Useful TCG Links
 

Hi everyone! Whether you're a veteran in TCG or are interested in just starting out, this thread contains a ton of useful links for both beginners and experts alike. Let me know if there are any others that I am missing (I'm sure I'm missing at least a few) and I'll put it up here. Enjoy!

Official Pokemon Links
Home to all the basic TCG information.

• The home page for Pokemon TCG. It's kind of flashy and confusing to get around, but a decent resource for navigating around.
• The Rules and Resources section contains all the important information you'll need to know, including rules and tournament procedures.
• The Tournament Search can help you find tournaments that are around your area. It is constantly updated, so check often!

TCG Forums / Articles
Interested in reading articles about the current metagame? Want to join a forum dedicated to TCG? Check these out!

• The Top Cut is the #1 TCG website in terms of tournament coverage. Started by 4 of the best players, it now has weekly live shows, tournament matches and streaming as well as articles and analyses. Their videos can be found on their YouTube. I especially love the tournament matches they have: Not only do you get to watch incredible players duke it out, they also provide commentary on all their videos so you can understand what's going on.
• SixPrizes is a great website with weekly articles and tournament reports. It also has a section for beginners, which you might want to check out if you're new to playing the game. If you're wondering about what the "Underground" portion means... Underground articles are generally much larger and more extensive than normal ones. You'll have to pay to become a member to read these articles though.
• Hey Trainer is the best forum in terms of discussion. It has a more relaxed and fun environment like Smogon, and has very enriching discussions about the metagame and its decks. It's also home to a lot of TCG's best players. You'll have to register to join the forum, but I guarantee you it's worth it.
• The PokeGym is a nice forum and is home to many Tournament Organizers, judges, and official TCPi staff members. Many people go on PokeGym to organize online trade threads.
• PokeBeach is home to another nice and friendly forum. PokeBeach also has some of the best TCG scans online. (On the home page, scroll down on the left and you'll see "Card Scans." It is sorted by set.)
• The Deck Out is an outstanding online blog started by Esa Juntunen from Finland. There are a lot of incredible articles on there about TCG strategies, the metagame, and decks. It also has several great decklists of standard metagame decks if you want to try them out.

Useful Resources for Building a Deck
These links can assist you in building a deck.

• Bebe's Search has many different helpful resources.
  • It has an incredibly useful Card Database which can help you easily sort through cards. You can specify filters ("Poke Power, Can burn, etc.") to make it even easier to find the card you're looking for.
  • It also has a Proxy Creator which can be used to print out proxies when you don't have the card you want to play with. It allows you to search for cards and prints them out at the perfect size. Incredibly useful!
• Pokepedia is another great database and is easy to use. It allows you to easily search for specific cards and functions.
• SteveP's Online Decklist is excellent for printing out decklists for tournaments. With this, you can easily create neat and clean decklists. It even does a deck check before you print your list out to make sure that everything is OK. By far the best resource in terms of online decklists.

Online Simulators
Great for practicing and playing online.

• PlayTCG is a free, clean, good looking program which has scans of all the cards. However, its chat system is lacking (You can talk to your opponent on IRC at #tcg to fix this!). Once you get the hang of it though, it's really great to use and is a personal favorite of mine.
• Redshark is another free program. It does not have any scans and requires Hamachi to work, but has a nicer interface, chat function, and logs all your actions so you are able to go over them after the battle is over.
• Pokemon TCG Online is Pokemon's official online simulator. However, in order to build competitive decks, you'll need code cards which cost money. (You can get a code card for around $0.30. Each code card redeems one online pack.) If you're interested in just starting out and learning how the game works though, it's free and very easy to understand.

Online Stores
If you want to buy any packs or accessories online, these sites are for you.

• Troll and Toad is one of the best sites to buy singles, packs, boxes, sleeves, etc. from. They have reasonable prices as well. Troll and Toad also buys cards in bulk, so if you're interested in dumping those useless commons and uncommons, I recommend them.
• The Gathering Ground is another great website to buy singles, packs, boxes, sleeves, etc. from.
• Pokevault is the best website to buy Japanese merchandise from. If you're sick of using those boring and plain sleeves, Pokevault is home to all the best and cheapest Japanese sleeves, binders, plushes, etc.

I'd add http://www.professor-oak.com/ to the list of online stores. I mainly just use T&T though.

I'd like to suggest http://www.tradecardsonline.com/ as an online simulator. The interface doesn't recognize the game rules, instead you need to apply them yourself (pretty much like an irl game), but you're free to move your cards around. It needs some practice though to get used to it but after a few tries it's easy. Also it opens the posibility to match you up with people trading cards you need if you setup your wants and trade lists, provided they're located near you =3
Should also note it has every set available since base set to next destinies, only pending the Dark explorers update :3

Question on PlayTCG: IS there a best Browser to use it? I'm having difficulty trying to figure out how to flip turns and do some other basic stuff, it's not as powerful as RedShark (though Redshark isn't updated)

Flip turns? As in let your opponent know whose turn it is?

Playtcg is set up to give players as much control over the game as they'd like, so there is no set turn. You just sorta do whatever and try and make sure you're following the rules. I haven't found any browser to be the most efficient though. I have had some trouble with certain cards though, which has since been fixed (just not showing an image).

The chat is its biggest weakness. A simple change like making it post the most recent message at the bottom would be a little more user-friendly.

The TCG official simulator takes a while to load - might want to include that.

Professor Oak is a joke of a site, The Gathering Ground is a joke of a site. If you want to buy/sell cards, the only real sites are Troll and Toad, StrikeZone, or GamingETC (although the last has had the pokemon buy list down for a while :/). Ebay is always superior to all three for buying anything but cheap cards ($1-), however.