flagship, years in the making
tcgslayer: an AI that plays Pokemon TCG
My deck builder and battle engine, started long before anyone offered prize money for it. Current milestone: the Kaggle AI challenge. Devlogs have the receipts.
The problem
Deck building in Pokemon TCG is a search problem pretending to be a hobby. Thousands of cards, a meta that shifts every set, and the only way to know if a deck works is to play it. Dozens of times. Against decks you'd have to build too.
I wanted a tool that could build a deck and pressure-test it: an engine where you battle an AI that actually understands energy curves, prize trades, and when to bench-sit a support mon.
What I'm doing
A battle engine that simulates full games: attach, evolve, attack, prize checks, the boring rules-lawyer parts included. An AI opponent trained by self-play, so it learns lines no one hard-coded. A deck builder that scores lists by simulated win rate instead of vibes.
The current milestone
A Kaggle AI challenge showed up offering prize money for exactly the thing I was already building. The engine got a deadline: simulation finals Aug 16, strategy report Sep 14. The devlogs in the logbook track win rates, bugs, and everything the bot does to embarrass me.