pokemart123 said:
Thanks for the replies guys. Unfortunately, there aren't really any other players that I know. The tournament is to see how many people turn up on the day. I'll grab a handful of packs today, then I'll research the cards in that list and see what appeals to our play style.
Then I'll be selling the excess yugioh cards I have to fund decks.
What kind of price am I looking at to build a couple of competitive decks?
And are there any "staple" cards, that I should just pick up?
Competitive decks aren't that expensive. Compared to Yugioh and Magic, they're really cheap (or so I've heard). They can really vary, but I'd say most of the cheap-ish ones are about $80 to $120 (these are all in US dollars). The cheapest can be around $60, and the expensive ones can be around $200, if they use a lot of new and/or ultra rare cards. And the
really expensive ones are around $700-$800 ($600 of that is getting a playset of a certain card: Tropical Beach).
There are definitely a lot of staple cards. N, Professor Juniper/Sycamore (they're the same card), Ultra Ball, Professor's Letter, Muscle Band, Colress, Skyla, and Tool Scrapper are all ones I can think of off the top of my head.
To answer your previous post, the cheapest top tier deck that's easy(ish) to play is probably Plasma. It uses Thundurus EX, Deoxys EX, Lugia EX, Snorlax, and Genesect EX, and is basically a fast beatdown deck. Lugia EX takes extra prizes with it's attack, and Snorlax is really powerful for a non-EX. Thundurus gets Energy on your Pokemon faster, and Deoxys boosts their damage. Genesect is for it's ability to bring up 1 of your opponent's benched Pokemon. Once the Xerneas and Yveltal tins come out mid-march, Darkrai/Yveltal will be pretty cheap. Most of the stage 2 decks need Tropical Beach to match the power of the other top tier decks, which is the only $150+ card in the format right now.
Sadly, there aren't too many good cute Pokemon right now. The only ones I can think of that use them are really complicated gimmick decks that aren't that great. There's Empoleon, which can play Leafeon and Emogla (< has the cutest card art in the history of forever), and is really simple to play. If Aromatisse counts as cute (I personally think it's hideous), then there's the Fairy deck, which I'd say is easy to moderate skill level, depending on the type of Fairy deck you make.
The best packs are probably XY, Plasma Blast, and Legendary Treasures to a lesser extent. Plasma Storm, Plasma Freeze and Boundaries Crossed are also really good, though I would be cautious about buying Boundaries Crossed, since it's probably going to be illegal within 6 months.