One Hit KO

Hello All and welcome to my first Article! 

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…

Hey everyone enjoying TeamOmar.com, Joel here with a new take on a popular favorite: Gyarados. With the new Black & White rules coming into effect, there has been lots of discussion on how the game will change. In my opinion, fast decks will be faster, slow decks will still be slow, and Sableye is going to see a lot of play. I figured with the new rules, I would go back to testing an old classic: Gyarados. Gyarados has proved to be a strong deck that can hold it’s own against SP’s, and has seen a lot of play over the past year, top cutting at many Battle Roads, Cities, Regionals, Nationals and Worlds. With the new first turn trainer rule, Gyarados can be a force to be reckoned with. I put together a Gyarados list and tested the deck under Black and White rules and the deck has brought me good results. I’ll share my list and discuss how I play it.

Pokemon:
4 Magikarp (SF)
3 Gyarados (SF)
4 Sableye (SF)
1 Ditto (LA)
1 Crobat G (PT)
2 Uxie (LA)
2 Mesprit (LA)
1 Azelf (LA)
1 Combee (SF)
2 Regice (LA)
Trainer/Supporter/Stadiums
3 Broken Time Space
2 Pokemon Communication
3 Expert Belt
4 Super Scoop Up
4 Pokemon Collector
2 VS Seeker
2 Energy Exchanger
4 PokeTurn
3 Seeker
3 Junk Arm
Energy
3 Rescue Energy
3 Dark (special)
3 Warp Energy

Continue reading "A new take on Gyarados"

What is MRDIF?

I am sure you all have heard of the new popular acronym (at least new to me) BDIF, witch stands for Best Deck In Format. Well I decided instead of writing an article about the Best Deck in Format I would write an article about the Most  Ridiculous Deck in Format, or MRDIF. For this article I chose to write about Gyarados as the MRDIF because I feel it really is!

How Do You Play Gyarados?

I realize that a lot of people already know how to play Gyarados but for those of you who don’t I’ll go over it briefly for you. Basically the goal of Gyarados is to discard Magikarp using cards like Regice and Junk Arm. You may ask “why would I want to get rid of your basics?” Well that’s because Gyarados’s “Tail Revenge” attack does 30 damage times the number of Magikarp in your discard pile for no energy. There are some cases where you do need to use cards like Pokemon Rescue to recover a Magikarp because Gyarados got KOed but you mostly rely on Rescue Energy now to recover Gyarados.

Ways to Play Gyarados!

In all of my experimenting…

Hello to all in Omar-Nation.  This is Pikkdogs here with another Deck Workshop.

Like many of you out there I am working on post-rotation decks.  I have had little success getting a successful draw engine for a stage 2 deck out of Uxie La, so I tried something different.  This deck uses Ninetails HGSS for a draw engine, which I find to be more consistent then Uxie La in stage 2 decks.                             

Now that I had my draw engine set I just needed a main attacker.  The most popular combo with Ninetails is Chariard Ar, but this has been done too much and is a little slow because of the fact that if you use Uxie La you then lose damage on each of Charizard’s attacks.  So I looked at other Fire type Pokemon and Normal Pokemon.  I saw a deck with Regigas and Mesprit that I liked, but I didn’t like the fact that Regigias’s best attack has a metal, fighting, and water requirement.  Next, I looked at Garchomp SV.

Garchomp SV was never hyped that much after its release, but it was valued highly after it’s release.  I have seen some decks that…

First of all, I want to make it clear that I’m not trying to rip anyone’s idea off. It should be obvious to anyone that reads SixPrizes regularly that this “Egg-Meg” idea was from the recent Egg-Meg: Optimism for new seasons article by doeigts.

The basis of the deck isn’t completely novel. I mean, the idea of pairing these two cards that came out in the same set should have been considered by many. The same powers have been around since base set. Base Set Venusaur’s “Energy Trans” Pokemon Power does the same thing as Meganium Prime’s “Leaf Trans,” and Blissey Prime’s “Blissful Nurse” Poke-POWER does the same thing as the Base Set Pokemon Center trainer card. You can see that the themes are nothing new. In fact, I played a deck that centered around Chansey, Alakazam, and Pokemon Center in a recent unlimited tournament. It has the same idea, except that it moves damage to an energyless Pokemon, while this Egg-Meg deck moves energy to an undamaged Pokemon. The Alakazam deck I played recently was based off a deck that my wife used to play back in Base Set. When I…

A big hello to all of you in Omar-Nation.  This is Pikkdogs here with a deck workshop.

Before we get started I would like to talk a little about Twitter.  I loved hearing you guys tweet during Nationals, and because of that I decided to get into Twitter more.  I have started to tweet about my decks and have found a couple of other people who do the same.  So if you are on twitter I would love to have you follow me and hopefully we can converse about the game.  Also, if you know anyone in the game who tweets also about it, please let me know.  My user name on there is “Pikkdogs.”

Like most of you, I am currently working on getting my decks post-rotation ready.  Some of my decks are working well, and some aren’t.  One that I am kind of on the fence about is Gyarados.

Just a small run through the strategy of the deck for all the new-comers.  Gyarados decks try to discard three Magikarps by turn 2 and then promote a Gyarados SF to do 90 damage with its “Tail Revenge” attack.  To get the karps in the discard pile, most people…

Hey Guys

Its me, Pikkdogs.  I just stopped by for some deck help.  Recently I have decided to try to make an Arceus deck, and see how good the deck could be.

I have never liked this deck.  It is much too slow and doesn’t hit hard enough.  But, because I’ve been wondering what the game might be like next year I thought Arceus might be a viable deck. I also made it because its just a fun deck to play.

In case you don’t know the strategy of this deck, I will do a quick run through.  The purpose of the deck is to take advantage of your opponenet’s weakness.  To do this the player uses the attack “ripple swell” which attaches 1 energy to each of your Arceus’s in play, as long as you have 6 different types of them.  So obviously the player will try to fill their bench on turn 1 or 2 and then use “ripple swell.”  Arceus is a somewhat complex deck that can be very difficult to master, and difficult to play against.  It hasn’t seen much serious play, but it did take top 4 in Michigan’s states.

Continue reading "Deck Workshop: Arceus"