One Hit KO

First off, I need to share some disappointing news. Our first City Championship is on Dec. 10th. I had this marked on the calendar and was rather excited to kick off this challenge business.

Well, I got a small bit of bad news when my daughter, Petra’s, hockey practice schedule was announced. Her 3rd practice of her first season is conflicting. While contemplating how I could work around this (drop early from Cities, have my wife take her to practice, etc), I received an email about her team pictures. This event starts at the same time as the City Championship. Now, this pretty much seals it. I have to take Petra to pictures and practice. You see, I’m also one of the coaches. I might get away with missing a practice, but I should be in the team picture.

On top of this, it’s a pretty bad move for me to ask my wife to take Petra to these events. She’s pregnant with our 4th daughter, and she’s having some issues that make it pretty bad for her to exert herself. Maybe she could sit through a practice, but I really don’t think she could deal with pictures, as it’s like chaos everywhere at those things.

I wouldn’t normally bring my personal life into the discussions here, but I feel like I’m letting people down. I don’t really know how many of you care what happens in this OneHitKO.com Challenge experiment, but I feel like I have committed to playing in all the local City tourneys. I don’t want to start it out like this, and I really don’t want people to think I’m skipping out because of the cards/deck or anything like that.

So, now that the bad news is out of the way, we can get to the interesting part of the update. I (solitaire) played the list like you see here a bunch of times. It just doesn’t work. Even if you luck into a good setup, it won’t last. The way to compensate for this is to either set up faster (and then hope the early KO’s disrupt the opponent) or make the recovery better.

I experimented with proxying some cards into the list. To keep it realistic, I only tried cards that I thought were easily obtainable through donations (or maybe some begging). I added 3 Dual Ball and 4 Pokeball. Yeah, Pokeball isn’t great. All my Pokemon search stuff is now flippy, but there’s one thing that goes well with flippy cards (in my mind). That’s draw/refresh. If you need a Raichu, you can flip for Pokeball, maybe get tails, and then draw a new hand hopefully catching another Pokeball, a Communication, or a Raichu.

To go with these new search cards, I added 4 Bianca. I don’t think Bianca is the best choice for the deck, but I think it’s a card that most people wouldn’t hesitate to donate. Anyway, after these mods, the deck played a LOT better.

	Pokemon		Trainers		Supporters/Stadiums		Energy
3	Tynamo	2	Poke Communication	1	Copycat	22	Lightning
3	Eelektrik	2	Switch	2	Prof Oak New Theory
2	Pikachu – HS 78	4	Dual Ball	4	Bianca
1	Pikachu HSP 3	4	Pokeball	4	Engineer’s Adjustments
3	Raichu Prime
1	Manaphy
1	Hoothoot
1	Noctowl

While I’m sure this isn’t the way most people would build a deck, I believe that it’s workable this way. Things could be improved even more, but it’s looking up. Adding a 4th Pikachu, Tynamo, Eelektrik, and Raichu would make it run even better. It would help getting set up faster, and it would help the recovery.  Then the deck wouldn’t necessarily need Super Rod or Flower Shop Lady.  As it is now, if you prize any piece of the Eel or Raichu lines, you may be doomed.

Hoothoot and Noctowl are no longer that useful.  Sure, if you happen into it, the extra card per turn is nice.  However, I’d rarely want to spend a Dual Ball or Pokeball to get either piece.  Even without another Eel or Raichu, I would probably cut them for the 4th Tynamo and Pikachu (if I had them).

Adding 4 draw supporters really helps.  I’m not even concerned which ones.  Cheren, Bianca, Sage, would all be helpful.  Heck, even stuff like Team Rockets Trickery or any of the other “draw two” supporters would be acceptable.

I hear that more cards are on the way, and now that I can’t play on the 10th, I will have more time to build before the debut.  Though, I have to say that I’d rather get to playing even if it’s not perfect.  Thanks guys!

Category: OneHitKO.com Challenge | Tags: