One Hit KO

This is the second part of a 2-part series. You can find part one here.
“Donking for Dummies Part 1: Radu’s Obnoxious Uxie Deck”

Time Management
I mentioned in the previous article that you will take extremely long turns. I said you will do it without stalling or slow play. I will explain how one goes about achieving this in this section. If I were to play a “fun” game against this deck the Uxie Donk players turn would probably be about 10-12 minutes, if I were to play against it in a tournament the average players turn would be somewhere between the 15-18 minute range. This is not ideal, not because you want to win on time, but because you are likely not taking all the time to think and plan that’s would be best. People just play this deck too fast. You have right to shuffle for more than two seconds, you have right to take a little bit of time to think between plays. What you will be doing may seem unreasonable given that you are denying your opponent a turn. It, however, is not. Honestly, you will be taking less time in between plays than a Luxchomp player would, your searches will be faster. You will check the discard pile three or four times during a game. That’s in 30 minutes of playing time. Most decks check the discard that many times in just 15 minutes of play. But your opponent will not like this regardless of any logic that is used. But keeping your opponent happy isn’t your job. Now, let’s look at some of the factors which lead to people not using enough of their time and losing game they should have won on time.

Continue reading "Donking for Dummies Part 2: Radu’s Guide To Cultivating Hatred"

This is guide to playing the universally hated Uxie Donk deck. The deck goes by some other names as well. The more common ones are Uxie Quadro, Solitaire, Donk Deck etc. I affectionately refer to is as Obnoxious, due to the fact that pretty much everything about the deck is incredibly obnoxious. If you don’t know why this deck is obnoxious then you simply have never heard of it before. The deck aims to FTK/OTK (First Turn Kill/One Turn Kill) the opponent even if they start four basics. This is my favorite deck to play this format.  That being said, I have never used it in a premier event due to my fear of Vilegar. Uxie Donk is also the deck I find to be, by far, the most intriguing this format.

As a card player, OTK and FTK decks always interested me.  They are somewhat common in Yugioh, but in modified Pokemon this is a true first. The engines that decks like this use are always incredibly intricate and fast. There are many people who have asserted that this deck and decks like it take no skill to play, or that it is only played by skill-less players. Those people are dead wrong. This deck does take a good amount of skill to play right, with the intention of winning tournaments. People simply don’t understand how much I cringe when I let people use this deck and they misplay horribly with it. It’s not a hard deck to learn, but if you fail to adhere to the simple academic rules which I will lay out here, you will not win as much as you should. To be fair, if an average player playing this deck has a 60% win rate, a very skilled player will only have 70 or 75% win rate, but when you are talking about winning in a larger field and going X-0 or X-1, those 10 or 15% make a huge difference.

This article will be broken into two parts. First, I will explain the strategy behind playing the deck and what it aims to do. Then, I will explain how one would go about playing this deck in a tournament, including a very large section on time management. A lot of what I say may seem obvious. I have learned over the several years I’ve been playing that nothing is too obvious for your average player to ignore, so I’m saying pretty much everything. Before all that, I will introduce myself for those that do not know who I am.

Continue reading "Donking for Dummies Part 1: Radu’s Obnoxious Uxie Deck"

You go second, you win. You go first, they don’t have Pokemon Collector, you win. They go first with one Pokemon and use Call Energy to get 2 basics on their bench, you still win. Heck, they could even start with an active Dialga G (resistance to your attacker), and you can win.

If they start Spiritomb, you lose!

I don’t care who your opponent is or what deck they’re running, these are all valid scenarios when playing Uxie Donk. Yeah, they’re not absolutes as I have presented them, but it’s kinda true. If your opponent isn’t starting with Spiritomb, you have a chance to win any match on your first trainer turn.

Great players won’t usually play Uxie Donk based on it’s ability to just flat-out lose (against Spiritomb or just a bad draw). On the other hand, players have taken it to tourneys and got X-0 wins. It all depends on the luck of the draw (your first 7 cards, your opponent’s deck, and who goes first).

Continue reading "Uxie Donk Decklist: Win Against Anyone Playing Any Deck"

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"

Last month, I posted talking about my Shuppet Donk Deck. The lists posted there didn’t take any of the HeartGold SoulSilver cards into account. To be honest, there isn’t a whole lot that HGSS brings to the deck. There is only one real big thing that HGSS allows this deck to do, but it’s enough to keep the deck alive and not fade out.

Oh, speaking of fade out, there’s a Pokemon in HGSS that has an attack named “fade out.” Isn’t that what Shuppet’s main attack is? Let’s take a closer look.

Dunsparce (from the GS set) is a 50HP basic Pokemon that can do 20 damage and return itself (and all attached cards) to your hand. Shuppet’s main attack does 30, so why would we want to sacrifice 10 damage in a donk deck? I can think of a few reasons: weakness, resistance, and attack cost.

When I say weakness and resistance, I’m not talking about Dunsparce’s (or Shuppet’s). If you play the deck well, they will never be attacked. I’m talking about the defending Pokemon’s weakness and resistance. In the past, if you played Shuppet against a Psy resistant foe, you might be in …

Continue reading "HGSS Shuppet Donk Deck – Dunsparce GS"

I just got done laying out a plan for our Pokemon Deck Workshop. If you are confused by how this article looks, go back and read that.

Now, let’s get to building me a winning LuxApe deck. Here’s the deal. I recently got myself an Infernape 4 Lv. X and an Uxie Lv. X. Now, I want to use them for fun and profit (where profit may be league stamps, premier rating points, etc.). What deck should I build? I think the obvious choice is Luxray GL with Infernape 4. Let’s start there. What else do I need? Other people run all kinds of crazy stuff that should be considered, but that’s not part of the article, that’s part of the discussion. I’ll wait to add my thoughts to the discussion until after I get at least one comment, and we’ll build the decklist together.

Here are my guidelines for this deck:
1) It needs to include Uxie Lv. X and Infernape E4 Lv. X.
2) I want it to be fast, because that’s how I roll.
3) I want it to abuse some game mechanic(s) that most decks don’t use, plan for, have a hard time …

Continue reading "Winning LuxApe Deck Workshop"

I don’t have a great article to go with this. I wanted to post these decklists mainly for archival reasons, but if you are someone that’s stumbled upon these, please feel free to leave any questions in the comment section. I’d be happy to elaborate on how the decks play.

First off, I want to present what I feel like is the basic T1 Shuppet Donk decklist. This doesn’t have any specific tech in it. That would be left up to the player to tweak. All this deck does is aim for a T1 double-donk. When it misses that mark, it will almost always get a single OHKO on its first trainer turn. Your first trainer turn will be maddening for your opponent as you cycle through the majority of your deck looking for Expert Belt, 4 Plus Powers, Shuppet, and an energy. On the way there, you will, no doubt, be dropping Crobat G for damage, Poke Turning him for more damage, Poke Blowering for damage, and Super Scooping for damage (or for Uxie’s Set Up Poke Power).

The draw engine is powerful enough to deck yourself on the first turn, but with Shuppet you don’t need to do …

Continue reading "Shuppet Donk (Aka T1 Shuppet) Decklist"

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)"