[Retro Pokémon: How do I play?] Part 3 - Playing with physical cards

Maybe you’ve got the bug from the game boy game. Maybe you’ve been grinding TCG One. Maybe you, like me, have a binder of cards from way back when and thought, gee, wouldn’t playing with these be swell? Good news. In person play is easier to set up than you think. I’ll start by talking about proxies first, then collecting cards.

What is a proxy?

Anything that replaces the “official” card for a given format. Why? Because the official cards for a 20+ year old game can be hard to come by or expensive. Proxies work like money - as long as everyone agrees on their value, there’s no issue. When you set down a proxy representing Base set Electrode, if you and your opponent play as if it is that card, the game can go on undeterred by the lack of authenticity. 

A proxy could be:

• A newer reprint of the same card (e.g., modern-era switch instead of Base set switch)
• The same Pokémon, but a different card (this electrode for Base set Electrode, for example)
• A printout of the card 
• A printout of the card's text
• A drawing of the card, with sufficient detail to identify it
• A piece of paper or an energy card with “electrud” hastily scrawled on it with sharpie (for Electrode, obviously)
• Some other random card (clear this one with your opponent first!)

What are the best practices for proxies?

These are my personal opinions of course, but:

• Your proxy should “blend in” with the rest of your deck before you draw it to avoid basically being a marked card.
• After you’ve drawn or played a proxy, it should either (1) be an accurate facsimile of the real card so as to not disrupt the flow of play or (2) stand out as a proxy so both you and your opponent can easily recognize and identify that yes, that Charizard-ex from 2025 is "actually" Base set Electrode.
• Proxies should be self-consistent; try not to use three different proxies to represent the same card.
• Use of proxies and the identities of proxies should be discussed and approved with your opponent before play. No surprises!

How do I make proxies? Actually, how do I get a deck together in general?

Good news! Those questions are related. There are two parts of making proxies - making the paper image for the card and making the physical object that will get shuffled into the deck. Let me walk you through my process for the second part first.

Start by getting a box or two of play sleeves (I bought these but you can also find cheaper on Amazon or at a local game store). These sleeves are designed to protect the cards during play. They have the added benefit of (1) hiding markings on the cards, so you can play with real beaters if you want, and (2) being excellent proxy-enablers. If you get 200 sleeves (two boxes) you have enough to build two decks, replace ones that break from use, and have spares to protect a few rare cards in storage (more on that later), so not too bad for $10-25. Next, get a bunch of modern or bulk energies. You can find these on TCGPlayer (more on this later) for about a penny each, possibly cheaper at local stores. If you have random bulk cards already you can use those, but if you’re starting from zero the energies are nice because you can directly use them instead of making more proxies for your energy. A full set of 60 energies per type (more than enough) should be $6-7. 

To assemble your proxy, just sleeve up the energies and tuck a thin paper rendering of your card in the sleeve in front of the energy. You now have a pretty dang good facsimile that feels like a real card, shuffles in without making a scene, and is easily swapped around. It’s also agnostic to how you want to make your image, whether it’s drawing, printing, or just writing on the energy. So, if you make 120 images (minus your energy counts), you now have two decks to play with on the cheap.

Use color-coordinated sleeves and type-matched energy for maximum topdeck/coinflip luck.

Okay, where do I get the card images?

If you are an extremely talented artist like me, you can draw them on little paper slips. Regular paper or cardstock both work. Check out these sweet limited edition renders.

However, I generally prefer a more “seamless” proxy by printing out the original card image. There are a few routes to make this work. Many sites offer proxy generators, but my favorite is Proxycroak, which has a search feature. Look up your card, click the one you like, and it adds it to a deck list. At the end click “generate” and then "print page > print to PDF" to get a printable version of all the cards, ready to be cut. By default Proxycroak prints 9 cards to a page, which is efficient, but I find it shrinks them slightly and reveals the energy backing card, so I usually manually limit prints to 6 per page which produces a very snug fit and a clean look (see above). Remember, it’s free if you print them at work.

If you are anal-retentive like me, you can also lay out card images in PowerPoint. Set the overall slide size to 8.5” x 11” and ensure the card images are 2.5” x 3.5” to fit snugly in a sleeve. This also lets you fit 7 per page if you can tolerate one being laid out sideways. If you want to print a card that hasn’t been translated, like the Vending series, you’ll have to first generate your own image and then use the PowerPoint method. Fortunately for you, I’ve already made translated proxies for the Vending series and documented my methods at the link here, so check that out if you like. Make sure to read the readme.

Although I haven’t done it myself, there is apparently a way to get actual cards printed with images using Drive-Thru Cards. There is some discussion of this procedure going on in the Pokémon 1999 discord, so feel free to check that out.

Am I ready to play now?

Almost! You just need a few more things:

• A handful of six-sided dice to use as damage counters. If one of your guys takes 20 damage, set it to 2. If it’s 80, use a 6 and a 2. Raid the Yahtzee box.
• A way to generate a binary random number. Coins are iconic but can flip away. Six sided dice (even/odd = heads/tails) work pretty well, but after rolling 11 heads in a row one game a heated debate as to their fairness was raised, so my in-person games use a d20 instead. 
• A marker to indicate poison. This is a great opportunity to use the shiny Pokémon coin you have without being concerned as to its weighting.
• A clean play surface, with or without a playmat (basically a big mousepad). Try playing without one before you invest. For many of our home games a tablecloth’d table is sufficient.

Now you have everything you need to enjoy some great games! I recommend starting out proxying some iconic decks from this blog like Rain Dance or Haymaker and deciding from there what you want to invest printing and cutting time into. 

What if my hunger is unbounded and I feel the need to collect real, physical cards?

You’re not alone. It can be fun! 

Where do I get the cards?

If you have a good local game store, you can always check the supplies there. I found that my local store was quite a bit pricier than just ordering online, so I primarily use TCGPlayer. It has a lot of ways to filter your search (set, condition, rarity, etc.), card condition is reported well, and after adding things to your cart you can optimize, which rearranges which cards you get from which seller to minimize price. Below is my typical optimization procedure with my clicks & settings as green arrows.

If you’re ordering a large batch of cards, optimizing might end up sending you 15 letters in the mail, but that’s kind of fun? I recommend buying heavily played cards and the non-holographic versions of cards to save cash because hey, you’re going to play with them anyway and they’re going to get a little dinged. That’s life. But also, you want to play with the first edition holographic near mint Scyther? Go nuts man, flex ‘em if you’ve got ‘em.

For certain rare promotional or Japanese cards, you can occasionally get a better deal on eBay than TCGPlayer, so check there too. Note that for whatever reason, Japanese cards are occasionally cheaper than their English counterparts. Ebay also tends to have a lot of “grab bag” lots available if that’s of interest (see the next section).

What do I get and when?

If you’re like me, you have a collection of random cards from back in the day which is enough to meet some of the basic needs, like 4 or 5 Bill. In this case, focus on getting single cards from a local store or TCGPlayer to build the decks you want. If you’re starting from zero, you might consider a “random 50 WOTC cards” lot from eBay. It’s not the most efficient use of cash, but it can give you a good set of commons and inspire some kitchen-table deck building. You’ll want to stop doing this quickly after you already have some cards to avoid ending up with endless duplicates of Rattata and Exeggcute, but consider doing it once (since you're not going to be buying and opening sealed Base set packs anytime soon). 

The sanest long-term approach is to make a few decks with proxies and try them out. If you like them, grab a few of the common and uncommon cards and start to swap out the proxies. Prioritize trainer cards first, as you’ll use them in many different decks. Picking up the recommended quantities of the uncommon and common trainer cards from this checklist of Base-Fossil staples would be a great way to begin, perhaps along with the stack of modern energy for your proxy backing. As you play different matches, notice which Pokémon show up frequently and try to get a few copies. Treat yourself to a rare card now and then. That’s it! If you play before you buy, you’ll only get the cards you want and at a natural tempo. 

Do I always follow the sanest approach? No, and likely you won't either, but it's good to keep in mind.

How do I store them?

The classic approach to card storage is a 3-ring binder with plastic sleeves. Tuck the cards in and close it up, they’re nice and partially waterproofed. As a kiddo I would stack multiple cards into the same binder slot, which is not really advisable to keep things nice. Ideally for storing in a binder you have one space for each card, but if you want 8x of many cards (enough to make 2 decks) this can take up a lot of space very quickly. Plus, if you’re just starting out, do you leave a lot of empty space to begin with, or just reorganize your binder all the time?

I tried keeping with a binder for a while, but I gave it up. Now I use one of these BCW Monster Boxes. They have smaller and other form factor boxes too. In three of the rows I store all my Pokémon sorted by type first, then alphabetically, and then by set. For instance, the first section is Colorless, and under R for Rattata I have several copies of Base set, then a few copies of Rocket, then one from Expedition. The trainers are also sorted by set groupings (Base-Fossil, Rocket, Gym, etc.). This makes it easy to find what I need to put into a deck and easy to add new cards without a lot of rearranging. The extra space in the box is good for storing energies, sleeves, and deck boxes, which I use for decks (duh) and to-be-filed cards.

Left with 'peeking' cards denoting sections, right as it normally looks.

I still use my binder - for storing proxies not currently in use. This binder has the Pokémon sorted by type and evolution line, making it a ‘catalog’ of sorts to review card options. Unlike physical cards, you can acquire a whole set’s worth of proxies in a day, so they can all be laid out with finality (no rearrangement needed) and the thin paper stacks well enough to add many in a single “sleeve.”

Full binder satisfaction at a fraction of the cost. 

Speaking of sleeving, I took my card storage one (excessive?) step further and added a layer of waterproofing by placing each card in a perfect fit sleeve and any holofoils also inside a spare play sleeve, even when in storage. This makes it easy to double sleeve my cards for play, because they permanently remain in the inner sleeve.

Green arrows point to the opening of the perfect fit sleeve which I put on all boxed cards, the orange arrow is at the opening of the secondary play sleeve for holos only. These cards are ready for action! (Once they get put into matching play sleeves, of course.)

Wait, what is *double* sleeving?

Well, if you buy heavily played holofoils, they sometimes have a charming curl to them. If you put them inside a perfect fit sleeve, it flattens them out a little so they don’t stand out sitting in your deck. If you have two sleeves - one facing in, one facing out - the card is also moisture protected and won’t curl any more from humidity. To make sure you don’t have one super thick card though, it's best to double sleeve all the other cards in your deck as well. Also makes them a little more grime and spill proof.

In order to accomplish double sleeving, you first add your card upside down into the inner sleeve, like the Bill above. If you are using proxies, slide both the paper and the backing card into the inner sleeve. Then take an energy card you don’t care about and, with the card you do care about, slide them both into the play sleeve right side up. After withdrawing the beater energy while keeping everything in place with thumb pressure, you’ve got a nice double sleeved card, ready for play. Just squish it a little afterwards (setting a heavy book on top works) to get extra air out so it fits in your deckbox.

How do I keep track of everything?

I use a spreadsheet that looks like this. Let me walk you through it. 

• Rarity: C(ommon), U(ncommon), R(are), or RH(olo). Not strictly necessary but nice to have at your fingertips if you wanted to try making rarity-restricted decks.
• Set: listed by name, but given preceding numbers in chronological order for easy sorting.
• For play and budget purposes, I don't distinguish between exact reprints, for example Base set and Base set 2, or the Gym vs. Expedition printing of Warp Point, or the two different promo Mewtwo (one in B-F and one in B-R), so there are some minor inconsistencies.
• Also, because there are only two unique cards, Eevee-11 and Computer Error are just listed as being part of the Team Rocket set rather than B-R Promo.
• Card Type:
• For Pokemon, this is just their type (Colorless, Grass, etc.),
• Trainers are listed as either Trainer or Trainer-Tool, Trainer-Stadium, etc.
• Card: The name of the card, plus other shorthand identifiers.
• For instance, Abra, Sabrina's Challenge 93, to distinguish it from the other Sabrina's Abra.
• A few cards (like Desert Shaman from Skyridge) are so dang expensive but have cheap, exact-same-effect modern stand-ins (Judge) that I lump them together in the sheet.
• Gym Leader: Whichever leader, if any, is mechanically or thematically associated with the card.
• I was trying to brew up some Gym-era, leader-restricted mini theme decks for a while... watch this space!
• Region: Kanto (Gen 1), Kanto-Plus (Gen 2, but evolves from Gen 1) or Johto (Gen 2)
• Collection: equal to "In box" + "Pending," where the latter keeps track of TCGPlayer orders.
• Conditional formatting for 0, 1-3, 4-7, and 8+ copies shows collection status at a glance.
• Decks
• These columns contain as many decklists as you'd like to have built at once. If you're just getting started, it might be just 1 or 2.
• Right now I'm working on a "battle box" of a few iconic decks, so I have three columns of named decks. (If I find a good set of decklists, I'll share them in a later post.)
• I start by making the decklists in an easy to use interface like Limitless, then input them.
• Still Needed
• This subtracts from the collection the total sum of the cards in the deck columns, showing you what you still need to order or proxy.

Filtering by "not blank" shows the "Freezing Rain" decklist I currently have built.

You can use my sheet as a starting point if you like. I haven't entered all the Vending and e-Card stuff yet, so I may upload another version when I do.

I think that's all you really need to enjoy the card game with physical cards! I know that many people play with physical cards over webcam, like on the Pokemon 1999 discord, but I haven't set that up so I won't speak as to the best way to do it.

If you want something a little more digital, try checking out the game boy game or playing on TCG One. If you want resources for how to build decks or prioritize collecting, check out this page. Otherwise, it's time to get brainstorming and playing!