One Hit KO

I’d almost want to call this a stupid deck idea, but it really doesn’t fit the definition we’ve worked with in the past.  This is a proven deck (albeit not top-tier) that had been fairly crippled by the recent rotation.

We’ve covered Scizor/Cherrim decks in the past, but I figured we could revisit this now that Triumphant has given it some new home in the way of Junk Arm.

In the past, the main idea of the deck was to use Scizor’s Pound Down attack for massive damage.  Whenever possible, you would want to finish off the defender with Scizor’s Accelerate attack.

Pound Down is a brutal attack that does 70 damage whenever your field is without Poke Powers.  This means that you can’t afford to run Pokemon like Uxie or Crobat G that might otherwise make their way into a deck such as this.

Accerlerate is Scizor’s other attack.  It only does 30 damage, but if it KO’s the defending Pokemon, Scizor can’t be affected by attacks on the opponent’s next turn.

Those two attacks are really the basis of the deck.  Sure, Scizor has a PokeBody that can prevent damage (if he already has 6 counters on him), but it rarely comes into play.  Let’s take a look at the list, and then we’ll get into the finer points of how it works nowadays.
Continue reading "The Triumphant Return Of Scizor/Cherrim"

After cities, I built an SP deck. You may have read about the LuxApe deck I was building. I had thought it would be a deck that I could play at States, but the more I played it, the less I was confident with it as a tourney choice. A few weeks ago, I decided on playing Gyarados, and I feel that, in retrospect, it was a smart choice. Ava was ready to go with her Scizor/Cherrim deck that she’s been practicing with.

We woke up, watched a couple episodes of Indigo League, and then headed out for Misty Mountain Games. It’s about a 45 minute drive from our house, and we arrived around 9:30. I had our decklists ready, so registration was smooth sailing.

The Team Omar contingent consisted of Omar, Abdi, Tre, Louis, Ava, and myself. I hope I get this right. Omar played LuxChomp. Abdi played Jumpluff. Tre played Flygon. Louis played Typhlosion. Hopefully, one or more of them will add their report sometime. I know that Michael (who also posts here) is on the hook for a report, but we’ll get to that later. Let’s get to the action from Ava’s and my perspectives.

Round 1: Traci W. (Feraligatr Prime, Gyarados G, and other water Pokemon)
When I sat down, she told me that all I had to do was let her take at least one prize. I must be a jerk, because I didn’t. I actually wanted her to take a prize, but she really couldn’t. She played a Rain Dance deck, but she only got about 2 energy the entire game. That’s not enough for Feraligatr and his pals. I got set up rather quickly. I think I started with Crobat G active, went second, played Collector, and Impersonated Felicity’s and was set up by turn 2. It went fairly quickly after that.

The interesting part was that Ava played Traci’s son, Chris, at the same time. This was Ava’s second tourney, and her first was winless. Ava pulled out an awesome sudden-death victory to start the day, so we knew that she wouldn’t be winless this time.

Continue reading "Gyarados Rocks Minnesota State Championships"

Ava has been playing Shuppet, and, while she knows the cards and how to play them rather well, I think she’s a bit timid about playing when it comes to battling an opponent she doesn’t know well. This is not good when playing a deck that will, ideally, take most of its play time in its first trainer turn. On top of this, it’s not a “fun” deck (especially to play against).

What I think she needs now is a deck that she play for fun that is able to compete with the good decks out there. Ava went 0-4 at her first tournament, so let’s work on building her a deck that can help her improve on that score. I still think she could do it with Shuppet, but let’s leave that on the back burner for now. Let’s give her a second option to train with (and hopefully more fun to play against).

My current thought is to build a deck based around Scizor from StormFront. SixPrizes has a good article on this strategy. Check out “Deck Spotlight: Scizor/Cherrim Beatdown!” I would build it a bit different both to account for HGSS cards and Ava’s playstyle. …