Pokemon Prerelease Tournaments – Tips and Tricks

Gearing up for your first Pokemon prerelease tournament and don’t know where to start? Or maybe you’ve already been to several and want to brush up your strategy? In this guide, we’re going to share essential Pokemon prerelease tips with you to help guide you towards a successful event – whatever your goals may be.

What is a Pokemon TCG prerelease?

Every year, several times a year, Pokemon releases a new set or expansion of cards. While some of these releases are smaller ones (called special sets), the major set releases are a cause of a lot of excitement and fanfare for both Pokemon TCG collectors and players.

For collectors, it represents new Pokemon products to buy, new Pokemon packs to open, and exciting and valuable Pokemon cards to hunt for.

For players, new Pokemon TCG releases are even more profound, allowing them to try new strategies, reconfigure their favorite decks, and learn to deal with powerful new Pokemon meta decks.

And while new cards are not standard tournament legal for a few weeks following the release, players do have an opporunity to collect and explore the latest cards from the new set early. That’s where the prerelease comes in.

A Pokemon prerelease is an event at a local game shop where players can meet with other players, open their Pokemon TCG build and battle boxes, and build a custom deck from their prerelease kits. This is a sealed format, meaning that unlike most Pokemon tournaments, you won’t be able to show up with a pre constructed deck. Instead, you’ll have to build a deck from the cards that you get at the event.

Why are Pokemon prereleases fun?

Besides the excitement of opening cards from the latest set, Pokemon prereleases are fun because you get to strategize about what deck to build under serious constraints. This often leads to inventive new strategies that you can use to battle your opponent. It also means you’ll play with cards you often never would in a standard Pokemon battle.

The creative nature of prereleases, where you are forced to come up with a cohesive deck strategy under a time limit, is one of the most fun aspects of a Pokemon pre release. And while figuring out how to do it for the first time can certainly be daunting, overtime you’ll find that it gets much, much easier to build an effective strategy from the nuts and bolts you are given at the event.

Pokemon prerelease tournaments general rules

Every Pokemon TCG build and battle box comes with a forty card deck and four booster packs. You are able to use whatever you get inside the packs in your deck, ignoring usual Pokemon deck building rules like the four card limit. The forty card decks have a lot of useful cards to help you actually play at a Pokemon prerelease tournament, and they’re usually competitive within the prerelease format as they are. Yet, cards that you pull from your booster packs can go a long way in bolstering your strategy and even give you a massive competitive edge over your opponents.

Before getting into the more advanced Pokemon TCG prerelease deck building strategy, there are a few general guidines to follow no matter the deck you are making. These include:

Include as many trainer cards as possible

Always include the trainers you get: its very hard to come by good trainer cards in a prerelease tournament. While your included deck will have a few, generally it’s a good idea to include all of the trainers you get from your boosters in your final deck.

The only exception to this rule would be if the card is somehow unplayable or a really, really bad match for what you are playing (like a trainer that only works with ancient Pokemon and you only have Future ones).

Choose your energies carefully

Unlike the rest of your deck that must be built from the cards you find in packs and your deck, you are not limited in regards to energies. Your Pokemon Professor should have plenty of extra energies lying around of all types, and you are free to use as many of them as you want in any combination.

It can be hard to balance the number of energies you add to your deck. I find a good rule of thumb is to add around ten. Too many more and your deck becomes absurdly full of energies, and any less and the energies you will need will be hard to find.

Like when building a normal Pokemon deck, your prerelease deck should be made up of only one or two different types of Pokemon attackers. This way it will be more likely you will find the energy you need when you need it.

Pokemon prerelease strategy guide

It quite honestly can be a little overwhelming to come up with a deck that works during a tight 30 minute timeframe that you then have to battle other trainers with. However, there are a few tips and tricks you can use to make the process smoother, and help you win more battles.

In general, there are a few main strategies you can follow.

Build a deck with the kit you are given

Your forty card deck that comes in the build and battle deck will have something of a strategy to it already, and it will almost always have an evolution line of Pokemon. The easiest strategy you can do is to just run with whatever evolution line and core cards your deck gives you. To make it even easier for you, your build and battle deck will come with instructions on how to play key cards in the deck.

Build a strategy around your strongest pull

My favorite strategy, however, has nothing to do with playing it safe. Indeed, my strongest prerelease decks have not been the ones where I just play verbatim what is included in the prerelease deck. Instead, my best decks tend to be the ones where I’ve put significant work into building a strategy around a few powerful cards I’ve managed to pull in my packs. Sometimes, this can be just one powerful two prize Pokemon.

Still, I’ve also had success building prerelease decks around cards with strong attacks that are easy to get off. One of my best decks to date was a bit unusual and definitely veered from my kit, but included Slither Wings.

While Slither Wings normally might not seem very powerful, in a prerelease format where most Pokemon have lower HP, a basic Pokemon that dishes out 120 damage plus burn with just two energy is incredibly powerful.

Look for other Pokemon in your packs like this one that might not otherwise be terribly strong, but function well in prerelease formats.

Stall tactics

Last but not least, it’s important to keep in mind that you can certainly stall in a prerelease. While not an effective strategy in competitive play, prerelease decks are by definition clunky and inconsistent, meaning it can be helpful to throw some high HP Pokemon into your deck and use them to block your opponent from taking KOs while you build up your bench.

Look for high hp single prize Pokemon that can take several hits so your opponent wastes turns attacking it while you get your stronger attackers ready to battle.

For collectors, prerelease provides peak pricing

If you are more into the collecting or buying/selling side of Pokemon, you’ll be happy to know that new Pokemon cards are usually at their most valuable during the two week period before the set releases. This means that typically the cards you get in your build and battle decks will be the most valuable they are going to be in the near future before the set actually comes out. This is because a lot of people are eager to get the new cards ASAP and will pay for the convenience.

At the same time, if you are looking to get your hands on singles, it’s usually best to wait until the set has been out for a little while before you start buying cards.

And with that, you are ready to tackle your first prerelease! Get out there, have some fun, and win some battles!