Every Pokemon fan knows of the TCG, whether they played it seriously from any point in its lifetime or they just liked the pretty pictures. It's one of the most popular card games, having a worldwide series of tournaments every year. This guide will lay down the basic rules of the game, because you cannot play a game competitively unless you know the rules.

Preparation

First thing you need to know is what kind of cards there are. We have three basic types of cards:

Pokemon: The creatures you fight with. While the other two types are technically not absolutely needed, you cannot play without a Pokemon card in your deck. Pokemon have different stages as well as more powerful versions: Basic, Stage 1, Stage 2, Restored, Star, EX, Lv. X, Prime, LEGEND.

Energy: These give your Pokemon the necessary power to use their attacks. They're separated into Basic Energy and Special Energy. Special Energy have added effects to them which can be very useful.

Trainer: These are not limited to only people, but are separated into smaller categories: Item, Supporter, Stadium, Tool. Previous expansions also separate Fossils but any fossil from BW-on is an Item card. Trainers have a wide variety of effects.

With all these, you have to construct a 60-card deck, unless you're playing the quicker version using only 30 cards in a deck.

The restrictions to your cards are 4 of any card with the same name in a deck, with some special cases.
Of course, you can have as many Basic Energy as you like, but Special Energy are restricted this way.
Arceus is the only Pokemon that can bypass this, so you can have as many Arceus as you like.
EX Pokemon are considered different, so you can have 4 Mew and 4 Mew EX.
Same for LEGEND, except due to LEGEND cards being two cards in one, essentially you can only have two full LEGENDs in your deck.
Star Pokemon are marked by a small star next to their name, and they are restricted to only one per deck.
Lv. X and Prime are considered to have the same name, however, so you can have 2 Torterra and 2 Torterra Lv. X, or 2 Espeon and 2 Espeon Prime.

With a deck constructed, you can then play. But there's many more things to playing.

Setting Up the Game

To start, your deck will typically be on your right. When you start a game, you will shuffle your deck and draw 7 cards. You lay one Basic Pokemon card in the Active position facedown, and any others you may have can be placed on the Bench facedown (your Bench can hold up to 5 Pokemon). Once that is done, you take the top 6 cards of your deck and place them on your left facedown without looking. These are your Prize Cards.

If a player does not have Basic Pokemon to begin with, they shuffle their hand back into their deck and draw again, while the opposing player draws another card after setting their Prize Cards. If both players do not have Basics, they both shuffle and draw again, with no bonus to either.

Once the cards are set up, both players flip over all their Pokemon and flip a coin to see who goes first.

Playing the Game

Each turn is started by drawing a card. Afterwards, you can do the following in any order:

• Play a Basic Pokemon to your Bench (until you have 5 on the Bench)
• Play an Item card
• Play a Stadium
• Play a Supporter (once per turn)
• Attach a Tool card
• Evolve a Pokemon (as many as you like, but one Pokemon can only evolve once per turn, and it cannot evolve the same turn it was played or on the first turn)
• Level up (Play a Lv. X onto its corresponding Pokemon)
• Attach an Energy card from your hand to a Pokemon (once per turn)
• Use an Ability (Poke-Powers and Poke-Bodies included)
• Retreat the Active Pokemon (once per turn; Energy must be discarded according to Retreat Cost)

The final action of your turn will typically be attacking. Before attacking, you ensure you have sufficient Energy to do so. Once you've confirmed, you will add damage counters to the Defending Pokemon. Here's where type plays in.

There are 10 types in the TCG. To the right is every single one of them, as well as the types from the video games associated with them. Anyway, most Pokemon will have Weakness, Resistance, or both.

If the Attacking Pokemon's type corresponds to the type(s) for Weakness or Resistance, then you will apply those damage modifiers.

Nowadays, it will tell you how much damage it adds or subtracts, but in the case of older cards, which do not mark this down, it is always Weakness x2 and Resistance -30. Some attack effects may add to the damage, which is done before Weakness and Resistance. Speaking of effects, there's several special conditions that must be covered.

Special Conditions

Special Conditions are the status afflictions taken into TCG format. Only the Active Pokemon can be afflicted by these. Benched Pokemon cannot have them, and if the Active Pokemon is taken to the Bench, the conditions are removed. Asleep, Paralyzed, and Confused can all be removed by each other, but Poison and Burn can stack on any Special Condition, even each other (not on themselves).

Burn: Between turns, the player flips a coin. If heads, no damage is taken. If tails, 2 damage counters are placed on the afflicted Pokemon. The Pokemon can Retreat.

Poison: Between turns, 1 damage counter is placed on the afflicted Pokemon. It can Retreat.

Asleep: Between turns, the player flips a coin. If heads, the Pokemon wakes up. If tails, it remains asleep. The Pokemon cannot Retreat.

Paralyzed: The Pokemon cannot attack or retreat for one turn.

Confused: The player flips a coin when they declare an attack. If heads, the attack is performed normally. If tails, 3 damage counters are placed on the afflicted Pokemon and the turn ends.

Conclusion

With basic rules in mind, you can now play the game, however, there's much more in the case of competitive TCG.

 

Pokémon Cards are highly collectible and can be really exciting and fun to collect, trade and play, however once you stray from simply buying the cards from retail stores and venture into buying job lots and individual cards off the internet (on popular auction sites for example) you are highly likely to run into fake Pokémon cards somewhere along the line, trust me - theres a lot of them out there.

Some of these fakes are really well made, and at a glance you probably wouldn't know they weren't real. The sad thing is that some of these sellers who are pumping out booster box after booster box of fake cards actually have quite good feedback profiles, as those less vigilant buyers may simply not even stop to think "are these cards genuine", or perhaps they're just a bit too trigger happy on giving feedback, who knows.

Anyway, I've put together a little guide, based on my own frustrating, and sometimes mildly amusing acquisitions of fake Pokémon cards I've bought from the internet or had traded to me to help you catch out these dodgy sellers.

Prevention is better than cure

If you've spotted a deal on eBay for 36 booster packs in a booster box and it's $12 USD, that in itself should be a red flag. But like me you may think it sounds too good to pass up just incase it's someone clearing old stock of legit cards (that would normally cost 6-7x more than that), check the sellers feedback rating first. Yeah sure they might have thousands of positive feedback, 98% of it may even be positive. But check their negative comments and see if any of it contains accusations of fakes.

The one positive thing is, should you buy these cards from eBay and report them as being counterfeit eBay will force the seller to refund you if you can substantiate it with actual proof. Should you not want the messing about of trying to get your money back however, lets take a look at a listing of fake Pokémon Cards, and show you how to identify them before you buy.


So why have I picked on this listing, and what makes me think they're fake? well firstly, look at the image of the booster boxes. Pokemon Go trading cards? At the time I write this there are no such things. So you can see that I've also circled his Free Delivery right? Well great, everyone loves something for free. However it's September 3rd and if I order today they'll be here in 9 days, the slowest domestic UK (where I am) services are 2-3 days, so why would it take 9? Here's the answer: The cards aren't coming from London, they'll be coming from China.

OK and finally I circled the price, a booster box containing 36 packs of Pokémon cards for £8.89 GBP (thats about 12 USD at current exchange rate). Yes, 24pence, or 35 cents per booster pack. I would truly love them to be real, but I'll save you the trouble. They aren't.

But he's got 96% positive feedback! you're wrong Luke! they could be real!
Check out the below shot from this guys feedback profile, when you select the negatives.


I'm not saying don't buy anything off the internet ever, by any means. Just take a look at the bits I mentioned above and think twice before buying. If you have bought some cards you aren't sure about, read on below to find out how to spot fake Pokémon cards and how to tell them apart from real ones.

How to spot fake Pokémon Card booster boxes & booster packs purchased from eBay, Amazon marketplace etc

1. We all know that booster fresh smell when you open a pack of legit Pokémon cards right? It seems one thing these counterfeitters haven't quite mastered is recreating it, many of the fake cards don't smell 'booster fresh' and might smell a bit plasticy/different. I'm proud to say I knew something was wrong with my booster box of Pokémon Steam Siege cards the minute I smelt them.

2. The next one which is an obvious giveaway if you are buying new, sealed boosters as I did is to check for the card which gives you the codes for the Pokémon TCG Online? Not in there? It's because they can't fake those codes, so you may notice you have 9 cards instead of 10 as a result.

3. Place one of the suspect Pokémon cards face down, next to a legit Pokémon card, face down. There is often a suspicious level of plasticy looking shine on the fakes, and although the fakes have got better as the years have gone on, there colours are off.


The back of a fake Pokémon card (left), The back of a legit Pokémon card (right). Notice the plastic looking shine on the fake, and that the wrong shade of blue has been used on the border + Pokemon logo outline.

4. The devil is in the detail, and sometimes the devil is quite a lot more obvious than that. Many of these fake Pokémon cards are produced in China/other regions where English is not necessarily the first language. Look for spelling errors on the names, descriptions, typing errors, or downright having the wrong Pokémon's info on it's card. Take a look at the below examples.


Caterpie is looking pretty darn mean eh? and my Earfetch'd is particularly strong, and don't even get me started on my Magnrton! (for any parents reading this who are unsure of what Caterpie should look like on that left card, he's a little green Caterpillar, not a big mean turtle with guns on his back, they've put the wrong Pokemon's name on this card entirely.)

5. Here is another crazy one, check out this packet of fake Pokémon Sun & Moon Cards I just opened. I've taken a picture of the unopened booster packs front and back, and I've also taken a picture of all the cards I got in it, a reverse holo Machop, great!, Wow, Mews in there too! and a Pikachu EX Promo amongst other things... what an amazing haul, lets take a look:-

These are the cards I got from the Pokemon Sun & Moon booster pack I got from eBay. Note: None of these cards are in the Sun & Moon set. NONE.

So whats my problem? Well for a start as some of you probably know already, none of these cards are from the Pokemon Sun & Moon collection, that aside take a look at the images below: you see the back of the booster pack stating 1 Online TCG code card inside? well there wasn't one. The pack should contain 10 cards as stated on the front of the pack including the code card, theres only 9. These both being relatively small details when compared with the fact that none of these cards relate in any way to Sun & Moon.


More often than not, fake boosters will not include the 10th card, as that 10th card is normally a code card for the Pokemon TCG Online.


You will never get these TCG Online Card codes from fake booster packs, because the counterfeitters simply can't produce codes out of thin air that will interact with the TCG Online.

6. I've given you some good examples of fairly easy things to spot above for when you purchase booster packs, booster boxes online. There are other things to look out for though:-

• Look at the text on the Pokémon cards, more often than not the font will be completely different on the fakes than on a genuine Pokémon card.
• Likewise look carefully at the text on the back of the booster pack, if the black outline of the while text on the back of the booster is anything but sharp and crisp (ie a bit blurred around the edges) start to question the pack
• If your Pokémon cards FEEL more plastic than card, start to question the pack even more.

In the next section we're going to look at purchasing used Pokémon cards from local sellers.

Buying valuable individual Pokémon Cards off eBay, Amazon marketplace/other marketplaces. Or buying job lots from those same places.

If you have spent decent money on a Pokémon card you want to be sure it's real. A number of ways of doing this are:-A fake, see through Ninetales card

1. Hold the card up to the light, if its particularly see through then it's probably not legit, whereas if you hold up an English Pokémon card you know is genuine to the light, barely any light passes through it. There is an exception here with some Japanese cards which are a little more translucent, but this is a good general guide for western/English cards.

The reason that legit western Pokémon cards don't let much / any light pass through is because they contain a blue/black coat in the centre of the card to prevent that.
 
2. Identifying suspicious 1st Edition's cards. Some fake Pokémon Cards may once have been real! What the hell am I talking about? Lets say someone sells you a regular Pokémon Card that they've stuck a 1st Edition stamp on. At a glance it'd probably look quite real, but there are some give aways to look out for. See the picture of the two 1st Edition cards below-right? the one on the right is legit, the one on the left isn't. What makes me say that?

• Look carefully at the fake on the left. It's a worn, used, very played condition card. Yet the area immediately around the 1st Edition stamp appears to have been cleaned - most likely prior to the stamp even being put on it.
• Look at the text of 'Edition' itself, the 'E' is the give away for me, though that D's seen better days too... hell, its just not a very good stamping job! No amount of play/wear will warp letters like that. It's been done intentionally.

LEFT: Tearing a real Pokémon Card left, a fake on the right. The real card has a light blocking dark bit going through the middle, the fake doesn't.
RIGHT: A real first edition card on the right, vs a fake first edition card on the left.

3. If you've paid out good money for a 1st Edition Card and you are 100% convinced it is fake, this video could help you prove it and get your money back. I'd only do it if I was bullet-proof sure though.

A guide on How to REMOVE a FAKE 1st Edition STAMP by TCA Gaming on YouTube.

Other things to look out for

I'm a pretty experienced collector of Pokemon Cards, but I don't know everything so I asked for help from some other collectors, check out the following additional things to look out for courtesy of Sean W on Google+

• The fonts are often not quite right
• The HP, something fake card producers slip up on quite a bit
• The retreat cost, as above
• The resistances/weakness, sometimes there will be an incorrect resistance/weakness icon on the cards
• The actual type, likewise if you get a Bulbasaur card that says its a fire type, you've probably fallen foul of the bad guys
• The texture of the cards, if you are reasonably experienced at collecting Pokemon Cards, and it doesn't feel quite right... well it probably isnt.
• And if you get multiple Ultra Rares/Holos in one pack it's most likely fake. They also sometimes use fake artwork on the foil packs.
• Sometimes these fakers will get a little lazy and use the pack artwork on a GX card.

That just about brings us to the end of this guide, and I hope it helps someone out. In the mean time if you can think of any way to spot fake cards that I don't have listed here please get in contact so I can make this guide better & potentially help more people find and report more naughty sellers. Thanks for reading!