I am thinking about another way to play the game, where all you need are some energy, a booster box, and an opponent.
You first crack all the packs, remove the basic energy, not including reverse holo basic energy, and shuffle all the cards from your booster box into one giant deck.
You then look at the basic energy you pulled, and for each energy type you have, multiply that by 5, so if you pulled 3 fairy energy from your 36 packs, you get 15 fairy energy.
With all the energies, form 9 piles featuring each of the 9 basic energies.
From the giant deck, take a card, then your opponent takes a card. Do this 6 times to form the prize cards.
You and your opponent takes turn drawing a card until each of you have 4 cards in your hand, then flip a coin. If heads, you may pick an energy from the 9 energy piles, and if tails, you must draw from the giant deck.
Every time you have to draw a card, you must flip a coin. If heads, you may draw an energy from one of the 9 energy piles, if tails, you must draw from the giant deck.
The giant deck is shared by both players. If you decide to draw an energy, you do not draw a card from the giant deck. For a card that tells you to draw cards, you must draw from the giant deck.
Do you know how much chaos this is going to create?
This way of playing ensures you that you draw dud cards some of the time. Imagine drawing a stage 2 card in which you don't have the previous stages.
Considering there are trainer cards that search your deck, instead of one giant deck, with the 36 boosters, make 6 60 card decks, and instead of drawing from one deck, you may choose to draw from one of 6 decks. If a trainer card tells you to search for a card, you choose a deck, and you may only search from that deck. When drawing your 6 prize cards, you would draw one card from each of the 6 decks instead. Your opponent does the same. When a card tells you to draw 3 cards, you do not have to draw from the same deck.
You win if you draw your last prize card, your opponent has no more pokemon left, and when no cards are left in all 6 decks, you still flip a coin. If heads, you draw an energy. If tails, you don't draw anything. If all energy are exhausted, you must draw from the 6 decks.
There is another way where you would have the one giant deck, you draw 6 cards and put it on the table face up. You pick one of the cards, and you draw the next card and put it on the table face up to replace the one you took. If only there was a quick way to shuffle a 360 card deck.
You may set the discard pile so they are shared too. If a trainer card tells you to retrieve a pokemon from your discard pile, you may retrieve your opponent's pokemon if you want to.
Because of the game having 9 basic energy types, it is difficult to integrate the energies into the giant deck, so I had to come up with the coin flip method.
However this new way of playing is, the basic premise is, the booster box is a shared deck between you and your opponent, and the draws are completely random and all over the place.
I wish that at least TPCi acknowledges 30 card, 2 on 2, and team battle as official formats, if not, encourage stores to support these formats in league. The biggest drawback with this game is that there is no way to play free for all.
