Well, I don’t really think I was ever a “hero” but it sounded good in the title. Maybe a better title would have been “Riches to Rags,” but it’s already up there. My previous installment saw me winning the Minnesota state tourney, so that’s what I’m talking about with “Hero” or “Riches.” The “Zero” and “Rags” will be discussed below.
I got back into the game a bit over a year ago, because I thought it would be something that my daughter, Ava, would be into. We started during Cities last season, which didn’t go so hot. By the time States preparation rolled around, though, I knew I needed a new deck, and I chose Gyarados based on several factors. After making that choice, I started looking for the right combination of cards for the meta, and that’s how I got in contact with Austino.
At the time, Team Omar was meeting almost weekly, so I got plenty of practice and experience against multiple decks. With Austino‘s deck help and Team Omar’s playtesting help, I was able to ride Gyarados to 5th place after Swiss in the 2010 MN State Championship. I then dropped before top cut, but it was a decision that I always wondered about. Should I have canceled my other plans? Should I have stayed and played. I felt like my top-8 matchup was favorable, and I think I could have made top4.
This season saw Omar depart the state and with him went the regular playtesting sessions. I hung onto Gyarados and still kept in contact with Austino, but I started playing much less Pokemon. Andy (the reigning State Champion) and I got together to try to get a regular playtesting thing going. It worked well, but as time went on the regular turned into irregular and seemed to fall apart completely in the month leading up to States.
I had thought of switching to a new deck. I had planned on making a new deck for Ava. I had even considered rebuilding Gyarados for Ava and coming up with something completely new for myself. With my hobbytime focus diverted to other things for a while, none of this happened. I decided that I would once again lean on my old pals Magikarp and Gyarados to get me through. I’m a big believer in playing what you’re comfortable with, and this tale just further solidifies my stance, but we’ll get more into that as things unfold.
Read More
Ava and I attended the Black and White Mall Tour on Saturday. It was a pretty well run event for the most part. We were planning to meet some friends at about 9:45. Unfortunately, we had car troubles (dead battery), so we ended up arriving just after 10AM. The first showing of the Zoroark movie was at 10, and they got in. We missed it.
We kinda got hosed on the whole movie deal. We arrived at the first info booth at about 10:10. It was too late for the 10AM movie, but we were told that they hadn’t yet received the 12:00 movie tickets. We’d just have to come back.
Ava and I then proceeded to rush around the mall to get 5 stamps before the lines became unbearable. It’s a good thing we did. After getting 5 stamps, people then had to wait in line to spin a wheel to see what prize they would receive. When we got there (at about 10:45), there were exactly 0 people ahead of us. We waltzed up and spun. Ava got a Snivy stylus. I got a Snivy patch. And there was much rejoicing.
We then decided to go back to see some of the stuff we zoomed by before, so we headed back to wait in line to play the new videogame. In line just ahead of us was a loud group of Team Rocket cosplay girls and a bit behind us was the Lesky crew (with Troy sporting a new tattoo which I should have captured on film). All the cosplayers were one of the more interesting attractions of the day, actually. It gave the event a fun and friendly feel.
Speaking of cosplay, we ran into Umbreon along the way. After the event, I looked him up. Apricot the Gerbil had a password giveaway, which was quite cool. Ava really appreciates the Mew bouncy ball she received.
Oh yeah, at one point, we headed back to get our noon movie tickets. We were informed that they ran out. All they had was 2:00 ones. Well, Ava had to be at a hockey game at 4:15, so that wouldn’t work. We found a young couple of Pokemon trainers before leaving and donated our 2PM tix to them. Hopefully they had a good time at the movie.
We did finally meet up with our friends, but we were all done with the stamping by then. We walked around with them and ended up meeting Grumpig. When we decided to leave, they went to wait in line for the wheel spin. Man, that line was LONG. I’m so glad we bolted through the stamp process early.
Here are our pictures. It was fun. States is coming up on Saturday. I’m definitely not prepared.
Alright, so maybe this deck idea isn’t utterly stupid. In fact, I think there is a lot going for it. It does, however, still fall under what I laid out for our “Stupid Deck Idea” article guidelines. I built it on paper (actually on the computer). I obsessed over it for a while. Ultimately, I decided that I won’t be building a physical version of the deck anytime real soon, so instead I’m posting it here for all of you to ponder.
I think it’s the type of deck that can just win any matchup. Unfortunately, it’s also the type of deck that can lose any matchup. It’s got a luck component to it that can end up in either player’s favor. So, take a look at the article/decklists. Maybe you want to build the deck and test it out. Optimizing the lists might just make it competitive. At any rate, I think it would be a fun (and annoying to the opponent) league deck. At least comment and let me know what you think about the idea (or decks like this).
The basic idea here is to exploit the new Mime Jr. from Clash of Legends. He has two features that we want to make use of. First, his FREE attack puts the top card of your opponent’s deck into the lost zone and puts Mime Jr. to sleep. Normally, this would just be disruptive to the opponent, but combined with the new Lost World stadium, this can win games. Second, his PokeBody prevents all damage to Mime Jr. if he’s asleep. Obviously, this can save him from being KO’d.
Read More
You go second, you win. You go first, they don’t have Pokemon Collector, you win. They go first with one Pokemon and use Call Energy to get 2 basics on their bench, you still win. Heck, they could even start with an active Dialga G (resistance to your attacker), and you can win.
If they start Spiritomb, you lose!
I don’t care who your opponent is or what deck they’re running, these are all valid scenarios when playing Uxie Donk. Yeah, they’re not absolutes as I have presented them, but it’s kinda true. If your opponent isn’t starting with Spiritomb, you have a chance to win any match on your first trainer turn.
Great players won’t usually play Uxie Donk based on it’s ability to just flat-out lose (against Spiritomb or just a bad draw). On the other hand, players have taken it to tourneys and got X-0 wins. It all depends on the luck of the draw (your first 7 cards, your opponent’s deck, and who goes first).
Read More
This past Saturday (12-04-10), I went up to The Source to play in their city championships. 25 masters showed up, giving us 5 rounds of Swiss with a cut to top 4. I brought Gyarados with me, but I left my sick daughter, Ava, at home. Hopefully she can join me this weekend.
Round 1) Justin K. with Lefeon/Flareon/Arceus
I don’t know why, but I’ve played Justin in just about every tourney we’ve both participated in. Heck, I even got matched against him at regionals. Well, at least he’s used to playing against me. He started with a fire Arceus on his bench. I think I Regimoved it active, and he ended up belting it. I used the 2X water weakness to my advantage and went up 2-0 in prizes. After that, he couldn’t recover.
1-0
Round 2) Emmanuel D. with Machamp SF/Prime and Kingdra Prime
I’ve played against this deck before. You might think it’s heavily weighted in my favor, but it’s not that bad for him. What is bad is prizing like all his primes and 2 Bebe’s. I am pretty sure he used Seeker to use Azelf’s Time Walk 3 times. In theory, he should be able to set up Machamp Prime and Kingdra Prime to get OHKOs on Gyarados (which is impressive, because Gyarados is resistant). In practice, it didn’t work out for him. He was on the ropes the entire game. I think this was his only loss in Swiss.
2-0
Read More
This week is another deck analysis on one of the top decks appearing at City Championships at the moment, Machamp. This deck used to fail to keep up to speed with everything that wasn’t SP or Regigigas, but with Machamp Prime for Triumphant, this deck is slowly crawling its way back to the top spot!
Watch for analysis and skeleton list! Read More
I’d almost want to call this a stupid deck idea, but it really doesn’t fit the definition we’ve worked with in the past. This is a proven deck (albeit not top-tier) that had been fairly crippled by the recent rotation.
We’ve covered Scizor/Cherrim decks in the past, but I figured we could revisit this now that Triumphant has given it some new home in the way of Junk Arm.
In the past, the main idea of the deck was to use Scizor’s Pound Down attack for massive damage. Whenever possible, you would want to finish off the defender with Scizor’s Accelerate attack.
Pound Down is a brutal attack that does 70 damage whenever your field is without Poke Powers. This means that you can’t afford to run Pokemon like Uxie or Crobat G that might otherwise make their way into a deck such as this.
Accerlerate is Scizor’s other attack. It only does 30 damage, but if it KO’s the defending Pokemon, Scizor can’t be affected by attacks on the opponent’s next turn.
Those two attacks are really the basis of the deck. Sure, Scizor has a PokeBody that can prevent damage (if he already has 6 counters on him), but it rarely comes into play. Let’s take a look at the list, and then we’ll get into the finer points of how it works nowadays. Read More
| Pokemon: 17 3 – Uxie – LA 43 1 – Uxie Lv. X – LA 146 2 – Crobat G – PL 47 1 – Shuppet – PL 92 1 – Dunsparce – HS 41 1 – Toxicroak G – DP 41 2 – Garchomp C – SV 60 2 – Garchomp C Lv. X – DP 46 1 – Unown Q – MD 49 1 – Dialga G – PL 7 1 – Dialga G Lv. X – PL 122 1 – Regice – LA 36 |
Trainers: 25 4 – Poke Turn 4 – Poke Drawer+ 4 – Plus Power 2 – Expert Belt 1 – Luxury Ball 3 – Energy Gain 2 – SP Radar 1 – Premier Ball 1 – Power Spray 3 – Warp Point |
Supporters: 10 4 – Cyrus’s Conspiracy 3 – Pokemon Collector 2 – Bebe’s Search 1 – Aaron’s Collection |
Energy: 8 2 – Psychic Energy 4 – Double Colorless 1 – Metal Energy (Basic) 1 – Cyclone Energy |
Essentially, the techs here come down to getting around Vileplume and Spiritomb. Regice can screw with your opponent’s Spiritomb, and it can work well in the SP matchup. Dialga G Lv. X shuts off both Spiritomb and Vileplume’s traier lock. Warp Point is essential here, because it helps you bench both Regice and Dialga when they are active (which is necessary to LvX Dialga). Warp Point is also an offensive weapon, because most of your attacks come off the bench. If you don’t want to attack their active, you can Cyclone Energy or Warp Point it away.
Read More
For this article, I’m going to focus on the play of the “vanilla” version of TOSSED. It was built to be a Shuppet replacement, so I play it a lot like I would play Shuppet. You may want to read about how the deck came to be before you continue this article. If so, head over to the “TOSSED: A Rogue Ahead” article at www.SixPrizes.com. Before we get into the play of the deck, I’ll give you a list of what the deck might look like.
| Pokemon 3 Uxie – LA 43 1 Uxie Lv. X – LA 146 2 Crobat G – PL 47 1 Shuppet – PL 92 1 Dunsparce – HS 41 1 Toxicroak G (Promo) – DP 41 2 Garchomp C – SV 60 2 Garchomp C Lv. X – DP 46 1 Ambipom G – RR 56 1 Unown Q – MD 49 |
Trainers 4 Poke Turn 4 Pokedex 4 Poke Drawer+ 4 Plus Power 2 Expert Belt 1 Luxury Ball 2 Dual Ball 3 Energy Gain 2 SP Radar 2 Power Spray 1 Premier Ball 1 Energy Exchanger |
Supporters 4 Cyrus’s Conspiracy 2 Pokemon Collector 1 Bebe’s Search 1 Aaron’s Collection |
Energy 2 Psychic 4 DCE 1 Cyclone |
Ed