Pokemon TCG

Sometimes I play with LonelyNess and we talk in #stark and then lots of people are like OH WOW I REMEMBER THIS and we have a good time.

Most people seem to be only really familiar with the first three sets (base, jungle, fossil), myself included. Can't blame them, since that's what the GBC game was all about. That was fun...and still is. Who doesn't remember any of this?

- Your first deck sucks dick. No more than 2 of the same card, at least 3 different energy types but low supply on any of them, and they all have stupid jokes, like that GB only Meowth that does 20 damage to a random Pokemon, or base set Gastly, or Devolution Spray.
- Enemy Horsea and Fossil Magmar Smokescreen makes you flip tails quite a lot.
- Any deck with Scyther, Electabuzz, Hitmonlee, Hitmonchan, etc is scary.
- The 3-prize battle in the Water gym with the Wigglytuff deck is scary too.
- You just won your second medal and you exit the top room all happy and then suddenly your rival attacks! Whenever he did that I would always be like WAIT FUCK I DID NOT GET TO HEAL YET
- The Final Four with their silly legendary cards. A Moltres that gets energy from your deck, a Zapdos that kills random Pokemon, sometimes yours, an Articuno that paralyzes your active by benching itself, and a Dragonite that heals everything. So inbalanced.
- Your rival never battles you after you beat the Final Four :(

Of course now they're all jokes because we know how to play, but back then man...

Anyway as a trading card game it's very silly, with all the coinflips and reliance on drawing the right thing. But it's fun anyway. In the most basic setting, I don't think there's anything I like playing with more than a good old Wigglytuff deck. I've tried all kinds of stall, I've tried Haymaker, Rain Dance, Energy Trans...but this really works the best for me.

I created a Gameboy Zapdos deck that I believe to be broken. Basically, the only Pokemon in the deck is Gameboy Zapdos, while the rest of the cards are Electric Energies and Trainer Cards to support it (Potions, Energy Removals, Item Finder, Computer Search). With your Zapdos being the only Pokemon in play on your side, you were guaranteed to do 70 damage to one of your opponent's Pokemon. The only problem was facing the Mr. Mime that was immune to attacks that did 40 or more damage, which is why I used Pokemon Flute.

I also created a deck with Exeggcute and Exeggutor only. It relied on getting Exeggutor out as soon as possible and attaching as many energies as possible so you could flip a ridiculous amount of coins for Exeggutor's Big Blast attack, which does 20x for each heads.

I loved the GBC game.
I still have the rom and bust it out when I get bored.
One of my favourite deck styles was Do The Wave, as Mekkah mentioned. Load your bench and dish out 60 damage every turn. Then I moved on to hypershock deck full of selfdestructors.


Also I am still playing the IRL TCG now.
The rules have changed slightly and any card from Generation II or older is competitively banned. So hey!
And I am quite a big fan of the newer sets, got a Mono-Electric deck that uses Zap Arceus and Ampharos to juggle massive damage and shuffle my bench over to keep damage low.
I also have a Fire/Electric deck I really like that has Ho-Oh LEGEND and Magnezones in it.

Man I should drop by #stark see if anybody wants a game.

Pidge said:

I created a Gameboy Zapdos deck that I believe to be broken. Basically, the only Pokemon in the deck is Gameboy Zapdos, while the rest of the cards are Electric Energies and Trainer Cards to support it (Potions, Energy Removals, Item Finder, Computer Search). With your Zapdos being the only Pokemon in play on your side, you were guaranteed to do 70 damage to one of your opponent's Pokemon. The only problem was facing the Mr. Mime that was immune to attacks that did 40 or more damage, which is why I used Pokemon Flute.

I also created a deck with Exeggcute and Exeggutor only. It relied on getting Exeggutor out as soon as possible and attaching as many energies as possible so you could flip a ridiculous amount of coins for Exeggutor's Big Blast attack, which does 20x for each heads.

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Those were my first "single Pokemon" decks as well. I agree it's ridiculously broken. The only things that stop it in-game are a quickly set-up hard-hitter like Arcanine. Poke Flute is a great idea to deal with Mr. Mime...personally I used the GameFAQs-recommended Mysterious Fossil/Kabuto line. Kabuto doesn't count as a basic so you're still guaranteed that Zapdos, but there's the issue that you need to have both cards, Mysterious Fossil takes a turn to be able to evolve, and then all it can do is scratch away at an active Mr. Mime. Retreating, Scooping Up, Damage Swap or just plain that thing being on the bench and the RNG keeps on wanting you to hit it for 0 damage are all possibilities. Poke Flute isn't without problems either (Mr. Mime isn't gone, you just reduce the chance to hit it) but it takes up less card slots.

The Eggy deck was less awesome but still a lot of fun. Exeggutor is by far my favourite Pokemon, and already when I was little and playing against the like 2-3 other people who played, this thing raped face.

I tried various other x-only decks. Sometimes I include GB Ditto because it can morph into something that's already in your deck and it's colorless. I wish the game had normal Ditto.

- Hitmonlee, supported by Poke Flute, Gust of Wind etc to do at least 20 dmg to anything I want, or 50 to an active.
- Clefairy/Clefable. Sometimes it's outright worthless (facing things like Voltorb and Lickitung that do little damage), but sometimes it's a lot of fun (OHKOing Fossil Moltres, blowing up on Golem, hitting Alakazam with Confuse Ray, blahblah).

Then I moved on to hypershock deck full of selfdestructors.

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Selfdestruct seems pretty worthless in an era without Metal Energy. I suppose you used Defender, Scoop Up, Potion and Pokemon Center along with it? With of course maximum Item Finders to re-use those as necessary.

I've always gone first by analyzing the coin trajectory. Also, raindance was the only option and tons of energy strippers. It was really fun... Now, tons of Poke's...

Since I actually do own the GBC game and play it sometimes, might as well post my deck ideas:

First is basically a Nidoking based deck. Get out a Nidoking, get enough to use toxic and then blam. Ingame it always gives the opponent 60 damage before your turn due to the toxic poison. Very rarely do I have to use it a second time. In the same deck I also have Hypnos ready to go nuts, so it has a small variety.

Other is pure Machamp, and enough fighting energy to get Seismic Toss up before I have a Machamp. Then I can simply 1hko mostly everything; not many pokes have over 60 HP outside Colorless, and those usually die when they attack next turn.

Also do anybody abuse the game mechanics in the game? Since the results are already made, you can easily check what each of the prize have after you knock out a pokemon, etc. I personally tried this at one time, but I can't be arsed to do this every single match, so I dropped it.

Pidge: Try a no energy Zapdos deck.
Basically you rely upon mr.fuji and scoop up and so on to keep taking out the zapdos again and again until the opponent dies. You need 4 zapdos though, that's a problem, but other then that your opponent will likely not have a turn at all.

Mekkah said:

The Eggy deck was less awesome but still a lot of fun. Exeggutor is by far my favourite Pokemon, and already when I was little and playing against the like 2-3 other people who played, this thing raped face.

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I absolutely loved Exeggutor for the sole reason that it didn't matter what energy you had in your deck. At all. Just put all your eggs in one basket and watch it destroy. (horrible joke intended)
The deck I used that in also contained a lot of cards like Hyper Beam Golduck and Super Energy Removal, since I had enough energy to overload all of my mons, I could afford to wipe their energy down to zero. So in the off chance that I get 2 heads out of 9 flips, they still can't do jack.
The other good thing having only 16 Pokemon and 8 Basic Pokemon in a 60 card deck meant a lot of the time the opponent was drawing 2 extra cards as I reshuffled my deck. In real rules, you would only do this until you had 15 cards in your hand, at which point you would stop drawing. The game doesn't realize that, however, meaning by using Hyper Beam, Super Energy Removal and Item Finder, it was possible to infinitely stall your foe until they decked out.
But I always found it more fun to just inflict 200 damage through lucky coin flips.

In real TCG there's been an Electivire that pays homage to said Exeggutor. It's got a move called Discharge costing ECC and requires you to discard all Electric energy to Electivire. Then flip a coin for each heads, and you get 50* the number of heads. Just like Exeggutor but a lot riskier. OH and said Electivire comes with a PokePower to let you attatch an Electric Energy from your discard pile to Electivire. Pretty cool.

Selfdestruct seems pretty worthless in an era without Metal Energy. I suppose you used Defender, Scoop Up, Potion and Pokemon Center along with it? With of course maximum Item Finders to re-use those as necessary.

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Defenders and Pokemon Center was a staple in a deck full of Electrode and Magneton. Even nowadays, Selfdestruct decks are kinda hard to use since they have BASIC Metal Energy now. Yeah, ones without the 'Reduce damage by 10.'
That, and the fact that most selfdestruct moves say "put X damage counters on this pokemon" where X happens to be that Pokemon's HP*10.

But yeah, the base sets were the best. Start off with Wigglytuff, then add the likes of Chansey and Kanga, throw in a bunch of Double-Colourlesses. And then add a Farfetch'd for lols and DO THE WAVE.

In real rules, you would only do this until you had 15 cards in your hand, at which point you would stop drawing. The game doesn't realize that, however, meaning by using Hyper Beam, Super Energy Removal and Item Finder, it was possible to infinitely stall your foe until they decked out.

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Which game are you talking about? My GBC TCG doesn't let the other player draw 2 at all. Which is fine because the Zapdos deck definitely doesn't need the opponent to start with a 15 card hand.

The deck I used that in also contained a lot of cards like Hyper Beam Golduck and Super Energy Removal, since I had enough energy to overload all of my mons, I could afford to wipe their energy down to zero. So in the off chance that I get 2 heads out of 9 flips, they still can't do jack.

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I'm not sure how efficient I find this. It helps earlygame when you need time to set up that Exeggcute, but those 3 turns it takes to get a Hyper Beaming Golduck up are an average 30 damage less from Exeggutor, not to mention it's possible that you start with a lone Psyduck and waste time waiting for the eggs, or dedicate more deck space to Pokemon Traders/CPU Search, etc.

In real TCG there's been an Electivire that pays homage to said Exeggutor. It's got a move called Discharge costing ECC and requires you to discard all Electric energy to Electivire. Then flip a coin for each heads, and you get 50* the number of heads. Just like Exeggutor but a lot riskier. OH and said Electivire comes with a PokePower to let you attatch an Electric Energy from your discard pile to Electivire. Pretty cool.

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I've seen quite a few cards with extremely high damaging attacks combined with flips and energy discards. I only like the ones that let you flip, then discard for the heads, not discarding in order to flip. And even the good ones still don't seem very efficient. Off the top of my head there's Blaine's Charmeleon, Dark Charizard, Dark Charmeleon, Lt. Surge's Electabuzz...

Pidge: Try a no energy Zapdos deck.
Basically you rely upon mr.fuji and scoop up and so on to keep taking out the zapdos again and again until the opponent dies. You need 4 zapdos though, that's a problem, but other then that your opponent will likely not have a turn at all.

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That and every time you put down that Zapdos, there's a 50% chance your own other Zapdos takes 30 damage. Possibly your active. And I'm having a hard time seeing you get it in and out often enough to actually kill things. Best case scenario, you have all of them in your hand at some point, with one initially on the field (during set-up). You put the others down and put 90 total damage somewhere. Scoop Up each one of them once and put them down for 180. Item Finder gets you another 180, though you also need to discard 8 to do that. Then I guess you could include a combination of Mr. Fuji, some random useless evo cards (to prevent you from being Zapdosless on turn 1) and Pokemon Trader for another possible 180 total. But you likely won't have all this on one turn, and half of it will hit your own Pokemon.

Really don't see why you would use this over a deck with energy. The strength of that 70 dmg attack is that Zapdos can't hit itself with it, so as long as your bench is empty you're good. The Pokémon Power essentially requires you to have a chance of damaging yourself.

Mekkah said:

Which game are you talking about? My GBC TCG doesn't let the other player draw 2 at all. Which is fine because the Zapdos deck definitely doesn't need the opponent to start with a 15 card hand.

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Offical Pokemon TCG rulings... They've changed it slightly in that if you don't start out with a Basic Pokemon in your hand your opponent can CHOOSE to draw 1 Extra card. most people don't for kind of obvious reasons, but hey.

I'm not sure how efficient I find this. It helps earlygame when you need time to set up that Exeggcute, but those 3 turns it takes to get a Hyper Beaming Golduck up are an average 30 damage less from Exeggutor, not to mention it's possible that you start with a lone Psyduck and waste time waiting for the eggs, or dedicate more deck space to Pokemon Traders/CPU Search, etc.

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I'm not saying it's super-efficient (nearly wrote super-effective), but it does make it a bit more reliable, so you don't end up with a semi-dead Exeggutor up against something like Charizard. Also if I recall correctly that very Golduck only has a RC of 1, meaning you can wipe them clean of energy one turn and then attack with Exeggutor. It's a lot better than filling your deck up with Exeggute then getting them killed while they have 6 energy attatched to them before you can evolve any of them.

Speaking of Charizard, anybody seen the Stormfront Reprint of it? it's essentially the same as the Base Set ones (Energy Burn, Fire Spin etc.) just with a modern card style and slightly better art. Wish I had one, it would fit well with the Typhlosion Prime tin I bought a few weeks ago.

Never played much besides the GBC game. I did the Zapdos abuse thing in it. Never the 'win in one turn' version, just the regular one where you have just one Zapdos out and spam Big Thunder. Devastatingly powerful, the only real defence the opponent can have is to fill their bench with high HP stuff and hope they can build a powerful active before it can get hit.

I've also done an Energy Removal deck. Dragonair, Poliwrath, think there might have been a third Pokemon with an energy removing attack, 4 Energy Removal, 4 Super Energy Removal, whatever else. It's not 100% reliable, sometimes it doesn't get 'set up', but once it is your opponent doesn't have a hope of attacking.

Tried Haymaker variants, they work pretty well.

Most of my decks have been energy-heavy, I often run 30 energy cards, because it's so important. That does in turn make them light on either trainer cards or Pokemon, which gets me in trouble sometimes, but usually things work.

The whole modified format thing pisses me off a bit, since my fair-sized collection of cards I built up as a kid are basically useless now. I understand the motivation to stop the game stagnating and avoid a power-escalation treadmill, but the cynic in me says it's just a way to make people buy more cards.

I still play this and am very competitive about it. I've had my fair share of success in it over the ast 6 years, winning over $7,000 in scholarship money along with free trips to Worlds and a bagillion cards and boosters. Right now university really puts a dent in my time and/or money I can spend on it, but I am still regarded as the 'player to beat' in every tournament I play in here in Mexico.

To everyone who thinks this game is heavily reliant on flips and stuff, the current version of the modified format does exactly the opposite. There are so many cards that search for specific other cards, and alot of 'draw' support to be able to guarantee you have what you need when you need it. Also the most popular and best decks usually NEVER have Pokemon which their attacks rely in flips, every decent player realizes how reducing luck to it's bare minimum and focusing on skill is what will make you win in the long run.

So yeah there's my input. I'm going to be playing Mexico Nationals on the 19th of May, which is my only shot at the Hawaii free trip this year. I've never been National Champion despite being Mexico's top player, because in the end, luck always screws me over. Best I've gotten is 2nd place and last year's 5th. Wish me luck guys!

Pidge said:

I also created a deck with Exeggcute and Exeggutor only. It relied on getting Exeggutor out as soon as possible and attaching as many energies as possible so you could flip a ridiculous amount of coins for Exeggutor's Big Blast attack, which does 20x for each heads.

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You'd like this then. Also, the attack's called "Big Eggsplosion".

On the topic of the Game Boy TCG game, I ran a Wigglytuff with Fighting backup. Hitmons for power and GB Marowak to fill the Bench for Wigglytuff. Also a Psychic and Fire deck that works pretty well for no good reason.

My best GB TCG moment was beating Imakuni without even having a turn. He played the 40HP Slowpoke and nothing else. He confused it with his Imakuni card, gave it Energy and it proceeded to smack itself. Back in those days confusion was a self-inflicted 20 damage, with weakness and resistance applied. Psychic types were weak to Psychic.

As for real cards, see this post from an earlier TCG thread. Standout point: Southern Island Togepi that somehow has epic hax powers. Seriously, I nearly always got heads on its attack to confuse the enemy, and my opponents almost always got tails on the self-damage flip. On another note, I really want a Dark Rampage theme deck. The big reason being that, with all the Dark energy, I'd get to play with my Darkrai Lv.X, which I can see comboing with this (the "star Pokemon" of the deck) for overkill of hilarious proportions.

One theme deck that my sister's "claimed" since it was a present for her is the Plusle/Minun "halfdecks" one, with some fun additions. Most notable ones being the Pichu Bros and Rayquaza ex.

I still have my 3000 cards somewhere...lol. My main deck was a Damage Swap deck because I had 3 Alakazams and had to show them off somehow! The TCG is what got me obsessed about pokemon so I have many fond memories of it :)

More and more people on IRC are getting into this. :D Currently we're all playing Neo only which is proving to be somewhat versatile, though typings make it hard to find neutral match-ups. The cards I've seen the most so far are Cleffa, Elm and Mary. Steelix and Fossil Egg (LIKE RABBITS) decks are the most commonly seen ones for me...most other types I've only seen/used once (Meganium/Crobat, Feraligatr, Typhlosion...)

Gmax
The testing of his patience and luck begin already before the game does, as his shaky Indian computer fails to start up Redshark sometimes. When it works, the only horde left is his reluctance to put damage counters. If he were a Pokemon, he would be Tyranitar. Because he wants to murder babies.

10/04 - The TCG productivity of Gmax takes a steady drop when he has to get notes about school somewhere in the near future. Even after fulfilling this task, his mind is too occupied and he makes silly mistakes such as using the wrong Meganium...but then it heals all his Pokemon anyway because it flips heads both times upon evolution, and after that all he needs is someone to Rocket Surprise Buttsex him so that he doesn't deck himself.

Amelia
Bill's Teleporter is working out perfectly for Amelia: one moment it's in his hand, the next it's on his discard pile, with no nasty side effects like decking himself thanks to a rigged tails coin. A baby in Amelia's hands will become a grown-up before it actually dies, which can be painful if he has a Donphan ready to Rapid Spin. Think twice before switching at your leisure when his Troll Light Arcanine is put down: he just wants to kill you with Spikes, and Spikes only!

10/04 - Amelia now has two decks. I forgot the first one, and then he has Jumpluffs and Zubats (this used to be Pineco's, but he's exhausted his current supply by blowing them up and can't be assed to go out and catch new ones). They don't get much done, but at least they annoy the hell out of Dark Gengar decks.

Lightwolf
Is far ahead of his time, creating decks in 3.51 when we're all still having fun in 3.50. Lots can be expected from Lightwlf in the future.

10/04 - Lightwolf is indeed a high profile player now, known for his cruel torturing tactics with unorthodox cards. Everyone shuns those silly Dark Pokemon for their low HP and weird attacks, he tries them all with 4 Darkness and some Rocket Hideout to dominate people. If you want to know what it feels like to get crushed by an Ariados but don't want to battle Theorymon on Shoddybattle, consider challenging Lightwolf.

LonelyNess
A mysterious warrior that knows power when he sees it. He can look past a card's flaws and think up ways they could be useful. For example, if Miracle Energy was allowed to be used four times in a deck rather than once, worked on Pokémon other than Light/Shining and didn't have to be discarded at the end of every turn, it would be quite broken! He spends most of his time looking through Neo cards and finding good ones, but when he is challenged to a match you can bet Easter dinner is ready, or his sister needs to be picked up. I named my Hamachi server after him, but only because I forgot the password to the old one.

10/04 - LonelyNess tells everyone how much he loves Dark Gengar after it flips everyone off (bad pun intended). The fact that everyone knows how good it is because of me is irrelevant here. LN's vulnerable spot is a mix of wishful thinking and not reading the cards before attacking. Yes, we would all love it if we could do up to 80 damage every turn with 4 Elekids on our bench, but that's not how it works.

CaptKirby
If CaptKirby is half as good at playing as he is at ranting about how his awesome deck with stupid cards was good a year ago, then he is probably the best player of us all. The fact that he hasn't played any of us does not deserve mention.

10/04 - Nothing has changed about CaptKirby, but at least he knows you don't mess with Feraligatr.

Zy
He would be the boy from the future, mostly capable at fighting old decks with new ones, and generally cutting it close. Hamachi and Redshark gave him no easy time, but he managed!

You should play Rocket/Gyms/Neo with Sneasel banned so I can play and actually have some semblance of an idea of what's good ^_____^

Hey Mekkah can I be put into your post now please.

so anyway, after proving that I suck at old sets and am only good with the new HG/SS cards, I also realized all my decks either have too much energy or not enough energy

oh well.

On the contrary, I'm still horrible at the TCG game... I enjoy it though.

The only thing I did well was Do The Wave because it's fun.

Diana, you should play with us, it's not like you can use the "I don't have IRC" excuse!

We (I) play more with TR/Gyms/Neo than with just Neo nowadays, which adds some nice versatility. Summing up the nicest cards I've seen so far:

Neo Feraligatr (Riptide): Misty's Wrath, Trash Exchange, and then just keep the flow going. It can be hard to decide when to evolve from Croconaw (I use the Sweep Away one) since it does a nice 50 damage and gets cards from the deck into the discard, while Feraligatr needs to use a trainer like Misty's Wrath almost every turn to be able to OHKO things. Even harder to time against people who use status. Once it gets going, this is just awesome. Would never use it without the Gym sets available though, Misty's Wrath is completely essential.

Neo Typhlosion (Fire Recharge): Lots of good Fire cards need to discard once in a while. Personally I'm a fan of Light Flareon and Magcargo (and Dark Magcargo to a lesser extend). Neo Typhlosion makes much it easier to keep them going as long as you don't get tails every time, and sometimes I attack with him because doing 60 with tails or 80 with heads is great.

Neo Magcargo: Nobody cares about the PokéPower, but its attack rules. Either it does 40 for FFF (nice an sich, though you'd expect 50 for it). But you can discard as many F cards from it as you like to add 20 damage for each. So you get some kind of cheaper version of Jungle Flareon's Flamethrower (which is FFFC, 60, discard F) that can go completely nuts at some point. When it's about to die or your opponent's active is the only thing that's ready to attack in a few turns, or if Magcargo is about to die regardless, just discard all you need to. FFF for 100? Yes please.

Neo Meganium (Wild Growth): They must've heard everyone thought the GSC starters were the worst. This Meganium turns every G energy card on your side into GG, making both attacking and retreating twice as cheap. It lacks a great easy set-up partner. I don't like the Scythers available, and using Meganium itself to attack leaves it open to status and knock-outs (though 40 + sleep for GG is sweet). So I've been mostly using this with Crobat (GG Cross Attack, which averages 40 damage and confuses over 50% of the time)), and when we went with Gym sets, Giovanni's Nidoking (GG Tumbling Attack, 40 on tails, 70 on heads). Crobat's easier to retreat, but Nidoking's attack is more reliable and averages higher damage, and it has a good bunch more HP.

Dark Gengar: Coin flip wars will never be the same. Its PokéPower makes the opponent have to flip two heads instead of one to wake up. Either Misdreavus or the guy himself can kill anything in no time with hardly a chance of retaliation. I used this a few times, but I didn't like going "OH FUCK" every time someone evolves, Super Scoops, Double Gusts, etc, and after playing LN with another deck while he was using Dark Gengar, I decided it is just wrong to turn the game into a flipping war like this. That, and Gmax's Light Flareon woke up at first opportunity about five times in a row.

Erika's Victreebell: Its PokéPower is essentially Gust of Wind with a flip, which you can use even if it's benched with 0 energy. Good combo potential, but works fine on its own with GGG Razor Leaf. Maybe I should try this with Meganium sometime.

Fossil Egg & Friends: THEY BREED LIKE RABBITS. Once one of Omanyte/Kabuto is on the bench, you can breed for infinite more. Both Omastar and Kabutops have flippy but scary attacks that become OHKOs once they have energies, and their types not matching their energy is a blessing for Kabutops, as this allows it to play in a Fighting deck and work on things that resist Fighting.

Any baby at all: Fuck them and their Focus Bands. When the opponent uses them, that is. Cleffa is a lifesaver. In fact, I pretty much only use Cleffa anymore. Never used Tyrogue. Elekid a few times, but never got much use out of it. Haven't gotten anything out of Gaze Igglybuff when I used it, never used Pichu since my decks often have PokéPowers.

There's some minor things that I've seen/considered a few times: Dark Feraligatr, Dark Ariados, Koga's Beedrill, Dark Muk, Forretress,

For trainers, Elm and Mary seem to be staples. Some people use Bill's Teleporter and fail at flipping it (cough Amelia). Sometimes a Stadium to match my game and to disrupt others, like Rocket's Hideout for Dark Anything, or Viridian Gym for Giovanni's Nidothing. Gold Berry and Focus Band are good Pokémon Tools. Balloon Berry is nice for high retreat things, and MiracleBerries are just good to put in when you have leftover space. Oh, and Pokemon Breeder Fields. A must for evo decks.

Hm... Maybe I can get online tonight sometime, I just have a few minutes to spare now. My time online's been really cut back but I'd like to try, if you want a card version of the Detroit Lions. xD

I have a ton of cards in my room but very little that goes together, but if we're using that RedShark program I can try to come up with something. Too bad I can't use that last awesome card I got a long way back, that R/S Blaziken but there's always Feraligatr and such.

My beedrills....
Urgh
My beedrills...
(And my Dark Duggies and Forries)

ahh i still play the good ol game.

the top ten cards imo were
1 professor oak - the king of old school period. you go from random annoying hands to badass hands full of good cards in one fell swoop
2 bill - never a bad draw
3 wigglytuff- 60 for 1 and a DCE is the most cost effective attack ever. turbo wiggy is beaten only by rain in high damage low cost attacks wiggy beats toise due to being able to kill Mr mime. (though fighting weakness is garbage)
4 speaking of rain... blastiose, 100 hp tank with perhaps the best ability in the game (Mr mime might beat it though)worked great with articuno allowing rain to never ever stop attacking for around 50 damage a turn
5 Mr mime the anti metagame card if there ever was one. litterally shut down so many deck archtypes all by itself the only real archtype it had trouble with was haymaker, and that was only a minor problem. perhaps Mr mime is the reason why haymaker varients were so popular in tornaments
6 gust of wind - ooh opponent syther reatreated with 10 hp? GoW it back and slap its face. so many wins i had were due to this card
7hitmonchan/mewtwo (promo)/electabuzz/sycther/ditto AKA the haymakers - ok i kinda cheated but they all belong here in the catagory of generally awesome hay cards. general rule of haymaker was pick 3 pokes and play
8. pluspower you dont know how much of pokemon base set was about 10 hp survives. PP or steriods as my friends called them allowed for some crazy shit like

syther 2KOs electabuzz/hitmon/sycther/mewtwo
wiggy OHKOS the haymakers
these are HUGE in a 70 hp filled meta. i garentee you if wiggy did 70 damage a turn normally it would have been banned INStantly!
9. super energy removal. lets face it people it useally would go like this
I lose one energy on some random poke that i instantly replace
they lose 2 energy and it really HURTS bad (esp if 2 DCEs are removed)
10. DCE. the engine of most pokemon in the meta right then was this card and it showed it presence in EVERY game i played.

runner up computer search, honestly a pretty good card. great for pulling out a oak GoW or +Power when you needed one. i ran 3 in all my turbo decks.

speaking of decks here are the top 5 archetypes in order of high level wins
scott gidharts poppuri
turbo wiggy w/mewtwo buzz and scyther'(I run this deck)
rain dance (articuno varient)
haymakers
Damage swap full stall.


Now i run a Sp luxikenchomp deck. btw

Mekkah: add one nice card to your list.

DONPHAN!

bumpers

two things:

Smogon TCG Tournament?

This would be quite a lot of fun to do imo. I don't really feel like hosting in the very near future but maybe in a bit...due to how much luck is involved, I think matches should be in best of 3. The most commonly played formats right now are:

- HGSS (HGSS)
- Neo (all four Neo sets)
- "Modified" (Team Rocket, Gym Heroes, Gym Challenge, Neo sets)
- Classic (Base, Jungle, Fossil)
- E-Reader (Skyridge, Aquapolis, Expedition)

My personal favourite format is modified by far. It has more things available than Neo only (putting less emphasis on babies = huge plus). Classic and HGSS are extremely overcentralized. HGSS will have Donphan Prime, Starmie/Feraligatr Prime, Ampharos Prime/Raichu, Jumpluff and that's about it. Classic is Haymaker, Wigglytuff, Rain Dance...end list. It's more about the trainers than the Pokemon. E-Reader is just boring, they're more like an extension to an already existent set.

HGSS

It was fun fantasizing while it lasted but it seems there's not much left to explore. From what I can see now, here's the best way to play each type, and there's little room for deviation.

Grass: Use Sunflora to find any Pokemon you need. Use Jumpluff to kill anything you need.
Fire: Arcanine. And uh...well, Ho-oh fits on any deck, and everything else is subpar.
Water: Delibird draws cards so you can get Feraligatr and Starmie set up. Attach energy to whatever and Cyclone things to death with Starmie, re-drawing with Delibird before you run out of energy.
Lightning: Set up Conductivity with Ampharos prime and kill things. Use Raichu as a hit-and-run thing with LL Thunderbolt for 100.
Fighting: Donphan Prime stamps on almost anything with F for 60, then FFF for 90.
Psychic: Your best bet is either to try and set up Exeggutor, or try and get a bunch of Hypno out to put things to sleep every turn with its PokePower. Ugh.

Ho-oh legend fits into any deck if it needs to, though it is very slow in setting up. I like Noctowl's Poképower and I use it as a filler line though its attack needs Copycat to work!

Pablo said:

I still play this and am very competitive about it. I've had my fair share of success in it over the ast 6 years, winning over $7,000 in scholarship money along with free trips to Worlds and a bagillion cards and boosters. Right now university really puts a dent in my time and/or money I can spend on it, but I am still regarded as the 'player to beat' in every tournament I play in here in Mexico.

To everyone who thinks this game is heavily reliant on flips and stuff, the current version of the modified format does exactly the opposite. There are so many cards that search for specific other cards, and alot of 'draw' support to be able to guarantee you have what you need when you need it. Also the most popular and best decks usually NEVER have Pokemon which their attacks rely in flips, every decent player realizes how reducing luck to it's bare minimum and focusing on skill is what will make you win in the long run.

So yeah there's my input. I'm going to be playing Mexico Nationals on the 19th of May, which is my only shot at the Hawaii free trip this year. I've never been National Champion despite being Mexico's top player, because in the end, luck always screws me over. Best I've gotten is 2nd place and last year's 5th. Wish me luck guys!

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I actually remember you as "the TCG player" from when I first joined Smogon.

I also didn't realize there was a TCG simulator. I'll have to check it out. I loved the TCG when I was younger but I really can't keep up with card games anymore. The one most of my friends play nowadays is Magic anyway.