It's been a long while since my children played the Pokemon TGC, not so long (and still comes up occasionally) for Magic the Gathering- it's a lot of fun, but know what you're getting into!
-definitely there is a lot of strategy, particularly in deck building (and remember, maybe counterintuitively, the smallest legal deck is always the best, it's mighty tempting to throw in just ONE more card you cant live without, but dont do it!)
-unlike chess, the game evolves over time as new sets of cards come out and old ones are retired.
-more so than chess is the idea of the metagame- what's best to play isnt always an objective fact, it can depend on whats popular where you are playing (although chess obviously has a metagame too
-hmm, resale value...maybe not so much. I've got a closet full of retired vintage cards Id sure like to sell you!
-good cards are indeed hard to get, the most desirable cards are always rare, ultrarare or whatever. If you are trying to build an actually competitive deck (and soon enough, you will be), it can get VERY expensive. Buying lots and lots of packs and opening them all hoping to find that coveted rare card is doomed to fail. (DAMHIKT!) Much better to decide what cards you really want to finish that killer deck and buy them as singles. You're right, forgeries abound, but there are honest card shops online (still a few mom and pop places too) like Star City Games where you are very unlikely to buy a fake.
-Boring? Yeah maybe but its really a gateway drug- soon enough they can move on to Yugi-oh, Magic and lots of others with more challenging play.
Since there are many kids (or parents of chess kids) on the forum, I thought I'd share something interesting.
Recently, I'm forced to learn Pokemon TCG (trading cards game) because I took my son to a pokemon TCG club (mom bought him a pokemon cards gift and I wanted to let him play with them properly).
Of course, we didn't know how to play (also we didn't even have a proper deck, which we didn't know at the time, so weren't even able to play) when we showed up. Well, that caused a bunch of heartaches so after only a few minutes at the club, I took him to the nearest Target and bought a few more sets of cards.
We trained for 2 weeks (mainly buying more cards after learning the rules) and went back to the club. Son had an enjoyable time. The club had about 25-30 players, mostly kids but some adults. We even went to a Pokemon TCG championship tournament (which happened near us).
I noticed that TCG and chess has many similarities.
TCG pros:
- there is a degree of randomness to TCG (mainly you never know which ofyour cards get put into the prize cards and the deck ordering); similar to real life where the best player don't always win.
- there are strategies in the game (mainly thru trainer cards but also with pokemon choices)
- it teaches good sportsmanship
- son's friends all own pokemon cards and are very into pokemon everything (except for the few whose parents don't expose them to)
- game characteristics /strategy can change dramatically based on the decks, even against same players.
- Very well organized with the backing of the Pokmone Company (owned by Nintendo); e.g. the reginal championship at the local convention center costed 1/2 the price of the regional chess championship at a smaller local convention cneter.
- games are conducted more casually (pairings are informal at the club)
- when done playing (e.g. moving on to new cards), the old cards have resale value and high demand.
TCG cons:
- good cards are hard to get (we always buy them from Target and Walmart instead of ebay because we don't want to deal with fakes. The means we pay a lot for each good card; but the biggest problem is we can't get certain trainer cards easily/cheaply.) The playing field definitely favors the player who can spend more money.
- I find the game incredibly boring (I play it with my son to he can test out his decks, I'm tempted to just write a program to relieve me of this duty); I just don't know how/why the kids love it. But the kids love it.