Pokemon TCG Quick Reference Rules Guide

This brief guide acts as a quick reference, or a cheat sheet, providing a basic outline of the rules for people that want to get straight into a game of the Pokemon Trading Card Game (TCG). It'll also be helpful for those that just need a refresher.

I've tried to make this helpful enough that you can play along while reading it without missing anything. The main thing when playing is to pay attention to the text on the cards itself.

This is based on the full rules guide that you can find on the main Pokemon website here.

I'd highly recommend playing the free online Pokemon TCG Live game with the free deck to get use to the game flow and rules. You can find it here.

Contents

1. The Objective
2. Quick Setup
3. How To Play
4. Critical Notes
5. Deck Building Rules

Pokemon TCG Rules

The Objective

• Claim all 6 Prize Cards before your opponent.
• Instant win if:
• Your opponent no longer has any Pokemon in play.
• Your opponent no longer has any cards to draw at the start of their turn.
• If both players win at the same time, go to Sudden Death:
• New game, but with only 1 prize card.
• Repeat until there is no longer a draw.

Quick Setup

Both players will setup their play area with 5 areas, in the following way:

1. Who's the first player? Flip a coin. The winner decides who goes first.
2. Both players shuffle their 60 card deck.
3. Both players draw 7 cards from the top of their decks.
• Place 1 Basic Pokemon face down in your Active Spot, and you may place remaining Basic Pokemon in your Bench area face-down. The Bench cannot have more than 5 Pokemon on it at any time.
• If BOTH players don’t have Basic Pokemon in their hands, restart by shuffling and drawing 7 cards.
• If you don’t have have any Basic Pokemon
• Show your hand
• Take a mulligan by putting your cards back into the deck, and shuffle.
• Draw another 7 cards, and your opponent draws 1 card for themselves from their deck.
• Repeat as necessary until a Basic Pokemon is found.
4. Take 6 Prize Cards from the top of your deck face-down and place them in the Prize Cards area.
5. Both players flip their Active and Bench Pokemon cards in play face-up.

How to Play

First Player, First Turn Rules & Conditions

These special conditions only apply on the First Player's first turn. The second player plays as normal.

• First turn Player cannot play any Supporter cards.
• First turn Player cannot attack, so they must skip the Attack step.

Each Turn

1. Draw a card from your Deck into your hand
2. Perform any listed actions
• Play Trainer Cards as many times as you want
• Supporter and Stadium cards can only be played once each per turn
• As many times as you want
• Put Basic Pokemon from your hand on to your Bench
• Evolve any Pokemon that were already in play before your current turn started.
• Evolving Pokemon will drop any special conditions on it (e.g. sleep, confusion, etc.)
• Use Pokemon Abilities
• Only once
• Attach an Energy card from your hand to any of your Pokemon in play.
• Retreat your Active Pokemon, swapping it with a Bench Pokemon.
• Asleep or Paralyzed Pokemon cannot Retreat
• Pokemon retreated to the Bench will have any Special Conditions removed.
3. Attack (no longer able to perform any of the above actions)
• You can't Attack if your Pokemon is Asleep or Paralyzed.
• Must have required Energy cards attached to your Active Pokemon to Attack.
• Calculate Type Weakness and Resistance as required at the end of attack damage calculation.
• If your attacking Pokemon is Confused:
• Flip a coin. If heads, the attack works. If tails, the confused Pokemon damages itself with 3 damage counters.
• Paralyzed Pokemon cannot attack.
4. Check-up Phase

Check-up occurs for both players and their Pokemon, not just the player who's currently taking their turn.

1. Apply any Pokemon effects or Abilities
2. Poisoned (maximum of 1 Poison marker on one Pokemon)
• Add 1 damage counter to Poisoned Pokemon.
3. Burned Pokemon (maximum of 1 Burn marker on one Pokemon)
• Put 2 damage counters on Burned Pokemon.
• Flip a coin. Heads means the Pokemon recovers, and is no longer Burned.
4. Asleep Pokemon (Pokemon card already turned 90 degrees anti-clockwise)
• Flip a coin. Heads means the Pokemon wakes up, and can be turned the right way up.
5. Paralyzed (Pokemon card already turned 90 degrees clockwise)
• At the end of the owner’s turn, recover from Paralysis.

Critical Notes

• The Check-up Phase is performed by both players at the end of every turn, even if it is your opponent's turn.
• Maximum 5 Pokemon on your Bench.
• Colorless Pokemon can use any Energy types for attacks.
• Stadium Cards
• Only 1 Stadium can be active across both players.
• The same Stadium card cannot be played over the top of itself.
• Only 1 Stadium can be played each turn.
• Old Stadium and effects are discarded, replaced with the new Stadium card.
• Abilities are not Attacks.
• A move that instructs you to "place damage counters" is an effect of an attack.
• Lost Zone is an out of play area, cards placed in there can no longer be used for that game.
• Pokemon Abilities can still be used if the Pokemon is Asleep or Paralyzed.
• If a dual-type Pokemon attacks and the defending Pokemon has a weakness and/or resistance to the attacking types, apply appropriate weakness, then appropriate resistance to the attack.

Deck Building Rules

When building a custom deck, these rules must be followed:

• Must have exactly 60 cards in your deck.
• Can only contain a maximum of 4 cards with the same name.
• EX and ex are considered different card names. E.g. "Magnezone-EX" 35/106 is a different card name to "Magnezone ex" 065/198, so you could have 4 of each in 1 deck.
  
  
• Delta Species is not part of the name.
• Other symbols are part of the name, therefore different symbols means different cards.
• May only have at most 1 single card of each type
• ACE SPEC
• Radiant Pokemon

Here are some beginner recommendations that are helpful guidelines to consider when composing your 60 card deck:

• Only use Pokemon that need 1 Energy type to attack. Colorless Pokemon are okay to use too.
• Use 12-16 Basic Energy cards.
• Use 20-35 Trainer cards.
• Use 12-22 Pokemon cards, of which at least 10 are Basic Pokemon (not an evolution).

Other Resources

Other miscellaneous resources that may be of interest to Pokemon TCG fans!

• Pokemon TCG Advanced Rulebook v1 (from judgeball.com)
  The original Wizard of the Coasts (WOTC) physical game manual that was released with the first Base Set deck boxes. The English cards were released in January 1999, trailing the Japanese originals which were released in October 1996.
• Nintendo Power 1999 - Pokemon TCG for Gameboy Official Guide
  A game guide for the Gameboy Color version of Pokemon TCG, the game itself was was released in December 1998.