One Hit KO

Hello it’s me, Prof. SGT Pokedad MD again.  Like I mentioned in my very first article, I’m not the best writer, but thought that this might be an interesting topic to discuss.  Also in my first article, I made it VERY clear that I am not a very good deck builder or player so bear with me on this.  In this article, I’d like to share with you a deck that I am running right now that I really like.  I will share my deck list, why I chose the cards I did, and then share my thoughts on why I am not running a particular card that quite a few people say I should.

I started the year playing the Darkrai-Hydreigon deck list from Japan.  I liked that deck, but it didn’t quite suite my play-style.  I played Zekrom-Eelektrik last year.  My son played the Darkrai deck and loved it, so I traded him the vast majority of my Darkrai deck and decided to move back to Eelektrik.  Starting with the Zekrom-Eelectrik pieces, I looked at the available cards and read through the forums.  It appeared that many were looking to play Rayquaza EX, Rayquaza and a litany of other Pokemon. I researched the other available Pokemon and came up with the list
Continue reading "Why You No Run Rayquaza?"

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"

Early this week, TAndrewT contacted me and asked me for my address. He had a package to send me. Well, things didn’t go well for TAndrewT and the postal service, and we thought that the package might not arrive before this week’s finaly City Championship tournament. Instead of sending the cards to me via snail mail (does anyone use that term, anymore?), TAndrewT sent me a list of cards on Friday. He swore that he’d hand-deliver them to me the next day, and since he was judging, I figured I could bank on him being there.

Click on the pic to the left if you want to see what he donated. I think he really wanted to see how the deck and I would do if things were taken to the next level. For the final Cities here, I think he wanted the challenge deck to be a real contender. Thanks to you donators, here’s the list I was able to run today.

Continue reading "OneHitKO.com Challenge: Grand Finale"

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"

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"

Alrighty guys, here we go. MN’s second Battle Roads of the season was on Oct 9th at Outpost 2000 and Beyond. I’d say we had a better day than the previous weekend, so

You mean you didn’t totally scrub out, misplay for a game loss, try to blame it on the judge, and barely make 50/50 on the day?

What the? Who let Pedro in here?

Continue reading "Battle Roads #2, Victory Cup #2"

This past Saturday, my daughter and I hit up the Battle Roads at Legion Games in Minnesota. It was MN’s first BR of 4, so I expected a good turnout. I didn’t expect a big group of players to come down from Fargo, ND, so that was cool. They helped just put us over the top, so kickers went to the 3rd and 4th place finishers.

I usually try to take notes on my matches. Really, this is usually like 1 or two lines per match. Maybe I’ll write the name of my opponent, a couple major Pokemon in the deck, and the outcome. If it was more interesting, I might put something further. Well, I did all that, then I was busy on Sunday and went out of town on Monday through Wednesday. I’m finally getting to type up my report, and I can’t find my notes. All this leadup is just my excuse for having a short and most likely pointless report.

I played Zed PS. Ever since I heard Pokemandan call it that, I liked the name. I think “Zed” is a very absurd name for the letter Z. Also, adding Tornadus doesn’t quite make it Zed PST for some reason, even though I played more Tornadus than Zekrom. I don’t know what else to say on this topic.

My daughter, Ava, played Donphan/Zekrom. I did not expect this to be a popular deck. I thought that Donphan might be seen in some “Stage 1s”, but Donphan+Dragons didn’t really seem that hyped. I built Ava’s deck to be very straight-forward for her, and I left out several things I would definitely include if I were to play the deck. However, it was still very solid.

Continue reading "How To Lose With Zed PS and Still Take Home A Victory Cup"

Hello everybody! Here are some videos of the new Black & White Zekrom and Reshiram tins.

I probably will never stop saying this, but I absolutely love this set. At first, after having a set like Call of Legends with 22 holo rares, 11 shiny legends, and 8 reverse holo energies, I thought it would be so nice to have a set with 12 holo rares, 2 ultra rares, and 1 secret rare. Perhaps this would be a nice, easy set to collect. Despite my trouble pulling the ultra rares (which you’ll hear about in the videos), I almost feel like it is more difficult to collect all of the holos. Now that I have started this set, I’m glad that it’s not as easy as I anticipated, because the best thing about collecting is the challenge. So bring it on!

Oh, did I mention that I love this set?

[youtube width=”640″ height=”390″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh1LWf68K-0[/youtube]

[youtube width=”640″ height=”390″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtfHUEKGPfk[/youtube]

Continue reading "Opening Black & White Zekrom and Reshiram Tins"