One Hit KO

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there, this is Pikkdogs here with another article for you guys.  For the top 40 players in North America and the players in Southern California all eyes are on World Championships.  All these people are thinking about is either countering the format or making a deck that will be consistent enough to grind into the main event.  But, for the rest of us, we have our eyes on Battle Roads and the new season.  And the new season means dealing with Pokemon Catcher.

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 will begin by …

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there.  This is Pikkdogs here with a discussion about the card Pokemon Catcher.  This card will come out in the Black and White: Emerging Powers set.  Its effect is simple, switch one of your opponent’s benched Pokemon with the active.  This makes it like Gust of Wind from the base set.  This article will tell you what this card means for the format.  This article will also speculate what the format will be like for this card, and what type of counter the new high HP Pokemon will be to Pokemon Catcher.

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 you to do …

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there.  This is Pikkdogs here with a second look at the Call of Legends set and the HS  promos. The purpose of this series of articles is to review the playable cards, and take a look at promising cards, to see if they might be playable.  I will not tell you if these cards are playable, for that you must judge yourself.  Its up to you to see if you can make a great deck out of some cards that are under the radar.

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 HGSS and BW blocks.  It contained cards from the Lost Link mini set, and some cards from the Clash at Summit set.  It also contained many re-prints from other HGSS sets, including 2 versions of a lot of the popular legendary Pokemon.  Like all of these articles, I will not review the baby Pokemon.  Also, I will not review any card that I have reviewed in other articles.  This explains the very short article we have.   So lets see if we can find any  good cards among this small pool.

Continue reading "A Second Look at Each Set: Call of Legends and Promos"

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there.  This is another continuation in my “Second Look at Each Set” series.  In these articles I go through the playable cards (the ones known and unknown) in each set, and make a case to play them, and a case not to play them.  Hopefully doing this will let you have a greater understanding of the limited card pool that the current modified format offers.

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 decided that this series will have just one more article in it, an article looking at the cards in Call of Legends and the Promos that are currently legal.   I decided against doing a Black and White review because its still fresh in our minds.  If you guys would like to see me do a Black and White review, I can do that, just tell me so in the comment box. If we get a couple people who want to see it, then I will do it.    Anyway, on to the article.

I just want to reiterate something that I thought I made clear before, but I guess it
Continue reading "A Second Look at Each Set: Triumphant"

Hey all you OHKOers out there.  This is Pikkdogs here continuing my series of reviewing the best cards and hidden gems on each set in the format.  I am already about halfway through the HGSS block, we are now on Undaunted. 

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 a few cards were hyped from the set, and nobody seemed to be in love with the set.

The Most Played Cards
Continue reading "A Second Look at Each Set: Undaunted"

Welcome to the second part of this series of articles.  These articles look at each set and take a look at both the most played and most overlooked cards of each set.  We are now on the HS: Unleashed set.  The hope is that by looking at the best cards of each set, we will be able to find some new techs or new deck ideas.

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 Japan hasn’t received yet?  Anyway, it does seem that the next set will contain a lot of unreleased cards from the Black and White sets and cards from the Coballion, Virizion, and Terrakion decks.  Anyway, lets get on to the article.

The Top Cards

These are the top cards that have been talked about and played already.  You should be aware of these guys.
Continue reading "A Second Look at Each Set: Unleashed"

Hey all you OHKOers out there, this is Pikkdogs here with another article for you.  With the upcoming rotation on July 1st, all of the old decks will be replaced by new ones.  And we know which decks will see a lot of play, a lot of people are talking about decks like Reshiboar, Magneboar, Donphan, Feraligatr Prime, Gengar Prime, Donchamp, ZPS, etc… .  But, is that it?  Are those the only decks that will be popular at nationals, or have we missed something?

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, …

[youtube width=”494″ height=”400″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQN-e_3DP8A[/youtube]

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 order to supply the best product. A little about us first, I (Kurt) am an economics major and will be graduating within the next month, from there I will continue my education and attend law school, although where is not known yet. I have played Pokémon from base set, but first started collecting. I successfully collected Base through Neo Genesis. When I finally got serious about playing the TCG it was August of 2001, in September the tragedy of 9/11 occurred and I was not allowed to participate in the tournament I was going to attend, and lost interest from there. I never let my cards go, and always retained an affinity for Pokémon in general so it has been very easy for me to pick up where I left off so long ago, this time as a competitive player. I (Kyle) started playing Pokémon when I was about 4 years old, I learned to read from the cards my brother was collecting, and on the Game Boy games. I have grown up around the TCG, video games, and T.V show, Pokémon is part of my life. I am 17 years old and will be graduating high-school within the next few months. I plan to attend university and hope to become a M.D. I began playing Pokémon competitively one month before states this year. At the time I had no current cards and after reading online I built a Jumpluff deck due to its low cost. With little time to prepare and even less experience I went 5-3 at Florida states coming in 23 out of 157. After states, despite my relative success I chose to completely abandon Jumpluff and created a Donphan/Yanmega deck for Regionals and failed horribly. I dropped after I realized I could not top cut with such strong competition and went back to the drawing board. With the announcement of the new format, we both have a clean slate and have high hopes for the coming season.

Continue reading "Battle Video Series With Deck Analysis. Donphan/Machamp v.s. Reshiram/Typhlosion"

[youtube width=”640″ height=”390″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nivsaS3g3rQ[/youtube]

After a short break I’m back with the newest episode of PokeClass!
In this episode I talk about the news of rotation and how it’s going to affect us now and in the future. There’s big things happening and they are very exciting for the game.
The next few weeks of episodes will be all about the Nationals build up which we should all be excited about! Lots of work to be done :)
Hope you enjoy the episode, Dan
Continue reading "PokemanDan’s PokeClass Episode 26 – Time for Change!"

A  big hello to all members of Omar-Nation, this is Pikkdogs here with my quarterly “Top 10 Impactful Cards” article.  This article counts down the top 10 cards that will be impactful on the game.  Not all these cards will make an impact now, some will not show up in a deck for about a year, but I think all these cards have a great chance of impacting the game.

I was able to head north to a pre-release this past Sunday.  After I attended church service with my Brother, I took the 30 minute drive north to Brighton, Mi.  I ended up going 0-3 and not getting a lot of trades done, but I did pull some decent cards.  Regardless, I had a pretty fun time with all the players and judges in Brighton, Mi.  I also met up with a cool Poke-Dad, I’m bad with names but I think his name was Dave.  He was a big Team Omar fan, so it was nice hanging out with him.  So shout out to Dave and his son!

The Pre-Release was very fun because it was fun to open the new Black and White cards.  With cards like Emboar, Samurott, Pikachu, Zekrom, and Reshiram being valued so high, it was like Christmas all over again.  There are some great cards in this set, so lets see how these cards will effect the format.  Since the format is up in the air right now, it will be very hard to tell, but I guess if it was easy anyone could write this article.

10. Pokedex-

There are not a lot of good trainers in this set.  When people think of trainers in this set, most people only think of one trainer, Professor Juniper, but Pokedex might change all that.   Pokedex lets you arrange the top 5 cards of your deck in any order.  But, with the lack of draw power in the coming formats, the ability to control your top decks is awesome.  The format may not let players play this deck, because of the lack of deck space, but if there is room this card is great.  It is a very versatile card that can be played in any deck (except a Vileplume deck).  Before the rotation, this card works well with Uxie La.  It also works well with Nineatils HGSS.

Continue reading "Top 10 Impactful Cards for Black and White"