Game Guide (Deprecated)

[admin]

I am posting the deprecated guide here for archive reasons. We need a new game guide!

About

TCG ONE is a new Pokemon Trading Card Game Simulator where players can gather online and play with their favorite cards in their respective formats.

It first went live on 18 July 2013 and is being actively developed and maintained.

Index

• Quickstart Guide
• Terminology
• Quickplay Decks View
• Deck Editor View
• Import Deck Wizard
• Random Deck Wizard
• Gameplay
• Career
• Bits
• Market
• Quests
• Achievements
• Formats
• In-depth Information

Quickstart Guide

Follow these steps to immediately start playing games. Games are first ‘created’ by a player then ‘joined’ by another player. Both players must have an account and be logged in order to play a game.

Creating games

1. Login to TCG ONE.
2. Click ‘Create Quickplay Game’ button at top-left.
3. Your account will have no decks at first. But players have already built many ‘public’ decks, so you can select and play. Click ‘View All Decks’ button.
4. Select a public deck by blue tick button left to it.
   You can examine them by clicking their name and navigate to other pages for more.
5. You’re good to go. Create your game and you need to wait until someone joins your game.

Joining games

1. Login to TCG ONE. If you want to play with yourself, you need to create another account and login on another browser.
2. In ‘Ongoing Games’ list, if there is a game in ‘WAITING’ status, you can join it via blue ‘Join’ button next to it.
   Mind the type of game (Quickplay or Career) and format of it before joining.
3. You will be prompted to select a deck. Follow steps 3-4 above to select a public deck. Join the game and you will be taken to game view.
4. Follow on screen instructions carefully. Good luck!

Terminology

Quickplay is the game type in which you can use EVERY card available in the system. You can use any card to build decks and battle. Perfect for casual playing and getting used to TCG ONE.

Career is the mode where players are given some cards for starters and they gain bits to open booster packs, use in-game market to trade cards, improve their decks, rank weekly and monthly, do quests and pursue achievements for greater rewards.

Bits are the in-game currency in Career.

Format is the specification of available expansions allowed in a game. Examples: Unlimited, Classic, Worlds 2004, etc. Decks also have a format attribute to match the game’s format.

Quickplay Decks View

Quickplay decks can be built by clicking ‘Quickplay Decks’ at top.

• Left side shows your decks
• Right side shows public decks made by all players
• ‘Create’ button opens blank ‘Deck Editor View’
• Clicking name of your decks opens ‘Deck Editor View’ in editing mode
• Clicking name of a public deck opens ‘View Deck Window’
• Blue tick button ‘selects’ the deck in Create or Join game windows.
• Clone button (near deck name) allows to save that deck as different. You can also clone public decks to make your own revisions.
• ‘Import’ button allows importing paper decks into TCG ONE via copy/paste.
• ‘Random’ button allows generating random decks for playtesting or fun.

Deck Editor View

• Left part shows cards available in the system, middle part shows cards in deck, right part is for selected card image.

• Filter selection by Name, Expansion and/or Card Type to find cards and add them via ‘>’ button in between. Remove cards by ‘<’ button. Right/Left keyboard buttons are also mapped to these keys.
• Every deck has a format. It restricts the available cards to use in that deck. You can select the format in bottom left, default is Unlimited. Your deck’s format affects the games that you can join. See formats part for broad information about game formats in TCG ONE.
• Select ‘Public’ checkbox near Save button to list your deck as public. Public decks can be used/cloned by other players.
• Decks have ‘used count’, which is incremented every time it is used in a battle or cloned. Re-saving a deck clears its ‘used count’ and updates its ‘last updated’ date.
• Print icons are used to export decks to paper.

Import Deck Wizard

Importing decks from forums or paper could be a picky task. TCG ONE provides an advanced Import Deck feature that allows you to copy paste import your deck. This feature is available via ‘Import’ button in both Quickplay and Career deck list views.

1. Select the expansions that your deck will cover. You can multi select via CTRL-click.
2. Paste your deck’s contents. The accepted format is for every line. Inspect the image for better understanding.
3. Click ‘>>’ button to parse your text.
4. For each line, system checks through the included expansions for card name matches. It constructs a multi select list for you to select the right card amongst those matches. For example, “4 Seadra” line matches to 3 different Seadra cards in selected expansions, so you need to select one to import.
5. Click Import button at the bottom (you may need to scroll down) to drop into ‘Deck Editor View’. Make necessary modifications and save your deck.

Random Deck Wizard

Random Deck Wizard allows you to quickly come up with a deck from any expansion. Pretty useful for getting used to new formats and playtesting. It is available via ‘Random’ button in ‘Quickplay Decks View’.

1. Select the expansions that your deck should cover. You can multi select via CTRL-click.
2. Select the types your deck should cover. You can multi select via CTRL-click. 3 types are allowed at maximum.
3. Click Generate button. The algorithm will try its best to come up with a random deck, taking evolution lines and energy into consideration. After finding pokemon lines and appropriate energy, it fills the deck with random trainers. Average card distribution is 20-20-20.

If it cannot find a suitable random deck it gives a warning. You should try different combinations then.

Gameplay

Games takes place in game view, which automatically opens (in both players) after somebody ‘joins’ the game.

1. Key instructions are displayed on every game start. These instructions are a good summary of the gameplay tutorial.
   • Please wait for card images to load at first. It can take up to 1 minute to load them all.
   • Make sure you use Chrome or Firefox browser for best user experience.
   • Game is played using the actions on the lower left side. If its your turn, you will see all actions you can do at the moment.
   • In bottom, you see your hand. You can play cards by clicking on them if its your turn.
   • You may zoom cards by right clicking on them.
   • It is extremely important to follow the gamelog all the time to understand what is going on.
   • Game offers no undo feature. Make your moves wisely.
   • Please report bugs you find immediately using the in-game function.
2. Select your active pokemon.
3. Select your benched pokemons, if you like.
4. You’ll be asked if you want to draw extra cards if your opponent used mulligan.
5. A coin flip is made to decide who starts first.
6. The engine starts 1st turn.

Left side includes game log, game chat, report bug button, refresh button, surrender button, spectator settings button and actions panel.

Top-middle is your opponent’s battleground: prizes, defending pokemon, bench, hand count, discard pile, deck, respectively.

Middle is your battleground with the same contents as your opponent’s.

Bottom-middle displays your hand. Cards are played by (left) clicking on them (if it’s your turn).

Right clicking on any card stack or card shows up the contents of that stack or zooms in that card (except prizes and deck).

Game is played via ‘Actions’ on bottom-left part (you’ll see them if it’s your turn) such as moves of your active pokemon, stadium effect in play, poke-power’s if appropriate, also retreat and end turn. Game automatically offers all the available actions in that game instant. Because it’s all automated, players are only allowed things that they can do by game rules, nothing more.

The UI itself is designed to be intuitive enough so players will easily get used to it after a few games. The only catch should be the active pokemon being in the left, rather than in the forward middle, but this choice is made for comfortable card images.

Career

Career was first made available for Classic format on 1 December 2013. It DOES NOT cover all cards in the system yet. As it is considered fresh, newer expansions are being gradually made available. Quickplay is the alternative if players want to play with all available cards.

Career is the mode where players are given some cards for starters and they gain bits to open booster packs, use in-game market to trade cards, improve their decks, rank weekly and monthly, do quests and pursue achievements for greater rewards.

Players start their career by selecting a starter deck. Selected decks’ contents are added to the player’s inventory. Note that career decks differ from quickplay decks, you can only use the cards in your inventory to build career decks.

• Progress tab shows the progress of your career record.
• Market tab is used for buying cards and packs.
• Inventory tab shows personal inventory of cards with their quantities. Individual cards can be listed up in market from this tab.
• Career Decks shows your career only decks and you can create new ones or modify existing ones here.
• Quests show status of your assigned quests. You can redeem rewards or assign more quests.
• Achievements tab displays progress of your achievements and you can redeem rewards.

Bits

Bits are the in-game virtual currency for Career. You can “purchase” cards, packs and decks with bits you’ve earned from completing matches.

• Bits are primarily gained through playing Career type games. The amount of bits received is the amount of Score accumulated.
• Quickplay games also awards bits cut in half compared to Career games.
• You will also earn 200 Bits for completing a quest and 100 Bits for leveling up.
• Donating rewards some complimentary bits.

Market

Market is where players buy and sell cards for bits.

• Plenty of singles are available in market. Sales can be filtered with card name and seller via column headers.
• Store is an actor in market, who sells sealed & randomized Booster Packs and Theme Decks. (See Drop Rates for in-depth knowledge)
• Each Booster Pack contains 10 cards: 1 rare, 3 uncommon and 6 common rarity.
• Energy Packs are sold cheap and each one contains 5 random basic energy cards.
• Players cannot sell items before reaching Level 10.
• Players can put up cards in their inventories to sell them for bits via Inventory tab.
• Contents of starter deck and promo cards has trade lock and cannot be sold.
• My transactions link will show details of your latest 20 transactions.

Upon buying a booster pack (from the store), a pack opener window lets you reveal cards one by one for the extra thrill.

Putting cards in market is achieved via Inventory tab by entering quantity for sale, and price per card.

Quests

Quests are the key for earning additional bits and get all 4 copies of promo cards.

• Each day, you’ll get 2 new quests (chosen at random). You can have maximum of 6 quests.
• Quests reward random prizes: 200 bits, 1 random promo (picked from the pool of promos you already have) or 1 rare holo card.
• You can reroll a quest once a day if you don’t happen like it (and lose any progress on it).
• Only career games are considered for progression.

Achievements

Achievements are long-term goals for Career, and they reward Promo cards.
See Achievement List Sheet

Formats

Format is the specification of expansions & cards allowed in a game. Examples: Unlimited, Standard, Classic, Worlds 2004, etc. Decks also have a format attribute to match the game’s format.

Formats & Expansions chart

In-depth Information

This section covers more technical stuff for the people who like to know better about this project.

Hidden columns in Card Database

You can access Rarity, Drop Rate, PV (Power Value), Notes columns via this cog button.

Drop Rates and Booster Pack Generation

Drop Rate Types: STANDARD(50), UPPER(44), EXTRA(38), ULTRA(32), SUPER(26), EXTREME(20), EPIC(14), LEGENDARY(8)

• Numbers beneath types represents the weight of that card in its rarity class.
• A rarity class is either Common, Uncommon or Rare (includes Rare, Holo Rare, Secret Rare, etc).
• A card has a rarity class and a Drop Rate assignment.
• By default, all cards has STANDARD drop rate, with the exception of Holo Rares having EXTRA, Secret Rares having SUPER drop rates. Those default drop rates can be overriden for each card.
• A pack contains 1 rare, 3 uncommon and 6 common cards from a single expansion set.
• An expansion set (Base Set, Jungle, etc) can contain any number of common, uncommon or rare cards.
• Total of K booster packs should contain 6K commons, 3K uncommons, K rares, evenly distributed amongst the given drop rate types to each of them.

Example: Let there be 3 uncommon cards (A, B, C) in a set where we need to generate 180 booster packs. A has STANDARD, B has EPIC, C has SUPER drop rates. Add up their drop rate values: 50+14+26=90. Target is 540 cards (3 uncommons in a pack), so we find the accelerator value = 540/90=6. When we distribute it, we’ll have 50*6=300 Card A, 14*6=84 Card B, 26*6=156 Card C.

Score Calculation and Power Value

Score depends on number of prizes you’ve taken, how many minutes have you played, whether you won or not and the way the game has ended.

Every card has a Power Value (PV) between 1-8. By default, commons have 1, uncommons have 2, rares have 4. The cards in a deck has a total Power Value, displayed in the career deck editor as a number near Save button.

A percentage of the gained score is shifted from the player with more PV deck, to the user with less PV deck, depending on the difference of their decks PV value.

This system was devised for to protect players with weak inventories to be overpowered with players with strong inventories.

Excluded & Altered Cards

One of the most distinguishing features of TCG ONE is that it knows what every card does and performs its actions for you. As such, programming TCG ONE to know how to handle every single card and every possible scenario is a monumental task, though definitely a long-term goal of this project. Currently, a few older cards are programmed to only account for common scenarios, some have bugs, and some are not programmed into the simulator at all because of their complexity. But for the most part, you shouldn’t really run into any of these problems, if you do, please report them using bug reporting feature.

You can search for unimplemented card by selecting “Not Implemented” Card Type (in the bottom) in Card Database. Cards with implementation notes can be seen with “Notes” column enabled.

Known Bugs and Limitations

• You should not lose connection, navigate to different site or close the browser during a game.
• Choosing the resolution of similar effects is not possible.
• There’s no notion of draw games, sudden death, or winning by 2 condition over 1.
• 2-on-2 format is not possible.
• Mobile devices are not supported.

TCG ONE is a great game! Enjoy!