First of all, I’ll try to give credit where it’s due. It sounds like Bret Brander, the New Mexico state champ, was asked to explain the Pokemon TCG, so he came up with this video with Ian Brander (his brother) and Disney Gonzalez.
Some call it the Secret Florida Deck. Others call it Sablelock (Sablock), Sabledonk, Sableye Honchkrow, or Sableye Garchomp. Does it win by donking? Does it win by locking your opponent? Does it win by starving them of resources? Does it win by controlling their hand? Let’s just say that it wins by making the opponent lose!
I’ve not seen the deck around here, but I can say that it is causing a bit of a stir on the interwebs. There are a bunch of people discussing this deck in various places. Let’s go through the list. No, not the decklist, yet. Here’s the list of who’s talking about the deck:
1) People begging for info about the deck that took 2 of the top 4 spots in Florida and was seen topping at other states.
2) People like Curry/Silvestro that obviously played the deck, but don’t want its secrets made public.
3) People that have played against the deck and either got donked or annoyed to death.
4) Trolls
Now we can add “5) Team Omar” to that list. I’m not going to pretend that I know the deck. I just want to fan the flames a bit, and see if we can get something going. This is going to be a deck workshop, so I’ll post a quick and dirty version of the deck. Hopefully I’ll get some good ideas from people, and we can fix the deck up.
From what I gather, the deck focuses on 2 things. The first one is the donk. Sableye with Special Dark Energy can do 50 on the first turn (under the proper conditions). If you go second, it can Expert Belt, Crobat, etc for even more nastiness. Garchomp C with Double Colorless Energy can do 30 on turn 1. If you go second, an Energy Gain or Expert Belt can move you into the 50 damage category. With all the Magikarp, Baltoy, Hoppip, Unown Q, etc. floating around these days, there’s a fair chance that you can get a turn 1 KO and maybe even a donk.
The second thing the deck seems to do well is limit the opponent’s ability to do anything useful. This is accomplished by devastating their hand and messing up their draws. Giratina’s Let Loose ability makes both players shuffle their hands into the deck and draw 4. To the Giratina player, this is like a mini Uxie Set Up. To the opponent, this is like a slap in the face (when played on turn 1). You play your hand out, drop Giratina, get 4 new cards and hopefully the opponent had more than 4 so that it hurts them. Then, if it’s turn 1, and you can’t donk, you can use Sableye to Impersonate Cyrus’s Initiative causing the opponent to lose between 0 and 2 cards (depending on coin flips). Then the opponent starts the game with 2 to 4 cards in hand. If you’re really nasty, you could drop a Chatot G between the Giratina and Impersonate to stop the opponent from drawing anything useful.
It seems that, in some ways, the deck plays like SP Toolbox. To be honest, that may be because I have a faulty idea of how the deck is built. At any rate, I think that the deck would play pretty fast and very frustrating (for the opponent). Here’s the list I came up with. Let me know what’s wrong with it or the writeup, so that I can improve them.
Version 5
Pokemon: 19
4 Sableye
3 Crobat G
2 Honchkrow G
2 Garchomp G
2 Garchomp G Lv. X
2 Uxie
2 Giratina (PL – Let Loose)
1 Ambipom G
1 Chatot MD
Trainers: 20
4 Poke Turn
4 Power Spray
3 Energy Gain
4 Super Scoop Up
2 Expert Belt
2 SP Radar
1 Luxury Ball
Energy: 10
4 Special Dark
4 Double Colorless
2 Dark
Option: Remove 1 Crobat G to include Moonlight Stadium or Uxie Lv. X. If you use Uxie Lv. X, I recommend making room for at least one Bebe’s Search by removing a Cyrus’s Conspiracy or maybe a Pokemon Collector. Also, SP Radar can be replaced by Pokemon Communication, because there are so many basics in the deck.
I’m going to file this under “Tourney Report” even though it turned out to not be an actual tournament. It still felt like a tournament to me, even though it wasn’t official. Here’s the story.
My family and I went out to Rapid City over the Easter weekend. We arrived on Friday, and Grandma came home from skiing. We hadn’t told her that we were coming, so she was surprised and cried tears of joy to see her grandkids. Then, on Saturday morning, they took my kids skiing. Can you sense a theme here? Yeah, they dig the slopes.
I figured that Pokemon was cheaper than a lift ticket, so I’d go do my own thing for the day. The Rapid City “South Side Pokemon League” had a tournament scheduled for the day, so the timing was right. It was an Unlimited Constructed tournament with a catch. Cards that are currently Modified-legal were banned. I thought this was quite an interesting twist, and since I didn’t have much for cards in between very old and very new, I didn’t know what to expect.
I arrived at “First Chance Last Chance Games” (which, according to this legend, was once “First Chance Last Chance Saloon” 101 years ago) and there was a long wait. This is only the second time I’ve tried to attend a Pokemon event in Rapid City, and both have been on holiday weekends. The last time was the day after Christmas and the morning after a big snowstorm. I think there were only 3 local players that day. The day before Easter was slightly better. 6 people (which includes myself) showed up and had decks. A 7th person also showed without a deck. I figured that I could build him a deck real quick if it came to it, but we needed at least 8. That didn’t happen, so the tournament was officially called off. Unofficially, though, I figured people (like myself) had built interesting decks, so I still wanted to battle it out.
During what was now league time, I was able to duel 4 of the 5 players that built decks for the tournament. I didn’t really keep notes about individual games, since it wasn’t a tourney. I did take a couple pictures (that are now posted at the bottom of this article). I do recall that my first match was against Adam. His deck revolved around Dark/Rocket Pokemon. Many of them were EX, and after a long defensive battle, I was able to KO 3 of them to get my 6 prizes.
Then, I played against Chris. Chris was one of the guys that actually showed up the day after Christmas. On this day, though, Chris wasn’t feeling well. I didn’t see a whole lot of his deck, and I got the feeling that he was just going through the motions of playing just to humor me and my desire to play against people’s tournament decks.
After playing Chris, I played against a younger kid. I’m sorry, but I don’t remember his name. His deck was mostly Base Set fire Pokemon. He did get Charizard powered up and even did a Fire Spin. After he removed 2 of his own energy, and Chansey wasn’t even phased by the Fire Spin, he seemed to lose interest in Charizard. My Energy Removal combined with his own put him in a pretty bad spot against my damage removal.
My final match was against Becky. I recall thinking that her deck was rather interesting, but I don’t recall what all she played. I do remember the Delta Species Jolteon repeatedly doing Return Spark. After several of these attacks, some Damage Swapping and Pokemon Centers came out. Let’s just say that Becky wasn’t real happy with me. Energy Removal and damage removal combined to frustrate my opponents all day.
So, I went 4-0 in the non-tournament. I played tons of Energy Removal and other nastiness. I was very surprised that nobody played any Energy Removal, Gust of Wind, Professor Oak, Item Finder, CPU Search, etc. against me. At least I don’t recall any.
So, I had fun, and I hope that I wasn’t too annoying of an opponent for the South Siders. Now, let me get into the deck I played. I had 2 decks left around from the Base Set/Jungle/Fossil time-frame. One is a Haymaker deck, and the other was this Alakazam Damage Swap deck. I figured that the Haymaker would take too much modification, because it had cards like Bill, Plus Power, and Electabuzz that were all reprinted recently. The Alakazam deck had some things like Double Colorless Energy and Bill, but they weren’t as integral to the play of the deck.
Abdi lent me a few interesting trainers/supporters/energy, and on the 9 hour drive to Rapid City, I built my deck. I had one very interesting find while searching through some of the odd cards I picked up here and there along the way. Persian, from EX Delta Species, looked pretty darn cool. Its “Prowl” Poke-Power lets you search your deck for ANY 1 card and put it in your hand, and it’s “Snap Tail” attack can snipe for 30 damage. Both seemed good to me.
Once I arrived, I laid it out and took another look. The deck is almost entirely defense, and I was worried that an opponent might set up a quick attack and use Gusts to take out my wimps before I could do anything. To counter that, I decided to toss in 4 Energy Removal (the deck already had 2 Super Energy Removal). I figured that the removal could slow down an opponent long enough to get my damage swap/removal set up. It did.
Here’s the list I ran. At the bottom, I’ll give a quick run-down of how the deck works.
Trainers: 24
4 Energy Removal
2 Super Energy Removal
2 Scoop Up
3 Pokemon Center
2 Item Finder
2 Computer Search
2 Professor Oak
2 Gust of Wind
2 Master Ball
2 Dual Ball
1 Pokemon Retriever
Supporters: 8
2 Celio’s Network
2 Lanette’s Net Search
1 Wally’s Training
1 Mr. Stone’s Project
1 Forrest Guardian
1 Island Hermit
Energy: 14
7 Psy Energy
2 Recycle Energy
2 Full Heal Energy
3 Double Rainbow Energy
The idea is to start with Chansey. If you can use his Scrunch attack to slow down the opponent, that’s great. You can also use Scoop Up to clear damage off of him (or as an alternative to retreating). Energy Removal is a very nice way to add to this stall (and ruin your opponent’s chance of ever doing anything useful in some cases). While stalling with that wall, you need to build up Alakazam (and maybe Persian) on the bench.
Once Alakazam is set up, then you can start moving damage counters around. I would usually spread them out evenly among the benched Chanseys. That reduces the chance of a Gust KOing one. If you have a Scoop Up, you can put up to 110 damage on a Chansey (without energy on him) and Scoop him. If not, just wait until you start getting uncomfortable with all the counters, move them to any un-energied Pokemon you have, and play Pokemon Center. That’s a sure-fire way to annoy your opponent.
At some point, you will want to attack. If you’ve devastated your opponent enough, you can use Chansey’s Double Edge attack. It does 80 to the opponent, but it also does 80 to Chansey. To use this effectively, you need to be fairly certain that your opponent can’t do 40 damage to Chansey on his turn. If he can’t, then you can just swap the damage back to the bench, and do it all over again.
Persian’s sniping attack also turned out to be pretty good. It only does 30, but that worked well against some wimpy benched guys. The Double Rainbow Energy helps Persian but reduces the output to only 20. Kadabra can attack for 50, but usually you’d need to evolve him to Alakazam. In the original deck, Kadabra would be a main attacker. Here, it didn’t usually happen that way. Alakazam is a bit of a last-ditch attacker. He can confuse the opponent, but it doesn’t seem worth it usually.
Chris and Ben Waiting For the Tourney to StartIt still seems that the deck is VERY lacking in the offense department. The combination of massive defense and energy devastation proved to be too much for what my opponents had prepared for. I think that some well-timed Gust of Wind or a speedy attacker would have wrecked me. As it turned out, though, this was the right combination for the day’s metagame.
Becky and Adam Getting Prepared for the TourneyI’d like to say “Thanks!” to the players in Rapid City. You guys run a great league. I wish ours was run that well. It really helps when the league is run by actual players that are passionate about the game and bringing new people to it. I think that “Adam” and “Ben” are planning a trip to Colorado for regionals. If you happen to play ’em, say “Hi!” for me. As for me, I’m getting ready to go to Wisconsin for regionals.
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. Read More
After 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. Read More
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.
As 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.
According 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.
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?
I recently made a deal in which I received a bunch of HeartGold SoulSilver Promo Hoothoot and Promo Noctowl. These are numbered HGSS05 and HGSS06. I bring this up, because I want to know what they are worth (in various ways).
The simple “worth” is monetary worth, so I want to know if anyone is looking for these cards. We’re not running this site to help sell cards, but I feel no shame in using it to advertise some of my haves. I just figure it’s a side-benefit of running a site. You may have caught on that I am selling some of the cards I just obtained, so here is my eBay listing.
Thanks, I sold ’em all.
I quickly looked at other auctions, and I tried to price mine below them all. That’s my only sense of what they are worth at the moment. If you’re interested in them, please feel free to buy them from me on eBay. I promise, I won’t mind. If, however, you’d like to make some other sort of offer (like a trade, an offer to buy a bunch at a time, or whatever), leave a comment here, and I will be able to email you.
Now, let’s move on to the part that most people will be interested in. What is this card worth to a deckbuilder?
Hoothoot: On the face of it, HGSS05 isn’t that great. In my opinion, the best way to compare him is to his Diamond & Pearl and GS brethren. They all have the same HP, so that’s a wash. The DP and GS versions both have a Hypnosis attack for one colorless that puts the defender to sleep. The promo version’s single colorless attack does 10 with no sleepiness. The DP Hoothoot can do 30 for two, but it’s flippy. The GS can tackle for 20 with two. The real difference, I think, is in the weakness, because they are all -20 resistant to fighting and have a single retreat. The GS weaknesses, as you should know by now, are all X2, so the DP version wins here with only +10 to lightning. The only big difference left is that HGSS05 can not be asleep. Please comment if you have any good use for his Poke Body.
Noctowl: I’m not going to go into all the details comparing the brethren here, because I think that the main issue here are the Poke Powers. DP Noctowl doesn’t have a Poke Power, but the regular GS and promo GS versions both do. The regular one lets you draw a card each turn. It is good, but that’s not what we’re here to discuss. With Poke Powers, it’s not as much about which version is better, but how you can exploit each one for a specific situation or deck.
HGSS06 Promo Noctowl’s Poke Power is called “Night Scope.” It lets you look at your opponent’s hand once each turn. Well, it’s nice to see the opponent’s hand, but is it really worth running a Stage-1 and its basic just to do it? Generally, I’d say “NO!,” but, as is with many Powers/Bodies, it can be used in the right combos. I’ll suggest one, and I’d love to hear your comments about others that you might think useful.
Oh wait, I already told you in the title. There goes my surprise ending, Promo Noctowl + Gengar SF. Gengar’s Poltergeist attack does 30 times the number of trainer, supporter, and stadium cards in your opponent’s hand. On one hand, you can just do the attack, see the opponent’s hand, and do the damage. It’ll do the same whether or not you knew the total before-hand or not, but the advantage that Noctowl gives you is that you get to know ahead of time. That way you can decide if you even want to do Poltergeist or some other attack. Gengar’s Shadow Room is also a good attack, so Noctowl gives you all the data ahead of time so you can properly decide which to do. It also gives you the option of attacking with another Pokemon, if you don’t like what you see in the hand.
Of course, adding Noctowl to any deck has its costs. There’s deck space, bench space, and risk vs. reward costs to consider. You might even consider the monetary cost associated with obtaining the cards (as mentioned in the part where I shamelessly plugged my eBay auction). So, what’s it worth to you? Have you got some combo figured out that offsets Noctowl’s coats?
I had previously posted about my experiences with Porygon-Z in the article, “The Problem With Porygon.” I thought the deck would adapt well to the new DCE-rich format, so I sent in a decklist to JWittz’s competition. I didn’t win any prizes. I think the Porygon idea is a bit more mainstream than what he was looking for, but I do think the deck is a good fit for DCE. I’m sure Omar would like to discuss how it may be a bad fit for the metagame, but that’s what the comment section is for.
I figured that the writeup that I did for JWittz would go to waste if it only made it to the judges, so I decided to copy it here. Maybe someone else can benefit from it, too. I feel like I should say that I did go 3-2 with Porygon in a City Championship, but it was (of course) a non-HGSS version. If you are interested in how I would (fairly quickly) mod it to be a HGSS Porygon-Z Lv. X deck, read on.
I think that Porygon-Z Lv. X will do quite well with the Double Colorless. First of all, each evolution of Porygon can use DCE for its highest cost attack. The main one being Porygon-Z’s Overload attack which does 40 + 20 for each TM attached. To exploit this attack, the deck runs 8 TMs. 4 of them help evolve the many Porygons or Baltoys. The other 4 mainly are just for extra Overload damage, but once in a while they can be useful to devolve an opponent’s Pokemon down to KO range.
The deck is full of synergy like the aforementioned TMs. Another good example is Porygon2’s Download Poke Power that helps play extra supporters quickly. It obviously helps you play extra Roseanne’s and Bebe’s, but when using a supporter like Volkner’s Philosophy, it combo’s quite nicely with Porygon-Z Lv. X’s Decode power. Decode lets you search your deck for any 2 cards, shuffle, and then place them on top of the deck. Volkner’s Philosophy or Claydol can then get those 2 cards into your hand. Do you want more synergy? Most decks won’t play Poke Healer+ or Blower+ because they’re not that good unless you can get 2 in your hand at once. Well, the Decode plus Claydol/Volkner combo I just mentioned can guarantee that you get 2 Healer/Blower+.
Porygon-Z’s Install power lets you move your TM’s around so that you don’t have to pile them all on a single Porygon. Double Healer+ helps insure that you don’t lose a loaded Porygon at the wrong time.
But, this is supposed to be about Double Colorless Energy, right? I already mentioned that Porygon itself benefits from DCE. With Broken Time Space, it can fairly easily attack for 100+ damage on the first turn if you can download enough supporters to get a couple Claydols and an attack-ready Porygon-Z all set up. But, what is one thing that you are SURE to go up against when DCE comes out? That’s right DCE itself.
Porygon-Z Lv. X eats opponent’s DCE, Call Energy, etc. for breakfast. It’s Mode Crash Poke-Power makes the opponent discard all the special energy they have in play when Porygon-Z gets leveled up.
Here’s the list. Try it against any deck. It can hold its own.
Yeah, it's from Base Set, and if you can get 4 First Editions in play, you automatically win.Pokemon: 21
x4 Porygon GE
x4 Porygon2 GE
x3 Porygon-Z (Promo)
x1 Porygon-Z Lv. X MT
x2 Baltoy GE
x2 Claydol GE
x2 Unown G GE
x1 Uxie LA
x1 Mr. Mime MT
Ed 
