One Hit KO

Alright, let’s get this out of the way right off the bat. I did not do well at Nationals. Well, I didn’t do terribly. My record was positive (5-4). One of those “wins” was a BYE, so I was actually even on the day. If I had won my final match, I’d have been in the top cut. All that makes it sound better than I felt like I did, though. This isn’t about Nationals so much as it is about my deck, though. If you want to read more about my Nats experience, you can do that here, here, or even here.

First of all, I’d like to point out that I think that there really is (at the moment) multiple ways to build a Reshiram deck. To me, any deck that focuses on using Reshiram as the main attacker can be lumped together. The main 2 Reshiram decks now are Reshiram/Emboar and Reshiram/Typhlosion. Both decks strive to achieve the same main goal, but they go about it slightly differently.

When I built my deck, I was of the opinion that Typhlosion was unnecessary, and I was concerned that there would be many others running Reshiram, Zekrom, or Zoroark. Therefore, I did not want to put extra damage on my own Reshiram (which would make it easily OneHitKO-able by anyone that could do 120 damage). Ultimately, the Nationals field did not feature so many Reshiram or Zekrom based decks, so Typhlosion’s damage placement wasn’t as big of a concern as I first thought it might be.

Let’s jump right into the deck I ran at Nationals.

Continue reading "Reshiram Emboar (ReshiBoar) Nationals Deck Analysis"

I’m back with some more pictures and the continuation of my weak little report.

I needed to win out on the second day. If I did, I would (most likely) make top cut. If I lost any of the day’s matches, I’d be playing in side events.

Continue reading "Nationals Day 2 (Ed’s Quick Update)"

Well, day 1 is over. I am not doing well. I chose to go with the deck I knew best, and unfortunately it’s garbage. I thought it wasn’t great, but I didn’t think it was this bad. Take a look at some pictures of day 0 (arrival/registration) and day 1 (the actual event) and read how the first day of Swiss went.

Continue reading "Nationals Day 0 and Day 1 (quick update)"

A big hello to everyone in Omar-Nation.  This is Pikkdogs here with a deck analysis.  We just got done with a long card analysis series, now that we’re done with that we can talk about decks again.  

Before we get to that, lets talk about Nationals.  It’s looking like me and the team omar crew will be going to Indy.  I would love to be able to meet some of you guys at Indy.  If you wanna get in touch with me, the best way to do it would be to send me a tweet.  My handle is “pikkdogs”, just tweet me.  And for those of you who are wanting to keep up on national news at home, I will be sure to tweet what I see.  You can either follow me now, or I will try to make my tweets public before the event.

Also, we should talk about the National tournament in the magical land of Can-a-da.  Those Canadians took a break from watching hockey and drinking maple syrup to play a couple games of Pokemon.  The popular card in Canada was Yanmega Prime.  The free attacking made the card very quick and versatile.  It was in a lot of the top 16 decks.  Kingdra was a card that also saw a lot of unexpected play.  Canada usually is a little more rogue than the U.S. and their nats is a lot smaller than the one south of the border.  I do not expect to see a lot more Yanmega because of the Canadian Nats, so don’t change your deck too much.  If you have a deck that does not have a favorable matchup towards Yanmega, you might wanna think about changing, but don’t overreact too much.  Players in the U.S. have a lot of money and will play more expensive decks like Magneboar and Reshiboar.
Continue reading "Deck Analysis: Magneboar"

Variation is the spice of life, and apparently Pokémon too. Once you have found something that works you always should ask yourself, “What can make this better?” and from there,  seek perfection. This does not mean you are going to find what you are looking for, but I truly believe that if you are not constantly trying to get better or reaching for something higher, you will never get to where you want. While this may seem over the top, these same ambitious ideas can easily translate to Pokémon. From our last video/article, we have pondered this concept and thought long and hard for other alternatives that can possibly improve on the two decks we last tested. In this article we will outline one possible alternative for each of our decks we wrote about last time. Following the process of editing and re-editing a deck list may help others see an alternative way of deck creation.

We will begin with Kyle as we did in the last article for a bit of consistency. This week in play testing I have opted for a Donphan Prime/Yanmega Prime variant that I received from a member at our league. Instead of the Machamp Prime, which was a slow set-up heavy hitter, Yanmega prime is used as a quick attacker. Along with Yanmega Prime comes the ability to add a bit of disruption in the form of Judge and Slowking (Second Sight).
Continue reading "Variety is the Spice of Life. Donphan/Yanmega vs. Reshiboar"

Ok, this is just another Reshiboar deck, but I think the Reshiboar name is, well,  a little Reshi-boring.  The Queen Reference is much better.

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there, this is Pikkdogs here with another deck analysis.  This deck is one of the most popular in the new format.  In this article I will analyze the deck and share my list.

The Goal of the Deck?

Well the goal is obvious, you have a 130 HP Pokemon in Reshiram, and it can do 120 damage a turn, the goal of this deck is to get Reshiram out as fast as possible and keep him hitting for 120 for as long as possible. Reshiram does discard 2 fire energies a turn with his “Blue Flame “attack.  To replace those fire energies this deck uses Emboar BW.  Emboar has the “Inferno Fandango” Ability, which lets you attach as many fire energies as you want to whatever Pokemon you want.  The strategy of this deck is simple.  Get an Emboar quickly to load up Reshiram.  Then keep using the fire energies to replace the ones that Reshiram that discarded.

If Reshiram has absorbed a…