Appendix V

Pre-release Deck Building

Building a deck for a Pre-release Event—an event where players get together a few weeks before a new set’s official release to play with cards from the new set—differs significantly from building a deck for the Standard or Expanded Formats. In a pre-release event, all players play in a Limited Format—where players are restricted to deck building resources provided for the event itself. This puts all players on a roughly level playing field and invites a much more laid-back, casual atmosphere.

At a pre-release event, players are provided with a Build & Battle Box from the set for which the pre-release event is being held. A Build & Battle box contains the following resources to help you build your deck:

  • 4, 10-Card Pokémon Trading Card Game Booster Packs from the Pre-release’s set (Most packs also contain a Basic Energy card.)

  • A 40 card preconstructed deck featuring 1 of 4 promo cards from the set (before Sword & Shield—Brilliant Stars, the kits instead included a 23-card Evolution pack, including the same cards, but without the Energy)

Pre-release decks are comprised of forty cards instead of the regular sixty and games played using pre-release decks are played with four prize cards instead of six. Like a regular deck, a pre-release deck must still include at least one basic Pokémon. Unlike a regular deck, the “Rule of Four” that restricts players to up to four copies of cards with the same name does not apply.

If your Build & Battle Box is from Sword & Shield—Brilliant Stars or later and you don’t feel comfortable building your own deck, you can simply use the 40-card deck exactly as it comes out of your box. If you’re using an older Build & Battle Box or if you're interested in tweaking the deck to improve it, read on.

Below is an example of what could come in a Build & Battle Box’s preconstructed deck. These particular Build & Battle Box deck contents were seen in St00ben’s Temporal Forces Build & Battle Box opening. The cards in the preconstructed deck have been broken into seven categories:

Primary Pokémon Type

These are all of the Pokémon in the Evolution Pack that have the same type as the Promo card at the front of the pack.

Secondary Pokémon Type

These Pokémon also share their type with each other, but are not the same type as the Promo card’s type.

Other Pokémon

These Pokémon don’t share their type with the Promo card or with the other type in the Evolution Pack. Most often, these are colorless Pokémon that can be played with any type of energy. Sort each of these Pokémon by their type.

Pokémon Search

These cards—typically Supporter cards and Item cards—provide ways to find the Pokémon in your deck.

Draw Cards

These are Trainer cards—typically Supporter cards and Item cards—that provide a means of drawing more cards than the card you draw at the beginning of your turn.

Energy Cards

These cards are the means of powering up your attacking Pokémon.

Misc. Cards

These are other cards that are included in the Evolution Pack that simply don’t fit into another category.

Primary Pokémon Type

Secondary Type

Other Pokémon

Pokémon Search

Draw Cards

Energy

Misc.

No cards from the Miscellaneous category were included in the kit opened by St00ben.

 

As you open the four booster packs that are included in your Build & Battle Box, continue to use these same categories to sort the cards, sorting each Pokémon type into its own pile. From there, you’ll have four options for how to continue with the construction of your deck.

  1. Build around the preconstructed deck. When you build around the Pokémon included in your preconstructed deck, you add additional Pokémon of the same types, including additional Pokémon from the same evolution lines, if possible. Colorless Pokémon and Pokémon with attacks that cost only colorless energy are also considerations.

2. Build around part of the preconstructed deck. Instead of using both types included in your preconstructed deck, you may instead choose to use only one. This may be to focus your deck on a single type (not a bad idea if you have a lot of Pokémon of the same type) or to introduce a new type from the cards you pulled from your booster packs, in addition to reinforcing the type you’ve kept in the deck with additional Pokémon from the same evolution lines, if possible.

3. Build around your pulls. The nuclear option has you ignoring the Pokémon in your preconstructed deck entirely, building around one or two types of Pokémon you’ve pulled from the booster packs included in your Build & Battle Box. Be sure to choose Pokémon that can do adequate damage for minimal attack costs, with decent HP.

4. Build around a multi-prize Pokémon, like a Pokémon ex. So, you’ve pulled a Pokémon ex and you have the evolution line necessary to play it. Awesome. This may be your best option. Here you have two different avenues of attack—to either go with just the ex and the bare minimum to get it evolved up, or to build around the ex, adding in Pokémon of the same type and Pokémon with colorless attack costs.

No matter which strategy you choose, keep in mind the following loose deck skeleton for a pre-release deck:

12-15 Pokémon
10-12 Trainer Cards
12-16 Energy

Pokémon to Include

Pokémon you include in your deck should be at least one of the following:

  1. A Good Attacker. A good attacker does reasonable damage for a reasonable attack cost. The higher the stage of evolution, the less reasonable an attack cost becomes. Low attack costs for mid to high damage are always best.

  2. A Possessor of a Helpful Ability or Attack. A Pokémon with abilities or attacks that draw additional cards, help you to search for Pokémon in your deck, or interrupt your opponent’s strategy. Call for Family and similar attacks are especially helpful in pre-release decks as they can help you search for your stronger Pokémon when you don’t start with them.

  3. A Free Retreater. A Pokémon with a Retreat Cost of zero can help you have an ideal Pokémon to promote when your Active Pokémon is Knocked Out. Free retreat gives you the flexibility to see what cards you draw into on your turn before committing a specific Pokémon and/or deck resources to your next attacker.

  4. A Beefy Staller. A Pokémon with high HP can sometimes be helpful to stall your opponent long enough to get your primary attackers setup and ready to knock out your opponent’s Pokémon.

  5. A Status-Happy Staller. A Pokémon with attacks or abilities that leave the opponent’s Pokémon Paralyzed, Confused, or Asleep can be the difference between winning and losing in a pre-release tournament. Because there are limited ways to switch out of status effects in a Limited Format like a pre-release, even little bits of damage from Poison and Burn can add up to a victory in the long run.

Trainers to Include

During a pre-release event, you should pretty much always include any trainers that are in some way beneficial to the deck you’re building. If a trainer is not helpful to your deck, exclude it. For example, you would not include Rose—a card that helps only decks built around a Pokémon VMAX—in a deck that contains no Pokémon VMAX.

If you find yourself with an overabundance of trainers and need to cut a few out, always prioritize keeping Trainer cards that help you draw cards or that help you find your Pokémon. These are the most important Trainer cards in any deck, and pre-release decks are no exception.

A NOTE ON ENERGIES

Unlike in Standard deck building, it is quite common for a pre-release deck to be built around two types of Pokémon (and, often, two main attackers) instead of being built around a single Pokémon. As noted earlier, a lot of pre-release decks will run roughly 13 energies (give or take a few) but will have to split those energies between two types. As an example, a deck with a Fire-type attacker and a Water-type attacker. Each preconstructed deck comes with Energy cards in it already, but you may find yourself cutting into your Energy to boost your deck’s draw power or Pokémon search capabilities and will need to consider which Energy cards to cut first. A few things will help you decide how to tweak the Energy split in your deck. Look for the following:

  1. Does either attacker require only its type of energy to attack? Does the Fire-type attacker, for example, require one fire and one colorless for its primary attack?

  2. Does one attacker have an especially high energy cost? Does the water-type attacker, for example, require three water energies to power up its attack?

  3. Does either attacker have an attack that can be powered up entirely by either energy type?

  4. Do secondary attackers have the ability to attack with colorless energies as the entirety of or part of their attack cost?

For a very quick-and-dirty guesstimate on how many energies you should consider running as a baseline, figure out how many energies of each specific type are required to power up all of your main attackers’ most cost-expensive attacks at once. If you have three copies of your main fire attacker and two copies of your main water attacker, and the Fire-type main attacker’s cost is RC and the Water-type main attacker’s cost is WW, you would say that, at a minimum, you need 3 fire, 4 water, and 3 copies of either energy. As your Water-type attacker can only take water energies, you should weigh the use of the three “either” energy slots more in favor of Water energies, perhaps including 2 Water energy and 1 Fire energy for your last energies.

Other Helpful Notes for Pre-release

What to Bring

In addition to bringing yourself and the money required to participate in the pre-release event, here are a few other things you should consider bringing with you that won’t be included in your Build & Battle Box or otherwise provided to you:

  • Deck Sleeves. Bring a minimum of 40 for your pre-release deck. This will help to keep your new cards protected so that you can play with them long into the future. My personal recommendation is Ultimate Guard’s Katana sleeves.

  • Dice. Bring at least a single coin flip die and six damage counter dice. Bring more if you can. With bulky Stage 1 and Stage 2 Pokémon ex running amok, damage piles up faster than ever. You don’t want to run out of dice to keep track of damage.

  • Playmat. While not required to play, a playmat is a good item to have with you to help extend the life of your deck sleeves.

  • Perfect Fit or Penny Sleeves. These are the sleeves you’d use to protect the valuable cards from your kit that you don’t end up playing with in your deck. Don’t have them? Use some spare deck sleeves.

Above all else, remember that Pre-release Events are primarily fun ways to get your hands on cards from the newest set early. Far more so than even in regular play, pre-releases are very luck-dependent and your deck is unlikely to be especially consistent. Just sit back, crack your packs, and prepare for a casual, fun time. Don’t stress too hard about winning.

A Breakdown of Contents in Temporal Forces Build & Battle Box Preconstructed Decks

Each Build and Battle Box contains a preconstructed 40-card deck. In that deck are the promo card and three segments of cards worth taking note of, beginning with two Pokémon-centric groups—one influenced by the promo’s type and the other influenced by the type of another random promo card from the set’s Build & Battle Boxes.

This set’s Promo cards are pictured below.

Additionally, each preconstructed deck contains cards from two of the Pokémon Groups below.

In addition to the promo card and the cards from the two Pokémon groups, each kit often contains supplementary cards for your deck. These cards and Basic Energy cards will fill the remaining slots of your 40-card preconstructed deck, with each deck containing no more than two of each card listed below:

Supplementary Cards
This set release does not appear to contain any supplementary cards that aren't tied to a specific promo cluster.