Confessions of a Pokeholic, PT. II: Learning the TCG

Posted by Aaron J. Walker in Editors Note, Entertainment, Fun, Games, Misc on September 5, 2008 9:04 am / no comments

It’s been a long and difficult journey but I’ve finally gotten to the point where I actually understand the Pokemon Trading Card game. Yeah, I know, duh!

But first, I have to share why this took so long.

I posted on MorninPaper here and here about my difficulty in grasping the concept. I was on the verge of giving up thinking this must be something incomprehensible to the adult brain. The video game was easy-peasy compared to this. I even visited a local card shop and was sneered out of the building for even asking if they knew how I could learn to play Pokemon (“Magic: The Gathering” rules this establishment).

I watched the Pokemon TCG World Championship for clues but all to no avail. I searched online figuring somebody, somewhere, had to have posted better instructions on how to play the card version of Pokemon.

I know what you’re thinking, type in Pokemon.com right? Should get you to where you want to go. Wrong! There’s actually two Pokemon sites, one more “secret” than the other.

Pokemon.com is the general site, here you’ll find all the products, announcements and what not. Great place to start to feed a Pokeholic’s addiction but not so great on how to learn how to play. Ã‚Â But lookey. Along the top tabs there’s something called TCG (Trading Card Game). Click on that to learn to play? Nope. You’re taken to another information only page for cards in the series.

It takes an incredible THIRD mouse click on the window that says “More Info” to then be redirected to Go-Pokemon.com . I thought it was for more information about the current series of cards, not to the site where you could actually watch a video demo.

After recovering from my shock, I found they actually had a pretty good tutorial on how to start playing the game. After watching it a few times, I finally “got” it. I was making it a whole lot harder than it had to be by trying to follow the written directions (again DON’T, watch the video instead).

There’s even a pretty extensive parental guide and other important things about playing in things like leagues and tournaments in your area. I no longer feel like such a dunderhead and have found playing the card game to be a welcome extension of playing the video game. The card game is much more cerebral where deeper levels of strategy and understanding come into play. Reading, math, memorization call for greater degrees of concentration than in the video game.

I’m even starting to catch up in the names, attributes, strengths and weaknesses of various Pokemon with my son that I thought I would never accomplish.

There’s a great deal on YouTube as well, one series from a parent that was pretty good at going beyond the basics. Ã‚Â I recommend you check it out as well as the official one at Go-Pokemon.com

So, I’m feeling pretty good about myself and hope I’ve helped our readers out there following along with my Pokemon road of discovery. Maybe you already figured all of this out (coulda e-mailed a brotha, ya know?), or maybe you were just as lost as I was. But I’m here to tell you parents, or anyone else whose life has been affected by Pokeholism, there is hope.

Tags: Games