One Hit KO

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there.  This is Pikkdogs here with an opinion article for you.  I didn’t really have many ideas on what article to write for today, so I decided we should do another opinion article.  Before we start the bold statements, let’s introduce my extra dimensionary sidekick, Pedro.  How’s Pedro doing?

Doing well. 

What news have you today for us?

Well, in entertainment news Michael Bay has announced that he is making a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, but he is making them aliens.  Which is weird because they are called “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”, which means they should be mutated adolescent kung-foo users, not aliens.  Do you like the TMNT?

Sure,  used to watch the cartoon series growing up, and I used to have the good Super Nintendo videogame.  I agree with you Pedro, the turtles shouldn’t be aliens.  To me, they are an extension of the awesomeness that was New York City in the 1980′s.  You had lots of crime and pizza, so to stop the crime and eat the pizza you needed the turtles and a large rat.  They also behaved like Teens, which made…

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there.  This is Pikkdogs here with a 3 pack of mini articles.  First, we have some old business to catch up on with, the award for best artwork in 2011.  Then, we have a new www.propokemon.com premium content article from Alex Fields, and I will bring you an exclusive look at that article. Finally, I have an idea for an article or two that I might want to do, I will run it past you guys, and we will see how it goes.  So, let’s get on to the article. 

Section 1: The Award for Best Overall Card Art.

If you have read the article about card art a couple weeks ago, you will remember that I did an award show type article that celebrated the best in card art.  I gave awards in many categories like: Best Full Art, Best Aerial Scene, and Cutest Card Art.  But, I let you guys pick your favorite overall card art.  Before we give away the last award, I just gotta say that I really liked doing the article this year.  This type of article is always very tough…

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there.  Last year I had an idea around awards-show time to give awards to the best card art in the format.  This year I decided to keep the tradition up, and name it after one of the best people I know, me.  Pikke (Pick-e) was my nickname in school, so I decided to call the awards the Pikkes.  No  matter what attractive chap the awards are named after, the Pikkes are all about greatness in card art.  And what a better time to have an award show, with the Oscars coming up around the corner.

A lot of Pokemon writers don’t mention card art, and only talk about playability.  But, card art is something that connects to the card collector and the serious player.  We all can appreciate a good piece of card art.  Not all of us can appreciate Mewtwo EX, but we all can appreciate how beautiful a Full Art card is.  I think its nice to take a step back from competitive play now and then and just appreciate something as simple as card art.   So let’s take a look at how we are…

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there.  This is Pikkdogs and his sidekick Pedro here with a new opinion article.  Nobody has posted anything on the site for a while, and I sure couldn’t think of anything to write about, so I decided to do an opinion article and give it a fancy new name.  In this article I will make some statements about the game, and then try to back them up with facts or observations.  But first, Pedro has some news for you.

Yes indeedy.  The new set Nobel Victories will be starting it’s pre-releases next weekend.  So expect some articles about the set to be coming up this week.  Hopefully our friends at www.pokebeach.com will be having the scans for that set out very soon.  And make plans to hit up the pre-releases in the coming weeks.  Tournament Organizers rely on their players to support them at these events, and it is a great way to get new cards from the upcoming set.  So make sure to get out to one of those, they will be a lot of fun. 

So what have you been up to lately Pedro?

Well Fall is my favorite time of year.  I’ve been watching my fair share of American Football.

Really your a football fan?  What’s your favorite team?

Well, I always root for my alma mater, the Susquehanna University Crusaders.

Susquehanna U.  Isn’t that Bullwinkle’s Alma Mater?

No, that was What’samatta U. 
Continue reading "Bold Statements with Pikkdogs"

So I know you OHKO’ers are knee-deep in Battle Roads right now, battling against all sorts of decks—not just the Reshiram/Typhlosions, Yanmega/Magnezones and Stage 1′s you’ve become familiar with since Worlds, but brand new decks too, like Zekrom/Tornadus, toolboxy Mew decks, Yanmega/Cincinno/Weavile, Gothitelle, Beartic/Vileplume/whatever—all kinds of builds you hadn’t thought of, but yearn to try. But how can you? I mean, you can’t just call up the guys every other day, asking to get together to test out your crazy Wobbuffet-donk deck whenever you please, right? We all have lives—school and college just started up, we’re all working hard to make financial ends meet, and Dancing with the Stars has reclaimed our Monday and Tuesday nights. Personally, it took me like 2 whole weeks to set a series of forest fires in northern Minnesota with the goal of sending a blinding cloud of smoke at Pikkdogs’ Michigan apartment. Let’s face it—we don’t always have the time to playtest like we should.

The Pokémon Company International has just created a new platform—Pokémon TCG Online, or PTCGO—that could make it much easier for us players to build and test decks. It also promises to attract a whole new set of players to the game. But it has its glitches, and its drawbacks. Pikkdogs wrote a brief introduction to PTCGO’s initial release, back when it was just a single-player game with old cards and set decks. Now, in its open beta, PTCGO has many of the features Pokémon players would want: two-player online games, owning and trading of virtual cards, a fully functional deck-builder, and a multiplayer matchmaker. In this article, I hope to bring you up to speed on what has changed with the service since Pikk’s article, and to help you decide whether investing time and money into PTCGO is worth it for you. I’ll also tell you about my own effort to use PTCGO to get ready for my first tournament of the Battle Roads season: the October 9th BR in Coon Rapids, MN.

Continue reading "TAndrewTesting: Pokémon TCG Online"

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there.  This is Pikkdogs here with his sidekick Pedro, and we are here to talk about the new ratings system and how Battle Roads are going.   

The New Ratings System

We’re talking about the ratings change now?  Didn’t that occur like two weeks ago?

Well, yes, but I just understood it now.

Don’t lie to us, you don’t understand it.

Well, no, but nobody really does, so I will just pretend I do like everybody else does.  And I’ll say the term “kicker points”  a lot, that will make me look smart.

I see.  “Kicker Points.”  Oh, yeah those are how I won my fantasy football game last week.

You play fantasy football?

Oh Hell Yeah!  Though my team is suffering this year.  I always take Peyton Manning first because I like his tushy.

Pedro are you gay? 

How can I be gay? I’m not human. I’ma  freaking extra-dimensionary being.

Ok, good enough for me, lets get back to ratings points.

Play Points

As you probably found out a couple weeks ago, Pokemon is changing how ratings work, and how…

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…

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there, this is Pikkdogs here with another opinion article.  This article is all about the choice to add SP Pokemon to the Pokemon TCG game.  

Lately it has been a popular thing to pick on TPCI and Play Pokemon.  Most people have been bashing them for handling the mid-season rotation poorly.  Just about anything other than what they did to handle the rule changes and rotation would have been better than what they actually did.  But, this is not the blunder I will be talking about, I will  be talking about their choice to put SP Pokemon into the format, and their choice to not ban SP cards.

Before we talk about how SP Pokemon were terrible for the format, lets look at what they were.  SP Pokemon  were all basic forms of Pokemon (mostly Pokemon that are usually stage 2 Pokemon) that  by themselves did not look to menacing.  Most SP Pokemon had about 80 HP and attack costs that were not extremely cheap.  But, when one took advantage of the SP engine, SP decks began to be very fast and very disruptive.  SP decks were very tough to beat, because they were toolbox decks that could tech against almost anything.  An SP player could beat any deck, he/she just needed to know what decks they were going to play against.

As we all know, come July 1st, all SP Pokemon will be rotated from the format, ending their dominant streak in tournaments.  During their time in the format, SP Pokemon
Continue reading "Opinion: the SP Mistake"

A big hello to all your OHKOers, this is Pikkdogs here with an article that looks at Stage 2 Pokemon in the HGSS-on format.  While we do not yet know when the HGSS-on rotation will take place, it is likely that it will occur after U.S. Spring Battle Roads.

With the rotation, a lot of people are salivating on all the good stage 2 Pokemon that will be in the format.  But, with recent rule changes and the loss of certain cards I think it will be very hard to consistently get more than 1 stage 2 Pokemon out in time.  This article will look at why I do not think that Stage 2 Pokemon will be effective. I will concentrate on five points.

1.  The Loss of Broken Time Space

BTS was released in the Platinum set, and has been a best friend to all stage 2 Pokemon ever since.  It allows you to skip the 1 turn waiting period, and let you evolve to a stage 1 or 2 Pokemon when ever you want.  In short, BTS let Stage 2 Pokemon compete with all other Pokemon.  Now without BTS to make Stage 2…

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there.  This is Pikkdogs with the second part of my article on the top 50 cards that are leaving the format.  The list is based on how good I feel the card is, and how well the card has preformed in tournaments.  So without further delay, lets finish off the list.

#25. Unown R

Throughout its time in the format, Unown R has always been “the other Unown”.  At first R took the backseat to Unown G.  Once G was rotated out, Unown Q gained a lot of popularity.  Unown R was always seen as a card that was played in inferior speed decks.  But, it was a great card that greatly sped up some good decks.  It was mostly used in speed decks like Shuppet and Uxie, but has seen play in other builds like Gyarados and Machamp.  It was a great versatile card that had an impact on the format.

#24. Toxicroak G Promo

Once Luxray Gl came out Toxicroak G was released to try to keep him in check. It is weird to think of one card being used only to counter one other…