Deck Building for Beginners

Hello, everyone! It's been a while since I last posted, but I thought especially with recent interest from numerous people in deck building advice, I would give some basic advice for those new to the game.

A caveat: I am relatively new to the Pokémon TCG, so any advice I give should be taken as opinion. I'll do my best to give helpful advice without too many errors, but if there are problems or additional questions, I'm happy to respond in the comments.

First of all, it doesn't hurt to check out websites like Six Prizes for inspiration. There are a ton of sites out there that give advice and deck skeletons, but Six Prizes is possibly the most well-known. Some of the advice isn't always impeccable, but it's a good site for those interested in the competitive game and general tips and strategies.

Secondly, there is no one proper way to build a deck. While the game is fairly narrow in choices for certain game actions right now, eventually newer sets will alter that fact. In addition, the build of a deck will depend heavily on each individual player's preference, and the focus of the deck.

Cards

Draw

Most cards that help you to draw are Supporters, and as such you can only play one a turn. Still, most decks should be running between 8-12 draw supporters in order to ensure consistency. Draw Supporters such as Professor Oak's New Theory, Professor Juniper, Cheren and Sage's Training are used most commonly. There are very few Pokémon that give decent draw support, though Cleffa, Magnezone Prime, Ninetails HS, and to a lesser extent Virizion NV are the most notable among those that do.

Pokémon Search

In general, these search cards allow you to look through all or a part of your deck for Pokémon. There are Supporters; Pokemon Collector and Professor Elm's Training Method: Items such as Great Ball, Poké Ball, Dual Ball, and Pokémon Communication: and a few Pokémon such as Sunflora HS and 'mons with the attack Call for Family like Litwick.

Support Items

These vary highly depending on the deck you are building. Any deck with a number of Stage 2 Pokémon can tend to benefit from Rare Candy, which allows you to evolve your Pokémon faster. however the card is fairly rare and expensive. Most decks can make use of Junk Arm (an incredibly good card and considered a staple of competitive decks), Pokémon Catcher, Switch, PlusPower, and newer cards like Eviolite and Rocky Helmet. What you put in your deck will depend on what sort of support cards you need, and that might not be apparent until you test your build later.

Energy

Most decks run a minimum of 12 energy, but yet again this can vary depending on the deck's needs. Apart from basic energy cards, it's worth considering the utility of cards like Double Colorless Energy, Rescue Energy, Rainbow Energy, the upcoming Prism Energy, and Special Metal and Darkness energies if you have access to them. Remember that you can only have four copies of the same Special Energy in your deck, unlike Basic Energy which has no number limit.

Pokémon

HP

There are more than a few things to consider when seeking what Pokémon to include in your deck, and in fact it's almost certainly the most involved and strategic part of deck building, so I will simply point out a few important things. At the moment the Pokémon TCG is heavily dominated by high HP and high damage output basic 'mons like Reshiram, Zekrom, etc. As those two dragons are capable of dealing out 120 damage unaided, any Pokémon under 120 HP is considered an almost certain OHKO. As such, Pokémon with 130 HP and above are considered much more play-viable, and 130 is often referred to as the "magic number" for HP.

Damage

The speed you can deal damage at and the amount of damage is also important. For example, while Tornadus and Thundurus deal 80 damage - respectable, but not huge - they are capable of doing that much damage on the second turn without any form of energy acceleration. The big basics are again usually good choices for the reasons of Damage output.

Ability / Poké-Power / Poké-Body

A good ability may be a reason to include a Pokémon that otherwise doesn't conform to these categories. As Abilities, etc. do not take up a player's attack for the turn, it allows the player to further manipulate the game to their advantage. Not all Abilities are equal, but the most popular ones allow you to accelerate the speed at which you can place energy on your 'mons, or heal/move damage.

Consistency

The most important quality of a competitive deck when seeking to test it is consistency. If I win one game, but the game hinged on a card that I have only one copy of in my deck, can/should I run four copies of that card? If it's a card that is regularly going to pull my deck through tight spots, it might be worth doing. The more redundancy in your deck the easier it will be to judge how functional the deck will be in a competition. Having a variety of cards in your deck can be an asset, but it can also be counterproductive. Narrow your deck down to an ideal build, test it with the help of Proxy cards, and trade for the cards that you need - then you will make decks that crush the competition!

Numbers!

In general most decks I build start with numbers like this:

18 Pokémon (Fewer if not running evolution lines)
18 Energy
24 Trainers (8-12 Draw, around 8 Pokémon Search, the rest varies)

... and get adjusted as I play them. This is the template I use when designing decks on the fly, especially when helping our younger players, unless I know I can cut numbers in one for needed cards elsewhere. It's pretty vague, but might be the starting point that some of you will need.

Hopefully some of you out there will find this post useful. Any questions, comments, or feedback would be deeply appreciated; I don't know if this is overly technical, or unclear in any ways.