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 going…

We…

Now, Pikkdogs would normally give you this information, but he has gone on Christmas Vacation, so I will handle this article.

We all know Pikkdogs works hard to give you articles about decks, but let’s face it, they all stink.  So if you want some good articles, you can head over to www.propokemon.com.  And now these two sites are coming together to give you two weeks of free premium articles.

All you need to do to get the 2 weeks of free articles is to follow this link.  Make sure you follow this link to get there, or else Ed will get mad and have to kill a cat.  And we don’t want that.  The free week of articles come with the launch of their new subscription service.  Now you don’t need to purchase each article separately, you can pay just…

Hey Pikkdogs, hasn’t TAndrewT already done something like this?

Well, yes. And you can read it here.

Wasn’t it a good article?

It was a good article.

So why are you doing it again? 

Well…………….I’m not sure, but I am doing it.

Okay, fair enough. 

Did you know that TAndrewT is a doctor of Chemistry?

Like the guys on the Big Bang Theory?

Yes.  Well kind of.  But those guys are  physicists.

One can only wonder why such an accomplished person can write on such a crappy website.  We usually get dumb people who only have master’s degrees like you.  So, what does Dr. T do?

Well, I looked it up, but I think I need a chemistry degree to understand it.  One of his papers is titled, “Enhanced Stability and Bioconjugation of Photo-Cross-Linked Polystyrene-Shell, Au-Core Nanoparticles.”   I started reading it a while ago, it’s pretty good.  I will be through reading the title in about a week.

Well, if he ever moves in with a physicist,…

Well, not much news for today.  Cities are still going on, and a special Victini tin is coming out.  It will contain 5 packs and a Victini promo (the one with the “Victory Star Ability.” So that’s pretty cool. 

Anything else?

Well a couple days ago, December 5th, was International Ninja Day. 

But we missed it.

Of course we did, ninjas are very elusive.

Well, it makes sense.  Enough ninja talk, let’s get on to the article.

While I must admit that this deck pre-dates my play history with it by a couple months, I recently made it because I think that the format is getting more Steelix friendly.  Pokemon that are now being played like Chandelure and Vanilluxe are great matchups for Steelix Prime.  So now is the perfect time to start experimenting with Steelix.  First, let’s learn some basics about the deck and what makes it playable.

The Goal of Steelix Ross

Steelix…

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…

Before we start, I gotta thank Pedro for filling in for me recently while I was serving my 1 article suspension.  I couldn’t do it and Pedro wrote an article and he did a ………….. well he wrote an article.   So thanks.

Well, your welcome Pikkdogs.  Say,  you had some time off lately, what did you do with your time?

Well I took a vacation.  I went to Amish country. In  Intercourse, Pennsylvania.

Ohhhh, what did you do?

Well, I have always been inspired by the simple life of the Amish.  I just walked around the center of town and talked with the locals.

So, in other words, you like to talk in the middle of Intercourse? 

Yes.  You know the one good thing about the Amish is that they don’t have computers so you can say whatever you want about them and they will never know.

Yes, the Amish and other Americans are very different.  One is a group of people that never read your articles…… and the…

Review of the Sigilyphs

Recently we had a request to review the Sigilyphs from Emerging Powers.

Why the heck would anybody want a review of 2 crappy cards like that.  They must be mentally deranged.

Now Pedro it’s not nice to make fun of the readers.  Bad Pedro.

I am a bad boy.  I might need-

Pedro this is a family website.  Please try to clean up your language.

A family website, must be a pretty desperate family to read this site.

Lets just go on to the article.

Alright, lets review those Sigilyphs.

There are two Sigs from Emerging Powers, they…

Before we get to the article, lets go over some news.  The first piece on news is that the Victory Medal is no more.  The card that you won from winning a Battle Roads is now gone and replaced with a card called Victory Cup.  Not much is known about Victory Cup, but sine BR’s are right around the corner I’m sure Tournament Organizers will be getting them in the mail soon and they will let us know when they find out.

I don’t know what Victory Cup will do but I don’t think it could be better than an athletic cup, those things are life savers.

Right you are Pedro (If you have read my last article, first I apologize, but second if you did read it you would have known that Pedro is the name of my sidekick).

The next news article first came out about a month ago, but of…

 It may seem like the fourth of July was just a week or two ago, but the summer is now coming to an end.  With the end of summer comes some of my favorite things: cooler weather, cool colored trees, American Football, and Battle Roads.  Although I feel like writing an entire article about fall and how its the best time of the year (except bikini waxing day), I think we should get to the Battle Roads.

Setting the Stage

If you were not able to make it to Nationals, you must feel really out of the loop.  The last time you played you were looking at Garchomp C’s and stuff like that, Battle Roads will be a whole nother animal.  Those of us who made it to nationals, and those that went to world’s, basically know the format.  Stage 1 Rush is good along with decks like Reshiphlosion, Reshiboar, ZPS, and Primetime (Yanmega Prime and Magnezone Prime).  But, thanks to the release of Emerging Powers, Battle Roads will be a little different.  So before you…

The Past

The structure of the tournament season has been pretty stagnant for the last couple of years.  The season starts in September and October with Fall Battle Roads, a small local tournament with a small ratings value.  Next we have Cities starting in November and continuing in December.  We then all celebrate Christmas and the New Year, and get ready for State Tournaments in March.  Next we go to one day in April which hold the Regional championships.  Battle Roads show up again in May and June, while Nationals are usually in June or July.  And of course, the World Championships are in August.

So that is what we have been doing for the past couple years.  It seems like a good schedule, lots of events but not too many where people would be spending an excess amount of time and money going to tournaments.  A lot of other card games have more tournaments, but this schedule seems to be pretty good for emphasizing local metagames.  So what’s the problem?

The problem is that…

The three attackers featured in this deck make the deck versatile, and add a toolbox like quality to the deck.  Here is a basic over view of the deck.  Donphan Prime is a great primary attacker.  It is tough to knock out, and can attack for just 1 energy.  It also has a type advantage over Mangezone and Zekrom.  Yanmega Prime is a versatile attacker that can snipe for 40 damage or attack for 70 damage.  The best part of Yanmega Prime is that he can attack for free (if you and your opponent have the same hand size) because of his “Insight” Poke-Body.  Yanmega is both disruptive and versaitle.  Zoroark BW is a card…

Emerging Powers is your 2nd Black and White Set.  It is made up of cards that were in the Japanese Black and White sets, along with cards from the “Battle Strength Decks” and random Promotional cards.  A lot of people are a little upset about this set because the current Japanese set seems to be a lot better than our Emerging Powers set.  But, there are some good and impactful cards in this set. It is not one of the better sets we have seen in a while, but at least it’s better than Call of Legends.  The thing I hate most about this set is that there is that it has another rare Unfezant that is useless.  It seems like I pulled just about all of the BW Unfeazants, and now I feel like I’m about to get 150 more crappy Unfezants.  But enough about my hatred of Unfeazant, let’s take a closer look at the set to get at the best cards.

Honorable Mention (#12) Thundurus

Our first…

Of course the biggest goal of the event is to have fun and get the cards you want.  One of the biggest advantages of being at a pre-release is that a lot of people will trade you a good older card for a decent new card.  Values of these new cards are kind of high before and after the release the set, but they will eventually fall.  So make sure you get out there and get the best value for your trades.

Now, lets focus on the swiss rounds that are played.  Of course each player gets 6 packs and makes a 40 card deck complete with energies provided by the tournament organizer.  These decks are usually not nearly as fast as modified…

Hey everyone, sorry it has been a while. Both Kyle and I have graduated from high-school and college respectfully and have taken some time off from writing and creating videos. With Nationals gone by and Worlds coming within the next few weeks, we thought it would be a good idea to revisit some of the deck concepts we had been working on and that have proven to be consistent. In the past we have looked at both Donphan/Yanmega and Reshiram/Typhlosion, both of which had great showings at the US National Championship. Today we will once again take a look and see what makes these decks great in the metagame.

We will begin with Donphan/Yanmega. It is no surprise to anyone how well this did at Nationals and should be no surprise when it does equally well at Worlds. Attacking for high damage with low energy on turn two is a combination that is hard to beat. With the addition of Zoroark, damage output of the deck is potentially quite a bit higher and the theme of stage one efficiency remains. We have already discussed the attributes of the Donphan/Yanmega combination in the past so we will instead focus on the addition of…

Lately when people see me they ask: “Pikkdogs, what are you doing looking in my window?”  And then they ask me, “Which deck should I run for nationals?”  This article will be about the second question.

By the time your read this article, you will probably be celebrating the 4th of July (if your in the U.S. of course), and I will be sitting by a parade and consuming my fair share of adult beverages.  But, it will be just about a week before the start of Nationals.  By this time you should have your deck choice made, and are narrowing down your choices of techs.

But, if your like me, you probably are not on that schedule.  So if you are still trying to figure out which deck to pick, lets look at some principles for choosing a deck for nationals.  Here are six principles that you use to guide you on making a deck choice.

1. Do Something Silly.

By this I mean, don’t just netdeck a deck, put something in it that is uniquely yours. …

Thanks for watching and good luck to those of you that have Nationals soon!

Dan

News and Introduction

Last night Play Pokemon gave us some big news, they are instituting a mid-season rotation to the HGSS-on format.  While this is not exactly a shock, it is disturbing to  alot of people.  While I would say that most people welcomed the news, a lot of people are not huge fans of the HGSS-on format, and are not happy of how Play Pokemon handled the rotation and rules changes.  I guess you are never going to please everyone, but I think for once Play Pokemon is making the right move.  The rotation freshens the format and puts a lot less emphasis on luck and starting first.  I for one will be happy if I never had to look at another SP card in my life.

So what does this mean for Nationals?  Well, it means a heck of a lot.  It drastically changes the format, all the top 1 or 2…

Before we begin the article I want to introduce some new writers to the site.  Kurt and Kyle, known on YouTube as Misnos, will soon be joining the onehitko family.  For those of you that do not know, Kurt and Kyle post Youtube videos about play-testing sessions that they have.  The videos are fairly fast paced and gives you a lot of information about some pretty cool decks.  The videos are really cool and should be good for the website.  I got a sneak peek at the first article they are writing, and let me tell you, you guys are in for a treat.  Look for their first article/video soon, in the meantime, if you would like to check out their videos, you can find them here.  Now, onto the Rare Candy issue.

The Old Rare Candy

When I first returned to the game, Rare candy was a very important card in almost all decks.  It was one of the first cards that I knew I had to have to make a decent deck.    It…

Round 1 vs Andres T. with Donphan/Flygon/Nidoqueen
I met Andres a few times before but have never played against him. We both came with the intention on just…