One of the best cards to have in the beginning of the game is Scyther. 
Use this scenario:
Your first turn you put down Scyther as your basic pokemon.
in your hand all you need to have is one grass energy, a double colorless 
energy or a voltorb and the old electrode. then put the grass energy on 
scyther the first turn and use swords dance. no pokemon has a 70 damage 
attack to kill it so then the next turn just use the double colorless or the 
buzzap from electrode and boom! base damage of sixty for a basic pokemon in 
two turns. kills almost all basic pokemon. and scyther has resistance to 
fighting so that annoying machop or hitmanchan with a 20 attack wont do 
anything to scyther before it dies. another good thing is that scyther 
retreats for free so if scyther is somehow losing you could just send in your 
other pokemons for it free. the only disadvantage is that scyther is weak 
against fire.
but a couple defenders should eliminate that threat. 
the only time my scyther got knocked out is when i has a hand of scyther, 3 
grass energy, double colorless and 2 bulbasaurs.
my opponent was using a fire deck and put out a charmander. he wont the coin 
toss so he used one fire energy to use scratch to do me 20 damage.  then on 
the next turn he used another energy and used ember. that was the only time i 
lost scyther but like i said before a few defenders and potions should stop 
even fire creatures and a few energy removals could help too.
sorry about such a long email. i hope you still post this up

H. Mehta
thrawn624@aol.com