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 theme deck event).  It is pretty much like a regular game, but you play with 4 prizes instead of 6.  Since you get random cards, consistency is key.  You won’t be able to run 4 Junipers and 4 Collectors in this deck, so you will have to build it as focused as possible.  We’ll get in to what cards to play later, but for right now just focus on making your deck centered on a couple Pokemon that are similar.  You usually play almost all of your useful trainers, and you play around 15 energies.  You might want to add an extra energy or two this time around, because the only draw power that we get in this set is N.

Pokemon to look out for.

This set is not great for really impactful Pokemon, but it does have a lot of Pokemon that make Pre-Release tournaments fairly easy.  There are a lot of good high HP basic Pokemon.  The three members of the Musketeer trio are represented (Virizion, Terrakion, and Coballion), as well as the last member of the energy (Kyurem) and Kami (Landurus) trios.  There is also a non legendary high HP basic, in Drudiggon.  If you get any of these, you should probably play them.  You have 2 shots at getting the members of the Musketeer trio, because they each have a Full Art form, so there is a decent chance of pulling one of those.  All three of these Pokemon are great, but my favorite is Virizion because he has an attack that let’s you draw cards.  Drudiggon is nice because he takes colorless energy, so you can throw him into any deck.  But the best of all the high HP basics is Kyurem.  If you are able to get an Eviolite on Kyurem, he will be almost impossible to knock out.  Kyurem has 130 HP and has the “Outrage” attack that Reshiram and Zekrom have.  If you are able to get Kyurem about, you should be able to “Outrage” for about 2-3 prizes before your opponent can knock it out.  It is the best card in this limited format.

This is usually the spot where I tell people to play Pokemon that let them draw cards.  But right now only Virizion does that, and it is a rare.  So this format will be extra slow and inconsistent.  Karrablast and Shelmet do have an attack that lets you evolve one of them if both are in play, but the chance of you getting an evolution with a bunch of each of the basics is not that great.  So not a lot of consistency Pokemon to talk about.

The Stage 1 Pokemon in this set are pretty good, but nothing to write home about.  If you pull a decent one like Amoongus you should play it, as long as you don’t have too many other energy types to begin with.  Audino has a decent attack. “Do the Wave” will do ten times the number of your benched Pokemon, which is not great, but is decent.

As always, playing Stage 2 Pokemon in a Pre-Release is tricky.  If you don’t pull at least a 3-2-1 line, it will be very hard to get your stage 2 Pokemon out consistently.  If you can pull a good line, then play the good ones like Conkeldurr and Chandelure.  But in this set, basic Pokemon will have more impact on games then the stage 2s.

For trainer cards, this set is pretty shallow.  Play every N you have, it is the second best card in this set for this type of format, so make sure to try to play it.  I would even play, Xtranciever, so you can search for it.  Eviolite, Rocky Helmet, and Super Rod are great, but I wouldn’t play much more than two to three of each of them if I pull any more.  I don’t know what to think about the fossils in this set. If you can pull a lot of the fossils and their corresponding Pokemon, then it is a good play.  But if not it will not be consistent. 

Conclusion

This set looks like a pretty tough one for Pre-Releases.  There are basically only two consistency cards in the whole set, meaning that it will be very hard to get what you want out.  And the consistency cards we have are fairly poor, one lets you draw 2 cards as the effect of an attack and the other let’s you draw a maximum of 4 cards. The winners this weekend will have to get very lucky.  Because of the lack of consistency cards, I would probably run a couple more energies and just hope for good draws.  The big HP basic Pokemon will be your best cards, but it will be hard to get them consistently because there are no search cards in the format.

Good luck to everyone, because in this format you will need it.  Do you have anything to say Pedro?

Cockfighting.

Well there you go.  Even though we had a short article, we did manage to say the word “cockfighting” 5 times.  That’s pretty good.

Always good when you can say “cockfighting” a lot. That is six times.

We better stop saying “cockfighting” now, seven times.  I wish ya good luck at your PR’s this weekend and I hope you have a good time and get some good trades going.

So long and thanks for all the fish!

Category: Card Discussion | Tags: Coballion NV, Drudiggon, Kyurem NV, N, Noble Victories pre-release, Terrakion NV, Virizion NV