HowTo Network emblem How To: Gaming THE HOW TO CO. — EDITION 10
Painted view out of a stone stadium tunnel into a sunlit arena, gold and blue banners hanging above a packed crowd

● POKÉMON · CHAPTER 01  —  DOOR 02 · BUILD

DECKS

& strategy.

The meta in plain terms — what's winning, why it wins, and how to beat it without just copying it.

A floodlit stone arena at night, tattered banners hanging over an empty central dais

▸ WHAT SIXTY CARDS ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE

A deck is a recipe, not a pile. Sixty cards, three jobs — and the middle band is the one nobody counts.

Every legal deck is exactly sixty cards, and almost every good one splits the same three ways. Around fifteen Pokémon do the actual winning. Around thirty Trainers do the searching, drawing and recovering that get those Pokémon onto the table on time. Around fifteen Energy pay for the attacks. Beginners load up on Pokémon and starve the middle — which is why their deck looks unstoppable on paper and stalls on turn two.

Those bands move by a few cards between formats and between decks. The proportion barely moves at all.

POKÉMON — 15 CARDS · 25% TRAINERS — 30 CARDS · 50% ENERGY — 15 CARDS · 25% TOTAL — 60 CARDS, ALWAYS
EVERY LEGAL DECK · EXACTLY 60 CARDS 15 POKÉMON THEY DO THE WINNING 30 TRAINERS SEARCH · DRAW · RECOVER 15 ENERGY IT ALL COSTS SOMETHING 25% 50% 25% 0 15 45 60 TRAINERS ARE HALF THE DECK. THAT IS THE WHOLE SECRET.

Three moves.

READ · BUILD · COUNTER.  IN THAT ORDER.

Ian laying out face-down cards across a village hall table beside a handwritten notebook, a club night going on behind him

▸ FROM THE ARCHIVIST · IAN

"A copied list is a stranger's answers to questions nobody has asked you yet. I've watched people lose eight rounds straight with a championship deck, because the list tells you which sixty cards to own — it never tells you which one to hold back on turn one."

READ: HOW TO TRADE UP WITHOUT BURNING FRIENDS →

Essays from the table

IAN & POPPY ON PLAYING WELL
Two players shaking hands across a scrubbed wooden table in a lamplit hall, the cards already cleared away IAN · ESSAYLIVE How to Trade Up Without Burning Friends Getting the card you need for your build, and still being welcome next week.

The sixty cards are only half of it. The other half is the person holding them.

These three are the ones our contributors keep coming back to. All live, all short, none of them about a list.

01 IAN · ESSAYLIVE How to Spot a Fake Holo in Ten Seconds One tilt under a light and the argument is over. The fastest check in the hobby. 02 POPPY · ESSAYLIVE How to Win Game Night Without Making Enemies A strong deck and a good evening are not the same project. You can have both.

◆ THREE LIVE · MORE AS THIS CHAPTER GROWS.

An empty tournament hall at first light, long rows of folding tables and chairs with paper cups still on the floor

▸ THE HOUR BEFORE ROUND ONE

The strongest deck in the room is almost always the one its owner has already lost with a hundred times.

The how-to guides

STEP-BY-STEP · BY ROUTE · BY IRIS
A vast gold-and-navy checkerboard plaza seen from directly above, tiny figures and fountains casting long afternoon shadows

Sixty cards, one plan — and everyone else's plan on the board too.

ROUTE 01 · BUILD

◆How to Build Around a Single Chase CardSOON ◆How to Counter the Top Meta DeckSOON

ROUTE 02 · PRACTICE

◆How to Read a Deck List in Sixty SecondsSOON ◆How to Test a Deck Without a TournamentSOON

ROUTE 03 · REFINE

◆How to Cut a Deck Down to SixtySOON ◆How to Fix a Deck That Never Draws Its Best CardSOON
A tall hall at night seen from below, its window grid glowing gold through storm-blue mist

The other two doors.

SAME CHAPTER · DIFFERENT WAY IN

01 Getting Started the whole game, from card one ENTER DOOR 01 → 03 Sets & Chase Cards what to open, what to chase ENTER DOOR 03 →
Pull Rate ▸ PULL RATE · THE COMPANION BOARD Building around one card? Pull Rate shows what a booster actually delivers — and what that card costs this week. CHECK THE BOARD →