Why You Should Play the Pokemon TCG With Your Child

My son and I started playing the Pokemon Trading Card Game against each other during the COVID crisis. My son is 6. His brother is 4 and they are both currently in the grips of a Pokemon obsession that would be grounds for involuntary commitment in an adult. I am just old enough to have grown up with Ninja Turtles and GI Joe instead of Pokemon, so I am only passingly familiar with the IP.

As a lifelong gamer I had children primarily to increase the size of my board gaming group. It’s a long play, but I expect dividends in a decade. The current Poke-craze in my house presented an opportunity to ease him into the TCG/CCG world and I took the plunge with two theme decks from my FLGS, delivered contactless-ly to my car trunk.

My son selected a Cinderance Theme Deck for himself because that’s his starter in the Switch Game. I told him to pick for me as well, and he picked out a giant green drumming monkey called a “Rillaboom.” I assumed that it was because he knows I play drums, but as it turns out, he was playing me.

As apparently everyone in the world except me knows, Rillaboom, like all grass types is weak to fire and his deck has a huge type advantage against mine. Most of his guys do double damage to all of my guys. This brings us to our first of four main considerations:

Type Weaknesses are a major part of the game

If you’re playing with your children you’re going to have a very small metagame! In the Pokemon TCG, type weaknesses can often be a much bigger factor in victory than clever play or good hand management. This can be a problem with the game, if your card pool is limited it may be clear who is going to win before the first (of 6) points is scored. 

But you can make it a strength as well. If you need to hamstring yourself because of your child’s age, giving them the type advantage can help level the playing field. Or, consider agreeing to play without type advantages and explain why you’re doing that.

Your child’s reading level matters

While a Pokefan of any age will be able to name any Pokemon that appears on a card from sight alone (my 4-year-old can name literally hundreds of Pokemon, but still gets lost on his way to the bathroom sometimes) , and the Energy cards (the “mana” of this game) are merely colored symbols, there is still a lot of card text to read. Abilities and attacks on Pokemon, and effects from Trainer cards (the “spells” of this game)  need to be read. My son couldn’t read at all when we started and still is a limited reader now. So, we leveraged kids’ incredible ability of memorization. We went through every card in his deck, talked about what effect it has, acted out the effect, and he committed them all to memory. (Don’t worry, in your 60 card Theme deck there is a lot of duplication, you won’t have to go over 60 distinct cards.)

Alternatively, you can play with both of your hands face up in front of you, and they can ask you what a card does if they can’t remember or read it themselves. This is a friendly game, after all! (You are being friendly with your child, right?) This is how we started before he proved he could memorize his whole deck.

Your child’s hand size matters

I’m not talking about the number of cards, I’m talking about their actual hands. My son’s hands are too small to fan cards. When we graduated from face up cards he had a really terrible game. He was holding his cards so that most of them were hidden and he had trouble making plays and was getting frustrated. For $12 we solved the problem with a big, curved, plastic card holder. For young kids I recommend the same!

The biggest factor is you

If your child expresses any interest at all in your gaming hobby and likes Pokemon at all, chances are very high they are going to have fun playing this game with you. On my end, I find the game a little frustrating. You can get stuck with the wrong cards in the wrong order more often than I like, and the theme doesn’t do anything for me.

But, I want to play Netrunner with him someday (or whatever the thing that’s as cool as Netrunner in 10 years is) so I’m mortgaging a little fun now to have a ton of fun later. Pokemon is a great stepping stone out of “kid” games and towards “big kid” games and I play to focus on his development and enjoyment. I take it easy on him without throwing the game and he’s learning both how to win with style and lose with grace. It’s a joy to behold!

You can get a lot of mileage out of the theme decks, and if your child really gets into it, or has friends who play too, they are going to want to buy packs. There are a few approaches you can take, but here is what worked for us. First I bought an Elite Trainer Box like this one. Then I set up a “bounty board”: a whiteboard full of age appropriate chores. Whenever he completes one he gets a checkmark, four check marks earns him a pack.

The little boogers LOVE opening packs. You have no idea. Buy some and try it out. It’ll make you feel like a kid again.

He also earns the carrying box itself, the sleeves and accoutrements with 4 check marks. Lastly, the set of energy cards cost him 4 check marks. He’s building up a tiny collection that hasn’t broken the bank, and one he absolutely loves. It’s a challenge to keep them safe and stored, at my kids age they are as likely to end up on the floor as the box, so set aside a good storage place and help them remember to put their cards away every day.

The check marks that are redeemable for Poke-stuff system has been great for teaching him to pull his weight around the house and how to save far more effectively than it did with earning quarters. Money doesn't really mean anything to him, but boy does he understand the value of a pack of Pokemon cards!

Lastly, I have to mention that the Pokemon TCG has a robust online system, which could take an article(s) all its own to go over. But, in brief, your kids can play online where there are excellent parental controls for both chat and trading/buying. You should definitely save the little code cards that come in the physical packs because your kids are going to like opening digital packs as much as if they were real ones.

If your kids have any interest in gaming with you, the Pokemon Card Game might just be the perfect place for your family to start!