One Hit KO

Trust me, the banana thing works.

Greetings OHKO!

I guess I’m going to start with a brief introduction. My name is Calvin Chang and I started playing Pokémon competitively halfway through the 2011-2012 season. I actually started playing Pokémon casually when I first investigated it for a high school composition class (yeah… long story). It was fun, the people were nice and I thoroughly enjoyed the game. Then I graduated from high school, moved onto the college campus at the University of Minnesota and took a hiatus from Pokémon since I had no car and no way to continue going to league. When January rolled around, some of the guys at Pokémon asked me if I wanted to compete at Midwest Regionals in the Dells. I figured it would be fun, grabbed a Magnerock deck from some friends and started playing competitively, all the way through Nationals. I wasn’t good but at least I went positive at all the events I played in and eventually finished 10^th best player in Minnesota based off ELO points. Since then, I’ve been getting more and more into the competitive environment though still doing mediocre as always.

A week before Minnesota states, I went down to La Crosse with the other guys from league. I had no idea what I was going to play, as mid-terms just finished up and I didn’t have a chance to thoroughly test my options so Joey, Lukas, Michael, Curtis and I stayed up until about 1 in the morning so that I could figure out a deck to play. I didn’t.
Continue reading "Zekrom/Eelektrik (ZekEels): Calvin’s MN State Championship 2012"

Choose deck at 4:00 am. Begin sleep at 4:30 am.  End sleep at 8:30 am. 

Apparently it’s been too long since SixPrizes published a “How to Prepare for Tournaments” article because I sure blew it this time. 

Here’s the (untested) list I decided to go with.

Pokemon – 16

4 Mew TM
2 Terrakion NV
1 Zorua BW
1 Zorua MCD
2 Zoroark BW
1 Tornadus EP
1 Mewtwo ND
1 Shaymin UL
1 Crobat UL
1 Chandelure ND
1 Jumpluff HS
Continue reading "Mewchigan States Report"

I really thought that I wasn’t going to make it to States this year. Part of me thought that I should make a strong effort to defend my title, and part of me thought that the effort would be wasted if I couldn’t attend anyway. I had it in the back of my mind that I might make it to the tourney, so all along I had been putting together a CMT deck. I really actually wanted to play a straight Celebi/Mewtwo deck (without Tornadus or any techs), but I didn’t want to go out of my way to buy a bunch of Mewtwo if I might not even use them.

I did end up scraping together all the pieces for a CMT minus the 2 Mewtwo EX. When I decided to try opening the OneHitKO Store, I bought 3 boxes of Next Destinies. I figured that if I did end up able to attend MN States, then I could just borrow a couple Mewtwo from the store for the day. Well, that idea fell apart rather quickly when I opened 3 boxes and saw a total of ZERO Mewtwo EX.

The weekend before the tournament, my wife went to the hospital 3 times with pregnancy issues, and I thought that each time we might have an extended stay there while delivering our new child. Nothing came of that, and on the Monday before States, I ended up emailing TAndrewT and talking about all of this. I told him essentially the same thing I just told you, still unsure that the pregnancy would last through the following weekend of MN States. I also added that I had considered Durant and straight 4-Terrakion deck.

I didn’t know if I even cared to build a deck at this point. Pokemon wasn’t a pressing issue, and I had barely played since Cities. Andy replied with, “Well, if you need Terrakions I have plenty for you to borrow.” and I thought that this sounded like the only plan I was going to come up with on late notice.

I netdecked a list, and I threw together the deck proxying the Terrakion (I had all the rest except for 1 old style Revive in place of the new one). There’s a guy here at work that I’ve been playing against over lunch sometimes. He has a Zekrom/Eelektrik deck (which I figured would be popular), so I challenged him to a match. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the deck with him, so he played an old Emboar/Reshiram deck of mine. The first game went very quickly as I lost due to not getting more than 1 Terrakion out. I think the deck wasn’t very shuffled yet, and 2 Terrakion were prized. The next game was a real match, and I think I ultimately won when he decked out. This one game turned out to be my only real tourney prep, though. Other than that, I never played the deck until the day of the tourney. At the tourney, a junior (another co-worker’s kid) challenged me to a game, and I ran though his Pokemon very quickly. Going into the tournament, I had only played one real and it was against a non-metagame deck.

Continue reading "Quad Terrakion Deck – MN State Championship 2012"

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there.  This is Pikkdogs here with a tournament report.  This past Saturday I was lucky enough to get to go to Michigan States at Okemos, Mi (which is just outside of Lansing).

The Deck

Before I talk about the tournament I will give you the deck that I used.  As you can see with the title, I ran a really weird deck.  I knew that I wasn’t going to win with this deck, but I just wanted to have fun.  I planned on doing a lot of testing and bringing a deck that I thought could win, but I came down with a case of Bronchial Pneumonia.  This really screwed up my states testing, and I couldn’t come up with a good deck since I was too busy coughing up my lung.  So I decided to just make up a quick rogue deck and just try to have fun instead of winning.

I came up with the idea for this deck while I was reading a Six Prizes tournament report by my buddy Airhawk.  He had played a guy who had made an Ursraing Prime/Durant deck that tried to win by milling.  The problem is that the deck didn’t turn out too well, and it seemed like it was an Ursaring Prime deck that could drop 4 Durants out of nowhere at the end of the game and win the game by milling.  This gave me an idea to do the same thing.  So I started the deck by using Scizor Prime, he is nice because he scares people by making them not use special energy cards.  The plan is to just use Scizor Prime for a long time, and then when they aren’t looking to use Durant for the mill.  I also put in Terrakion for the Zekrom match-up, and Victini for the Durant match-up. Here is the list.

Continue reading "Pikkdogs States Report and Scizor’s LGD (Late Game Durant) Decklist."

A big hello to all you OHKoers out there.  This is Pikkdogs here with a short article about the first week of States.  The first week has come and gone.  Some things about States were very expected, while others were kind of a shock.  We will go through all of that, and hopefully you will be all ready for your second week of states. But, before we go to that, let us say hi to my inter-dimensionary sidekick Pedro.  How’s it going Pedro?

Going well, how is Pikkdogs?

Actually not doing that well.  I am sick, I got a cold or something, but, as we all know that doesn’t matter to Ed, he makes me work no matter what disease I have.

How did you get sick this time?  Did you catch something from all the Pokemon groupies that hang around you?

I think so.  One was kind of sneezing, so that could be.  In fact, that was the reason that I couldn’t go to States last weekend, lots of groupie sex.

Will you be doing more groupie sex this weekend, or can you go to States?

Well, I was going to States, but something came up.

So you are …

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there.  This is Pikkdogs with an introduction to States/Province/Territory Championships 2012.  I will also add a bit about going to your first tournament at the end of the article.

An Introduction to States

Before we get to States, let’s take a look at how Cities ended.  I have already recapped Cities, so I won’t go too far into this.  But, we gotta cover it a little.  Cities started with strong performances by Zekrom and  some of the newer Noble Victories decks like Chandelure and Vanilluxe.  As Cities wore on, only Chandelure stayed on as a great deck.  We started seeing newer decks like Six Corners and CaKE.  While familiar decks like Donphan and Dragons and Reshiphlosion still saw some play.  The season ended with a domination by Durant.

We still expect some decks like Durant and Reshiphlosion to see some play, but the most talked about decks right now have cards from Next Destinies in them.  The most hyped card was of course Mewtwo EX, he is slated to be in almost every non-Durant deck that has a shot to win States.  Mewtwo is a fast card that can take over the …

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 …

Well State/Province/Territory championships are all over, and its time to see what we have learned from it.  This article well recap what happened at states, and try to give you a little view of what will come up next month at Regionals.

Overview

Well, things at States were fairly predictable this year.  Luxchomp again won most tournaments, while a couple other popular decks got a couple wins.  According to Pokegym.net this is the list of winners of States.

16 Luxchomp (1 w/Honchkrow)
4 Vileplume/Gengar
4 Gyarados
3 DialgaChomp
3 Sablelock (1 w/ Luxray SP)
2 Lostgar w/Vileplume
2 Machamp (1 w/ vileplume)
2 Chenlock
1 Arceus
1 Steelix
1 Scizor Prime
1 Vilegar / Dusknoir
1 Magnezone

From this list, we can see a couple cool rogue decks winning here; like Steelix, Scizor, Mangezone, and Arceus.  And, some second tier decks took some states as well,  with help from the good players that champion them.  We also see 6 Vilegar variants winning and 5 Sablelock variants winning.  This somewhat surprising showing by these decks show that they are strong contenders for the title of 2nd best deck.        

How Did the Rogues Do?

The rogue decks were out at full force …

Hey everyone in Omar-Nation, this is Pikkdogs here with a tournament report for Indiana’s states.  I again decided to run Uxie, after briefly flirting with an Umbreon/Scizor Prime deck.   

I woke up a little after 5:30, and got on the road before 6:30.  This was very early for me, but it was cool to go outside and see a huge full moon hanging in the sky before sunrise.  I then took the 3 hour drive to Fort Wayne, Indiana.  When I got there I met my friend James in the parking lot.  James, who is a testing buddy of mine, tried really hard to get me to come today and I’m glad I capitulated to his requests. Before the tournament started I made some trades with some players, borrowed some cards, said hello to a lot of my Pokemon friends, and received a cool deck box from James.  The format again was very Luxchomp heavy.  It was a little more diverse than last week, but Luxchomp was by far the most popular deck.

The tournament was held at a neat venue, a minor league baseball stadium.  Just past right field is a long narrow room where we had the tournament.  …