One of my main ways of divination, next to the Clow cards, is Magic the Gathering. After years of trying methods like tarot, lenormand & other cartomancies I saw someone on twitch giving readings with pokemon cards. I was interested and I've been doing it ever since!

Building your deck

First you have to decide what system you will be using. Magic the Gathering? Pokémon? Lorcana? When just starting out I suggest using cards you already own. It may not be the best of the best, but you can get an idea of what you want and if you like it. My own decks have between 50 and 75 cards.

What's also a neat thing is that you can tailor TCG divination decks to your liking! You could make a theme or have 'em be nicer or meaner (I like a blunt deck, personally). You can also keep upgrading them as new sets come out. For example, my Magic the Gathering deck is a mix of Theros, Strixhaven & Wilds of Eldraine.

The Basis

Regardless of what route you take, your deck should have a base of one card of each mana type, if your tcg of choice has those. It will be the element in it's purest form like the aces in tarot. You can always take type meanings with you as cards will have one or more anyways.

A few examples:

Magic the Gathering

• Plains (Positive, beginnings, good luck, life, etc)
• Swamp (Negative, endings, rebirth, death, etc)
• Mountain (Fire, passion, struggles, aggressive, speed, etc)
• Island (Water, emotions, isolation, magic, etc)
• Forest (Earth, roots, strength, growth, etc)

Pokémon

• Normal (Basic, nothing, potential, mundane, etc)
• Water (Emotions, fluidity, adaptable, etc)
• Fire (Passion, drive, aggression, excitable, assertive, etc)
• Grass (Earth, roots, growth, slow, passive, etc)
• Electric (Energy, sudden, fast, shocking, irritable, etc)
• Fighting (Endurance, fighting, tradition, studying, etc)
• Psychic (Intuition, magic, manifestation, etc)
• Dark (Unknown, unseen, struggles, shadow, negativity, etc)
• Steel (Perseverance, support, willpower, etc)
• Fairy (Wishes, hope, positivity, etc)
• Dragon (Strength, magnanimous, divine, magnificence, etc)

Lorcana

• Amber (Resilience, persistence, patience, dedication, etc)
• Amethyst (Sorcery, mysticism, power, limited options, etc)
• Emerald (Flexibility, adaptability, change, analytic, witty, etc)
• Ruby (Courage, challenges, speed, confrontations, etc)
• Sapphire (Knowledge, creativity, inventive, strategy, etc)
• Steel (Strength, imposition, perseverance, mundane, etc)

There is a lot from the card itself you can take with you in your reading.
Let's look at Spectacle Mage to see what.

You can use:

• The cost, their attack & defense or all together (numerology)
• The name of the card
• The subtext of the card
• The abilities of the card
• The (creature)type of the card
• The element(s)
• The image
• The setting

Pokémon cards will have attacks and stages you can take with you in your readings, next to how they act (try sites like bulbapedia). With Lorcana you can look at the stories of the disney characters, as well as the lyrics of their songs and whether they can turn into ink or not.

Now to add other cards! You want a mix & match of different themes. If you build a deck of around 50 cards I advice you have little theme overlap between the cards unless you like the nuance. My Pokémon deck has Deino & Diglett which both can mean overwhelm with the versions I have. But whereas Deino is pure overwhelm because it can't find its way nor its family, Diglett's overwhelm is because it dug out next to the sea. You dug too deep, poked your nose where you shouldn't have, said yes one too many times, etc.

Once you have a good amount of cards you can give 'em cute sleeves, practice with your deck and build up from there!