A Three Pack of Mini Articles: Your Favorite Card Art of 2011, How EXs Effect States, and Ask Pikkdogs?

by Pikkdogs ~ February 16th, 2012.

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there.  This is Pikkdogs here with a 3 pack of mini articles.  First, we have some old business to catch up on with, the award for best artwork in 2011.  Then, we have a new www.propokemon.com premium content article from Alex Fields, and I will bring you an exclusive look at that article. Finally, I have an idea for an article or two that I might want to do, I will run it past you guys, and we will see how it goes.  So, let’s get on to the article. 

Section 1: The Award for Best Overall Card Art.

If you have read the article about card art a couple weeks ago, you will remember that I did an award show type article that celebrated the best in card art.  I gave awards in many categories like: Best Full Art, Best Aerial Scene, and Cutest Card Art.  But, I let you guys pick your favorite overall card art.  Before we give away the last award, I just gotta say that I really liked doing the article this year.  This type of article is always very tough and labor intensive, it is not an easy article to do.  It also is not easy to pick a winner out of a pool of some really good art.  But, at the end I really enjoyed doing the article and hearing your responses.  I really think that card art is something that connects the casual 7 year-old player to the competitive 24 year-old player.  It brings everybody together because everybody can appreciate card art. 

Okay, so without any more ramblings on, let’s crown your winner for best overall card art.  In tallying the votes, I was not happy with how many overall votes we recieved.  But, that could have been because the comment section of our website crashed for the first couple days this article was up, so that was not a good thing.  But, all that aside we do have a winner, and it is………………….

That’s right, the first ever overall Favorite Card Art award goes to Full Art Victini from Noble Victories.  It won even though it was a write-in choice. 

Nobody cared to tell us why they liked it, so I will just guess.  First, Victini is a very popular Pokemon.  It is the star of two Pokemon movies.  Also, this Pokemon is very cute.  Victini does succedde in rivaling Pikachu in the cuteness department.  Just being cute will land you a lot of fans, I should know.  Next, we can look at the card art itself and we see a very nice closeup of Victini’s entire body.  He seems to be in the middle of a fight or something and he has his fangs peeking out of his cute little mouth.  His body appears to be summoning the power of some kind of fire.  Finally, what really stands out here are his baby blue eyes.  They really grab you and get your attention.  Victini does have the eyes to rival old blue eyes himself, Frank Sinatra.  But, Victini is better than Frank Sinatra because he doesn’t have any ties to the Mob, not so far anyway.  Add all these things together and you get a really cool piece of card art that is really cute. 

Thanks to you all that read the article and voted for your favorite card art. 

Section 2: www.propokemon.com Premium Article by Alex Fields, “How the Return of EXs will Effect the State Championships.

Our friends at www.propokemon.com have a new premium article out.  As always we will give you an exclusive sneak peek at the article that you can only find here, for free.  If you want to be ready for states, just follow this link, and you will have an oppurtunity to read the whole article and get yourself up to date on your Pokemon knowledge.

This article is all about EXs and how they will influence play at States.  The author takes the time to look at every EX individually and discusses decks where they will see play.  It just isn’t a rehash of the stuff you hear on this site and others, it does bring new stuff to the discussion.  It really is a pretty cool article.  It gives a pretty good decklist and it gets your mind in gear for play in the new format. 

Here is a sneak peek at the article. In this part of the article, Alex is giving you tips for States.

– Be prepared to play against a lot of decks that manipulate energy, whether through Eelektrik, Typhlosion, Emboar, or Celebi. Echo what I said above about what to do if your deck can’t beat them. Energy manipulation is a key part of this format, and most of the successful decks running Evolutions at this point are in this category.

– Be prepared for N. The presence of EXs makes this card potentially more disruptive early on, and it remains, as always, the ultimate comeback card.

– Durant is not only still a very solid deck, it is practically the go-to deck for a.) casual players and b.) players who don’t have access to Mewtwo and/or other expensive EXs/Primes/etc.. When I say this, I am not being derogatory toward either group a. or b.—I’m just giving an honest observation. It is favored by a lot of casual and limited-resource players because of how cheap it is to build, and how simple it is to run (playing the deck masterfully isn’t that easy, but you know what I mean—it isn’t hard to grasp the “Devour all game” strategy). Be prepared for it as well.

Those are just a fraction of some of the tips, there are others in the article, and also a lot of other good info.  To get your hands on the full article, just click here.  

Section 3: Ask Pikkdogs

I know that I am just asking for trouble here, but I will go against my better judgements and again ask for your help in an article.  I know that we have a lot of very attractive readers, but your participation rate has always been fairly low.  Well, I’m hoping that we can buck that trend and that will have good participation in this new article idea. 

The new article will be called, “Ask Pikkdogs.”  As the name suggessts, this article will be all about the benefits of adding chicken to a pizza.  Well, actually it won’t at all.  It will actaully be about me answering questions from you guys.  You will leave your questions in the comment box, and I will try to answer them. 

You can ask my opinion on anything.  Some good sample questions could be:

  • What deck should I play at states?
  • What decks can I play if I don’t have a lot of cash to throw around?
  • Do you follow the theories of Karl Jung, over the theories of Sigmund Freud?
  • What is the best way to start collecting cards from each set?
  • What type of fuel should I put in my 2002 Ford Taurus?
  • What is your favorite Wagner Opera?
  • Here is my decklist, can you help me make it better?

Those are just a sample of some good questions to ask.  As you can see I am up to talking about anything, even something silly, it’s always fun to let yourself hang a little loose and not to take yourself too seriously.  Personal  questions and questions about things like Pedro are also encouraged.  As I mentioned, you can post your question in the comment box of this article, you can also always email me questions at pikkdogs@yahoo.com, try to put something like “Ask Pikkdogs” in the subject.   I know I am not as much of an expert on the game as some people are, but I think it would be cool to answer some questions that people have.  Also, since I’m hoping that half of the questions include stuff about people like Geoffery Chaucer, it may not go too deep into Pokemon.  Hopefully we can get a lot of user particpation to make this a fun article. 

So that’s, 1…..2……and 3.  Three things completed in one article, I’m all done.  Hopefully we can get some cool questions for “Ask Pikkdogs,” so please don’t be shy, “Ask Pikkdogs” today!

Category: Opinion, State Championships | Tags: