I have a question. I recently got back into collecting Pokemon

Troll and Toad

>>27240461
>Would it just be best to buy them online?
It would be better if there were any card shops near you. Google Magic the Gathering stores, those usually stock Pokemon. Otherwise just use ebay/amazon/tcgplayer.
>Also I heard that the old cards are going to be reprinted
They're not. Like 10 or so might be, and only in art. They're more likely going to be reusing the art only, but making them into new, legal cards with a fuckton of different formatting since the game has changed so much since the WOTC days.
>And any recommendations for a folder to keep my cards in?
Just get a binder. Even Gamestop sells them if you can't get a 2 dollar binder and some baseball card pages at your local supermarket.
>Lastly, are energy cards no longer as common or something?
Energy cards get reprinted once every main set because they're given out in everything including as league promos and everyone already has their energies. Buy an Elite Trainer Box if you want a bunch in a row. Buy Generations or XY base if you want to waste opening cards on energies.

>>27240563
>since the game has changed so much since the WOTC days.
pls ellaborate, not OP but I was also looking into getting back in the game

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>>27240584
There have been like 2-3 card formatting changes since back when the game started in the 1990s. Remember when every single card had an e-reader code on them? Around the D/P era they tried to introduce costless energy attacks. I'm pretty sure the icons have changed size over time and so has the font. Back then some words on the cards were just different colors for some reason too.

It's a lot more toned down now that there seems to be some sort of quality control. Compare the reprint of Slowpoke from Generations to the old base set version. If you ever played Magic, it's like how Standard cards have a template and Legacy/Vintage cards look pretty different.

If you interpreted it as "the metagame has changed so much since the WOTC days" then that's a whole different can of worms I'd be happy to get into.

>>27240716
>that's a whole different can of worms I'd be happy to get into.
Please do if you have time at the moment

Troll and Toad is okay for just buying more common cards in bulk, but for individual more pricy cards I'd honestly suggest eBay. The price difference between somethings is absurd. Just got another playset of VS Seeker for 25$ on eBay as compared to 11-12$ a piece on T&T.

For a folder, go with Ultrapros 2x2 mini binders or buy an actual "business" binder and fill it with sheet pages. The cheap shit they make for the tcg with graphics and shit are garbage.

Energy cards are mostly reserved for precon decks now. If you're actually thinking of playing, you'll only need like 6-10 basic energy of a single type anyway so might as well just buy a deck of a type you'll enjoy.

No clue about collecting old cards though, as I only started playing again a few years ago and only collect for trade fodder. The games pretty fun though, if only for its simplicity and low price, as compared to the shit ton I sink in Yugioh and Magic.

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>>27240766
If you ever played the game back then (or played goat format of yugioh) it was super slow and honestly kind of terrible to play against players who knew how to play. Everything revolved around removal, and there were no limits to trainers. So you could run 4 gust of wind, 4 energy removal, 4 superior energy removal, 4 bills to draw you all of these cards, 4 computer search to get you any card in your deck that you want, and more. So every turn you could attach one energy and deal like 20 damage, and then your opponent with a decent deck would promptly get rid of that and do the same. This goes on for 5+ turns until one of you gets a knockout. Then you repeat for 6 more Pokemon to get all your prizes.

The game today is based mostly on speed and getting OHKOs. The average usable Pokemon who isn't an EX has ~90 HP. A lot of the better ones have ~130+ HP. EXes are 180 HP capped(with exceptions I'll get to later), but give 2 prizes to anyone who knocks them out. So a game can theoretically end in 3 turns if you can knock out 3 EXes. Compared to the 30 turn minimum of older games. A huge improvement. Something like Shaymin EX is one of the best cards in the game right now, but is only an EX so it can give players 2 prizes to knock it out, since it can do at most 30 damage and only has 110 HP. Something like pic related is one of the best attackers in the game right now because it wins the prize trade. Its second attack can scale to 180+ damage in order to OHKO an EX with one energy attachment, take 2 prizes, then your opponent needs to knock out 6 of these before you can knock out 3 of their EXes. Or you can play denial using things like Seismitoad/Trevenant, which puts the game back to how it was back in the day of one player not being able to do anything.

>>27240975
I did play the game back when it came out but very casually and thnking back your first paragraph did describe it perfectly, we were constantly removing each other´s energies
And flipping coins, oh god the coin flipping, it never ended ,I think thats why I stopped playing, because many coin flips made the game seem extremely luck based, is there coin flipping today?

I dont know if I like how fast the game is as you described it, I kinda liked chipping away damage with small attacks and poison and playing strategically with retreats

>>27241084
> because many coin flips made the game seem extremely luck based, is there coin flipping today?
Not nearly as much unless you base your deck around it, but one deck got banned for that and now the best thing for making coin flips more consistent is dead. There's the occasional crushing hammer splashed into decks, but the only coin flip that matters in the game right now are meme Malamar-EX (flip for every energy attached, so people put like 20 energies on it and flip 20 coins) and Servine (evolve and devolve it again and again to flip for a chance to paralyze the opponent)

You might like Trevenant or Seismitoad if you like slower things and want to get into the game again. For a while before Night March came in, the meta was really slow. Like, back to the days of Gen 1 TCG slow. You did 50 damage per turn to the opponent's 180 HP Pokemon. They healed 30 HP per turn due to their stadium and hit you for 50 HP. You healed 30 HP with their stadium. The thing about ramping up power like like that is that it can be disrupted before they can ramp up too far, while you play at a constant pace. Really, any time you're not facing EX deck vs EX deck or huge burst attacker vs EX deck is where the game is pretty reasonable about it's speed. Most games last a good amount of time since we're not really in a heavy EX format, so you have to think through your turns and play optimally. My only real complaint is that turns can take a while to get through if my opponent is setting up, and I can't do anything during my opponent's turn.

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>>27240887
I'd argue TCGplayer is better than Troll and Toad for older cards, it's the same basic premise but many many more sellers. I'm working on a precon deck collection right now and TCGplayer has TONS more old cards and usually at far better prices.

>all those old pokemon cards you lost or threw away

I feel so awful

>>27241923
They likely weren't worth much to begin with and you could probably get them all back with 20 bucks and an hour on TCGplayer.

>>27241923
Unless they were foils in near mint condition or had a certain orange lizard on them they weren't worth a shit in the first place.

>>27241417
Is there variety or is the game centralized around a few cards

>>27242740
There is some variety but the trainer package in most decks is largely the same. There is SOME variance, but nowhere near as much as in other games like MtG or even Yugioh, where you see maybe 2-3 cards shared between meta decks.

I has question

Where the FUCK is the TCGO thread?

Also, what did your typical high tier deck look like around the time the Gym decks came out?

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>>27242837
>Where the FUCK is the TCGO thread?
I dunno, I was wondering the same thing.

>Also, what did your typical high tier deck look like around the time the Gym decks came out?
Either some variation of Rain Dance, Do the Wave or Haymaker, possibly with Dark Vileplume in there fucking shit up if you went the antimeta route. The actual information on the meta during Gym is scarce because that's when people stopped caring outside of Japan. It's almost like the game died during the Gym sets, because the only info I can find on anything is either pre-gym or TR-On with Neo released.

I wish Dark and Gym leaders pokemon came back

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>>27242963
Dark Pokemon came back during EX Team Rocket Returns, the best fucking set of all time.

Gym Pokemon are never coming back as they were in Gym Heroes/Challenge because those are the worst selling sets of all time and they've been using the Vs. style cards ever since when trainer owned pokemon are turned into cards.

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>Want to work towards completing every set
>Only missing a revive in Base set
>Cant find it at ANY thrift store or yardsale

Fucking ennoying. Oh, but I can find rare $100_ TurboGrafx16 games no fucking problem

Pic related is what I need for the first 3 sets

>>27243034
TCGPlayer, senpai.

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>>27243034

And here is what the checklist looks like up to Ruby Sapphire

It kinda fizzles out around that point and picks up again around HGSS

>>27242988
Oh that looks great

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>>27243070
If you're talking about the foiling, Reverse Foils from EX Hidden Legends until EX Power Keepers were fucking awesome, they were basically foils with the set logo on them and a unique foil pattern.

If you're talking about the individual card, well it's basically a better version of Team Rocket's original Dark Hypno. EX Team Rocket Returns had quite a few cards that were basically remakes of cards from the original Team Rocket set and from Neo Destiny (which also had Dark Pokemon). My favorite would probably be this one, have a complete reverse foil playset.

Could a pokemon cube draft be viable and possibly even fun?

>>27243185
There was a guy who posted in the TCGO threads who apparently had a Base-Rocket cube and a gym cube, so probably.

I had this sick scam going on at my local Target

In the pokemon card section, the ONLY price sticker they had said "19.99 trdng crds"

So, I would grab the $49.99 boxes and make them honor that price.

I did this for 4 straight months

Hell, at one point, around when the Generations set came out, they had a buy 2 get 1 free deal. So, I grabbed 3 of the $49.99 boxes. made them honor the $19.99 sticker for two of them, and I got the 3rd one for free. I took advantage of that one twice.

I have NO idea how it took them so long to fix the sticker, but holy shit, I'm so glad it did.

>>27243315
>scam
>implying they weren't actively trying to clear out the shelves of unsold card games by letting you "scam" them