One Hit KO

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there.  This is Pikkdogs here with a second look at the Call of Legends set and the HS  promos. The purpose of this series of articles is to review the playable cards, and take a look at promising cards, to see if they might be playable.  I will not tell you if these cards are playable, for that you must judge yourself.  Its up to you to see if you can make a great deck out of some cards that are under the radar.

Before we get there I just want to remind you guys that unless you guys say you want me to, I will not be doing this with the Black and White set, since it is fresh in our minds.  So that means this is the last of this series of articles………….you guys in Minnesota can stop clapping now.

Call of Legends

There are two schools of thought with Call of Legends.  One school is that it is the worst set ever.  The other school is that it contains a lot of good value cards.  The set was released as a filler set between the HGSS and BW blocks.  It contained cards from the Lost Link mini set, and some cards from the Clash at Summit set.  It also contained many re-prints from other HGSS sets, including 2 versions of a lot of the popular legendary Pokemon.  Like all of these articles, I will not review the baby Pokemon.  Also, I will not review any card that I have reviewed in other articles.  This explains the very short article we have.   So lets see if we can find any  good cards among this small pool.

Continue reading "A Second Look at Each Set: Call of Legends and Promos"

Hey everyone, this week we are going rogue; no political reference there.  By rogue we mean less mainstream, not bad by any means. We have always had a fascination with off-beat decks so this week we chose to look at two very different concepts. Jumpluff/Yanmega and Blastoise/Floatzel., are two decks you may have heard about, and we feel deserve a look.

We will start with Blastoise/Floatzel. Blastoise has always been a fan favorite Pokémon, and the Blastoise from UL seems to live up to the name. Sniping is something this format seems to lack and can be a very powerful tool with so many techs bench sitting these days. Blastoise’s attack Hydro Launcher combines well with his Wash Out ability allowing him to continuously snipe for 100 when combined with the Water Acceleration of Floatzel.

Blastoise has several favorable matchups against some of the more popular decks this format. Blastoise is a direct counter to Reshiram, a very popular archetype that will see large amounts of play for at least the next season or two. Reshiram also requires energy acceleration in the form or Emboar or Typhlosion, while weakness is not taken into effect on the bench, Blastoise can two shot either of these. Blastoise also has 130 HP and will not be OHKOd by Reshiram without the use of a Plus Power. Another bench sitter you will often see in a Reshiram deck is Ninatales or Shuckle, either of these can be taken out with just 1 Hydro Launcher. Donphan is probably the second most popular archetype that will be played this format. While Donphan is usually safe with 120 HP and Exoskeleton, this fails against Blastoise. Whatever Donphan is paired with also suffers from Blastoise, Machamp is normally slow to setup and its evolutionary forms will sure draw the attention of a Blastoise Player.
Continue reading "Going Rogue"

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there.  This is another continuation in my “Second Look at Each Set” series.  In these articles I go through the playable cards (the ones known and unknown) in each set, and make a case to play them, and a case not to play them.  Hopefully doing this will let you have a greater understanding of the limited card pool that the current modified format offers.

I apologize if these articles seem hurried or are a little messy.  Each article in this series takes a lot of time to put together, so I try to cut a few corners in order to get these articles out fairly quickly.  If you don”t understand something please leave it in the comment box and I will be happy to explain it to you.

Two housekeeping issues to take care of before we start the article.  The first is to tell you guys to watch the site in about a week or so.  I will be starting a raffle fairly soon and have an awesome grand prize to give away.  So stay tuned to hear the details of the contest.  The 2nd item is that I have decided that this series will have just one more article in it, an article looking at the cards in Call of Legends and the Promos that are currently legal.   I decided against doing a Black and White review because its still fresh in our minds.  If you guys would like to see me do a Black and White review, I can do that, just tell me so in the comment box. If we get a couple people who want to see it, then I will do it.    Anyway, on to the article.

I just want to reiterate something that I thought I made clear before, but I guess it
Continue reading "A Second Look at Each Set: Triumphant"

Hey all you OHKOers out there.  This is Pikkdogs here continuing my series of reviewing the best cards and hidden gems on each set in the format.  I am already about halfway through the HGSS block, we are now on Undaunted. 

It seems like some people are confused of the aim of this article.  Just because I talk about a card here, does not mean that I think it will win Nationals.  I am just going over the cards in the set that might be playable in the right deck if everything goes right for the deck.  It’s about finding rogues and different ideas.  Yes Reshiram and Magnezone will clean up at this years Nats, but if I talked about them all day, it would be pretty boring.  So this is out to find some fresh new ideas.

Unduanted

Undaunted was released in the U.S. in August of 2010.  It was made up of cards from the previous Japanese set and many different kinds of Japanese decks that were released.  It also featured legend cards from the newest Japanese set.  Like Unleashed, Undaunted was not known as a  very powerful set at the time.  Just a few cards were hyped from the set, and nobody seemed to be in love with the set.

The Most Played Cards
Continue reading "A Second Look at Each Set: Undaunted"

Hey OHKO! Sorry for the delay in getting this posted, things have been pretty busy recently.
That said, here’s the latest deck analysis on the most hyped/anticipated deck at US and Canadian Nationals in a few weeks.
I give you the lowdown on the deck including a tight skeleton list to help you out. I’m liking the new format of the deck analysis myself, but what do you guys think? Let me know in the comments below!

Continue reading "PokeClass Episode 30 – MagneBoar Deck Analysis plus Battle Video!"

Welcome to the second part of this series of articles.  These articles look at each set and take a look at both the most played and most overlooked cards of each set.  We are now on the HS: Unleashed set.  The hope is that by looking at the best cards of each set, we will be able to find some new techs or new deck ideas.

Before the article we have a bit of news.  Last week it was announced that the next English set will be called “Emerging Powers.”  The weird thing about the announcement is that it was announced that the set would include over 90 cards including 25 Pokemon that were never printed before.  Since our Black and White set did not have about 25 Pokemon cards that were not in the Japanese Black and White sets, this means that we probably will not be getting any cards from the Red Collection (the second Japanese Set).  Whats even stranger is the fact that we are getting some cards like Krookodile and Scolipede that have not been released in Japan.  So does that mean that we are getting a lot of new cards that Japan hasn’t received yet?  Anyway, it does seem that the next set will contain a lot of unreleased cards from the Black and White sets and cards from the Coballion, Virizion, and Terrakion decks.  Anyway, lets get on to the article.

The Top Cards

These are the top cards that have been talked about and played already.  You should be aware of these guys.
Continue reading "A Second Look at Each Set: Unleashed"

Hey all you OHKOers out there, this is Pikkdogs here with another article for you.  With the upcoming rotation on July 1st, all of the old decks will be replaced by new ones.  And we know which decks will see a lot of play, a lot of people are talking about decks like Reshiboar, Magneboar, Donphan, Feraligatr Prime, Gengar Prime, Donchamp, ZPS, etc… .  But, is that it?  Are those the only decks that will be popular at nationals, or have we missed something?

To make sure that we don’t miss a single card that can help us at Nationals, I will look at each set one by one, and try to find the most playable cards of each set.  Now I know these articles won’t be perfect, but I will try to leave no stone unturned in the search for the hidden gems of the HGSS-on format. I will not be reviewing any Baby Pokemon (except Cleffa) because I did an entire article them.

Set Introduction

Just to be wacky I will start with the oldest set in the format, Heart Gold and Soul Silver, hmmm…… that doesn’t seem very wacky, well okay so maybe its not wacky, …

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"

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there.  This is Pikkdogs here with a deck analysis.  I was struggling on whether I should call this article a “Deck Analysis” or a “Stupid Deck Idea.”  The reason I wasn’t sure whether what to name it was because it is an all or nothing deck, it either works really well or falls flat on its face, but we can talk about that later.  The deck that I will be spotlighting is a Kyogre/Groudon Legend build.

What the Deck Does

As far as I know, KGL builds can trace their history to an article on Pokegym by Elekid 957. KGL was a hyped card when it was released, so I’m sure it did see some play before the article, but that was the first time a real playable list was released to the masses.  The problem with this decklist is that it is for the MD-CL format, meaning the list lost a lot of cards.  This loss could have broken the playability of the deck, extensive testing has yet to show if a KGL build can survive in the HGSS-on format.

I made a KGL deck because I love the Ruby and Sapphire generation.  To me, those games were the best Pokemon games, so the legendary Pokemon from that generation have always been special to me.  Another reason why I like the deck is that I like the milling strategy (discarding cards from your opponent’s deck).  The strategy of the deck is to use KGL’s “Mega Title Wave” attack to mill the opponent’s deck. 
Continue reading "Deck Analysis: Kyogre/Groudon Legend"

Hey all of you at OneHitKO! This is PokemanDan bringing you the next episode of PokeClass.

This week is the start of the HGSS-On deck analysis for all of you that have Nationals coming up soon!
ZPS is one of the most hyped deck of the new format since it can get a very powerful donk going on through the first turn. A very tough deck that has very strong early game presence, but maybe that’s the biggest weakness. Watch the video to find more in-depth analysis!

Now, I’ve included the playthrough video in this post to save you having to click elsewhere. It simply goes through the first turn of Zekrom, showing you how you can manage to do 120 damage on just the first turn, including 3 energy attachments! Watch below for more.

Enjoy and comment below what you think about the deck.

See you next week,

Dan

Continue reading "PokeClass Episode 29 – ZPS Deck Analysis w/Playthrough"