Archive for September, 2013

Some Old Deck We All Used to Know: Emboar/Reshiram

Sunday, September 29th, 2013

emboar113-reshiramHello One Hit Ko community!

My name is Eric, and I am a new writer for One Hit KO. I write every Sunday, so expect an article on that day!

Here is my article, and please add suggestions in the comment section below.

This article is supposed to be about an old deck that pretty much everyone forgot about. That’s right, ReshiBoar.

Today on this fine Sunday, I will show you Reshiboar, the deck most of us hate. Let’s get started, shall we?


15 Pokemon
3 Tepig BCR
1 Pignite BCR
3 Emboar NXD
4 Reshiram NXD
4 Virizion PLB
14 Supporters/Stadiums
4 Juniper
3 N
4 Skyla
3 Virbank
20 Items
3 Catcher
4 Rare Candy
1 Ace Spec Card
2 Silver Mirror
4 Energy Retreival
3 Hypnotoxic Laser
4 Superior Energy Retreival
10 Energy
4 Grass
6 Fire


As you see, this deck is a little out of place, especially Hypnotoxic Laser. Let’s review, shall we?
Continue reading "Some Old Deck We All Used to Know: Emboar/Reshiram"

Opening the Emerald Toolbox

Friday, September 27th, 2013

VirizionWhat’s up everyone!

I hope everyone is as stoked for X & Y as I am. They’ve really been slow-rolling the final evolutions of the starters in particular, and I for one am anxious to see what they look like so I can finally figure out which one I want to use (at the moment I am leaning towards Fennekin, like many others, but I am still undecided).

Anyways, we’re back, this time with a new rogue strategy article for you to ingest! Much like my second article (http://www.onehitko.com/2013/09/06/unveiling-b-side-plasma/), I will be delving into my thought processes as I was developing the deck, as well as giving you a card-for-card list with detailed explanations, and an in-depth matchup guide to boot. We’re closing in on Regionals season, so preparedness is of the utmost importance, regardless of what deck you’re looking to play!

 

The Discovery

 

Much like the Plasma alternative I spoke of in my second article, my quest to create this deck began during my testing of the Virizion/Genesect archetype, not long after the Plasma Blast set was released. Players have a tendency to evaluate strategies found in the Japanese metagame and compare them to our …

Continue reading "Opening the Emerald Toolbox"

Darkrai EX / Hydreigon In the New Format

Wednesday, September 25th, 2013
That's Me On The Right

That’s Me On The Right

Hi there, Onehitko readers, my name is Ethan Cooke and I will be writing a weekly deck analysis for this website every Wednesday. Before I begin this week’s analysis, I would like to introduce myself as far as the world of Pokemon is concerned. I’ve been a fan of everything related to Pokemon ever since I can remember, and my first premier TCG event I attended was the State Championships in Texas as a Master during the HS-NXD format with my girlfriend, Samantha.

We had no idea what the format was or even what was legal in the first place, and, consequently, our decks dated back to DP Base set. Luckily, we found a professor that goes by “Master Professor Birch” who was nice enough to give us each theme decks and sign our decklists thus eliminating the need to wait in line. We were so new to the world of Pokemon that we assumed it was played in Single Elimination as opposed to Swiss, and we went home after losing the first round.

Fast forward a bit to the BLW-BCR format, and I know a lot more about playing the TCG than I did at my first event; I got 2nd place at Tyler City Championships with my rogue deck, Registeel EX/Blissey DEX. Fast forward to BLW-PLF, and I took home a 2nd place victory cup with Rayeels. Here are a few other things you may want to know. I’ve never had an official local league so I do a great deal of testing online.  I tend to never play the same deck at 2 different premier events, and I recently passed my Professor Exam (the week after my 18th birthday, actually).

And finally on to the analysis!

The deck I have chosen to analyze today is a deck that has been around for quite some time now and that deck is Darkrai EX/Hydreigon. I feel like this deck is potentially one of the funnest decks around and can be more competitive than some would think. The goal of the deck is a simple one: use dark trance to alternate between attackers, heal attackers with the aid of Max Potion and even give all Pokemon free retreat with the aid of Darkrai’s Dark Cloak. It’s pretty easy to see how this deck can succeed in the right metagame but also easy to see how Max Potion can be a dead draw in some matchups including Blastoise, TDK, and even Virizion/ Genesect.

This is what I feel to be a pretty solid list for this deck:
Continue reading "Darkrai EX / Hydreigon In the New Format"

Updated Plasma and Thoughts on the Four “Tier 1” Decks

Monday, September 23rd, 2013

Hello readers!  I am back with another article for your reading pleasure!  This time we get back on track with the current modified format and talk a little bit about what many others including myself consider the top 4 decks at the moment

 Darkrai EX/Garbodor

 Blastoise/Keldeo EX/Black Kyurem EX

 Genesect/Drifblim/Virizion

 Plasma Variants

But before we go into that, let’s take a look at what changes plasma lists have undergone to combat this new proposed tier 1 of decks that contain a lot of Plasma hate.


11 Pokemon
4 Deoxys Ex
3 Kyurem
2 Thundurus Ex
1 Absol
1 Keldeo EX
36 TSS
4 Juniper
4 N
4 Catcher
4 Float stone
3 Colress machine
3 Colress
3 Skyla
3 Ultra ball
3 Silver Bangle
2 Tool scrapper
1 Plasma ball
1 Energy search
1 Dowsing machine/Computer search
13 Energy
4 Plasma
4 Prism
3 Blend WLFM/2 Blend WLFM 1 Blend PDGF
1 Water
1 Lightning



Continue reading "Updated Plasma and Thoughts on the Four “Tier 1” Decks"

Strategies in the Shadows

Friday, September 20th, 2013
Just A Funny Pic

Just A Funny Pic

What’s up guys!

To anyone who checked back last Friday expecting a new article from yours truly, I’d like to take this moment to apologize; I was halfway through writing it, but then my sweet laptop decided to crash on me. I lost everything I had written at that point (remember, CTRL+S is your friend). No matter though, because we are back this week and better than ever!

If you can recall my first article (http://www.onehitko.com/2013/08/30/thoughts-on-the-early-days-of-the-new-format/) I took a detailed look at the five strategies I felt were the ones to beat going into the new format. While this may go without saying, it is of the utmost importance that we have a strong understanding of what these decks are trying to do and how to best combat them. What is equally important, however, is that we keep a close eye on the decks that lurk in the shadows known as tier two, waiting for the perfect time to strike and spike the tournament; if you are not weary, you could find yourself in the losing bracket, regardless of how prepared you were for the big dogs.

So, today’s article will be a similar layout to my first article, but I will instead be taking a close look at the ‘tier 2’ strategies to expect going into Regionals and the like. I will also explain the environments each strategy needs in order to prosper, in an attempt to best prepare you for what you should expect at any given event. Let’s get started!

Continue reading "Strategies in the Shadows"

No EX tournament and My Outlook On the Upcoming Season!

Tuesday, September 17th, 2013

garchompHello once again readers of OneHitKO, I’m back for my second article with an interesting experience for everyone to read about.  This previous weekend (9/14/13), I got the opportunity to play in a BW-on tournament that was single-game Swiss rounds.  The only different rule was, you couldn’t play any EX Pokemon!  I actually only found out I was going to this tournament about a week in advance, so I was limited on how much I could prepare.

At first I thought the Tool-Drop deck (Trubish/Sigilyph/Masqurain) would be the best choice, but it was very inconsistent and didn’t do as well against non-EX Pokemon.  Absol seemed strong, but was also easy to play around if that was the only focus of the deck.  Zoroark was promising, but just didn’t hold up to some of the stage 2 decks.  I wanted to play Gothitelle/Accelgor/Dusknoir but I no longer had any Gothitelle, so I decided to play Garchomp/Altaria.  It was consistent, had a good damage output (100-140) without too much effort, and was easy to play.  After testing a game or two and doing some theorizing, here is the list I came up with:

Continue reading "No EX tournament and My Outlook On the Upcoming Season!"

Introduction, A New Path, and The Klaczynski Open!

Monday, September 9th, 2013

Greetings readers of OneHitKO, my name is Mike Lesky (or Choncey as some people may know me ).   I am 21 years old and graduated from Culinary School last winter.  I am also a veteran of the Pokemon TCG and have had quite a bit of success in the game since 2003.  I have never written anything for a website before so this is a whole new experience for me, and I am very grateful that Ed is letting me do this.  I have always wanted to be a role model for players of the Pokemon TCG ever since I started helping locals in my area build decks, understand strategy, and win tournaments.  I am a very competitive player when it comes to this game so I tend to take it very seriously.

I have been following OneHitKO.com for quite a while now and have always kind of thought of it as a more casual Pokemon website because of the lack of “Big Names” writing for it.  As everyone has probably noticed the best way to get traffic nowadays is to put some big flashy titles and names on things to spark interest and draw in new crowds.  So some of you are probably wondering, who is this guy and how do we know that he knows what he is talking about?

I’m not some big name like 3 time world champion Jason Klaczynski or consistent nationals player and worlds qualifier Kyle “Pooka” Sucevich, but I do feel that I am a strong contender at any tournament I go to no matter who is there.   Some of my top accomplishments are:

2x Minnesota State Champion
1x Iowa State Champion
3rd Place 2007 Midwest Regionals
2nd Place 2007 Mississippi Valley Regionals
9-10th Place x3 Midwest Regionals 2010 2011 2012
23rd Place World Championships 2012
2x Top 128 National Championships 2012 and 2013
11x Battle Road Champion
6x City Champion

So it isn’t the most impressive list of accomplishments, but I do like to think that I know what I’m doing.

So anyways, the whole point of why I am here is to bring the competitive scene back to OneHitKO.  I feel that this is the best way to bring traffic back to the site.  I think this is the best way to go if we want to ensure the future of this community.  And to get it started, I want to go over my experience I had this past weekend (8/30/13) at the Klaczynski Open!

Continue reading "Introduction, A New Path, and The Klaczynski Open!"

Unveiling B-Side Plasma

Friday, September 6th, 2013

What’s up everyone!

First off, I’d like to thank everyone who took the time to read my debut article from last week. I’m sure this much is obvious by now, but I am very passionate about Pokemon and writing alike, so it means a lot to me that people would stop what they are doing to read what I have to say. Hopefully in time, as more articles are posted, more and more people will discover this website and what we have to offer to the community. Of course, you can help with that too; if you read our articles and dig what you see, don’t hesitate to tell your friends about us! Word of mouth really does go a long way, and every single person who shares us helps us out a tremendous amount.

(In case you didn’t catch my last article, you can view it via the link directly below.)

Silver Bangle

http://www.onehitko.com/2013/08/30/thoughts-on-the-early-days-of-the-new-format

While I am pretty confident with my predictions in last week’s article, only time will tell what archetypes truly prove themselves to be the cream of the crop. Trying to qualify for Worlds having not played in over two years is going to be a major challenge for me, and if I want to succeed, I have to make sure to make the right meta calls from the very first event. When determining what deck is an optimal play in the early days of a format, there are always a few factors I like to consider, the first of which being that since there are little-to-no results for us to analyze and learn from, everyone who turns in their deck registration sheet at that very first event is going off of theory, raw testing results and not much else.

Because of this, we can deduce that the decks that will perform the best throughout the early stages of a season are generally going to be more proactive than reactive, meaning they are more concerned with ‘asking a question’ than ‘providing an answer’; without an adequate amount of tournament results to go by, the reactive decks simply don’t know what questions they need to answer (or how to best address them, for that matter). Proactive decks, however, don’t need to know all the right answers, because, well, they are the question! This logic also applies to techs somewhat; there is nothing wrong with adding a card or two to counter what you predict you will be facing, but a fully teched-out deck is generally going to be less favored in a beginning-of-the-format tournament when compared to a consistent, streamlined one.

Take TDK for example- what is probably the biggest ‘question deck’ of this new format. The question TDK asks its opponent is this: ‘How are you going to deal with a consistent flurry of Kyurem backed by Team Plasma support?’. As we all know good and well, this is not an easy question to answer effectively, which is what makes TDK the consensus strongest strategy right now. See, TDK isn’t worried about attacking specific strategies it may or may not face; regardless of what you’re playing, TDK just wants to Blizzard Burn for obscene amounts of damage as early as possible until all six prizes are taken. This is what it means to be a proactive strategy.

Continue reading "Unveiling B-Side Plasma"