One Hit KO

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there.  This is Pikkdogs here with my sidekick Pedro, and we have an article about strategy for Noble Victories pre-release tournaments.  Now people don’t normally go to Pre-Releases for the thrill of victory.  Pre-Releases are for fun and for getting the new cards.  But, while your there, you might as win right?  Some tournament organizers also give a free pack to the winner of the pre-release, so it s a good thing to win.

Pedro, are you going to a pre-release this weekend?

Well, no.  I’m going to watch the UFC event.

Oh, you like the MMA hey?  MMA is kinda cool, it’s like boxing but with colorful shirts.

Gotta love the colorful shirts. 

John McCain doesn’t like MMA though, he said it’s like human cockfighting.

No, I’ve seen human cockfighting, and they don’t wear the colorful shirts.  They don’t wear much of anything.

Well, there goes our hope of having a clean article, let’s get off the subject of cockfighting and let’s get onto the article.

How to Build a Pre-Release Deck

Pre-Release tournaments are held with a 40 card deck that you make out of 6 packs(unless your area holds …

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there.  This is Pikkdogs here with a Pikk Three article for you.  I also brought along my sidekick Pedro. 

Well I expected to have the scans for the new Noble Victories set to be up by now, but as the time that I am writing this article, we know nothing about the set.  We don’t even have a leaked set list or anything.  The first pre-releases are just a little over a day away, so i am pretty ticked that we don’t have any news about the set to share with you.  But, that’s not on us, that is on the people who have opened their boxes and decided not to share with us.  

Anyway Pedro, do you have any good news for us?

Nope no news, I guess everyone else in the Pokemon world took the week off.  The last time you wrote you were feeling sick.  Are you feeling any better Pikkdogs?

Well, I do feel a lot better, but I still got the sneezing and for a couple days I have been hacking up something pretty fierce. 

More information than we wanted to know.  I guess that syphilis …

A big hello to all your OHKOers out there.  This is Pikkdogs and my extra-dimensionary sidekick Pedro here with a Stupid Deck Idea.  If you aren’t familiar with the stupid deck idea concept, it was Ed’s idea to have an article that reviews a deck that isn’t the best.

Couldn’t we say that about all of your deck lists?

Well I guess so, let’s rephrase that.  A stupid deck idea is an article that highlights a deck that I don’t believe is as good as other decks.  It could be a deck that I haven’t had a chance to test, or it could be a deck that is more of a fun league deck.  This deck is more towards the fun league deck category, but it might be a little more if you can get a really polished deck.

Before we get into the deck, let’s check in with Pedro.  How are things going Pedro?

Well, I’m doing good.  How bout you Pikkdogs?

Not so well, I came down with a cold or something like that.  So I have an excuse for writing a terrible article today, I’m not feeling too well.

What are your excuses for writing terrible articles …

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there.  This is Pikkdogs and his sidekick Pedro here with a new opinion article.  Nobody has posted anything on the site for a while, and I sure couldn’t think of anything to write about, so I decided to do an opinion article and give it a fancy new name.  In this article I will make some statements about the game, and then try to back them up with facts or observations.  But first, Pedro has some news for you.

Yes indeedy.  The new set Nobel Victories will be starting it’s pre-releases next weekend.  So expect some articles about the set to be coming up this week.  Hopefully our friends at www.pokebeach.com will be having the scans for that set out very soon.  And make plans to hit up the pre-releases in the coming weeks.  Tournament Organizers rely on their players to support them at these events, and it is a great way to get new cards from the upcoming set.  So make sure to get out to one of those, they will be a lot of fun. 

So what have you been up to lately Pedro?

Well Fall is my favorite time of year.  I’ve been watching my fair share of American Football.

Really your a football fan?  What’s your favorite team?

Well, I always root for my alma mater, the Susquehanna University Crusaders.

Susquehanna U.  Isn’t that Bullwinkle’s Alma Mater?

No, that was What’samatta U. 
Continue reading "Bold Statements with Pikkdogs"

Hello all you Earthlings.  Today we have an article about the ending of Fall Battle Roads.  Let me now introduce to you your author for this evening,  the other rock star from Mars, Pikkdogs!!

Why what an introduction, Pedro.  What has gotten in to you?  You usually are not this nice.

Well, I thought I would give you a good entrance to make you feel better about your dissapointing fall battle road season.  

Here we go, I thought there must have been something up your sleeve. 

No, nothing up my sleeve. I just thought it could be pretty bad to go to 6 tournaments without winning any.  0-6 is a tough thing. 
Continue reading "Review of Battle Roads and your first Regionals Preview"

Happy Monday to all you OneHitKO readers, Joel here with a report and a half from this weekend’s battle road events. I say report and a half for because I only took notes on half my matches from Saturday, mainly because I did so bad and I was getting so frustrated I just stopped taking notes. I did a lot better on Sunday, but nowhere near cut but at least it was a major improvement from Saturday. It was also a horrible weekend for sports as well. The Detroit Lions undefeated streak came to an end, the Detroit Tigers got eliminated, and Michigan lost to Michigan State. The Red Wings won their game however, so it wasn’t too bad. I will start the article with Saturday’s Battle Road, which took place in Ann Arbor, MI. I was happy to see an event in Ann Arbor, only because I live 15 minutes outside of A-squared and it is arguably the greatest city in Michigan. The event was held at my favorite store down there, Get Your Game On. The only downside was the venue was very small, so small it was cramped and people actually got turned away because we went …

I forgot to bring my camera for both days this past weekend, so I don’t have my usual slew of unfocused pictures. Because of that, I thought that I wouldn’t write much, so I didn’t take any notes. This is all from (my poor) memory.

Here’s a micro report from The Source Comics and Games on Oct. 15th. I knew that there was another tourney the next day, so I thought that if Ava was done playing, I might drop. I didn’t want to drop if there was a chance I could still win, but in the back of my mind, I almost hoped I’d hit that 2 loss mark early. We had a party to attend as a family, so it would be good to get home a bit earlier.

Juniors had 8 players. Aiden wasn’t there with his Beartic deck which has beaten Ava’s Donphan deck in the 2 previous events. Unfortunately, Paul decided that Beartic was the clear best deck (as it had won the previous 2 events) and decided to play it. I think Ava lost to Paul and forgot about Exoskeleton to lose another one. In the end, she snuck in at 4th place and got her third top-4 in 3 events.

Continue reading "Battle Roads Double Header Weekend in Minnesota"

Hello to all you OHKOers out there, this is Pikkdogs here with a Battle Roads report.  Of course I am also joined by my extra-dimesnionary sidekick Pedro.

Before we start, I gotta thank Pedro for filling in for me recently while I was serving my 1 article suspension.  I couldn’t do it and Pedro wrote an article and he did a ………….. well he wrote an article.   So thanks.

Well, your welcome Pikkdogs.  Say,  you had some time off lately, what did you do with your time?

Well I took a vacation.  I went to Amish country. In  Intercourse, Pennsylvania.

Ohhhh, what did you do?

Well, I have always been inspired by the simple life of the Amish.  I just walked around the center of town and talked with the locals.

So, in other words, you like to talk in the middle of Intercourse? 

Yes.  You know the one good thing about the Amish is that they don’t have computers so you can say whatever you want about them and they will never know.

Yes, the Amish and other Americans are very different.  One is a group of people that never read your articles…… and the other group is …

Hey all you earthlings, this is Pedro here.  Pikkdogs receieved a one article suspension for his cussing last week.  And because the show must go on, Ed asked me to fill in for him.  While I don’t know much about this game, I should be able to  do better than a fat kid that doesn’t know his grammar rules. 

Before we get into the article, we should take care of these italics.  Even though my normal langauge translates into italics, it would be hard to read an article full of italics, so I bought an italics converter.  If I just pop it into my inter-dimensionary porthole like so, that should do it.  Okay lets get to the article. 

Obviously I am an extra-dimensionary being, so I don’t know that much about Pokemon, but one thing that interests me is the Lost Zone.  Since I have to travel through an inter-dimensionary porthole, a portal to the Lost Zone feels very familiar.  So I will start talking about Lost Zone cards and Lost Zone decks. 

The Most Versatile Lost Zone Card- Lost Remover

Continue reading "Pedro’s Corner: A Review of the Lost Zone"

So I know you OHKO’ers are knee-deep in Battle Roads right now, battling against all sorts of decks—not just the Reshiram/Typhlosions, Yanmega/Magnezones and Stage 1’s you’ve become familiar with since Worlds, but brand new decks too, like Zekrom/Tornadus, toolboxy Mew decks, Yanmega/Cincinno/Weavile, Gothitelle, Beartic/Vileplume/whatever—all kinds of builds you hadn’t thought of, but yearn to try. But how can you? I mean, you can’t just call up the guys every other day, asking to get together to test out your crazy Wobbuffet-donk deck whenever you please, right? We all have lives—school and college just started up, we’re all working hard to make financial ends meet, and Dancing with the Stars has reclaimed our Monday and Tuesday nights. Personally, it took me like 2 whole weeks to set a series of forest fires in northern Minnesota with the goal of sending a blinding cloud of smoke at Pikkdogs’ Michigan apartment. Let’s face it—we don’t always have the time to playtest like we should.

The Pokémon Company International has just created a new platform—Pokémon TCG Online, or PTCGO—that could make it much easier for us players to build and test decks. It also promises to attract a whole new set of players to the game. But it has its glitches, and its drawbacks. Pikkdogs wrote a brief introduction to PTCGO’s initial release, back when it was just a single-player game with old cards and set decks. Now, in its open beta, PTCGO has many of the features Pokémon players would want: two-player online games, owning and trading of virtual cards, a fully functional deck-builder, and a multiplayer matchmaker. In this article, I hope to bring you up to speed on what has changed with the service since Pikk’s article, and to help you decide whether investing time and money into PTCGO is worth it for you. I’ll also tell you about my own effort to use PTCGO to get ready for my first tournament of the Battle Roads season: the October 9th BR in Coon Rapids, MN.

Continue reading "TAndrewTesting: Pokémon TCG Online"