One Hit KO

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1HMbvwOf3I[/youtube]

Continue reading "Pikkdogs: The Final Article"

I really thought that I would be writing a Battle Roads tourney report this week, but I just can’t. I need to tell you about my friend, Adam. It’s been weighing on my heart. I meant to write this months ago, but I’ve been putting it off. I could make excuses about being busy, but it’s just my fault. I keep thinking about this, though, so I feel the need to put it out here.

I first met Adam around Christmas of 2009 when this site was in its infancy. Since then, I have been going to the Rapid City “South Side Pokémon League” about twice per year. I’m usually there for the 4th of July and again at Christmas time. The problem there is that both of those are holiday weekends, and there aren’t usually many league members around when we show up.

When I knew I’d be in Rapid City, I would usually email Adam to see when/where the league was taking place. From what I understand, Adam started the league in June of 2006, and it has been held in several locations since then, including the library, Hobbytown USA, First Chance Last Chance Games, and Who’s Game House. I wanted to be sure I knew where and when to show up and find out if there were any interesting formats (like 2-on-1 unlimited or old minus current) being played.

On May 25th of this year, I wrote such an email the day before I drove out to Rapid City. I didn’t get a response from Adam, but it was short notice. I had plenty of other things to do while we were out there, and, without his reply to remind me, Pokemon got put on the back burner for that trip.

On June 24th, I wrote to Adam again, telling him that we’d be around for our normal 4th of July trip. Petra (my second daughter) was just starting to play, and I thought his league would be a good environment for her. Again I didn’t hear back, but this time Ava, Petra, and I made it a priority to attend league. Well, we didn’t make it the top priority, because we showed up about halfway through the scheduled league time.

When we arrived, there were no Pokemon players around, but the guy that runs the shop told me that I just missed everyone. They had left, because there weren’t any players (which is kinda typical on the holiday weekends). I mentioned that I had emailed Adam a couple times without hearing anything back, and he said it’s because Adam died. Wow, what a shock.

Continue reading "Adam Klynsma – Pokemon Master"

We’ve been doing this Wednesday evening Pokemon thing for a while. It usually oscillates between Abdi’s house and mine. Omar and I are always there, and other team members are usually playing, too. Well, last night marked the last time that Omar will attend the weekly meeting. He’s going away to college. When I left, I could see it in him that he was a bit emotional about it. I didn’t shake his hand or give him a hug or anything. My coldness wasn’t entirely related to the fact that Meghan just relentlessly and repeatedly pummeled me with her Shuppet deck. I just didn’t know how to react, I guess.

On my drive home, though, I was kinda depressed. It’s been a good ride, and I feel like it’s coming to an end. I started to reminisce about the past year. When I left, I told Omar to have a good trip and have fun at college. What’s that? That doesn’t mean anything. So, I thought I’d write this, and he (and I) could keep it as an archive of what Team Omar once was.

Continue reading "History, Death, Rebirth? (or How to Con Your Way Onto a Pokemon Team)"

I really like how this website is shaping up. We’re getting a good amount of interesting Pokemon TCG articles here. We’re even getting more and more traffic from people searching for information about different decks and cards. In fact, our top search is for info about a dialga garchomp deck, so Omar will need to write an article titled “Dialga Garchomp Deck” in the near future. [winks and points finger at Omar]

So, the site is becoming a good repository of information, but I feel like we’re missing out on it being a good resource/medium for discussing things as a team and working together to create something or come to a decision as a whole. A tournament report really ought to be one guy’s take on what happened, and the comments are probably just going to be like “good job” or whatever. Reporting about how a deck worked while play-testing or in an actual tournament/league situation (like what I did with The Problem With Porygon) could generate some interesting discussion if others show up and have questions/comments, but it really is just another report. These things are in the past, and therefore they can be somewhat standalone and …

Now that Team Omar’s website has been blasting off for a while, we are starting to get some content. I think we should talk a bit about what we want to do with the site. I think that the main issue is whether or not we want our conversations public. Right now, people can find this site via Google. I keep track of some stats. They are in no way large at the moment, but you never know what it might grow to be. I think that maybe 2 or 3 people that we don’t know have stumbled onto the site. For example, I saw that one person found us by searching for “speed blaziken fb deck” on Google.

If we start mentioning specific things like what deck we’re playing at a specific location/tourney, then people might end up searching for that and knowing what we’re planning. This may not be a bad thing, but it might not be the best. The other side of things is that if we talk freely here, then we might get new people from around the world coming to read and discuss topics here. Who knows.

I think we should at least discuss how …

Now, as we all know, we are getting sweatshirts, which means we need to be able to come up with something really amazing on them, otherwise they are a waste, so brainstorm!!!!

I was thinking like it could say team Omar on the front but the O in Omar could be a pokeball or a master ball or some kind of ball. And then on the back we could have #’s like 1,2,3 to show how many members, but i call 0, AKA a ball of some sort again :)…