My buddy Steven (@bigboygametime) loves Pokémon. He says it’s a nice change of vibe from the grimdark-darkness that’s so prevalent in “the hobby.” I agree. It’s cute and bright. You have these little monster guys. They fight a little and knock each other out. It’s adorbs monster fight club. Neat. But also a little weird I guess. It’s like cock fighting for kids through the lens of anime. Huh. Never thought of it that way. I still like it.

I have always wanted to play – mostly out of curiosity – so Steven and I decided to play over video chat. I went to a local card shop and bought like 120+ basic energy cards for a total of $3. We each bought a “Build & Battle” box and a couple of booster packs. I suggested we play with the pre-built 40-card decks first, then do a sort of “limited” format with the boosters. We did. It was fun. I liked it. We both had so much fun we’re going to play Pokémon over video chat once a month going forward.

I’m not going to go nuts on Pokémon. I have zero intention of doing so. It’s crazy to me that people approach this as an investment. Yeah, I have some pretty valuable miniatures, but I don’t think of them as “an investment.” I try not to buy anything that I don’t have plans of painting and/or using in a game. Witnessing videos of grown-ass men stealing Pokémon cards at conventions makes me ill. I am simply approaching this as a fun little thing to do once a month with my good friend. It’s my fun thing, not my hustle. Totally different.

I do not enjoy keeping up with “the meta” – I enjoy discovery through play, not obsessive front-loading to build an unbeatable deck. It’s part of why I’ve bounced off of Magic: The Gathering. I still like that game in theory, but I got rid of all my cards for it (other than the proxies I’ve made). It’s definitely more complicated than Pokémon. Whether that’s better or worse depends on the person. For my taste right now, simpler is better.

In my first two booster packs, I pulled two Pokémon cards that are pretty desirable, then immediately sold them to a local card shop for $11. I feel no need to keep or collect rare cards. If I think the card mechanic is fun, I can proxy those cards for the cost of my time, printer paper and ink, plus I’ll have an original little work of art. I’ll just do that and stick to a few cheapy cards once in a while (we’re talking like $0.25-$0.50 cards here). Right now I’m not even planning on buying boosters. Just proxying, buying cheapos, and trading with Steven via plain white envelopes sent with good ol’ letter postage stamps. Fun. Easy. Cheap. Friend stuff. 🙂

Steven makes proxies for Pokémon. I wanted to make some proxies for Pokémon, too. Here they are. Ironically, they aren’t cute and bright. But they’re mine.

Sorry this isn’t miniatures-related (I suppose it’s strange because this is “bryanruheminiatures.com”). Hope you think they’re fun anyway.

Until next time!
– Bryan