One Hit KO

Rapid City Road Trip

I have a bit of catching up to do here. I was out of town (and fairly busy) between Christmas and New Years. I’m back now, so I should update you on the happenings since the last installment.

We were in Rapid City, SD for vacation, because we have family there. We go there almost every year for Christmas. This time, there were 2 league times that occurred during our stay. I penciled in both, but I didn’t know if we’d have other family stuff going on.

If you have been reading here for quite a while, you may recall from my Alakazam/Chancey Report that Rapid City has some interesting formats that they attempt. The Pokemon scene there is quite different from other places I’ve played. It pretty much exists in its own little bubble. Adam, the league leader and one other guy named Ben seem to be the ones that really drive the scene.

Now, from what I’ve seen/heard, most leagues allow an unlimited card pool, but even then, most players play modified-legal cards. Yeah, if you want to play old cards, people won’t mind, but most will prefer to play against tourney decks. In Rapid City, it seems that they don’t care much about the modified format. Yeah, people like new cards, but they don’t want to dump their old stuff. Case in point, this time, there was a guy who’s “want” list contained a bunch of SP trainers. I had no problem trading them away, because I had no use for ’em.

Continue reading "OneHitKO.com Challenge: Road Trip & Surprise"

I’m going to file this under “Tourney Report” even though it turned out to not be an actual tournament. It still felt like a tournament to me, even though it wasn’t official. Here’s the story.

My family and I went out to Rapid City over the Easter weekend. We arrived on Friday, and Grandma came home from skiing. We hadn’t told her that we were coming, so she was surprised and cried tears of joy to see her grandkids. Then, on Saturday morning, they took my kids skiing. Can you sense a theme here? Yeah, they dig the slopes.

I figured that Pokemon was cheaper than a lift ticket, so I’d go do my own thing for the day. The Rapid City “South Side Pokemon League” had a tournament scheduled for the day, so the timing was right. It was an Unlimited Constructed tournament with a catch. Cards that are currently Modified-legal were banned. I thought this was quite an interesting twist, and since I didn’t have much for cards in between very old and very new, I didn’t know what to expect.

I arrived at “First Chance Last Chance Games” (which, according to this legend, was …

Continue reading "Unlimited Alakazam Chansey Pokemon Report"

Ava created another piece of art for the website. This time, she has combined the forces of Vulpix and Uxie to create Vuluxie. I can’t say, for certain, why. I can’t pretend to understand the mind of an artist. I have no such talent, so these things are above my comprehension.

No, on to today’s news. Cheffords, who recently wrote about his experiences at the Michigan State tourney, contacted me to inform me that some of his comments were missing. Low and behold, he was right. I had wondered why we weren’t getting very many comments lately. Well, it seems that people were commenting all along. It was just that the automatic comment SPAM filter system was marking the vast majority of comments as SPAM. Indeed, there are a lot of comments that are SPAM. It’s a sad reality, but when your real comments get tossed in with that garbage, it becomes a huge problem. Of course, we’re trying to create an atmosphere where people can share ideas and comment on people’s experiences, decklists, questions, etc. That’s hard to do if those ideas and comments get automatically discarded.

Continue reading "Comments, New Artwork, and a Road Trip"

Well, we went to the Rapid City Pokemon League on Saturday. It was the morning after a pretty good snow storm (and Christmas), so they didn’t get a good turnout. They said that they’d usually get around 20 players, but they got 3 (besides Ava, my two brother-in-laws, and myself). I was hoping to earn some Claydols, but they didn’t have any. I ended up with a new Uxie and a Snorlax. The guys there were cool, and they taught me how to play 2-vs-2. I accidentally won our first 2-on-2 match when I double-donked each of their only Pokemon for the win. The second game was much longer.

Ava wouldn’t play at league. She did play around and one of the guys played her Next Quest TFG with her, so that was cool. After league, though, I was getting convinced that Ava would not play in the City Champ on the 10th. I asked her if she still wanted to, and she said she did. I told her that she’d have to practice with me every day, and she agreed.

Sunday evening, I got her to play against me. I used VERY suboptimal green deck (Beautifly) against her, and …

Continue reading "Ava’s Research (Supporter)"