January 2012

Pikkdogs Pikks Three: Special Energy Edition: Rainbow Energy, Double Colorless Energy, Rescue Energy.

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there.  This is Pikkdogs here with another Pikk Three article.  This Pikk Three article is special, because it is all about Special Energies.  We will do 3 card reviews for the special energies that are currently legal, then get a sneak peek into a new energy that may be coming into our format in the next year.  But first, I must introduce my extra-dimensionary sidekick Pedro.

Hey Pedro what’s going on today?

Hey Pikkdogs, I have some news for you.  Next Destinies Pre-Releases will start on January 28th, and the set will be released on February 8th.  So you can practice early for states so you know exactly how you will lose at states. 

That’s always nice.  However, I do like to be surprised by the way I lose.

I can appreciate that.  We also have one last weekend for Cities this coming weekend.  So you might be able to lose one last time.  And finally, things are starting to come out of Japan about the new Dragon type Pokemon that we are getting.  We have received the first 3 Dragon type Pokemon.  We still don’t know all about the set, so continue to stay tuned for more news.

Pedro, you didn’t make any jokes this time?

Ok, you want some weird news and jokes okay.  We can talk about Snoop Dogg.  The D-O double G got arrested this past weekend for marijuana possession.  Lawyers predict that Snoop will get up to one yizzle in the jizzle.  That good enough for you. 

Very nice, let’s get on to the article. Read More

OneHitKO.com Challenge: Decklist & Other Discussion

I got some cards from Coolestman22 since the last tourney, so the list was a bit better than the previous run.

The additions were:

  • 1 Zekrom: Excellent damage output without the energy discard that all my other attackers have
  • 1 Thundurus: Second turn 80 damage and puts 1 energy in the discard
  • 1 Pokemon Communication: Gets my evolutions
  • 1 Great Ball: Maybe the best addition (gets Junk Armed a lot)
  • 1 Pokemon Circulator: I gets me out of certain situations, but is also annoying when you know Catcher is in format.
  • 1 Professor Juniper: Great draw supporter for this deck

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OneHitKO.com Challenge: Tourney #2 Report

I have to admit that I’ve been disappointed with the number of participants in the OneHitKO.com Challenge. When I first proposed it, people said that it might get low participation, but I didn’t expect it to be this low. I figured locals would chip in. I figured that some people would fine the idea oddly intriguing. I figured that, for the cost of a stamp, thinning your card pool of stuff you didn’t intend to play could be turned into entertainment. I guess I figured wrong.

Now, I’m not all sad or anything. In other ways, I’m very pleased with how things have turned out. I’m playing a deck that I otherwise never would have used in tourneys, and I’m having fun with it.

I’m happy with the cards that have been donated. There’s another area in which things have exceeded expectations. When I expected to be running a deck full of the best picks from random junk, I’m running a deck with 3 Primes, several popular trainers/supporters, some great dragons, and one of the most impactful Pokemon of the moment.

My goal was to build a community around this project, and in that I feel like I’ve failed. I’ve been thinking of ways I can continue with a similar experiment/project, though. Again, it’s not all bad, but it’s not what I aimed for. I have ideas for future targets, though.

My in-game goal was to go better than 50/50 in any tourney. Let’s get to the report.
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Ya Gotta Gear Up!!! Pokemon Style.

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there.  This article is for beginners, and it is about the tools that Pokemon players and collectors use.  When you first thought of playing a game, you probably never thought of using things like sleeves, binders, and deck boxes.  But, all these things are very important.  So let’s look at what some random douche, me, has to say about these things.  We will begin by looking at things you  need like randomizers, sleeves, deck boxes, binders, and playmats.

Randomizers/Damge Counters

There is a really good chance that one of the first Pokemon things you ever bought was a theme deck.  Theme decks are nice because they teach you the rules of the game, give you some cards, and give you a rule book with some other stuff.  That “other stuff” contains things like a coin and damage counters.  The coin is a cheap plastic thing, and is very hard to flip.  I have tried to flip those, but I end up either not flipping it or hitting my opponent, more often than I do a successful flip. The damage counters are not much better, they get too messy and obstruct the card so you can’t read it.  The better way to fix these problems is to use dice.

Almost everybody uses dice for both damage counters and randomizers.  When using as a randomizer, you treat evens as heads and odds as tails.  There are a couple rules for using dice as randomizers.  The first rule is that the dice must be transparent and have rounded edges.  To make sure nobody weighs a die so that its finally resting position is on one side, the dice must be see through when you hold it up the light, just so everybody can see there is no weight inside of it.  The die also must have rounded edges on it, I’m not really sure why this is a rule, maybe one of our readers can explain why.  The second rule is that die you use to flips must be different from the ones that you use for damage counters.  This rule is to avoid confusion when your randomizer die lands close to your damage counting dice. Read More

Deck Analysis: Mew Prime, Unfezant, and Vanilluxe.

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there.  This is Pikkdogs here with a deck analysis for you.  My extra-dimensionary sidekick Pedro is also with me today.  What’s going on today Pedro?

This weeks bit of news comes from the field we are most qualified in, politics.  Well this past week in Iowa they held the Iowa Caucuses, to help determine the Republican candidate for the Presidential elections that will be held later this year.  And we have to talk about it just so I can say the word “Caucus”.

Who won the Caucus?

That was Mitt Romney.  You know Pikkdogs, I once won a Caucus?

Is “won a caucus” code for amorus homosexual activity?

Maybe.

I have a feeling we should just go onto the article.  Read More

Pedro’s Preview

Yo all you Earthlings, this is Pedro here with a sneak peek at the newest premium article to hit www.propokemon.com.  You can even read an exerpt from the article right here in this article.  The article even contains a top tier, really good deck list for your playing and play testing purposes.   I’m going to pop my Italics converter in my inter-dimensionary porthole for this one so it is easier to read. 

Do you remember a while ago when Pikkdogs did a Six Corners deck analysis and then gave a couple Cities reports where he got knocked around and ended up with losing records.  Well this article is kind of like that deck, except the deck that this article is talking about is actually good.  And the article is written in a way you can understand it, without a ton of spelling errors.  Sounds like a much better article to me.

Now if you want to subscribe to propokemon’s premium membership, you can do so very easily and on the cheap.  It only costs $6 a month to subscribe to propokemon.  That is cheaper than one of the meals from Arby’s that Pikkdogs always talks about in his tournament reports.  I’m sure you can afford a subscription for a price that is less than 1 1/2 packs of cards! The subscription fee is really cheap, and you get a lot of cool articles that are written by players that are actually good.  Sounds like a good deal to me.  If I was a good sidekick I would work at ProPokemon in a heartbeat.  But, if you want to subscibe, you gotta hit this link here.  Well, I lied you could also hit this one here.  Well I didn’t really lie since they link to the same site, the exact same site that this one will bring you to.

So now is the time where I bring you an exerpt from the article. So read the article, of course you will like it, so then you can click here to subscribe and read the rest of the article.  Sound Good?  Okay, do it.

Have a good night everybody.

Exerpt from “The Secret of Six Corners” by Jack Armstead

For people who have been in the game a long time (and people who know their TCG history), the name of Six Corners gives a pretty big hint of the basic strategy of the deck. It follows the example of the old ‘Four Corners’ deck, which was based around Lanturn HL and Magcargo DX and supported by strong Fighting and Psychic Type Pokémon. The aim of the deck was to be able to hit any popularly played Type for Weakness.

Six Corners has the same strategy at its core, but takes a different approach. It aims to make the most of the excellent Type coverage provided by the three Unova Dragons (Reshiram, Zekrom and Kyurem) by abusing their massive HP (enhanced by Eviolite) and their low-cost Outrage attack. Type coverage is increased by adding in the Fighting Type Terrakion NV (to counter popular Lightning Types) and other techs of choice, depending on the metagame.

Essentially, Six Corners is a reactive deck: it works by giving the opponent a series of near-impossible problems to solve, and then take advantage of their inability to deal with them. This is one reason why some players have a negative reaction to the deck. Pokémon players are competitive by nature and are often conditioned to favour decks that play out in an aggressive manner: they want to get their deck up and running and go on the offence, scoring Prizes, spreading damage, and disrupting the opponent. Six Corners works somewhat differently to that: it is a deck that offers the opponent the first punch, confident in the knowledge that it will hit them back even harder.

OneHitKO.com Challenge: Road Trip & Surprise

Rapid City Road Trip

I have a bit of catching up to do here. I was out of town (and fairly busy) between Christmas and New Years. I’m back now, so I should update you on the happenings since the last installment.

We were in Rapid City, SD for vacation, because we have family there. We go there almost every year for Christmas. This time, there were 2 league times that occurred during our stay. I penciled in both, but I didn’t know if we’d have other family stuff going on.

If you have been reading here for quite a while, you may recall from my Alakazam/Chancey Report that Rapid City has some interesting formats that they attempt. The Pokemon scene there is quite different from other places I’ve played. It pretty much exists in its own little bubble. Adam, the league leader and one other guy named Ben seem to be the ones that really drive the scene.

Now, from what I’ve seen/heard, most leagues allow an unlimited card pool, but even then, most players play modified-legal cards. Yeah, if you want to play old cards, people won’t mind, but most will prefer to play against tourney decks. In Rapid City, it seems that they don’t care much about the modified format. Yeah, people like new cards, but they don’t want to dump their old stuff. Case in point, this time, there was a guy who’s “want” list contained a bunch of SP trainers. I had no problem trading them away, because I had no use for ’em.
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