March 2010

Comments, New Artwork, and a Road Trip

Vuluxie
What do you get when you put Vulplix with Uxie?
Ava created another piece of art for the website. This time, she has combined the forces of Vulpix and Uxie to create Vuluxie. I can’t say, for certain, why. I can’t pretend to understand the mind of an artist. I have no such talent, so these things are above my comprehension.

No, on to today’s news. Cheffords, who recently wrote about his experiences at the Michigan State tourney, contacted me to inform me that some of his comments were missing. Low and behold, he was right. I had wondered why we weren’t getting very many comments lately. Well, it seems that people were commenting all along. It was just that the automatic comment SPAM filter system was marking the vast majority of comments as SPAM. Indeed, there are a lot of comments that are SPAM. It’s a sad reality, but when your real comments get tossed in with that garbage, it becomes a huge problem. Of course, we’re trying to create an atmosphere where people can share ideas and comment on people’s experiences, decklists, questions, etc. That’s hard to do if those ideas and comments get automatically discarded.
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Deck Spotlight: Flyperior (Flygon and Rhyperior Lock and Mill)

Rhyperior-DPHello to all members of Team Omar.  My name is Pikkdogs, or Josh, and I am pleased to present you with my first post.  I first started following Team Omar a few months ago when Omar referenced one of my articles from SixPrizes.com.  From then on I have enjoyed reading some of the things included on this site.  Now, I am proud to present my first article.

This article will be about the deck that I just took to the Michigan State Championships.  I call it the Flyperior Lock and Mill deck.  Usually Flygon is paired with either Machamp or Donphan Prime, my deck forsakes all those fighting Pokemon for another one, Rhyperior DP.  The decks strategy is to use Flygon Lv.x RR and Rhyperior to lock in a weak opponent and then mill them, or discard cards from their deck.

The Basics

There are certain steps that allow the user to do this.  The first step is to establish a Flygon Lv.x, with a Trapnich Sw underneath it, and a Memory Berry attached to it.  With Memory Berry, Flygon can now use the attacks “Inviting Trap” and “Sand Tomb.” First the user would use “Inviting Trap” to select a weak Pokemon such as Claydol GE or Mr. Mime MT.  Preferably the Pokemon you choose with this attack will have a high retreat cost and in ineffective attack.     Then after you have the Pokemon you want in your opponent’s active position the user then uses the attack “Sand Tomb.”  This attack does ten damage and does not allow the defending Pokemon to retreat next turn.

Once you have your trap set up, then the milling starts.  With Flygon Lv.x’s Poke Body “Wind Erosion” you may discard the top card in your opponent’s deck between turns.  Then, on the bench, the user can set up a Rhyperior DP.  It’s Poke Power “Earth Fissure” lets the user discard the top three cards of the opponents deck.  Then the user would make sure they have a Broken Time Space in play, and then use the card Super Scoop Up to pick up Rhyperior, and then lay the Pokemon back down and use “Earth Fissure” again.  Then the user repeats this strategy until the opponent decks out.

My Decklist

This is the decklist that I used for states.  It is not a perfect decklist, but it worked well for me.  If anyone has any comments on it, I would love to hear them.

Flygon Lv. X - RRPokemon

2-1 Palkia Lv.X – Used to bring up a benched Pokemon with his Poke Power “Restructure.”  I use Platinum Palkia, but any Palkia can be used.

3-3 Claydol GE –  A 3-3 Claydol line makes it easy to set up fast, it also helps feed Flygon’s “Power Swing” attack.

4 Trapinch SW –  Believe it or not Trapinch has the attacks that the user will use most often.  He is the back bone of this deck

2 Vibrava RR – A Blah Pokemon just used to evolve to Flygon can use the SW version if you want.

3 Flygon RR – He gives you the HP you need to make Trapinch’s attack works.  His Poke Body rainbow float also lets you use Palkia Lv.x many times.  His attack “Power Swing” can also be devastating.

1 Flygon Lv. X – Used because of “Wind Erosion.”

1-1-1 Rhyperior DP – Essential for the “Earth Fissure” Poke Power.

2 Unown G GE

1 Azelf LA

1 Relincanth SV –  If your opponent starts getting smart and uses Unown g to negate Trapinch’s attacks, then use Relincanth to vanquish your opponent.

Trainers

2 Rare Candy

4 Bebes Search – Even though Claydol’s come easy to this deck, you still need lots of searching power for the Rhyperior Line.

3 Roseanne’s Research

1 Team Galactics Wager – Just a fun card.

3 Memory Berry – Three are essential

4 Super Scoop Up – Four are essential

1 Poke Radar – A staple of any deck I make.

2 Warp Point – Useful for getting a  benched Palkia Lv.x

2 Broken Time Space

1 Luxury Ball

1 Night Maintenance

Energy

5 Fighting Energy

2 Water Energy – Just to give Palkia free retreat, he could also be used to attack if need be.

2 Double Colorless Energy – This is what you use if the trap situation is not working.  This energy helps Flygon use the moves “Extreme Attack” and “Power Swing.”

Possible Techs

Rhyperior Sv-It is possible to extend the Rhyperior line and involve Rhyperior SV to finish off a Pokemon that you sand tombed, in order to mill more cards.  The attack ‘Deep Scrap” is pricey, but if you are able to power it up and combo it with sand tomb, you will hopefully mill some important cards.

Dugtrio Pt- This would cause you to change your strategy up a little.  But Dugtrio’s Poke Body “Sink Hole” puts 2 damage counters on a Pokemon each time your opponent retreats them.  If a user constantly attacked with inviting trap, you would force the opponent to either leave the Pokemon in the active position or put 2 damage counters on it.

Wobbufet promo- The new Wobbufet promo has a Poke Body named “Tenacious Bind.”  This body   would increase the retreat cost of your opponent’s Pokemon by 2.   If for some reason the Flygon that your were trapping with has been knocked out, you can bring up Wobbufet and the defending Pokemon will still not be able to retreat because of the Poke Body.  Allowing the user to buy time and set up  another Flygon.

Pokemon Communication- This trainer is nice because it is like a Bebe’s search, it would help the user bring a Rhyperior out a turn or two earlier.

Flygon SW- Pokemon like dunsparce and Garchomp C can be an issue for this deck because of weakness.  So if you run a Flygon SW (which is a fighting type) you will be able to set up a trap without running into a weakness problem.  You can then put the level x on it when you are ready.

Match Ups

I have not tested this deck out against every deck out there, but I know a little bit about the match ups.

Gengar

Gengar is actually a pretty easy matchup for this deck.  The Poke Body “Fainting Spell” won’t affect you because you will not be knocking out many Gengars.  Just grab their Claydol and trap it.  Eventually they probably will find a Gengar Lv.x.  If they do, you must use “Extreme Attack” to get rid of it before “Level Down” affects the game too much.

SP Decks

I want to test more against SP’s, but it seems like most SP decks give this deck a run for its money.  If the opposing player is running Mesprit or Claydol, just lock down that Pokemon.  If not then wait till they use their Poke Turns up and then try to lock a Lucario GL, or Bronzong G. If that doesn’t work then hopefully use “Extreme Attack” to knock out Garchomp C. Lv.x and other Lv.x’s.

Rogue Decks

Rogue decks like Scizor/Cherrim, Arceus and others can pose a problem.  They usually don’t run a Claydol, so the strategy is different.  If possible find something to lock, for example I locked a Water Arceus in the recent States tournament.  If locking doesn’t work then start using “Power Swing” and hopefully you can out power them.

Gyarados

I haven’t actually tested against Gyarados yet, but I will soon.  I would imagine that Gyarados can be quite a problem here.  But none the less, just bring up Regice and lock him up.  And Hopefully they will roll tails enough times on their Super Scoop Up attempts.

Uxie/Shuppet/other Donk Deck

Donk Decks are a problem for this deck.  Trapinch and Baltoy only have 50 HP, so if you don’t have a Palkia start, this could be a short game.  But if the user is able to withstand the first couple turns and get a couple “Cosmic Power”s off, you should be in good shape.   The opponent will use a lot of trainers to go through their deck very fast, this is in your advantage.  Once they use a lot of cards, milling their deck is much easier.  Make sure you have an active Flygon when they first attack with Uxie or Shuppet.  They will probably retreat to Mr. Mime.  Then you just need to lock Mr. Mime in his place.  Then your opponent will flip for Super Scoop Up, if they aren’t able to hit a couple of heads, you will be able to mill most of their deck away.

Closing Thoughts

This is a nice fun deck.  It will never be a super popular deck, but it can win (my top 8 at States proves that). Unfortunately it is a pretty expensive deck, so I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone.  I thought of this deck when I heard a player ask if this game had any concept of mill.  I said it didn’t but that didn’t mean that you can’t introduce it.  I always liked Rhyperior DP and wanted a partner for him, and that partner was Flygon with Trapinch SW.  Even though I came up with this deck idea by myself, I didn’t do it first.  I learned that this combo was used before, but not to much success, and of course the Flygon trap strategy had been around for a long time I ever made this deck.  If anyone has any suggestions to make the deck better, please let me know.

And thanks to Ed and Omar for letting me post on their site.

Peace.

2010 Michigan State Pokemon Championship – Okemos Convention Center

Shuppet PlatinumHey there, Cheffords here. This is my first tournament report, and first post to TeamOmar.com. I hope you get something out of this, because I know I do when I read other people’s reports.

A little about myself: this is my second season playing the Pokemon card game. I got into the game when my daughter asked if she could start collecting the cards and I said yes but we had to learn the game too. Since then she and I have been going to league and tournaments together pretty regularly. My first season was a huge learning opportunity and it took me a long time to get enough knowledge of the cards and various strategies to feel like I was able to compete. Things changed this year during the very first City Championship when I ran a vanilla Shuppet deck and won first place. My daughter has been running Kingdra since Legends Awakened came out and she took third place at the same city’s.
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Michael’s MN State Pokemon Championship report!

Hey everyone, this is Michael making my first post on Team Omar. Anyways, for the past few weeks I had been testing and perfecting a Flyphan list, but on the Wednesday before states at the Misty Mountain weekly Pokemon Tournaments, Radu told me it was trash and instead wrote me up Jay H’s GG list. I couldn’t resist such a good list, so I quickly set out to gather up all the cards. I finished the list on that Friday, and went to testing. Through testing, I found the lock GG puts out is one of the funnest things to do. Lukas came over and stayed the night, and I beat him 4/5 times while he used SP. That Friday night, I also playtested against Thomas V’s Gyrados, and beat it 2/3 times. Unfortunately, I would not have that same luck the next day.

Now, my friend Sabrina will also be included in this report. Why? Well, before a few weeks ago, Sabrina would play the worst decks. They would be pyramid lines, like 3-2-1, with like 20 energy and like 10 trainers, a few of those trainers being like Marleys Request and Rival. I could not stand by any longer, so I built her a 3-2-3-1 Mchamp 2-1-2 Nidoqueen deck, so she could do good, and to show her that pyramid decks suck, and that real competitive decks win. Thats the small story behind her, and it showed.

Michael Playing at the Top Tables Surrounded By the Big Boys
Michael Playing at the Top Tables Surrounded By Sharks
Moving onto the tourney:

Michael playing: GG

My friend Sabrina playing: A Machamp Nidoqueen deck I built her.

Round 1:  Michael S.(GG) VS Ryan Westgard(SP)

I start with a Ralts, he starts with Garchomp C. He has a godly hand, and I TGW(Team Galactics Wager) it away. He still manages to take three prizes, but then, I have the Gardevoir set up, and under the lock, SP could not do a thing. He keeps trying to play Uxie for 4 or 5, and I am like “No stupid, power lock”. He couldn’t do anything while I beat down everything he had.
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Gyarados Rocks Minnesota State Championships

Magikarp SFAfter cities, I built an SP deck. You may have read about the LuxApe deck I was building. I had thought it would be a deck that I could play at States, but the more I played it, the less I was confident with it as a tourney choice. A few weeks ago, I decided on playing Gyarados, and I feel that, in retrospect, it was a smart choice. Ava was ready to go with her Scizor/Cherrim deck that she’s been practicing with.

We woke up, watched a couple episodes of Indigo League, and then headed out for Misty Mountain Games. It’s about a 45 minute drive from our house, and we arrived around 9:30. I had our decklists ready, so registration was smooth sailing.

The Team Omar contingent consisted of Omar, Abdi, Tre, Louis, Ava, and myself. I hope I get this right. Omar played LuxChomp. Abdi played Jumpluff. Tre played Flygon. Louis played Typhlosion. Hopefully, one or more of them will add their report sometime. I know that Michael (who also posts here) is on the hook for a report, but we’ll get to that later. Let’s get to the action from Ava’s and my perspectives.

Round 1: Traci W. (Feraligatr Prime, Gyarados G, and other water Pokemon)
When I sat down, she told me that all I had to do was let her take at least one prize. I must be a jerk, because I didn’t. I actually wanted her to take a prize, but she really couldn’t. She played a Rain Dance deck, but she only got about 2 energy the entire game. That’s not enough for Feraligatr and his pals. I got set up rather quickly. I think I started with Crobat G active, went second, played Collector, and Impersonated Felicity’s and was set up by turn 2. It went fairly quickly after that.

The interesting part was that Ava played Traci’s son, Chris, at the same time. This was Ava’s second tourney, and her first was winless. Ava pulled out an awesome sudden-death victory to start the day, so we knew that she wouldn’t be winless this time.
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Pokemon State Tournament Tomorrow

First of all, I need to apologize for the lack of posts lately. This last week or two, whenever I’ve had some Pokemon time, I’ve used it to prepare for the Pokemon TCG State Tourney. That means I’ve been pretty focused, and it obviously hasn’t been on the website.

My daughter Ava and I plan to go to tomorrow’s tourney together. There we will meet the rest of the Team Omar guys and play cards for fun and profit. Anyway, I hope we can achieve at least one of those goals. This will be Ava’s 2nd tournament. Last time she played Shuppet at Cities and didn’t win a match, so I am really hoping that this time will be an improvement for her. I think she has a good deck that she knows how to play well, but she kinda clams up a bit when she goes up against other people. She has a tendency to play slowly and decide not to make certain plays that she would otherwise see. She’s only 6, so she has a lot of growing to do still, but I still wish that she would get some wins to help her feel better about herself.

Pokemon State TournamentAs for me, I feel pretty comfortable with the deck I’ve chosen. It has gone through a fair bit of testing, and I’ve decided to keep it simple. I kept trying to tech it for certain things and tune it to be more versatile, but I scrapped all that. I’m going for the straight-forward focused approach, and I feel much more at ease with it now. I really think that you need to play what you know and what you’re comfortable with. Stretching your horizons is great when you are practicing, and sometimes it leads to a new level of comfort with something you were previously at odds with. When it’s time to win, though, you have to evaluate not only what will win, but what you can win with. That’s where I’m at, now. I’m not sure that I can win every matchup, but if I played a deck that I feel would be stronger all around, I would be weaker playing it.

So, we will wake up tomorrow, eat some breakfast, maybe watch an episode of Indigo League, and then head out to the competition. Soon after, I plan to post a tournament report, and then I’ll let you know which decks we played and how we did. I hope to get some other people to post their reports, too.

If you have a report you’d like me to post, let me know. Also, the same goes for Deck Workshops or just about any sort of article you think would be suited for the site. If you ever want to contact me, just leave a comment on one of my posts and as me to email you.

Zigzagoon and Team Omar

Zigzagoon GEAccording to Bulbapedia, “As Zigzagoon shows an interest in everything it happens to see, it always zigs and zags, even leaving distinguishable zigzag footprints.” We at Team Omar are also interested in many different things, so today, we will zig and zag leaving a footprint.

For a website, though, the footprint is a bit different. The trail left for you to follow us is at TeamOmar dot INFO. That’s our footprint. If you want to find the real Team Omar, though, you will now find us at TeamOmar dot COM. Don’t worry, though. Until the footprints are washed away, you will still find us the old way. Okay, let’s drop the Zigzagoon bit.

What I’m trying to tell you is that we used to be at a different web URL. I thought that the site deserved a real dot com address, so I switched from .info to .com. The old URLs should still work, but not forever. If you have ever linked to Team Omar on another website, please change your links to www.teamomar.com!

If you’ve told your friends to check the site out, please let them know of the URL change. As I said, the old links won’t work forever. At some point, they’ll stop redirecting to .com.

If you haven’t posted the Team Omar URL ( www.teamomar.com ) anywhere or told anyone about the site, maybe this is a good time to do it. More people will lead to much more interesting and enriching discussions.

Thanks trainers!

Tyranitar Deck Workshop

I don’t even know how to properly set this article up. You see, it’s not my deck, and I’m not the one that wants help with it. The problem is that I can’t seem to teach Abdi how to log into these internets. I’ve been waiting for almost a week for him to post this article asking for help with his Tyranitar deck. Last time I saw him play it, he was whining about how it wasn’t working well enough and fast enough, and he wanted suggestions. I figured “Who would be better to help him than you guys?,” so I told him to post his plea for help here. Well, since then, that Noctowl article has sat there waiting to be bumped from top spot, and I feel like we need something new for people to read. I guess that means that I have to post Abdi’s help request for him, and maybe if I disparage him enough in the process, he’ll finally log in to defend himself. It seems like a long-shot.

The problem, though, is that I don’t know Abdi’s current decklist. Omar might, though, so hopefully we’ll get a reply from him. For now, I’m going to leave this rather simple. I’ll post a decklist that I got from a thread on PokeGym by “Burglar Matt,” and start editing that. I’ll edit this info when I get something better. I want this to be a placeholder to start discussing the deck. What needs to be in? What are popular misconceptions? What are things you’ve tried, and how did they work/fail?
Tyranitar - Stormfront

Pokemon: 20
4 Tyranitar (SF)
2 Pupitar (SF)
4 Larvitar (SF)
4 Sableye (SF)
1 Pachirisu (GE)
1 Unown G (GE)
2 Claydol (GE)
2 Baltoy (GE)

Trainers: 11
1 Luxury Ball
4 Rare Candy
4 Super Scoop Up
2 Expert Belt

Supporters: 11
4 Roseanne’s Research
3 Felicity’s Drawing
3 Bebe’s Search
1 Team Galactic’s Wager

Stadium: 3
2 Moonlight Stadium
1 Broken Time Space

Energy: 15
4 Special Dark
11 Dark