Help & FAQ

What is CardForge?

CardForge is a deck builder for the Pokémon Trading Card Game. It helps you build legal decklists across Standard, Expanded, GLC, and Prerelease formats, surfaces deck-health diagnostics and statistics, lets you favourite and learn from community decks, and (with Pro) gives you Claude-powered card suggestions, matchup analysis, and draw probability tools.

CardForge is an unofficial fan project — see our fan-content notice.

Building your first deck

1. Head to My Decks and click New deck. Give it a name and pick a format.
2. Use the search panel on the left to find Pokémon, Trainers, and Energy. Filter by format, supertype, type, or set. Click a card to add it to your deck.
3. The right-hand panel shows your current decklist and totals. Drag to reorder; click a count to adjust quickly.
4. Hit Savewhen you’re happy. Toggle visibility to Publicif you’d like others to be able to find it on Explore.

Understanding Deck Health

Every deck shows a Deck Health summary while you build. It checks your card counts, Pokémon/Trainer/Energy ratios, format legality, and whether the deck is the correct size for the chosen format. Items shown in red block legality; amber items are warnings worth considering before you submit to a tournament.

Deck Health is rule-based, not opinion-based — it won’t tell you which Pokémon to play, only whether your deck is legal and balanced.

What Pro unlocks

CardForge Pro adds Claude-powered features built specifically for deck building:

• AI card suggestions— recommends cards that fit your deck’s strategy and identifies gaps.
• Card autocomplete— lets you type a partial name and get smart, format-aware completions.
• Matchup analysis— explains how your deck fares against the current meta’s top archetypes.
• Deck statistics— opening-hand probabilities, consistency scoring, and dead-draw analysis.

See Pricing for current plan details. You can cancel any time from Settings.

Known beta limitations

• CardForge is currently a closed beta running on a Vercel preview URL. Expect occasional rough edges, cold starts on less-trafficked routes, and the odd missing card image.
• Welcome and verification emails are sent fromonboarding@resend.devduring the beta, so Gmail may file them under Promotions. A branded sender will land before the public launch.
• The card pool is updated periodically from the upstream public API. Brand-new sets may take a day or two to appear; please report any specific cards you can’t find.
• Stripe is in test mode for most of the beta — you won’t be charged. Use Stripe’s4242 4242 4242 4242test card to try the upgrade flow.
• Mobile UI is supported but desktop is the primary build target. If something feels broken on a phone, send us feedback so we can prioritise it.

Reporting a bug

Click the Feedbackbutton at the bottom-right of any page (it’s hidden on legal and auth screens to stay out of the way) and tell us what happened. We capture the page URL and your browser user-agent automatically — that’s usually enough to reproduce the problem.

For anything sensitive or anything that needs a back-and-forth, email danryanchan@gmail.com.