February 2010

HGSS06 Noctowl Promo With Gengar

I recently made a deal in which I received a bunch of HeartGold SoulSilver Promo Hoothoot and Promo Noctowl. These are numbered HGSS05 and HGSS06. I bring this up, because I want to know what they are worth (in various ways).

The simple “worth” is monetary worth, so I want to know if anyone is looking for these cards. We’re not running this site to help sell cards, but I feel no shame in using it to advertise some of my haves. I just figure it’s a side-benefit of running a site. You may have caught on that I am selling some of the cards I just obtained, so here is my eBay listing.

Thanks, I sold ’em all.

I quickly looked at other auctions, and I tried to price mine below them all. That’s my only sense of what they are worth at the moment. If you’re interested in them, please feel free to buy them from me on eBay. I promise, I won’t mind. If, however, you’d like to make some other sort of offer (like a trade, an offer to buy a bunch at a time, or whatever), leave a comment here, and I will be able to email you.

HGSS05 HGSS06 Hoothoot and Noctowl HGSS PromosNow, let’s move on to the part that most people will be interested in. What is this card worth to a deckbuilder?

Hoothoot: On the face of it, HGSS05 isn’t that great. In my opinion, the best way to compare him is to his Diamond & Pearl and GS brethren. They all have the same HP, so that’s a wash. The DP and GS versions both have a Hypnosis attack for one colorless that puts the defender to sleep. The promo version’s single colorless attack does 10 with no sleepiness. The DP Hoothoot can do 30 for two, but it’s flippy. The GS can tackle for 20 with two. The real difference, I think, is in the weakness, because they are all -20 resistant to fighting and have a single retreat. The GS weaknesses, as you should know by now, are all X2, so the DP version wins here with only +10 to lightning. The only big difference left is that HGSS05 can not be asleep. Please comment if you have any good use for his Poke Body.

Noctowl: I’m not going to go into all the details comparing the brethren here, because I think that the main issue here are the Poke Powers. DP Noctowl doesn’t have a Poke Power, but the regular GS and promo GS versions both do. The regular one lets you draw a card each turn. It is good, but that’s not what we’re here to discuss. With Poke Powers, it’s not as much about which version is better, but how you can exploit each one for a specific situation or deck.

HGSS06 Promo Noctowl’s Poke Power is called “Night Scope.” It lets you look at your opponent’s hand once each turn. Well, it’s nice to see the opponent’s hand, but is it really worth running a Stage-1 and its basic just to do it? Generally, I’d say “NO!,” but, as is with many Powers/Bodies, it can be used in the right combos. I’ll suggest one, and I’d love to hear your comments about others that you might think useful.

Oh wait, I already told you in the title. There goes my surprise ending, Promo Noctowl + Gengar SF. Gengar’s Poltergeist attack does 30 times the number of trainer, supporter, and stadium cards in your opponent’s hand. On one hand, you can just do the attack, see the opponent’s hand, and do the damage. It’ll do the same whether or not you knew the total before-hand or not, but the advantage that Noctowl gives you is that you get to know ahead of time. That way you can decide if you even want to do Poltergeist or some other attack. Gengar’s Shadow Room is also a good attack, so Noctowl gives you all the data ahead of time so you can properly decide which to do. It also gives you the option of attacking with another Pokemon, if you don’t like what you see in the hand.

Of course, adding Noctowl to any deck has its costs. There’s deck space, bench space, and risk vs. reward costs to consider. You might even consider the monetary cost associated with obtaining the cards (as mentioned in the part where I shamelessly plugged my eBay auction). So, what’s it worth to you? Have you got some combo figured out that offsets Noctowl’s coats?

Porygon-Z and DCE

JWittz had this competition where he wanted people to “Construct the best 60 Card Deck using 4 double colorless energy!” Check it out at Prof it Competition! Best Double Colorless deck!. If you want to see the results, check out Profit: DCE Contest Winners.

I had previously posted about my experiences with Porygon-Z in the article, “The Problem With Porygon.” I thought the deck would adapt well to the new DCE-rich format, so I sent in a decklist to JWittz’s competition. I didn’t win any prizes. I think the Porygon idea is a bit more mainstream than what he was looking for, but I do think the deck is a good fit for DCE. I’m sure Omar would like to discuss how it may be a bad fit for the metagame, but that’s what the comment section is for.

I figured that the writeup that I did for JWittz would go to waste if it only made it to the judges, so I decided to copy it here. Maybe someone else can benefit from it, too. I feel like I should say that I did go 3-2 with Porygon in a City Championship, but it was (of course) a non-HGSS version. If you are interested in how I would (fairly quickly) mod it to be a HGSS Porygon-Z Lv. X deck, read on.

I think that Porygon-Z Lv. X will do quite well with the Double Colorless. First of all, each evolution of Porygon can use DCE for its highest cost attack. The main one being Porygon-Z’s Overload attack which does 40 + 20 for each TM attached. To exploit this attack, the deck runs 8 TMs. 4 of them help evolve the many Porygons or Baltoys. The other 4 mainly are just for extra Overload damage, but once in a while they can be useful to devolve an opponent’s Pokemon down to KO range.

The deck is full of synergy like the aforementioned TMs. Another good example is Porygon2’s Download Poke Power that helps play extra supporters quickly. It obviously helps you play extra Roseanne’s and Bebe’s, but when using a supporter like Volkner’s Philosophy, it combo’s quite nicely with Porygon-Z Lv. X’s Decode power. Decode lets you search your deck for any 2 cards, shuffle, and then place them on top of the deck. Volkner’s Philosophy or Claydol can then get those 2 cards into your hand. Do you want more synergy? Most decks won’t play Poke Healer+ or Blower+ because they’re not that good unless you can get 2 in your hand at once. Well, the Decode plus Claydol/Volkner combo I just mentioned can guarantee that you get 2 Healer/Blower+.

Porygon-Z’s Install power lets you move your TM’s around so that you don’t have to pile them all on a single Porygon. Double Healer+ helps insure that you don’t lose a loaded Porygon at the wrong time.

But, this is supposed to be about Double Colorless Energy, right? I already mentioned that Porygon itself benefits from DCE. With Broken Time Space, it can fairly easily attack for 100+ damage on the first turn if you can download enough supporters to get a couple Claydols and an attack-ready Porygon-Z all set up. But, what is one thing that you are SURE to go up against when DCE comes out? That’s right DCE itself.

Porygon-Z Lv. X eats opponent’s DCE, Call Energy, etc. for breakfast. It’s Mode Crash Poke-Power makes the opponent discard all the special energy they have in play when Porygon-Z gets leveled up.

Here’s the list. Try it against any deck. It can hold its own.

Double Colorless Energy
Yeah, it's from Base Set, and if you can get 4 First Editions in play, you automatically win.
Pokemon: 21
x4 Porygon GE
x4 Porygon2 GE
x3 Porygon-Z (Promo)
x1 Porygon-Z Lv. X MT
x2 Baltoy GE
x2 Claydol GE
x2 Unown G GE
x1 Uxie LA
x1 Mr. Mime MT

Supporters: 10
x4 Bebe’s Search
x2 Roseanne’s Research
x2 Volkner’s Philosophy
x1 Palmer’s Contribution
x1 Marley’s Request

Trainers: 18
x4 Technical Machine TS-1
x4 Technical Machine TS-2
x3 VS Seeker
x1 Luxury Ball
x4 Poke Healer+
x4 Poke Blower+

Stadium: 2
x2 Broken Time Space

Energy: 8
x4 Call Energy
x4 Double Colorless Energy

HGSS Shuppet Donk Deck – Dunsparce GS

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 trouble. You didn’t have any other options. Now, you have Dunsparce. Also, in the past, the only weakness you could exploit was Psy, but now you can switch it up and get an easier KO on that Flygon, Garchomp C Lv. X, or whatever.

Another big thing about Dunsparce is that he gives you another colorless attack. I say “another,” because you already had Uxie. Uxie wasn’t the main attacker in Shuppet Donk, but he was there if you needed him. If you needed to clear some bench space or wanted to do another Set Up, you could always Psychic Restore placing Uxie at the bottom of the deck. Maybe you could even Dusk Ball him back the next turn. His attack was colorless, but, because it wasn’t an attack you wanted to rely on, you probably wouldn’t run any energy besides Psy in the deck. Now, that’s all changed.

What do you do when you are up against Spiritomb AR with a standard Shuppet build? Well, you hope and pray that you can KO that Tomb ASAP. Dunsparce has another answer, and it’s called Cyclone Energy. Dunsparce can use the Cyclone Energy to blow back the defender and still attack that turn (which Shuppet couldn’t do). Cyclone Energy is quite nice here. If you want to use its effect, just drop Dunsparce, retreat your active (to bring up Dunsparce), then drop Cyclone. If you don’t want to swap out the defender, drop Dunsparce, drop Cyclone, then retreat your active (to bring up Dunsparce).

If you still don’t believe me, take a look at the SixPrizes article titled “A New Friend for Shuppet!” It’s not a long article, but there really isn’t a whole lot to say, and there are some good comments there.

So, maybe I’ve sold you on the idea of Dunsparce, and you’re all ready to build your Dunsparce Donk Deck. Well, now I’m going to show you my current build that runs only 1 Dunsparce and 1 Shuppet. I keep reading deck discussions about different ways to build this sort of deck. Whenever I see a title about a Shuppet deck, I try to at least browse the decklist. They rarely impress. The deck is about raw speed, and people keep mucking it up with extra Shuppets, Banettes, weird tech Pokemon, etc. I’m not saying that mine is better than theirs, but I think it is.

If you want to understand how this deck works, I suggest some background reading. Check out SLOW DECK’s “UR Double Donked.Dec – The original.” It really is quite a deck. I even ran a similar build in a City Championship before moving to Shuppet. The straight Uxie build is ultra potent, but the Shuppet build adds consistency. Just take a look at that Uxie deck, though. Ain’t it lean and sexy? That’s how I think the Shuppet version should look. It’s still lean and sexy, but it’s a bit more grown up and can deal with a bit more adversity.

I know. You want the list.
Dunsparce GS

Pokemon: 17
1 Shuppet PL
1 Banette PL
2 Crobat G
4 Uxie LA
4 Unown R
1 Mr. Mime MT
2 Unown Q
1 Dunsparce GS
1 Unown G

Trainers: 37
4 Poke Turn
4 Super Scoop Up
4 Poke Blower+
4 Poke Drawer+
4 Pokedex
4 Plus Power
4 Quick Ball
2 Dusk Ball
1 Luxury Ball
2 Night Maintenance
2 Expert Belt
1 Pokemon Rescue
1 Pokemon Communication

Supporters: 3
3 Roseanne’s Research

Energy: 3
2 Psychic Energy
1 Cyclone Energy

Blastoise Feraligatr Deck Workshop

So, This is the other side of the spectrum, AKA donphan’s greatest weakness. Water. The point in this deck is to abuse feraligatr and use blastoise and smash people with aqua press, or hit 2 bench for 60, whichever gets the prize card. Nothice the last few words in the last sentance, prize card. Yeah, its a prize race type of deck. Get 6 first and win. People might say stuff like, well all decks are prize card races. My response to you is, no. There are decks built for prize cards, like gyrados, kindra,SP etc. and decks built to manuever and win usind strageties like flychamp, GG etc. This is one of those where you need to get 6 prizes as fast yet correct as possible. Im not sure how to speed it up. I have some ideas, but lets see what people have to say. Criticism please.

Pokemon:23
4 Blastoise PL
2 Wartortle
4 Squirtle
2 Feraligatr Prime HGSS
1 Croconaw
2 Totodile
2 Claydol
2 Baltoy
1 Flotazel G Lv. X
1 Flotazel G
1 Uxie
1 Unown G
Suppoerters/Trainers:24
3 BTS
3 Candy
3 Collector
3 Professor Elm’s
3 Pokemon Communication
2 Roseanne’s
2 Expert Belt
2 Warp Point
1 Fisherman
1 Night Maintenance
1 Luxury Ball
Energy:13
13 Water

Flygon Donphan Deck Workshop

Alright, after my long absence, i am back and cookin. Even though i am not a phan of playing against the Donphan prime, I am a phan of using it. Here is my decklist for it. Criticism please.

Pokemon: 24
3 Trapinch SW
2 Vibrava RR
3 Flygon RR
1 Flygon X
3 Phanphy HGSS
3 Donphan Prime HGSS
2 Baltoy
2 Claydol
1 Nidoran RR
1 NidoQueen RR
1 Uxie
1 Azelf
1 Unown G
Supporters/Trainers: 23
4 Rare Candy
3 Roseanne’s
3 Poke Communicate
2 Collector
2 Bebe’s
2 Expert Belt
2 Memory Berry
2 Warp Point
1 Palmer’s
1 NM
1 Luxury Ball
Energy: 13
4 Call
2 DCE
6 Fighting
1 Psychic

For those who dont know how this is run, its pretty self explanitory. Like Flychamp, you truck the pokemon upfront early with donphan. The reason he is a better replacement is his stage 1 and 120 health, and his pokebody. He also does at lease 60, mabye 80 for 1 energy. So, all in all, it can take more damage then machamp, can dish out more consistent damage then machamp, and doesnt have a bad lv. X that is an eye for an eye effect pretty much. Then, flygon makes your retreat non-existent, and flygon does what flygon does, lock them and deck them, blow them up, kill lvl x’s, destroy stadiums, you know, flygon stuff. no big deal. I like to see someone take a consistent 60-130 damage starting either turn 1 if you go second or fer sher turn 2. Let alone dish out 160 or 150 damage for ohko’s. Weakness may be a factor with the new Feraligatr. I hope flygon can do its thang to get around it, and i havent tested against it yet so i guess we will see. But some ideas to smooth out the edges(if there are any ;) ) i would appreciate.

Juniors Pokemon Deck Workshop, Scizor Cherrim

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. Here’s a quick decklist of something like I would consider.

Scizor SF

Pokemon: 19 (12 basic)
2 Scyther (SF)
2 Scizor (SF)
4 Cherubi (DP)
4 Cherrim (SF)
1 Caterpie (GE)
1 Metapod (GS)
4 Unown R
1 Unown Q

Trainers: 25
4 Pokemon Communication
1 Luxury Ball
4 Pokedex Handy 910is
2 Expert Belt
3 Night Maintenance
3 Pokemon Reversal
4 Energy Search
4 Plus Power

Supporters: 10
4 Prof Oak’s New Theory
2 Professor Elm
4 Pokemon Collector

Energy: 6
6 Grass

The transition from Shuppet to this wouldn’t be so huge. There is a lot in there that Ava is already used to using. I do have some concerns, though.

Should she play the Expert Belt? I’m not sure that she understands the drawback, and how it effects HP. With Shuppet, she’s never had to concern herself with these issues, because, to that deck, it’s just like 2 PlusPowers.

Are the Unowns enough of a help here? They add to the count of basics without really changing the way the deck plays. The deck has a limited (compared to Uxie/Shuppet) draw engine, because I don’t want her to worry about BTS and Rare Candy and all that comes with those. The thought here is that she should be able to set up an attacking Scizor by turn 2. At some point, switching to Jumpluff would be an option. The deck is fairly single-minded.

Is Professor Oak’s New Theory worth anything at all? I put 4 in, and it’s the only real draw power the deck has. Buck’s Training is really for when you need 10 extra damage, but it’s draw-2 capability is always welcome. I’ve always liked the card Energy Search in decks like this. It just thins the deck so that, next time you draw cards, you have less of a chance of drawing energy (and you don’t need much at a time in this deck).

Before I put in the 1-1-1 Jumpluff line, I had some Pokemon Rescue in the deck. Now, it’s just 3 NM. What do you think about that? Should the deck run Pokemon Reversal, Warp Point, etc?

Ultimately, though, I don’t just want comments about how to make this deck perfect for Ava. Perhaps there’s another deck that’s better altogether. If so, I want to hear about that deck, and I’ll split this article into a Scizor/Jumpluff/Cherrim workshop and a workshop for Ava’s new deck.

Pokemon Solitaire Playtesting (TCG Deck Testing)

You’ve thought up your next great deck. You’ve worked out some ideas on paper (or in Excel as I’ve taken to doing recently). You’ve even gone as far as building a deck (with a few proxies here and there). Now what do you do?

Of course, you’d like to test it out against some known decks. For various reasons, that might not be the next step, though. You might just want to play the deck by yourself first to see how things go, but how do you go about playing Pokemon TCG Solitaire? That’s exactly what I want to know, too.

If you have the same question, then it’s only fair for me to tell you how I’ve played Pokemon cards by myself. I’ve done it a few different ways, so I’ll lay them out below. I’d love it if you could respond and tell me how you do it. I’d like to try some new ideas for solitaire playtesting.

1) Just Draw

This is the most simple way that I can think to test your newly built deck, and it can be incorporated into any other solitaire game. Shuffle your new deck, and draw 7 cards. Look at the cards, and decide if it’s a good starting hand. You could even lay out the basic Pokemon and decide what you would do if you went first or second. When you’re done, shuffle the deck and draw another 7. I could even see making a little tally sheet with good vs. bad draws, and I’d have to categorize a mulligan as a bad draw. Do this 10 times or so to get a fair idea if the deck can start the game well. Shuffle well between draws, though. I might even recommend a (6 or 7) pile shuffle here.

2) Vs Another Deck

Pick one of your known working decks, and pull 6 Pokemon. Depending on the challenge level you want, you can pick the best 6 or some mix. I would pick the strongest 6 Pokemon (even if they are Stage-2’s or Lv. X’s), but it may make sense to drop something on the bench that’s representative of something that might actually be an easier target (like a Baltoy or Unown G). Lay out the 6 Pokemon as if you were playing against them. Shuffle your own deck, and draw 7 cards. If you have to mulligan, just do it, but make a note if it happens too often. Put out your prizes, and then roll to see who goes first.

I have a bunch of D&D-style dice, so I mark things with those. You could use paper, or you could just use the cards themselves. Here are some ideas. Whenever the “opponent” plays, pull a card off the top of their deck and place it in their “hand.” That way, you can tell how many turns they took. If you want to use a die, place it on top of your deck. Then, whenever you draw for the start of your turn, increment the die. I also keep track of how many KO’s the opponent got. For that, you could put out 6 prizes for the opponent, and turn one up for each KO. If you like the dice, though, you can just keep another counter going.

The opponent needs to do something on their turn, and this is where the realism of the solitaire game wanes. Lately, the only thing my opponent does is attack for 60 damage each turn. I do this on every turn, even the first. It puts pressure on me from the start, but it can be too little later in the game. It’s also very predictable (which can be good or bad). In a real match, you can often guess how much the opponent will attack for on their turn, but you could get surprised. Maybe you’d want to roll a die for damage. Maybe like 1 through 5 does 60 damage, but if they get a 6 it does 100 damage. Another thing that I tried before was, instead of fixed damage, the opponent always did the max damage that their active Pokemon could dish out. That can be rough, but it can be negligible, too.

Things my solitaire “opponent” never does is retreat, use PokePowers, play cards from their hand, etc. This makes some situations or draws worthless for testing. For example, Power Spray is a dead draw against this technique. Trainer locking or power locking would be pointless here. You get the idea.

Just play out the game. See how many turns it takes for you to grab your 6 prizes and win the match. I tend to favor quick and aggressive decks, so this style of testing works okay for me. If I can win in 8 turns or less against a brain-dead opponent, then maybe I have a chance versus a real foe. If you’re building a slow and controlling style of deck, it might not make sense to test using this method.

So, I’ve laid out some of the ideas I’ve had and used for testing decks all by my lonesome. I mean, you have to do something when your friends are too afraid to show up and test against you. What do you do?

HGSS Typhlosion Deck Workshop

Im going to just open with this as our first HGSS deck workshop. In this deck, i want to use his Pokepower to speed up energy, and use Charizard AR To do the tank/damage, and to make this work, i think ninetales HGSS will fit perfectly.

Thats what i will leave it with for now. Ideas GO!

Pokemon: 22
3 Charmander AR
2 Charmeleon
3 Charizard AR
2 Cyndaquil HGSS
1 Quilava HGSS
2 Typhlosion Prime HGSS
3 Vulpix
3 Ninetales
2 Unown G
1 Uxie
Trainers/Supporters: 25
3 Rosie
2 Collector
2 Bebes
3 Pokemon Communicator
4 Candy
4 Poke healer +
2 NM
1 Palmers
2 Warp Point
2 Copycat
Energy: 13
3 Call
10 Fire