Well I got no news to report or anything like that.  I can remind our readers that if they leave right now they can avoid reading another article on this site, there is still time. 

Pedro, I’m trying to draw people to the site.  I don’t want to drive them away, no matter how beneficial it will be to them.  Sure we aren’t as good as a normal website with a sponsor, paid writers, and servers that don’t crash every half an hour; but I still do my best to put out sub par articles with lots of spelling errors.

Well if you wanna torture these good people, I guess you can continue on.  Let’s look at possible decks from the cards…

Noble Victories was quite a mysterious set.  We thought it might be a lot of the cards from the Red Collection that was released in Japan, but we weren’t sure.  Now we can be be sure, it is mostly made up of Red Collection cards and some cards from Theme decks.  The mystery of this set has obscured a lot of the hype that usually surronds these sets.  The only card that was getting some hype was Victini.  Now we know exactly what is in the set, we can give it a fuller review.

Before I talk about the set, let’s get one thing straight, these cards will not be legal for fall Regionals.  So even though a lot of people have the Victini card now, you…

Pedro, are you going to a pre-release this weekend?

Well, no.  I’m going to watch the UFC event.

Oh, you like the MMA hey?  MMA is kinda cool, it’s like boxing but with colorful shirts.

Gotta love the colorful shirts. 

John McCain doesn’t like MMA though, he said it’s like human cockfighting.

No, I’ve seen human cockfighting, and they don’t wear the colorful shirts.  They don’t wear much of anything.

Well, there goes our hope of having a clean article, let’s get off the subject of cockfighting and let’s get onto the article.

How to Build a Pre-Release Deck

Pre-Release tournaments are held with a 40 card deck that you make out of 6…

Hey all you earthlings, this is Pedro here.  Pikkdogs receieved a one article suspension for his cussing last week.  And because the show must go on, Ed asked me to fill in for him.  While I don’t know much about this game, I should be able to  do better than a fat kid that doesn’t know his grammar rules. 

Before we get into the article, we should take care of these italics.  Even though my normal langauge translates into italics, it would be hard to read an article full of italics, so I bought an italics converter.  If I just pop it into my inter-dimensionary porthole like so, that should do it.  Okay lets get to the article. 

Obviously I am an extra-dimensionary being, so I don’t know that much about Pokemon, but one thing that interests me is the Lost Zone.  Since I have to travel through an inter-dimensionary porthole, a portal to the Lost Zone feels very familiar.  So I will start talking about Lost Zone cards and Lost Zone decks. 

The Most Versatile Lost Zone Card- Lost Remover

By far the most versatile Lost Zone card is Lost Remover.  It…

You mean someone actually asked you for advice on cards?

Yep.

Don’t they know you’re a crappy player?

I guess nobody has told him yet.  Hey Pedro, I was wondering something.  Why do you always speak in Italics?

Well that’s how all people from my dimension speak.

Huh.  What dimension is that?

Well I can’t tell you that, the people have to go about and buy my auto-biography.

You wrote an auto-biography?

Oh hell yeah.  It’s called “Stick it in my inter-dimensionary port hole”.

I suppose it’s available on Amazon.com?

Well yes, but not in this dimension?  You have to go to my own dimension’s Amazon. 

Your dimension has an Amazon?

Of course, how else do you think South American countries get their water.

Oh so you live in Earth just a different dimension.  Hmmmmm interesting……. Anyway let’s just…

Why I would be happy to.  Stage 1 decks can be traced to U.S. Nationals 2011.  Kyle “Pooka” Suceveich, among others, did very well with a deck that featured Donphan Prime, Zoroark, and Yanmega Prime.  While Pikkdogs did not do so well with Donphan/Samurott.

What does that have to do with the article?

Nothing, I just thought I would mention it while we were on the topic.  As I was saying, the deck was refered to as Stage 1 Rush, because  every important  Pokemon was a stage 1 Pokemon.  It also emphasized the fact that this deck was both hard hitting and fast since it didn’t have to use Rare Candy, or just rely on puny basic Pokemon.  The deck itself was very fast and could counter almost any deck.  It is almost like a tool box in that it has so many options on what it wants to run.

Fast forward to the end of the summer when Emerging…

Before we get into the article I would like to thank my buddy Mark for writing the last article on the website, the one about Lilligant.  I hope this begins a long friendship with Mark and ONEHITKO.com.  Oh, before we get off the subject, I got a story for you, Pedro, you’ll like this one.

I doubt it, but go ahead.

Well when Mark and I were talking about the article, he hinted that we might not want to publish the article.  As if we had some kind of quality control or something.

Yeah that is funny.  You gotta have quality before you have quality control.

Haha, Like we have an Editor or something.  We just drive around down-town Detroit and ask the homeless to write articles for us in exchange for the promise of chicken.  But there’s never any chicken.  We publish whatever they give us, and hope it makes sense. 

Of course we do.  And nope, there’s never any chicken.  But, if you wanna check out Mark’s article, click here.  And thanks again Mark,…

Biography

Allow me to briefly introduce myself, My name is Mark McDonald. I am a native of Detroit, Mi. I am a member of the Michigan based Team Warp Point, and friend of the well known Pikkdogs. I’m relatively new to the card game. Nationals 2010 was my first tournament ever. I hadn’t even seen a battle roads, and there i was in the largest tournament of pokemon history. I ended 6-3 with dialgachomp (that i learned how to play a week prior) missing top cut in 75th place of my flight. In 2011, nationals saw me  ending with a  5-4 record with zekrom. But that’s enough about me. Today’s topic is lilligant!

The Idea:

On the horizon of the 2012 tournament seasons start we all have been in search of the deck that will handle the various threats the current format pose. The obvious presence of Pokemon catcher is definitely not being overlooked and the hype of gothitelle is spreading like wildfire. The release of Emerging Powers brought some interesting cards into the format with the potential to stir up our competitive meta game and question…

Card #1-The Staple-Typhlosion Prime

Description- Typhlosion is a stage 2 140 HP Fire Pokemon with a weakness to water and a 2 retreat cost.  Its Poke-Power afterburner lets you attach an energy card from the discard pile, and a damage counter to any of your Pokemon.  Its attack, called “Flare Destroy” does a lackluster 70 damage for FFC, but it has the awesome effect of requiring a discard from each of the active Pokemon.  The best part is that you get to choose which energy goes in both circumstances, that means you can discard the DCE on pesky Pokemon like Zoroark and Boufallant.

Analysis- Typhlosion saw…

I think I might start doing something like this where I write about upcoming cards currently receiving hype. For each card, I’ll analyze it and then give my opinion on whether or not I think the hype is worth it. You might think this article seems really premature. You might be right, and if this information turns out to be wrong, it’s whatevs. Everything is subject to change. PONT was “bad”, and then it was in an odd LuxChomp list that happened to win Worlds. You never know what the future holds.

You know, with Red Collection, we get a lot of, hmm, unique cards. We get some tools, some abilities, and then like 90 other filler cards. There is one Pokemon with an ability that definitely stands out among the others. That…

It is no secret that Pokemon cards change value very easily.  Pokemon is one of the cheapest TCG’s out there, but cards that are really useful could command a fairly large price.  This means that cards that are cheap one day can be very expensive the next.  The most popular example is Yanmega Prime.  In the winter and spring Yanmega Prime was about a 5-7 dollar card.  It was used in a couple rogue decks, but for the most part people only wanted the card for fun decks.  Then in July the format changes and Yanmega is a lot easier to play.  All of a sudden that 5 dollar card is up to 14 times more expensive then it once was, commanding a 70 dollar price tag at U.S. Nationals.

Even though Yanmega is an extreme example, it is not unlike the value of other Pokemon cards.  Most cards value in price over their life time.  Some cards like Crobat Prime are hyped and command a high dollar amount early, but then crash and burn a couple…

Before the Rotation

Before the rotation, most decks did not have a starter, decks were fast enough where you could probably do a decent attack on turn 1.  The decks that had a starter were Gyarados and Sabledonk, both of these decks ran Sableye.  Gyarados used it because that made it easier to put Magikarps in the discard pile, Sabledonk used it because it relied on two supporters working together in one turn.  Besides those exceptions, starting Pokemon were laughed at.

Leading up to Nationals

With the rotation Pokemon decks have lost a lot of draw power because of the loss of Uxie.  To respond to the HGSS on format, people have been using starting Pokemon in there deck.  These starting Pokemon have allowed decks to setup quickly without the need for draw power from Pokemon like Claydol or Uxie.

The most used starter…

Pokemon Catcher is a trainer card that lets you pick a Pokemon on your opponent’s bench and switch it with the active.  The last time this card was released, as a card named Gust of Wind, it was the best card in the format.  It ushered in an era of dominance for a very fast deck with all basic Pokemon.  The question was will Pokemon Catcher have the same format changing effect as Gust of Wind did?  To answer these questions I decided to test multiple decks in the PC (Post Catcher) format.  The testing yielded some surprising results.  To start this article off I…

Before we start the article, just a little reminder about the contest.  The contest that celebrates my 100 articles is still going on.  All you have to do to enter is send an email to “pikkdogs@teamomar.com.”  In the email just tell us something you like or don’t like about the site.  When you enter you will be in the running to win one of two official www.onehitko.com t-shirts.  To see the complete rules, just read my 100th article celebration post here.  Okay, back to the article about Pokemon Catcher

What it does

Pokemon Catcher allows…

Before we get there I just want to remind you guys that unless you guys say you want me to, I will not be doing this with the Black and White set, since it is fresh in our minds.  So that means this is the last of this series of articles………….you guys in Minnesota can stop clapping now.

Call of Legends

There are two schools of thought with Call of Legends.  One school is that it is the worst set ever.  The other school is that it contains a lot of good value cards.  The set was released as a filler set between the…

I apologize if these articles seem hurried or are a little messy.  Each article in this series takes a lot of time to put together, so I try to cut a few corners in order to get these articles out fairly quickly.  If you don”t understand something please leave it in the comment box and I will be happy to explain it to you.

Two housekeeping issues to take care of before we start the article.  The first is to tell you guys to watch the site in about a week or so.  I will be starting a raffle fairly soon and have an awesome grand prize to give away.  So stay tuned to hear the details of the contest.  The 2nd item is that I have…

It seems like some people are confused of the aim of this article.  Just because I talk about a card here, does not mean that I think it will win Nationals.  I am just going over the cards in the set that might be playable in the right deck if everything goes right for the deck.  It’s about finding rogues and different ideas.  Yes Reshiram and Magnezone will clean up at this years Nats, but if I talked about them all day, it would be pretty boring.  So this is out to find some fresh new ideas.

Unduanted

Undaunted was released in the U.S. in August of 2010.  It was made up of cards from the previous Japanese set and many different kinds of Japanese decks that were released.  It also featured legend cards from the newest Japanese set.  Like Unleashed, Undaunted was not known as a  very powerful set at the time.  Just…

Before the article we have a bit of news.  Last week it was announced that the next English set will be called “Emerging Powers.”  The weird thing about the announcement is that it was announced that the set would include over 90 cards including 25 Pokemon that were never printed before.  Since our Black and White set did not have about 25 Pokemon cards that were not in the Japanese Black and White sets, this means that we probably will not be getting any cards from the Red Collection (the second Japanese Set).  Whats even stranger is the fact that we are getting some cards like Krookodile and Scolipede that have not been released in Japan.  So does that mean that we are getting a lot of new cards that…

To make sure that we don’t miss a single card that can help us at Nationals, I will look at each set one by one, and try to find the most playable cards of each set.  Now I know these articles won’t be perfect, but I will try to leave no stone unturned in the search for the hidden gems of the HGSS-on format. I will not be reviewing any Baby Pokemon (except Cleffa) because I did an entire article them.

Set Introduction

Just to be wacky I will start with the oldest set in the format, Heart Gold and Soul Silver, hmmm…… that doesn’t seem very wacky, well okay so maybe its not wacky,…

An Introduction:

Hey everyone, for the past month or so, my brother and I have been posting videos on YouTube so we can watch them as replays and share them with whoever may be interested. Over the past month we have learned a tremendous amount by reviewing our videos and watching for misplays or foregone opportunities that may have altered the course of a match. Some of our videos have gotten a little attention, and this surprised us both. But to make a not-so-long story even shorter, we now have the opportunity to compose written commentary in the form of articles here at OneHitKO.com. We are very grateful for this prospect as we sense that we, along with our viewers can benefit more from an in-depth look at each game, rather than just a recap in video form. Combining both mediums will allow us to gain ultimate insight and offer a more well rounded look into each match.

Misnos, as a moniker actually represents both of us (Kurt and Kyle) and while these articles may come from a first person point of view we are writing together, always interacting and debating amongst ourselves in…