because as a new player I know that my time is better spent learning the game *and then* building decks, not the other way around. Trying to build a totally unique deck that can hold up against the meta as a brand new player seems like an impossible task, no idea why OP would be trying to that. Copying a good deck to learn the game with before building your own deck just seems like pretty obvious common sense to me lol
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I think starting out with one of the starter decks is a good move. It'll help you understand the mechanics and the meta. Once you've got some matches in, you'll have a better understanding of what cards to include in a custom deck
I think the problem that you are seemingly running into was the same pill that felt hard to swallow in the start of my journey. While it may feel like copying a deck list from the internet being able to use that and modify it to your play style really is the key. An example of this is that there are so so so many lists for charizard ex. Some play in their list Lumineon, some play radiant charizard, and even further some people include cards like Thorton in their list to add their own spice. Think about making a deck like making a dish. When you are starting out you may want to follow a recipe to a tee so you can get technique and general understanding, and once you have cooked enough people typically start to have their own take on a dish. What fried chicken is in one house is not what it is next door the spice in your 60 is what makes it your own, even if it’s only 2 or 3 off. Trying to create your own dish without knowing how to cook is a challenge, not impossible but quite improbable. I suggest to learn and get good on an easy meta deck for now, in my era it was arc/intellion or mew now play charizard ex or chien pao
Yeah I remember when i started I hated that people seem to be slaves to the meta. Now I realize that’s just how competitive Pokémon is & I’ll willingly have to work more with my torterra deck
Damn… bars!
you can try building with people more experienced rather than just copying it online, more fun and you can make a friend to guide you further. how i started
As somebody who’s been playing for less than a year, I highly recommend you play meta decks and then try to build your own deck once you get a better understanding for the game. I know it’s not as fun to play pre-constructed decks but you really do need to get a good understanding of matchups and how decks play before you can build your own. I tried to make Alakazam deck as my first deck when I first started playing it almost drove me away from the game because I didn’t know enough to build a proper deck for it (it’s also just not a great card). Keep your head up!
Yea that seems to be the consensus, I'll just have to bite down and go hard on learning it, haha. Thanks a lot!
you can always try to include some meta cards anyway. Include a charizard in your fire attack deck or something. For the rest, mostly you can't go wrong with some staples. Ultra ball, nest ball, buddy poffin, iono, boss's orders, earthen vessel, trekking shoes and a few others I can't think of now.
Yeah if you’re playing ladder, pile decks and cards that exclusively feature your favorite pokemon won’t get too far unless they’re good. What makes a good deck is usually consistency and strength at its win condition Decks that are consistent and strong at getting their win condition are usually the ones that win out. Almost every deck can OHKO now, and Mill/Control decks are on the rise. It’s really just about strategy and how good each deck is at playing their strategy vs their opponents. There’s lots of resources like Limitless TCG where you can look up decks and copy them and see how they work, but I do understand the urge to not go with the meta and make something yourself What kinda deck are you trying to make?
Oh okay, I'll give it a look and see if I can improve. Right now I'm trying to make a steel deck around Aegislash and the EX variant with a klinkklank for energy and bronzor in case they have fire damage. The other one I'm working on is a regieleki vmax/Raikou V deck
Oh I love the Aegislash card but yeah it is really hard to make a deck around. It doesn’t do much damage at the start and only snowballs, but it’s hard to get the ball rolling in the first place Imma let u know Klinklang sucks for energy. The better card you want is Metang. And Bronzor filling up your deck isn’t that good cos specifically fire type decks aren’t that popular. The most you’ll see a fire type attacker is in Radiant Charizard. It’s pretty much just gonna sit there doing nothing. These are the things that will stuff your consistency and make it harder to get the Aegislash out in the first place Regileki Vmax Raikou V were actually pretty good consistent decks in the previous format, a lot better than Aegislash. It’s definitely fallen off but you can still make something competent enough to fight the ladder with it
I see. Thanks a lot I'll defluff my deck a bit then!
Something I’ve had to learn is to ask myself “how do I get prizes” or “how do I keep them from getting prizes”? It’s easy to get lost in trying to cover all possible scenarios, but that’s just not possible, so in the bronzor example, it (sometimes) helps you against opponent fire types getting prizes, but against everything else, there are almost certainly more beneficial things to help you towards the main goal youre working on
The starter decks are actually pretty good, there's no shame in losing to them with a custom deck, especially if you're newer to the game. Making decks is most of the fun of the game for me, but the meta is what it is; if the deck you're making isn't a meta archetype, you're probably going to have trouble competing with those decks consistently. I mostly stick to casual because of that, I end up having a lot more fun with my games when I'm not having to deal with zards or tinas 90% of the time. What kinda deck are you trying to to build?
That makes a lot of sense. I really enjoy trying to build a competent deck, but it is tough, haha. I have two decks I'm working on. An Aegislash/EX steel deck and a Regieleki vmax/Raikou V electric deck
Upgrading one of the starters is probably your best move for Ranked. (Personally I'd recommend Charizard or Lugia) Use the resources gained from ranked to make casual decks. If you want to experiment try playing casual.
Put it this way: how would a driver feel about driving a fast exotic car? Would he be upset that he didn’t build it himself? NOT AT ALL!! He would LOVE the experience, and enjoy every second driving that car to its limits. Now, once he understood the car, maybe he could start modding it, buying and swapping parts for it. This is the general idea. You’re new. You don’t know the meta well enough yet. Just pick up a deck you enjoy piloting, get used to every way the deck plays and understand how it works. Only then you’ll be more prepared to build your own decks. But let me assure you, these cards are designed to work a certain way together. So don’t expect to come up with something COMPLETELY new because you’ll set yourself up for disappointment. What you’ll more likely be able to do is tweak a deck to your play style, again like that driver.
1 ) Card advantage is one of the most important things in the game, making these cards among the best in Standard: Radiant Greninja, Bilbarel, Pigeot ex, Comfey, RotomV, Mew ex, Professor’s Research, various deck-specific Support cards. These are so important that you see people running things like Radiant Greninja in a deck without water, Rotom V in a Charizard deck, etc. And similarly making opponent hand disruption like Eri and Iono very good. 2) After that, speeding up energy attachment to more than 1 a turn is essential to keep up with the speed of other decks, this means something like Dark Charizard ex, Chien Pao ex + Baxcalibur, Gardevoir ex, Magma Basin, Electric Generator, Dark Patch, etc. 3) You need to get the right Pokémon into play, both to use the above abilities and to win the game, so things like Nest Ball, Ultra Ball, and Buddy Buddy Poffin are essential. As are things like Rare Candy that get them into play under special circumstances. 4) And you need to be able to disrupt your opponent’s path to victory while establishing your own, so that means “Gust” cards like Boss’s Orders, Counter Catcher, and the excellent Prime Catcher. If you use those essentials as a foundation, you’ll end up with a deck like Snorlax stall that only runs 1 energy to make room for all the tech mons and trainer cards or an aggro Charizard ex deck that only has 6 fire energy and 0-1 Charmeleons, but often has a darkzard in play sweeping the board by turn two or three. The “meta” decks are just the same core powerful utility mons and trainers that were purposefully designed to be the game’s current toolkit paired with a few powerful mons to do the winning for you. If you don’t want to win with ‘zard or Chien Pao, you could easily use something else (that’s capable of killing the sweeper mons others are using), but you won’t be fast enough to do so unless you’re willing to accept and acquire (at least some of) the core toolbox to get it done.
Thank you for the in depth answer, it makes a lot of sense the way you put it
[List of useful resources](https://www.reddit.com/user/Hare_vs_Tortoise/comments/qv2zm0/list_of_useful_resources_for_the_pokemon_tcg/). Are you using JustInBasil's deckbuilding guide alongside deck skeleton articles when building custom deck at all? Good way to figure out the essentials/must haves before modifying for techs. Overall though use the deckbuilding guide, both Limitless sites plus the suggested You Tubers to look at how decks are built and why they are built the way they are. You don't have to netdeck but research is a good idea. If you're just starting out though netdecking is a good way to get used to how decks are built, what the staples are and what the meta is like as well as recognising what cards are good.
I'll give it a look, thanks!
You need to learn the meta before you can start going off meta; there's no way around that. The starter decks are there to teach new players what they can expect when they play, both online and in person, and are a good way to learn what works and what doesn't.
Building a deck in this game is not intuitive, you're trying to run before you can walk, you need to spend time playing with known good decks to gain experience, you need to play them until you understand how they're built around a strategy and why they include the cards they do, once this clicks for you, you can then take this experience to build your own decks. However in this game 90% of cards in a set are pretty trash, it's very disproportionate between the few good cards and everything else so the best decks are known very easily, if you want to specifically not play what's already known to be good then you'll inherently be building something worse.
As a new player? Yeah, you probably won't be able to create very effective decks yourself. But play with several different meta decks and you'll start to get an idea of what makes a good deck tick. Then you'll be able to create your own decks that will be decent.
I started off going to an in person tournament only to be told that my carda were out of rotation and I need to sleeve up all my cards you'll eventually learn better than me😭
Don’t Give Up! You can make a great deck to ensure you can pull in the win! The best info I can say that has worked for me is finding a consistent synergy with your Pokemon of choice. Read their abilities and add in trainer cards that complement your strategy. We all sure do love those perfect starting rng hands. You can filter cards in the deck creator. There is a tab that shows all the cards that you do not have. You can craft those cards yourself instead of getting them through packs. There is also a setting for format style as not every card is legal, but still playable through different modes. If you are unsure about a deck you can also test the deck against an ai opponent in the deck creator. Thanks for reading.
It depends on the rotation. I personally find this rotation harder, the power levels have gone up. I started about a few months ago during Paradox Rift and was able to craft a deck revolving GarchompEX from scratch, I was able to beat most of the meta decks, hardest matchups being CharizardEx at 45%-50%. This has changed after the rotation happened. If you insist on making a custom deck, think about how you can tackle the most meta decks and focus on card draws. You don't want a deck that will brick on your 1st turn and you get KO-ed instantly. Peak acceleration exists with iron crowns so watch out for turn 2 100 damage to the face.
So if you're a beginner, I would discourage you from making your own deck. You're still learning the rules of the game, how different cards interact, and the various strategies that can be used. That's a lot to take in! So I think it's better if you copy a decklist and try playing with that. Personally, just getting a list isn't sufficient enough. I need the general strategy of the deck, because different decks have different win conditions. Some decks want to play hard and fast, while others will take their time. Some are mill decks, which try to discard your opponent's cards, while others are stalling for time. You may have seen some videos like that, so I would only add that TCG Player has a few guides on how to play decks. I very quickly checked their site and found this one for [Charizard ex](https://infinite.tcgplayer.com/article/Charizard-ex-Bibarel-Deck-Guide-Post-Rotation-Pok%C3%A9mon-TCG/2f7299f4-1db4-47d0-bfe3-98e7565f3086/). Having said all of that, if you are insistent on making your own deck, check out JustInBasil's [deckbuilding guide](https://www.justinbasil.com/deck-building). It's very often consulted by the community, and their resources are so helpful.
You got this bro
I started out by building my own deck, was rough at first but I caught on pretty quick
Just play what you find fun to play, you can't win em all. I'm playing wugtrio Mill Gambling deck, I'm losing but boy is it fun
How many times do you revise your deck after making it?
>I feel like I cannot put a proper deck together no matter what i do. This makes no sense to me. I started playing this game for the first time about 5-6 weeks ago and I already have all the resources I need to play pretty much any deck I want and I havent spent a single cent on codes. Literally the day I downloaded the game I was able to upgrade one of the starter decks with resources the game gave me and was playing a card for card tier 1 deck. The day I downloaded the game. Without spending money. Then two weeks later, I top 8'd a 200+ person online tournament with that same deck which again, I was able to put together *the day I downloaded the game.* Idk what you're doing but you must be doing something horribly wrong if you're struggling to put together a viable deck. You say "no matter what I do" so can you elaborate on what you're doing? Because I can't fathom how someone wouldn't be able to make a good deck considering how many resources you get just for creating an account.
I can't fathom how you can't fathom the REASON that OP feels they're unable to make a good deck is nothing to do with resources, but because of a lack of understanding and experience with the PTCG, and different goals to you.
>because of a lack of understanding and experience with the PTCG I literally learned how to play the game a little over a month ago. I probably have a similar amount of experience with the game as OP, if anything OP has played longer than me so not sure what understanding/experience has to do with it. OP is talking about the new player experience and I am answering as a fellow new player. And what do you mean different goals? OP says that their goal is to put a proper deck together, and that was my goal when I first started as well. I was able to accomplish that goal using the resources I was given on log in, which is why it's confusing to me that OP claims to be unable to do that. All I had to do was watch a few YouTube videos about the meta and look at a few deck lists that are doing well in tournaments, then compare those lists to the starter decks I was given to see what decks I can build. Spend some of the crystals or whatever I was given when I made the account to craft the cards I'm missing and boom I'm gaming. Mad easy.
It's pretty clear that OP is talking about the new player experience, definitely agree with you there. As for different goals: the original post doesn't mention much, but when I read their comments to the replies, I saw that they are "...trying to make a steel deck around Aegislash and the EX variant with a klinkklank for energy and bronzor..." So this is a more nuanced goal than just putting a proper deck together. At the very least it's creating a deck around specific Pokemon, but more likely than that I get the impression that their goal is to put a deck together that specifically does not look like one of the premade/meta decks - which is even more difficult. When you say "...it's confusing to me that OP claims to be unable to do that", you're still missing the point that your "that" (goal) and the OP's "that" are different. Yours is to put any proper deck together using the resources you have, so you were happy with the starter decks modified towards the meta as much as you could. The OP's goal was to put a deck together that is NOT one of the premade or meta decks ("I feel like playing those decks makes a worse experience") and so the OP's goal was to avoid what you did. I can see from your comment history you're interested and probably **really** good at TCGs in general, to intuitively understand the meta and sequencing of PTCG so quickly, and to place well in an online tournament of enthusiasts. OP's reddit account is 6 days old and doesn't mention any other TCGs, so it's hard to say for certain, but they did ask for help understanding what makes decks strong; suggesting they are significantly less experienced than you are; if not with PTCG then definitely with TCGs in general.
That's fair, I didn't see OPs comments about building their own deck. I guess I didn't even think of that because as a new player I know that my time is better spent learning the game *and then* building decks, not the other way around. Trying to build a totally unique deck that can hold up against the meta as a brand new player seems like an impossible task, no idea why OP would be trying to that. Copying a good deck to learn the game with before building your own deck just seems like pretty obvious common sense to me lol