Let’s go over the basics. In our current format, this card recently saw an uptick in play. Morten really brought the MagneRock deck concept to the forefront with an 8-0 swiss record at the ECC. Magnezone Prime is a Stage 2 Pokémon with 140 HP. If has one attack and a Power.

The “Magnetic Draw” Poke-Power is extremely viable in the next format. With the loss of Uxie, the format is going to need a very good draw engine. This is one of two obvious sources of draw power (the other is Ninetales’ Roast Reveal).

The “Lost Burn” attack is beastly. It does 50 damage for each energy you move from the field to the Lost Zone. This attack can hit extremely hard and is a great late game closer.

You might ask, “if the attack is great and the power is great, why wouldn’t this card see play?” Well, many people are afraid of Stage 2 based decks without Broken Time-Space and a nerfed Rare Candy.

However, I think that this Pokémon is going to be very playable, possibly even Tier 1 if the list can be perfected. So, let’s look at a few potential lists to run with Magnezone, their positives and negatives.

List 1: Zekrom, Pachirisu, Magnezone Prime

That brings us to 53 cards with seven slots left to fill. These could possibly be filled by maxing out several of the Trainers for consistency or adding a starter Pokémon for consistency like Stantler. Other cards to be considered would be Professor Oak’s New Theory, Judge, Professor Elm’s Training Method, Seeker, Super Scoop Up, etc.

This deck works like a Major League Baseball team. The deck has a leadoff hitter that can “get after it” quickly and then has a bulky, powerful clean-up hitter. You obviously want to start Zekrom and start hitting for 20+ damage turn one and up to 120 damage by turn two. Zekrom has such a high hp that it can stall long enough to set up your Magnezone Primes to close out the game.

Magnezone Prime is a very good draw engine. Pachirisu is possibly the most consistent energy accelerator in the format. This is because it is a basic that can Energy Switch and Switch allows you to save your Lightning energy before Zekrom is KO’d and to power up Magnezone the turn it hits the field.

The problem with this deck is Donphan Prime, Lucario, or other fast fighting decks. Right now, this deck does not have a good counter to those decks.

In all, this deck could hit for solid damage early and fast. Then it transitions to its clean-up player. It could be very good.

List 2: MagneGatr

If only he was just a little bit easier to get out and set up.

This list has 54 cards. The list could be filled by most of the same cards as earlier.

The benefits to this deck are energy acceleration, draw power, and heavy hitting attacks. This deck includes a tech to counter both Reshiram and Donphan. It’s my “super secret” tech: Golduck!!! Golduck does 30+10 for each water energy in play. Paired with Feraligatr, this card can easily OHKO both Donphan Prime and Reshiram.

The main drawback to this deck is relying on two Stage 2 Pokémon. Relying on that many Stage 2’s was risky before the Rotation and even more so in a HGSS-on format. I think that one Stage 2 is fine, but multiple could spell trouble.

This deck could be solid, but the list will have to be extremely tight for it to run well.

List 3: Magnezone Prime / Emboar

Pokémon – 18

3 Magnemite TM
3 Magneton TM
3 Magnezone Prime TM
2 Tepig BW
1 Pignite BW
2 Emboar BW
4 Reshiram BW

I am skipping the Trainer and Energy lines. It will need a standard list with either 4/5 Lightning Energy or 4 Rainbow energy.

This deck works like the MagneGatr deck, except that this deck will get to run a better starter.

So, what’s the verdict?

I definitely see potential with Magnezone Prime in the HGSS-on format. Out of the three decks that I presented, I think that the most likely deck to see play will be the Pachirisu/Zekrom/Magnezone Prime deck. It is the fastest of the three. It has a solid early game and great late game presence.

There are other pairing options for Magnezone, but these seem to be the most viable.

Does it Stand a Chance? – Magnezone is an article featured on SixPrizes - Pokemon TCG Tips and Strategy.

Today I want to talk about the Little Rogue that Could – MewCario. We’ve seen it around, and we’ve seen it evolve from the Palkia G Lv.X variant LostCario. But what makes this deck tick? Is this deck before its time? Well let’s get started and see if we can answer those questions and more.

Now there are probably a handful of players that were at the Wisconsin Regional tournament last Saturday at the Wisconsin Dells, and most of you have already seen the deck list, but for those of you who didn’t, here we go!

And there is a simple skeleton of 47 cards. I know that it is a skimpy list but bear with me as I point out a few options for your deck, and break down the list for you.

The Strategy

The real goal of this deck is to, as quickly as possible get a few Pokemon in the Lost Zone and use Lucario to clean up the opposing side of the field. This can be done several ways with Relicanth CL, Absol Prime, and Mew Prime.

Another way to play this deck is to tech in some bigger hitters or even Spiritomb AR until you can get set up. If your going to go with Spiritomb AR, you may want to consider Vileplume UL. One or two lines of Vileplume will give you the time you need to set up, as well as give you something to Lost Zone in a pinch. In a current build of mine, I’m using a 2-2-2 line and can usually set it up quickly thanks to Professor Elm’s Training Method.

I’m not sure about Rare Candy as its now being reworded to say you can’t play it on a Pokemon you played that turn, but it might come handy in some situations.

The Pokemon

Lucario CL: This is the real meat of the deck, and a little fickle just by himself. Dimension Sphere is the most useful attack, dealing out 30 damage +20 for each of your Lost Zoned Pokemon. His other attack, Sky Uppercut, is also a fairly useful attack, dishing out 70 damage.

Next up we have Mew Prime TM. By now we should all know what this little guy does.

For one Psychic energy, “See Off” sends a Pokemon in your deck to the Lost Zone, but with 60 Hit Points, he’s not a very good choice of attacker, at least not until you happen to Lost Zone a Lucario CL, then this mini-tank gets the boost that it needs.

Using the Poke-Body Lost Link, you can copy the attacks of any Pokemon in the Lost Zone. This in mind, and a few Pokemon that have fallen from play, Mew Prime becomes quite the powerhouse. Granted not as strong as a Mew that’s copying a Rhyperior Lv.X, but that’s a topic all its own.

Another helpful card at present is the always popular Absol TM (Prime) for its Vicious Claw attack that deals 70 damage, 80 with a special Darkness energy just by sending a Pokemon away.

Relicanth CL: Perhaps the most overlooked card in the game right now, simply due to the terrible playability at the prerelease events. Just tack on an energy card, Lost Zone a card, and draw 3. Playing smartly could give you a boost in play, not playing it smartly could make you draw your entire deck out.

Techs, Tips, and Tricks

Among the cards from the HeartGold base set was Professor Elm’s New Theory. This card is great for searching out a Lucario when you need one, and can be used if you choose to go with other evolutionary Pokemon.

Another tech you could consider is a Noctowl HS Line. I consider it to be the Uxie Lv.X of the next format and should be run in any upcoming metadeck simply because of the draw power it provides.

With Night Sight, you get an extra card off of the top of your deck, much like Uxie, however the drawback of potentially loosing it to a first turn out hit is relatively minimal as it doesn’t have to leave the bench.

Call this outsider perspective, but this seems to be an advantage that most people pass up, and if you don’t have the extra cash to buy a Uxie Lv.X on its own, grab these up as you can as the prices might sky-rocket once rotation happens.

Yes the advantage that Uxie has is the Poke-Power “Setup” – so don’t worry Uxie, fans I’m not trashing, you can still run it.

With the upcoming Black and White set, lets take a second to think about one of the best Pokemon in that set – Zoroark.

Using Foul Play you can toss on a few Psychic energy cards and take the LostGar decks at their own game! Not only that, when it comes time for that ever crucial game changing Lost World tech against the LostGar, whom (I would assume) you have just Judged into oblivion, you can use Nasty Plot to clean up next turn.

These are just a handful of possibilities for the upcoming Black and White rules format. You can really add to the deck as you see fit and what fits your play style. Always remember guys, what works for you isn’t always going to work for some one else.

To close with, what are your thoughts on the new Black and White Format? What are you planning to play? Share your thoughts below!

The Little Rogue That Could – Mewcario is an article featured on SixPrizes - Pokemon TCG Tips and Strategy.

So here’s the story that brings me to this topic. Rewind about 2 weeks from now. Philadelphia Regionals is coming up and we’re at League all getting ready. I decide that the Umbreon deck I’ve been running since I pretty much started playing has served me well but it’s just not cutting it anymore.

I was dieing to try something new but being a new player that just started playing last November, I wasn’t really sure what to come up with.

Now you may ask, why not pick something Meta like Luxchomp, Vilegar, ect? Well those of you that know me a little better realize I dislike playing Meta decks. Sure they get the job done and all, but I just feel the whole thing is a bit too cookie cutter for me right now. Not to say I’ll never play Meta in my life, but at least for the moment, I can’t stand our format. I live to run rogue like a ninja. (Haha..what?)

So my friend at League decided to show me this deck that he used to play with. It’s based on Glaceon Lv.X and basically tries to make it so the game says, “Ok you can’t have any cards in hand, oh well with no cards you can’t attack next turn.”

So the basic idea for this deck is to use Sableye to set up quick by using 2 supporters a turn with a played one and Impersonate. You use collector to get your basics, then a combo of Luxury Ball, Bebe’s Search, VS Seeker, and other draw and search cards to get Glaceon Lv.X, Giratina Lv.X, and Slowking set up.

Glaceon Lv.X has a Poke-Body that cancels out opponent’s Poke-Powers. The Glaceon RR uses Ice Bind for 50 and if the opponent doesn’t discard a card, they’re paralyzed next turn. Using Slowking’s Second Sight, you can choose what they’re going to top deck and try to give them useless cards. And Giratina Lv.X makes it so that your opponent has to discard to attack.

Combine all this with Judge and Team Rocket’s Trickery and you can try to make it so that they have to discard to avoid being paralyzed and not be able to play any cards, or they have NO cards in hand to discard and can’t touch you the next turn.

It’s a tricky tech deck that’s really fun when you can pull it off. But you have to pretty much get the perfect set up or you sink. Having seen it in action at League and loving it, I decided to run it myself at Regionals. With less then 2 weeks left, I borrowed the cards I needed and began play testing. Here is where I made 2 mistakes.

Mistake 1: Don’t jump into a new deck you barley know before a big tournament!

As cool as the deck seemed, I had never used it before and as I said before it is somewhat of a tough deck to get going. But I was too excited to really think this through. I had thought I had found my top cutter rogue that would lead me to get some respect in Regionals. Oh how wrong I was.

Mistake 2: Play test against the Meta!

To be straight up honest with you all, my whole team loves playing rogue. So my play testing was mostly against rogue decks that seemed to stumble before Glaceon’s lock. I even made many misplays while testing that cost me good number of games, but again, being a new player and seeing a deck like this just had me too excited and I figured by the time tournament time came around I would be more focused. Wrong again. Both play testing AND real playing, I forgot to Second Sight many times and would play the wrong Supporters at the wrong times.

I was still pretty confident during the 8 hour drive from Ohio to Philly. I had never seen a deck like this before and I kept it in my head this was something that no one would see coming and not know how to counter. But round 1 taught me really quick that I was wrong.

I’m not going to give you a full report because I honestly can’t remember it all, and that isn’t what this article is about. But I will show you were my overconfidence tore me apart.

Round 1 was against DialgaChomp. I actually set up REALLY quick and thought I was going to take the game. But he was quick to knock Glaceon Lv.X out and I panicked. I had no idea what to do and quickly lost the game. This had also happened in many other games. I realized at this point how much the deck focused on ONE card which was a really bad idea to begin with.

Another issue I had was never being able to get the energy I needed. For some reason it always got prized or I could just never draw it. This cost me at least 2 games on it’s own. By the time round 5 came around I knew I had made a big mistake. But I decided to tough it out and finish. Dropping wasn’t an option to me. Ironically I played almost all VileGar which was funny to me because Umbreon EASILY shuts them down which made me think..

Mistake 3: Play what you know!

Even though I had played Umbreon all season so far, it had done decent for me and it was the deck I’m most comfortable with. Not only that but much of this area’s Meta was VileGar which Umbreon UD enjoys singing “Can’t Touch This” to. Even though I did poor with Glaceon, if I had practiced a lot more with it maybe it could have been a game winner for me. I honestly believe that just using a deck your used to ups your chances of winning by far.

Ouch.. Just ouch..

By the time Swiss had ended, I was sitting at a painful 0-8 record. Dead last place of the whole Master’s Division. It felt kinda bad but luckily I’m not a sore loser. Luckily the whole experience has taught me a big lesson about the game of Pokemon that I hope you caught onto while reading this article.

Sure new decks are fun and sometimes they can get you the surprise win, but you need to know what your using and how to use it before jumping into the trenches.

I think for Nationals I’m going to go back with my old friend Umbreon and take on this looming horrible format ahead that the Sableye menace brings. I’d rather fight through it with a friend I’m familiar with.

Afterwards I did decent in the Video Game Tournament and enjoyed the rest of my weekend in Philadelphia with my friends. The long drive home gave me a lot of time to reflect on everything that had happened and what not to do for Nationals. The format is about to get crazy enough without me making rushed choices. I hope you all may have learned from my mistake before it happens to you.

Good luck everyone. Nationals looms ahead. I wish you all the best and hope to see you there.

Why Not to Play The New Rogue Deck You Found 2 Weeks Before a Big Event is an article featured on SixPrizes - Pokemon TCG Tips and Strategy.

This is virtually awesome!

Hey everyone!  While everyone is swarming SixPrizes with their tournament reports, I’ve decided to do a review of the Pokemon TCG Online to break the cycle.  Even though I know that many of you have played this already, because we have all hyped it, then made it an after-thought, and then flocked to it because the graphics are better than Redshark.

First off, I went to make my avatar.  The clothing was limited, I couldn’t get my long hair, but I got to wear a flat cap, so all was well.  This part barely has any relevance to why we go to the website, but I digress.

I then headed to the Trainer Challenge, which is where this review will really begin.  I started with the water deck, because my favorite type has always been water, and I started looking through it.  The deck was terrible! Upon seeing this, I quickly scanned through all of the available decks, and they were all kinda bad.  I decided to just stick with my decision and proceed to play against the first of three leagues.

The first matches are amazingly easy, before eventually leveling off at as-long-as-I-can-evolve-and-attach-energies-I-will-wineasy.  Probably the “hardest” matches that I had were due to ridiculously slow set up, and once I evolved, it was still relatively easy to take back the game.  There were glitches in the system at some points, forcing me to concede to get out of the glitch, and then proceeding to beat the computer 6-0. After beating the first league, which probably took me about an hour, I decided to stop playing for the day and go to sleep.

He may be bad in modified, but in limited he is a god.

The very next day, Pokemon decided to modify the programming, making me lose all of my “hard-earned” data and forcing me to start all over again.  I decided to go with the fire deck this time, as it seemed to be the one that could do the most damage, seeing as how I won that one prerelease tournament with the power of the Flareon in the deck.  This went very well, being able to hit for enough damage each turn to go somewhere around 6-2 for each game, but sometimes running into problems with those pesky water decks.  After taking the first league, I moved on to the grass deck for the second league, and then finishing off the Trainer “Challenge” with the water deck.  A fun way to kill about two and a half hours, but definitely not anything competitive or extremely challenging.

Despite not having much of a challenge against the virtual opponents, I really do enjoy this system of playing Pokemon.  The graphics are really nice, the toolbar on the side is handy, and everything happens quicker because the program shuffles for you in a second as compared to your normal 15 or so seconds.  Selection is made easy when dealing with attacks, attaching energies, your hand is automatically organized for you, you can see the amount of energies attached to your Pokemon, and you can get to zoom in to every card that has been played so far.  Searching through your deck is easy when you get the chance to do so in the game, and I appreciate all the work that Pokemon has done so far.

The decks, at least after getting all of the unlocked cards, were relatively playable.  Pokemon still put in their really bad evolution lines, giving the Typhlosion line a 4-3-1 build.  Better than usual, I guess, but your total Pokemon count came in at about 29, way higher than necessary for teaching basic mechanics of competitive play.  Their energy counts were a bit high, and in the Fire deck, it ended up being at 19, which is one higher than my ‘GatrZone deck and about four more than most other decks in the format.  Seeing as how these decks had no draw engine and barely any search support, I will give them a break on that.  The real problem was that there were 11-12 T/S/S in each deck, where the average for a competitive deck has this number around 20.  Still, I believe these decks to be better than most starter decks.

And now, if you haven’t been put to sleep during my summarizing of my play time online, here comes what Pokemon really needs to fix within the beta to make it even better.  I hope that some of the people working on this programming or who monitor the development of this program are reading this so that they can improve it.

1) Don’t tell players to not retreat- This was probably the part that bugged me the most about the in-game tutorial that is there when you are first playing through the game.  When you attempt to retreat, the game tells you that doing this is expensive, a waste of resources, and usually not a good idea.  Though I agree with this statement when all of your Pokemon have a retreat cost that is not zero, you should not be discouraging newer players from using this mechanic in the game.  Retreating is a big element of play in competitive Pokemon, and finding ways to get their damaged/unprepared Pokemon out of the active spot is going to be very important when (and if) Gust of Wind Pokemon Catcher is released.

POKEMON, Y U NO LET US USE COLLECTOR?

2) Search cards exist. Let people use them- My second peeve with this system is that there are only three search cards that you are allowed to use, and two of them are pretty terrible, with third being alright.  You only get to use Professor Elm’s Training Method, Pokeball, and Dual Ball.  These cards barely see any competitive play and are not very good because two of them are based on luck.  The hand-refresher cards that they have available for use are good, making use of Professor Oak’s New Theory and Copycat and they even emphasize the importance of energies by letting making you run Interviewer’s Questions.  But why are we not allowed to search out our own Pokemon like the computer can?  At least they get Great Ball.  Why don’t we?

3) Let the player modify the deck with the cards that are unlocked- Now, I know that Pokemon is still working on their Deck Builder, so I should give them a little bit of a break on this one, but if you unlock a card to be played in your deck, you should be allowed to mess around with the card counts.  I appreciate the system that you have in place right now, because it shows players that you can modify your deck with other cards that you have, even though it should be common sense.  What I don’t like is that you force cards out that some players would like to use.  As I stated earlier in the article, I really liked using Flareon in the fire deck.  When I unlocked some new cards, I lost an Eevee that I really would have liked to have instead of a Growlithe.  I also did not like losing my PlusPowers.  They came in handy many times before.  Maybe set it to disable and individual achievement?  That would probably work.

4) If the player loses, don’t let nothing happen- When you lose a match of Pokemon in real life, your rating goes down, and you have to fight back and win more games in order to get your rating back up to where you started.  Since this happens in real life, the virtal challenge should not be any different.  You can allow replays to get the player to get back to their starting rank, but I suggest that you teach the ranking system, as this one shows that you can lose to a challenger ten times, and then after you beat them once, you are all-of-a-sudden better than them.

Thank you all for reading through this article, and if you actually made it to the end, I have a suprise for you.  My ‘GatrZone (name trademarked by Pablo Meza) list.  I have used this many times and it has worked better for me than when I was testing out MagneRock, even with my lack of Azelf.  Have fun with it if you wish.

If only he was just a little bit easier to get out and set up.

I shouldn’t have to explain the strategy, because it mimics MagneRock’s, except this one can survive Power-Lock more easily.  This list still needs some work, as I still need to find a way to avoid Fainting Spells and fit recovery cards in there, but it works really well in all of the other matchups.  Just be cautious when you’re dealing with LostGar, as if you don’t plan for a Seeker, it will hurt you a lot.  If the energy count seems too high for you, I suggest dropping 2 Water Energies for a Skuntank G and another BTS.  I would have done this myself, except that in testing the deck, I kept on getting into energy droughts, which is not supposed to happen with a 16 Energy list that has draw power.

I wish you all well on your preparation and performance at Regionals and I hope you keep flooding Pokemon TCG Online so that we can prove to them that the Pokemon community will embrace this development that we’ve all been waiting for.

Pokemon TCG Online Beta Review is an article featured on SixPrizes - Pokemon TCG Tips and Strategy.

After a rather disappointing week one for me, I wasn’t in the most pleasant of moods, I had gone 5-3 at the California state championships and placed really low to say the least. So I start texting one of my Poke-friends around midday Friday and find out he is willing to give me a ride all the way to Arizona since he’s going anyways (thank you Kenny) so I immediately start thinking about what deck to run and what changes I can make to my current list.

After contemplating Luxchomp, Sablelock, and Dialgachomp I decide on using Dialgachomp after learning that both Pooka and Con Lee topped week 1 with their own Dialga variants.

So after several hours of deep thought and analyzing where my deck went wrong during week 1 this turns out being my final list, and I’ll explain why I chose some cards and why that certain quantity seeing as how my Dialgachomp build differs from the norm.

Pokemon

Dialga G Lv.X
I chose a 2-2 line where most decks stick to 3-1 for turn 1 Deafens or 2-1 for extra tech room, but I decided 2-2 was best to help combat the phantom menace known as Vilegar since I only run 2 Power Spray in my deck so chances are my Dialga would be Level Downed by Gengar Lv.X this always gave me a chance to draw into DGX faster.

Garchomp C Lv.X
Honestly the one deck that influenced me the most when making this deck was Luxchomp. As you can see I don’t even tech stadiums in this deck to combat Lostgar or Gyarados because honestly like it or not Luxchomp is BDIF right now and the one thing that keeps Dialgachomp from topping most times is the sheer speed at which Luxchomp can set up compared to Dialgachomp so I decided on a 3-1 line to help me in the Garchomp/Dragonite/Ambipom battle

Dragonite FB/Ambipom G/Toxicroak G
Now many of you may be thinking that all 3 of these Luxchomp counters + a 3-1 Garchomp C Lv.X line is overkill but I believe them to be necessary since Dialgachomp looses in speed so it has to make up for it by keeping up in the prize exchange once it gets started.

All other Pokemon are standard in any Dialgachomp list so I will skip those.

Trainers/Supporters/Stadiums

The basic SP engine and Consistency Cards are present but I’ll only go over the odd choices so as to defend myself and my crazy ideas!

Junk Arm/VS Seeker
I find it necessary I should start with both of these cards as they are the two cards that influenced my trainer line up the most with both of these present I’m allowed to only run 1 of some supporters such as Looker’s, Bebe’s, Aaron’s, and Twins. The Junk Arm also helps in dropping some trainer counts, that’s why I only run three energy gain, two SP radar, two Power Spray, and 1 Expert Belt also when needed Junk  Arm can empty your hand of useless techs to get something useful such as a fifth Poke Turn!

Premier Ball/Pokemon Communication/Bebe’s/Aaron’s/SP Radar
I find 2 premier Ball and Pokemon Communication helped this deck out a lot since I only played 1 Garchomp C Lv.X between these cards I was Guaranteed to nab it whenever I needed it. Premier Balls also help to recover a knocked out Pokemon as does Aaron’s Collection which are both necessary to recover my lone Garchomp C Lv.X

Twins
This card is so terribly underrated especially in Dialgachomp! Chances are that in any major tourney your bound to face at least two Luxchomps and maybe a Gyarados that alone condones the use of Twins both are decks that can out speed you, this is where you turn both of those decks speed against them, it’s so helpful to be able to search out two DCE with twins and keep up with the prize exchange against Luxchomp or to search out your single Expert Belt against Gyarados or two of anything you need for that specific match. And one is all the deck needs since its searchable by Cyrus not to mention all the Twins shenanigans you can commit with VS Seeker and Junk Arm.

Looker’s Investigation
A near staple in Dialgachomp, deafen for a couple turns followed by Looker’s say goodbye to all your stockpiled trainers!

Everything else is self-explanatory including the energy line up, nothing too flashy there.

Tournament Report

We leave California at Midnight and arrive in Arizona at 6 am. By we I mean 2 masters (Kenny and I) and 2 Seniors (Josh and Kristy). By this time we’ve all been awake for at least 24 hours. Needless to say we eat breakfast make last minute preparations, register and start round 1!

Attendance is announced at 82 for masters so we’re gonna go 7 rounds and a top cut of 16.

Round 1 vs. Joseph with Luxchomp

He starts Unown Q to my Garchomp C immediately we both cringed at the sight, I hate to start a tournament on such a sour note, he can’t do anything so he passes throughout this whole move I felt like a jerk, I collector for Uxie, Unown Q and that’s it why drag it out longer? I quick onto Garchomp C use set up with Uxie attach an energy to him and psychic restore for the win. I offered a friendly he refused and I didn’t pursue the matter any further I would probably have done the same if I were on the receiving end of that.

1-0

Round 2 vs. Zachary with Sablelock

This match is the proof that karma does exist and oh boy does it!! I start off with Dialga G and Lucario GL I believe to his Sableye and I forgot what else but he turn 1 impersonates for a collector and grabs Chatot G, Murkrow, and Garchomp C. I start horribly, 2 Poketurns, Power Spray, Junk arm, and Energy Gain I believe no Energy or Supporters.

He notices I don’t attach an Energy and pounces on the opportunity to disrupt all i can remember is that 4 turns later and a couple Garchomp C Snipes and Chatot G Drops I’m left with no Pokemon on the bench and he takes a 3rd prize but I’m left with no Pokemon to promote. Karma came back to bite me in the butt!!

1-1

Round 3 vs. ??? Blastgatr

I feel bad he was probably the nicest of all my opponents and I forgot his name. He had a really good Blastgatr deck that could have been better had he run Professor Oaks instead of Bills and Mom’s Kindness. So anyways he starts Spiritomb and Tododile to my Dialga G and Garchomp C. He Darkess Graces into Groconaw and ends.

I start by attaching a special metal and I collector for Bronzong G, Uxie and Crobat G I set Bronzong G and setup with Uxie thats all I could do due to Spiritomb so I pass play. He Bebe’s for Feraligatr evolves sets Squirtle on bench and ends turn. I attach DCE to Dialga G, Cyrus For Cyrus, Poke Turn, Basic Metal and Second Strike for Knock Out he’s left with promoting Feraligatr out.

He Pokemon communications for Blastoise and Rare Candies into Blastoise at which point he puts a DCE on it and Rain Dances two water onto him (Scary Stuff) the rain dances 2 more onto Feraligatr Prime in an attempt to retreat. He’s left with two cards in hand I’m expecting an Uxie but he passes. I build up a DGX and search a Garchomp C Lv.X with premier ball and I cyrus for a Cyrus, Power Spray, and Metal I second Strike for 50.

He then attempts to Uxie I spray he ends. I add 1 more metal and remove lost I hit tails. He draws into bill attaches, retreats to Blastoise and washes out Bronzong G for the KO. I Flash Bite for the Knock out on Feraligatr he then cant set up anymore with rain dance so its only a matter of turns till I take out the Blastoise as well with both DGX and Garchomp C Lv.X.

2-1

Lunch Break by this time it was 1 o’clock and all of us in our group were 2-1 and on our 30th hour without sleep, it was hell!

After a quick bite to eat we continue on through.

Round 4 vs. Desmond with Sablelock
I setup turn 2 DGX with Belt, he sets up turn 3 Honchkrow from Supreme Victors and knocks out my Belted DGX im down by two prizes. I sacrifice My Ambipom G by taking a turn to tail code the DCE over to an Azelf a move which ultimately wins me the match. He Galactic Switches a dark energy over to Honchkrow and attaches a psychic to knock out Ambipom.

I flash bite Honchkrow I Cyrus for twins and Poke Turn and I rush Honchkrow. He shuffles my hand away sends out Crobat G and ends, sucks because I had twins. I retreat get out Uxie X Warp and send out powered up Dragonite thanks to trade off, lookers his hand away and KO his Crobat. He Starts Setting up Garchomp and I believe he earthquakes for KO. I follow it up by Sending up My Garchomp C and Earthquake.

He Giratina Drops and I top deck into 2 DCE Cyrus and Premier Ball. After This he can’t keep up with my SP hate deck and we get called into time we’re at 1-2 prizes in my favor and he’s staring down a Dragonite FB a Garchomp C and Uxie X with DCE and Energy Gain in hand. He dragon rushes Garchomp C and I respond with Drogonite FB. Best game I’d Had in a while! Thanks for an awesome game!

3-1

Round 5 vs. Kim with Speed Gyarados
I believe he’s a tournament organizer from Northern California we wish each other best of luck and begin, now theoritically this is a match I should be dreading DGX’s tanking ability cannot keep up with base damage 90, so far I’m 3-0 against Gyarados in competitive play so I have ways of playing around it.

Luckily he can’t set up for the first couple of turns and it becomes a really long drawn out game due to deafen and power spray I keep his Magikarp in hand. The 1 turn I take to break the lock he explodes and starts swinging for 60 I get a prize but I start using all my resources to keep him from getting a single prize. He finally takes one and time is called at 5-5 prizes (I know thats how slow and well thought out of a match it was on both our parts).

I tried to keep him from getting another prize because all I needed was one final dragon rush on any benched Pokemon to get the win but in the end it was a misplay on his part that won me the match. Instead of knocking out my Garchomp C Lv. X with 60 damage on it already he regi moved it away to toss his last Magikarp guaranteeing me the win by sending out my DGX which couldn’t get knocked out that turn and allowing me the dragon rush the turn after. Really good game sir!!

So at this point I’m 4-1 and I’m feeling really good about myself having won two really well fought matches. I check up with my friends and both seniors we came with made top cut and my friend Kenny was 3-2 still keeping optimistic of top cutting with good resistance.

Round 6 vs Carmelita with Kingdra/Donphan

Talk about unexpected, the sheer damage output to this deck even though I beat her would get her through the rest of the competitors and her way back into top cut. Well I say unexpected but I myself have made a version of this deck so I knew what to expect.

Honestly the only reason I won is because I sprayed her Uxie Twice leaving her with no cards in hand. She went through four, that’s right four Garchomp C Lv.X. I had to use two Premier Balls, Aaron’s Collection, and VS seeker to keep up with her. She had turn 2 Kingdra Prime Belted. I Never let her setup a Donphan and I took out her belted Kigdra all with a combination of dragon rush, flash bite, and earthquake.

5-1

Okay final round in Swiss I knew I was making top cut regardless so I felt a sense of relief and it was this sense of relief combined with it being my 35th hour without sleep that lead to a bunch of sloppy plays that would ultimately lead me to my horrible top 16 opponent because had I won this match up I would’ve faced a different opponent in top cut.

Round 7 vs. Jared with Gengar

My series of misplays started with me terribly misinterpreting this match up, he played Gengar not Vilegar so I spent alot of resources trying to bring out DGX when I didn’t have to. To give u a look into how grossly I spent my resources I wasted 3 DCE’s in one turn, one on retreating DGX one on junk arm to get back something useless and one on Dragon Rushing….epic fail.

Even with all that though by keeping week support Pokemon out of my bench and using my trainers up I brought it to 1-1. I’m not knocking him down he did well to make such a good deck though GG!

So after a couple minutes standings are shown and both me & Kenny made top cut Im seeded 9th while he is seeded 11th. We are now in zombie mode, so dead without sleep but like always we go on through. And as for the title of this long tournament report 8 of the top 16 players were from California so we invaded!!

Top 16 vs. Matthew with Luxchomp
This is the opponent I regret facing. Continue reading and you will find out why, had it not been for this I probably would’ve advanced to top 8 vs Dialgachomp a match I’ve been practicing constantly, oh well I’ve got California Regionals to look forward too.

Match 1
I completely dominate and take 6 prizes within 15 minutes to his zero, he draws no supporters.

Match 2
He opts for me to go first I start with a lone Uxie, but my hand is killer Collector, DCE, Special Metal Energy Gain, Warp, and Premier Ball Everything I could hope for I thought I was gonna own again. As soon as I see that he Collectors for Crobat G Uxie and Unown Q, I immediately realize he’s going for the donk and sure enough he does.

Match 3
I opt for him to go first I start with Azelf (a pixie again) My hand is crap DGX, DGX, Metal, Metal, Poke Turn, Poke Turn, I don’t draw into anything, needless to say he donks again.

So I end up getting kicked out in top 16 when I know it was a match I could take with all my SP Hate, but at least my friend Kenny went into top 4 with Luxchomp Congrats man!! And if any of you are wondering top 4 looked like so:

1. Matt With Vilegar
2. Eric Ha with Sablelock
3. Kenny Britton with Luxchomp
4. ??? with Dialgachomp

Thank you to all of you for sticking with me till the end, it might be too long but I try to explain my moves as best as possible. Look forward to future articles from me, I already have an article on testing in my mind! So now for the usual pros ans slops sections :

Pros
Top Cutting
Taking the road less traveled and using Dialgachomp
having overall great opponents and a good time
Everyone in Team Majestix for Topping (Kenny 3rd in Masters, Kristy Top 8 seniors, Josh 2nd Seniors, Me top 16 Masters)

Slops
Getting donked twice in the same match
Not facing a single Vilegar all day
40 + hours without sleep

California Invades Arizona: Top 16 w/ Dialgachomp and Decklist is an article featured on SixPrizes - Pokemon TCG Tips and Strategy.

Unfortunately, preparation for the event was not ideal, as it is a rather hectic period of the year for me what with visiting university after university. Time dedicated to play-testing was scarce, which doesn’t help when you’re entering states with a deck you’ve never brought to a tournament before.

Having stayed up all night in order to not miss my very early morning train, I set off and unashamedly started solitaire testing on the train there to try and keep as fresh as possible.  What was my deck you ask?  Well here’s the deck-list that I’d been working on for the past couple of weeks to hopefully give me a good shot of top-cutting at states.

All in all, a fairly standard deck-list with nothing particularly outlandish.  The Twins/Expert Belt was mainly for the Gyarados matchup, but also helped in the SP mirror in tight situations.  Seeker is like your 5th Poke-turn, your 3rd Uxie ‘Set up’, your 2nd Azelf ‘Time Walk’, and is just in general very versatile.  I’m not the type to be withdrawn about giving out a deck-list because it changes every tournament I go to in order to give myself a better chance against the metagame, and generally think net-decking a deck is pretty useless anyway.

The tournament saw itself attracting talent from all over the country, including notable names such as Karl Blake, Nick Fotheringham, Freddy K to name just a few. I definitely felt rather minuscule in terms of talent when compared to these people but was confident enough in my deck to put in a good showing at this tournament

R1 – Drew – Donphan/Machamp

Whilst setting up, we get talking and I find out he’s only been playing for a little over a month, which is a bit of a relief for me as I really wanted to get off to a good start.  We flip and he starts with active Smeargle to my Weavile G.  I call for a Roserade Gl and Luxray GL, still unsure as to what he was playing.  He then ‘Portraits’ for a Machop, Donphan and Uxie so I know what he’s playing and am a little bit fearful.  However, I get the Roserade lock on him then snipe his benched Machoke so he has no real way coming back into the game.

1-0

R2 – Ben S-Armstead – Luxchomp

Ben, fresh from a 5-3 showing at the ECC was definitely someone I had to be wary about when playing.  However, this match turned into somewhat of a joke.  He couldn’t get Supporters and I couldn’t get Energy so it was a battle of who could top-deck first essentially and I got that Cyrus to put a slightly disappointing game to bed.

2-0

R3 – George Boon – Gyarados

Remember I mentioned about how little play-testing I’d done prior to this event?  Well most of that came from Skype/IRL battling with George, a good friend from a different competitive gaming community so I had a good idea of how to approach the matchup.  However, I get a horrible Bronzong Start, and he comes within a second Magikarp in the discard to getting the donk.  Having overextended massively in order to get the donk, I just set up safely after that and took prize after prize whilst he struggled to recover after his initial burst of speed.

3-0

R4 – Faisal ‘Freddy’ Khan – Luxchomp

This was a very tight match throughout, having to go aggro Dragonite the first few turns thanks to some horrible prizes.  I was always behind slightly on prizes though, which I didn’t mind as I was just biding my time to use Twins and sneak back ahead in the last few turns.

However, he only goes and uses Judge straight after I use twins to banish any chance of me coming back into the match so very well played on his part.  I’ll admit Judge is a card I’ve never even considered before in Luxchomp but watching Freddy use it over the course of the day opened it up as another good option for Luxchomp to me.

3-1

R5 – Ryan Tur – Luxchomp

Apparently, there were to be 3 players on 4-1 in the top cut, with one just missing out so I was fully determined to take this match for my chance at top cutting in the biggest even in the UK so far this year.  Ryan tells me his Luxchomp list is 100% teched out against the mirror.

However, this ironically turns out to be his downfall.  After a good opening start from Ryan (2 Garchomp C and a DCE), he Premier Balls to find his Lv.X prized.  From there, it’s downhill from him, with me power-spraying Bright-Looks in order to keep control.  I keep two power spray in my hand at all times as his only out seems to be using Collector for 2 Uxie.  I finish the game by using Seeker and knocking out his active Luxray Lv.X for the win.

4-1

So after what seems like an age, the top cut is announced and I’m delighted to see I’ve made it, far outstripping any expectations I had entering this event!  Guaranteeing myself a medal was great, as that’s the prize I always look forward to the most when entering any TCG tournament.  An interesting side-note; I believe 3 of the top 4 in the top cut had actually been playing the game for less than a year, which is a great testament to how the game is growing and expanding, and the other had been playing for at least a decade, showing it’s general longevity.

Top Cut

T4 – Charles Barton – Luxchomp

Match 1 – This was an opponent I had to respect when facing, as a multiple City Championship winner and the only person to have made it 5-0 at this event in the Swiss rounds.  The first game goes very tight, with a prize trade almost every turn using Dragonite FB and Garchomp C Lv.X.  However, his resources come through late game and he manages to continue his momentum throughout the match which I just couldn’t replicate and always seeming on the back foot.

Match 2 – Another really close match went to time + 3 with us both on 2 prizes, so the first to take a prize would win at this point.  I’d beensetting up a Garchomp on the bench in case this happened and I Dragon Rushed for that last prize to take it to sudden death.

Match 3 – Sudden Death, I make a horrible mistake by not realising it’s a 1 prize game and putting Unown Q active.  Fortunately, he flips over a Smeargle and goes first so I’m very relieved.  In my turn, I Bebe’s for a Roserade Gl, retreat and start poison binding, putting him on a very important timer.  He desperately tries to tack on damage to me using Crobat drops and then using ‘Tail Rap’.  However, I just poke-turn it back up and keep the Poison bind going.  He doesn’t have the resources to knock me out so concedes.

T2 – Faisal ‘Freddy’ K – Luxchomp

Match 1 – Any result for me at this point would be great for me, and am definitely excited to be playing in my first major grand final at an event.  However, this match goes very badly for me, I make crucial misplays early on in the game which cost me the game.  On reflection, I didn’t have much of a chance thanks to Garchomp C Lv.X, 2 Uxie, Bronzong and Azelf being prized but that’s how it goes sometimes.

Match 2 – He starts Ambipom and passes.  I have an active Dragonite so decide to go for the donk no matter what and not care about the consequences.  I ditch my hand by attaching E-Gain to Dragonite, use a couple of Poke-turns unnecessarily, junk arm them back and use them again and then Uxie Set ups for a big new hand.  I draw the DCE and get the donk.

Match 3 – A close match that in reality, Freddy always had control over. It was a standard Dragonite/Garchomp war in the end but Freddy makes crucial misplays throughout to cost him.  His first mistake was thinking an earthquake would knock out my Garchomp C Lv.X, allowing me to return the KO easily.

His second (more crucial) mistake came on the second turn of +3.  He had a benched Garchomp X with two energies.  Thinking it was fully powered up; he attached a Gain to Ambipom and promoted Garchomp to Dragon Rush for the win.  I knock it out next turn and the Judge calls for a 1 prize sudden death to decide the tournament.

Match 4 – I’ll be honest, I get an absolute god hand from this.  Garchomp C, Premier Ball, Double Colorless Energy, Energy Gain, Poketurn.  I couldn’t have asked for much better and I get the Turn 2 Dragon Rush for the win.

What can I take from this tournament on the current metagame?

LostGar – This deck saw little to no play in the Masters division at Manchester.  I saw one in Seniors and that was about it.  It still seems to me like a very risky move in the current metagame with people conspiring to tech against it.  However, due to the incredibly low turnout during the first week of states, it could be a safe play in week 2, at least in the UK.

LuxChomp – Still incredibly huge.  Being able to thrive off a small skeleton build with plenty of rooms for techs to adjust to any particular metagame is too powerful at the moment.  Even hard counters to the deck are starting to have a harder time against it.

Gyarados – Saw a huge drop in popularity it seems.  There was only one player in Masters playing Gyarados which is disappointing as I still feel it has a definite place in the current metagame.  I think the fact that Luxchomps are starting to tech things like Twins and Expert Belt are hurting this deck more than other threats such as Lostgar and Vilegar.

VileGar – Still seemingly very viable, although not particularly successful, it did see a fair bit of play.  It’s versatility in being able to interchange into a Lostgar deck if necessary gives it a bit more of an unpredictable factor as opponents would not know whether to ditch Pokémon or Trainers.

Rogues/Anything not Tier 1 – The odd one can become successful (there was a Jumpluff/Yanmega Prime deck that reached top cut at Manchester), but I’d be surprised to see many take states though.  These kinds of decks inherently have the same problem.  They either thrive under a SP metagame whilst struggling against everything else, or can compete with everything but SP.

So my first States, and my first States win, I’m definitely hoping to build on this in the coming states too.  I’m also really looking forward to how this will affect my Premier rating, as getting an invite to worlds is probably my biggest aim for my first year in the Pokémon TCG (despite having no intentions of actually attending it!).  Thanks a lot for reading, if anybody would like any further info about my deck or my states in general, hit me up with a PM on SixPrizes, I’m under the username Tamoo on there (I should be fairly easy to find, just look under the staff section).

~Tamoo

UK States Winning Tournament Report with Decklist is an article featured on SixPrizes - Pokemon TCG Tips and Strategy.

YAY!!!

Your States tournament is this weekend – and you haven’t started testing or even chosen a deck! You need to get cards now – but what to run?! Never fear, I’ve done all the testing for you!

These are my personal observations – hopefully it helps you to choose a deck. Note that a lot depends on how fast you can play too – if you play slowly you may want to avoid Gengar decks. My testing partners and I play at extremely fast speeds so it is usually untimed – but that does make a huge difference in tournaments!

For all this work I’m sharing with you guys, I better not come in last place in the author popularity poll again.

Anyway, a little introduction. In science, testing and experiments must be done under exact conditions. You only want to manipulate one variable at a time, unless you have some kind of data processing that allows you to control for multiple ones.

Extrapolated to this, it means that player skill on both sides of the board should be the same, and that many experiments should be done to minimize the effect of bad beats. Another thing that I learned from a former testing partner, Ian, is to play four games with your list (two going first, two going second), then switch decks with your opponent and play four more games.

Of course, I ignored these considerations in order to get the massive amount of testing done that I wanted, but they may provide some insight for you guys if you really want to figure out the percentages behind a matchup.

Post a comment if you guys are interested and I can show you how to use statistics to find out what the matchup number truly is using this testing method (it will involve lots of math though!)

LostGar

Although it may have seemed like I said that LostGar is dead, I still believe it is a significant threat. The thing is, it takes a while to get it right and get it tight. Listwise, you have to make sure the list is consistent enough to Lost Zone 6 within the time limit as well as not autoloss to Dialga.

Playstyle-wise, games often come down to the last turn so you must play extremely accurately. You have to have an intuition about whether to Seeker and Hurl or find a Spiritomb and Hurl. You have to know when to start attacking and when to just rely on Lost Zoning from the hand. And each list has its own nuances to deal with.

LostGar (Jason) 2 vs. Sablelock (Aziz Al-Yami) 4

I play a very normal Lostgar list, with Azelf LV.X but not too many fancy techs (i.e. Machamp). Aziz Al-Yami is a friend who took his version of Chenlock past the Grinder into Top 16 or something of Worlds, losing in Sudden Death to a Roserade GL I believe.

Anyway, needless to say, the self proclaimed “#1 in the World at Sablelock” has serious skills with these types of decks. Aziz’s Sablelock list is like most Sablelocks, seeing as it is such a tight deck. The problem with the matchup is that once he gets out his Honchkrow, it pretty much OHKOs me (even with Azelf LV.X out!).

I am able to win once by attacking Honckrow with Gengar twice, sacrificing them, and then using Uxie’s Psychic Restore to Lost Zone it. Another time he got a bad start and I was able to Lost Zone many cards for the win. My belief is that Sablelock is definitely winning in this one.

LostGar with Vileplume/Mesprits (Jason) 0 vs. Sablelock (Aziz) 2

Aziz got the idea to try to use Vileplumes and Mesprits in LostGar, with the whole Spiritomb engine and everything (this was before the European Cup Championship tournament, we didn’t think to play Gengar SF). However we quickly found that it was even slower and losing.

...

States Testing with Jason Chen is an article featured on SixPrizes - Pokemon TCG Tips and Strategy.

I believe Pokémon States this year is going to be one of the most interesting ones of the whole year. There’s going to be people playing Lostgar going 5-0 and dropping for ratings and rankings. I think that’s cool, BUT if you want to win the safest deck to go with is easily Luxchomp or Dialgachomp.

What I’m here to do is to tell you how to play the top tier decks such as Luxchomp and Dialgahomp. For there is no way to play them perfectly, don’t go running into a tournament expecting to win with Luxchomp. Fact: It’s not going to happen unless you know how to play it correctly, trust me. I’m just going to teach you how to do so. So without further ado the deck of the hour, Luxchomp.

The list looks like the basic Luxchomp except the Weavile G; I will soon get on to this. Right now I will explain the reason why Luxchomp has taken so many victories of many Tournaments.

The reason why? Well the insane power of Luxray GL LV.X and Garchomp C LV.X. People may say that they have no synergy at all. Well this is true; they do one simple thing though, pick off your opponents weakest Pokémon.

They also have the SP Engine to abuse also. So think twice about lying down your Uxie LA to set up, because the Luxchomp players will just Power Spray it and snipe it eventually. But there are ways around Luxchomp and its usual and easily over played strategy in the Pokémon TCG.

Luxchomp is easily one of the most played decks in the TCG right now because of this. This is the reason you will most likely play at least two at your States.

A Luxchomp deck can be teched out to beat any deck. The reason for the Weavile G, to crush Lostgar and Vilegar, it won’t always help but in certain situations it does. Luxchomp’s strategy is simple, set up a steady base of Luxray GL and Garchomp C and setting up a legitimate control of the board while taking easy prizes. Eventually you will win if you can take a prize every turn; though Luxchomp’s late game isn’t so great its early game is probably the best in the game. Now that you know the basic strategy of Luxchomp I’m going to share with you a list of techs and possible matchups ranging from tier one to tier three.

Techs

Smeargle UD- This card is one of the most underrated cards in the format. Its Poke-Power Portrait allows you to copy a Supporter in your opponent’s hand. It’s amazing in mirror match, if you have room I highly suggest running this card.

Roserade GL- Wow, yet another Pokémon that is underrated in our format, what a surprise! You can lock there active Pokémon in their position while poisoning it. This card is good if there is lots of Vilegar in your area.

Dialga G- This card is good to counter Lostgar and Vilegar, you can Deafen lock the whole games against Lostgar of just drop the LV.X and turn of all of your opponents Poke-Bodies such as Vileplume and Spiritomb’s nasty trainer locking bodies.

Blaziken FB- This card is good for going against Dialgchomp, Scizor, and Steelix. I think this card is amazing if you have a lot of Dialgchomp in your meta. Other than this it doesn’t really help against mirror. It can put a little disruption in your Luxchomp though.

Honchkrow SV- This card can be used to counter Lostgar and it sometimes helps in mirror match since most of the cards in your deck are basic.

Donphan Prime- This card is absolutely amazing in mirror. It kills your opponents Luxray’s but it also replaces Promocroak if you don’t have one.

Dribflim FB- A good late game sniper, it can kill pixies and easily anything with 60 hp or less.

Dribflim UD- This card is what I believe to be the best Mewtwo and Machamp counter. This card is also helpful to take out tanks.

Toxitank- This can be teched in with a stadium such as Pokémon Contest Hall, to poison your opponent with Skuntank G’s Poison Structure and kill them with Toxicroak G’s PL Deep Poison. I highly suggest this with high Machamp in your area. But don’t run it if there is a lot of other SP in your area.

Absol G LV.X- This card can help in the Vilegar and Lostgar matchup you can discard your trainers or Pokémon, and hit them for weakness. This card is OK in my opinion but if you see a lot of Vilegar and Lostgar in your area I suggest this card highly.

That’s it for some of the techs. As you can see I didn’t list all of the techs but there is still a hefty amount. Now on to the matchups good and bad this deck is one of those decks that don’t have one Auto-Loss. People may say it does, that’s your opinion. Well now that where don with techs where going to be talking about matchups.

Matchups

Machamp- Many people believe that Machamp is Luxchomp’s worst nightmare because of the contious stream of hard hitting Machamps. Machamp SF is known to be the SP killer; with its attack Take Out it can KO any basic Pokémon for one energy. But there are many things you can do to make this matchup in your favor. You can use a 3-1 Uxie LA line as I do to KO a Machamp with Zen Blade or you can run Dribflim UD. You can even run Toxitank, but I highly suggest not to because of the mirror match. Anyways I say this matchup is in Machamp’s favor by just a little.

40-60

Maphan- I know this will probably not be seen at your states but I’m putting it in here to warn you. Maphan is near auto loss for Luxchomp. The two tanks paired together are very hard to take down. The key to winning this matchup is to snipe and Bright Look around your opponent’s heavy hitter’s. You will most likely not win this because of the raw power of Machamp and Donphan Prime. But the key again is to be sneaky.

30-70

Kingchamp- This matchup is easier than the others, because of Kingdra’s weakness to lightning. But you must watch out for Machamp if he gets out just KO it with Uxie LV.X. The best tech for this matchup is Blaziken FB it makes Kingdra’s Dragon Stream a measly twenty damage.  This is one of the easier Machamp matchups.

60-40

Kingphan- I think this matchup can be hard and easy at the same time you can kill their Kingdras and snipe around the Donphan’s. But they can hit hard for little energy. All you need to do is kill their Kingdra’s and pick off their bench when you can. This matchup can turn out in either player’s way.

50-50

Kingdra- This matchup is easily winnable. You simply Bright Look their Horsea’s, Seadra’s, and Kingdra’s and pick them off. Another way to win is snipe and drop a Blaziken on your bench and keep it there the whole game. It’s an easy matchup unless they donk you of course.

70-30

Donphan- This matchup is pretty hard saying they only run eleven Pokémon in their deck half the time. You should just use Garchomp C be sneaky. Otherwise it is very hard to win this matchup most of the card’s in the deck have one 120 HP and usually that’s all your opponent will have on the field when you snipe of their Uxie’s. Like I said this matchup isn’t your luckiest or best.

40-60

Healix- This matchup can be hard or easy. If you run Blaziken or Dribflim you can KO it or Take Away their tank. Once a tank deck’s tank is gone it can’s tank anymore leaving it tankless. I say this is a pretty hard matchup if you don’t run the right Pokémon in your deck, BUT if you do your good to go.

50-50

Scizor Variants- This deck can be harder to play against, #1 you can’t attack it head on sometimes if you accidently attach a DCE or Call Energy. But if you run Blaziken you can easily take them down, same with Dribflim UD. If you don’t run either of these cards it’s very hard.

50-50

Regigigas- This matchup is hard if you don’t run Promocroak or Donphan Prime. I haven’t tested this as much as I would like to but it can be won but lost to. If they get out Gigas then all you have to do is Power Spray their Sacrifice to kill it eventually. I believe this matchup can be won but I’m giving it an even matchup.

50-50

Vilegar- This matchup involves a lot of luck and skill. If they start Spiritomb keep the cards low in your hand and Bright Look around it as soon as you can. Weavile G works wonders in this matchup, you can KO a Gengar in one shot but watch out for Fainting Spell his nasty Poke-Power that cannot be Power Sprayed. Two other techs that help out are Dialga G and Blaziken FB, also Absol G LV.X. (See techs section.) Whatever you go with beware of the trainer locking duo.

50-50

Gyarados- This matchup in my opinion is completely equal. Whoever gets set up first usually wins. I’m a big player of both Luxchomp and Gyarados; the difference between the two is that Luxchomp loses steam after the 7^th or 8^th turn. My reason for this is Luxchomp takes easy prizes, so does Gyarados. Luxchomp hits hard and fast, so does Gyarados. Luxchomp can stand up to Lostgar, and Gyarados well can’t. The decks are both good but Luxchomp has more teching Options and better matchups over the most hyped deck in Pokémon, maybe the best?

50-50

Sablelock- This is an odd matchup, because of the luck of both decks. Overall the winner of this battle is the one who gets a better hand out of Judge. It also depends on what the Sablelock player is playing. Because there are many versions of the deck you could win or have a hard time. But it depends entirely on luck.

?-? (Depends on Lady Luck)

Dialgachomp- This matchup is one of the most nerve racking matchups. You can kill their Dialga G with Blaziken FB or Take Away with Dribflim UD. But either way their healing engine is pretty godly. So I say don’t head on attack unless you happen to get active with a Garchomp C go ballistic then. But if Dialga G is there just snipe his Garchomps. I say this is a pretty fun matchup if it happens. Go crazy and remember Luxray GL has a metal resistance.

60-40 50-50 (Depending on techs.)

Mewperior- This deck is included only because you’re probably going to see at least one at states. The easiest was to beat Mewperior is to simply get ahead on prizes the whole games. If you happen to be playing anything with Expert Belt DON’T attach it then you’ll get behind on prizes and lose. Mewperior’s strategy is simple take a prize a turn after Seeing Off Rhyperior LV.X. That’s your opportunity now is the chance to get ahead of prizes cards and cruise to victory.

50-50

Mirror (Luxchomp) – This is a harder matchup than most believe it is. You have to be geared for the mirror match and be prepared for the Garchomp war. You have to Dragon Rush their Garchomp C’s before they do it to you. Or you can use Dragonite FB or Ambipom G for the surprise kill. I highly suggest that for mirror you run both Dragonite FB and Ambipom G.

50-50 (Whoever wins the Garchomp war wins the game.)

Dialgachomp

Now that we’re all done with blabbing on about Luxchomp I’m going to tell you a little bit about Pokémon States and Provincials. The first thing you need is a solid deck, such as the deck posted above. (Don’t be afraid to net deck!) I don’t net deck myself but I encourage it for newer players if they don’t know what to run. Another abomination that will be played at States for sure is Lostgar. Some easy counters for this are anything that’s dark and has an attack that does 60 or more.

What I’ve also been noticing is the drop in play of Gyarados because of Lostgar. I think this is quite smart for the old Gyarados player because if the Lostgar player gets Gengar Prime out T1 and Hurl’s a Magikarp you pretty much lose. So I highly suggest Luxchomp or Dialgachomp, I will give you a skeleton here but most of the tech’s for Luxchomp are the same. I’m not going to go quite as in depth on Dialgachomp as Luxchomp.

Techs: T/S/S

Pokémon Communication- This card is OK if it’s in your hand in certain situations. It does nearly the same thing as Bebe’s Search does EXCEPT you put a Pokémon on top of your deck. I say it’s an ok tech but limit it down to one to two.

Snowpoint Temple- This card is used with Toxitank in Dialgachomp; it gives all of your basic Pokémon 20 extra HP. If you have a heavy SP meta don’t run this because it benefits your opponent more.

Energy Exchanger- You can use this card to get a Double Colorless Energy or a Special Metal Energy. You can also grab basic energies.

V.S. Seeker- You can grab that fourth Pokémon Collector maybe that fifth Cyrus’s Conspiracy. Or that Aarons Collection that you already used or that third Bebe’s Search.

Junk Arm- You can grab that Energy Gain, Power Spray, or even that miscellaneous Premier Ball.

Now that we’ve come to an end to my excessively long article I hope you have a little insight on what to play for States/Provincials. Also you can contact me by E-mail at elimoses19@yahoo.com, or at Ironman785 on the Pokebeach. If you need ANY help or have ANY questions just give me a holler,

Thanks Blooper.

Insight on Pokemon States/Provincials Meta is an article featured on SixPrizes - Pokemon TCG Tips and Strategy.

Finally time to teach 'em this evil thing.

Welcome back to yet another exciting episode of the history channel: no history neede…. Wait, what’s that?  Oh, hey all, sorry, I must have been “SP”azing out again.  Today brings us another teacher deck; this one very relevant to today’s metagame.  What’s that, you ask?  In case you’re brain dead or are missing your eyes, and therefore have ignored the hints, we’re talking about SP decks.

SP decks are very popular in today’s metagame, and until they rotate out entirely, will be a force to be reckoned with.  However, for newer players, an SP deck may seem overwhelming, with so many choices and oddities that will confuse them.  If you are using these decks in order, you have already introduced the idea that SP makes non-basic Pokémon into basic Pokémon. (Floatzel GL from Floating Duck, Porygon-Z and Crobat G from Tanks for Nothing)

So what type of deck will this teacher deck lead to?  There are two (maybe three) major SP decks in our metagame at the moment.

• LuxChomp
• DialgaChomp
• (somewhat) Sabelock/Chenlock

In addition, there are some other SP decks that have nice options

• LuxBox
• Weavile G Toolbox
• BlazeRay
• Palkia Lock (Palkia G/Lucario CL)
• BlazeChomp
• ApeChomp
• *any Pokémon here really*-Chomp

This guy makes every metagame SP roll call.

This deck also teaches the following:

• Basic vs Special Energy (DCE vs the rest)
• Energy provided vs Energy cards attached (Hydro Shot)
• Damage counters vs Damage dealt (Crobat G again)
• The AMU trio (one copy of each of the LA pixies)
• Optional Poké-Powers (see again AMU trio, Crobat, others)
• Trainers that target only specific cards (Cyrus, Aaron’s, others)
• THE SP ENGINE LOLZ (All the TGI, Cyrus)
• Type matching options (using one attacker over another)
• Synergy (Alakazam to move damage to a tank, Poké Turn it away)
• Lv. X cards and “level up” rules
• Basic Power locking (Mespirit LA)
• Power Denial (Power Spray)
• Cards/effects done during your opponent’s turn (Power Spray again)
• The Lost Zone vs the discard (Palkia’s Lost Cyclone)
• The “only to the active” clause (Expert Belt + Hydro Shot)
• The “one tool only” rule (Expert Belt vs TGI Energy Gain)
• How Lv. X cards count towards your total of “four with same name”

However, what remains the hardest thing to learn for a newer player is the meat of every SP deck, the SP engine.  The SP engine, of course, is one of the strongest draw engines in the game, second only (in some cases) to Uxie’s “Set Up.”  With that said, throwing LuxChomp at a new player and telling them to get it working is just silly.  No, we’re here to do what any good teacher does:  Water it down and let your student digest it slowly.

This SP build is built around some otherwise worthless Lv. X cards, so you can finally justify buying all those RR packs and pulling these guys.  (Own up, you guys know you wanted that Luxray GL Lv. X.)  This deck focuses upon the following:  Alakazam 4 Lv. X, Palkia G Lv. X, and Golem 4.  (Alakazam is a cheap Lv. X, Palkia is in the new promo boxes, and Golem is a super-ignored rare.)  The rest are all cheap to find or purchase as well.

Now then, onto the deck list:

A fair warning.  I’m breaking my own rule here, as this deck is way more expensive than I’d like.  Why?  It contains the full SP engine.  If your player does not value his/her cards, I highly recommend you use proxies or use Redshark.  Once again, the usual teacher deck warning applies as well.  This deck is intentionally flawed.  Please do not use this in an event.  Ever.  Thanks.

Hi, my name is Palkia, I just want to love you!

And I love to hear all sorts of criticism.  But remember, criticize what the deck’s intent is.  If you see it failing as a way to teach something I listed above, by all means let me have it.  But if you’re going to tell me “Lol it won’t win any matchups everything is 1-99” then please go elsewhere, as that’s the whole point of these decks.

So as should be painfully obvious to most players, we’ve watered down the SP engine not much at all. Instead we’ve watered down the Pokémon, and all of you are probably thinking “holy crap did he really just say twenty energy?!?!”  Well yes, yes I did.  Twenty energy makes this deck slow enough to give your learner some time to adapt to this deck style.

So how do we teach this deck?  Our champ in the making should know all about playing SP Pokémon as basics, but we need to explain that Lv. X cards cannot be played as basics, nor can they be played to level up Pokémon on the bench.  This is very confusing to a newer player, as they will be used to the standard evolving mechanic.  Be sure to explain it slowly, and to re-enforce this lesson at times if need be.

If they’re curious enough, they may ask if there’s a counterpart to Rare Candy.  It is at that point that you should do two things.  Firstly, pat yourself on the back, because now you have a player who is interested enough in the game to explore ideas on their own.  Secondly, pull up a scan of/pull out a copy of Level Max.  If this is the last deck you’re teaching, they should notice that it has a “flippy” effect and remember that “flippy=bad.”

The first thing to note is that with this teacher deck, I highly recommend that you play it first while they watch your hand.  For the other teacher decks, it is possible to let them pick it up and run, but not for this deck.  On your first few runs, show them how to chain Cyrus, while picking out the Energy and Trainers they need.  Also show them how SP Radar can only find SP Pokémon.  Have them look at Bebe’s Search (from your collection or a scan) and SP Radar and note the pros and cons of each.

Flippy? Yes. Useful? Up to them.

Once you’ve shown the basics of the SP engine, let them give it a spin.  Play them with some of the other teacher decks, so that they get a feel for type-matching various other decks.  As Genguy said on the comments from article II, “Please comment with your ideas, everybody, they’re great!”

Strategy

There are several different Pokémon you can start with.  These Pokémon seem like they were chosen at random, but each has a very valid role to play in interacting with each other.  In order of convenience, they are:  Crobat G, Yanmega 4, Uxie, Palkia G, Alakazam 4, Azelf, Mespirit, and Golem 4.

No matter what your start, though, you should have some sort of Supporter in your opening hand.  Between Cyrus and Collector, you’ve got a pretty good chance of getting what you need.  If none of those cards are in your hand, then there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve got something else that you can use, or that you’ve already got the Pokémon you would need anyways.  Teach your young player to set up one or two Pokémon, based upon what he sees on the other side of the field.  If he’s used the other teacher decks before, he/she should have somewhat of an idea on what to do.  Make sure that if he/she decides on Palkia G as one of his foci, he remembers the “Lost Cyclone” effect hurts him or her as well.

Have your pro set up the Alakazam, and then use the Poké Turn + Damage Switch combo to heal as needed.  Show how you can leave damage stacked onto Golem 4, and then late game, sweep your opponent with all the damage you have stockpiled upon yourself, by keeping yourself ten damage out of their KO range by “Damage Switching” off as needed.  Also show them the synergy of using Yanmega using Whirlwind and then Lost Zoning the opponent’s main attacker that you sent away using “Lost Cyclone.” As the AMU trio is also important, show them they can use Azelf to search their prizes for what they want.  Also show how Mespirit can block your opponents from using Poké-Powers when they most need them, or when your champ has no Sprays in hand.

Yay for sponges!

The nicest thing about this deck, however, as well as with SP decks in general, is that they still have other options.  They can choose to go aggressive Palkia G, hitting with Pearl Breath early game, and then hitting the survivors with Hydro Shot.  Allow them to explore their own idea and options.  This deck is an open sandbox, so to speak.  It contains, in SP form, watered down versions of most main deck strategies.  That is, it has options for spreading, sniping, tanking, disrupting, locking, and healing.

So there you have it folks.  The SP engine, in teacher deck form and style.  What do you think?  Was it worth your time?  Is the teacher deck article style getting cramped?  Keep ‘em coming?  Let us know in the comments!

What a SPaz: Teaching Newer Players – Part 4 is an article featured on SixPrizes - Pokemon TCG Tips and Strategy.

Firstly, let me apologize for the span in-between this and my last post. January is always a hectic month for me what with work, the Holidays and such, so I haven’t had enough time to write (or spend on Pokemon in general), as I would like. With States coming up me and my team will be testing more, so I should have lots of interesting stuff to write about in the weeks to come.

Because I haven’t exactly had the utmost time/concentration/inspiration to spend on Pokemon lately, I thought I would make this article sort of a mishmash of subjects, and try to spark some discussion in the comments section. I understand this type of article won’t be for everybody, but hopefully you can bear with me until I get some relevant testing results to share with you all.

TCG News of the Day

- So that Call of Legends set was pretty bad, eh? I don’t really think so. I mean, I completely DO think that everyone reading this post thinks that the set is bad, and rightfully so. However, that is probably because we are all jaded competitive players who have little need for most of the cards in this set.

If you take the time to look at this set from a purely “How many good cards are in it?” standpoint, it starts to become less terrible, considering that the set consists of…

Lost World
Lost Remover
Smeargle
Ninetales
Umbreon
Leafeon
Mr. Mime
Professor’s Oak New Theory
Copycat
Special Dark
Special Metal

So, 11 cards that range anywhere from constructed kinda playable (Leafeon, Mr. Mime) to semi-staples (Smeargle, PONT) to new cards that could make quite a splash (Lost World, Lost Remover).

Obviously 11 cards, most of which are either unproven or are reprints does not a great set make, but I thought I would throw an opposing viewpoint out there, since the quality of COL has been a relevant discussion as of late.

- I assume that by now you’ve all heard of the new Online TCG that will be implemented in the next few months? If not, check down a few posts on this very website! I’ll give you some time to check that out……Now that that’s out of the way, what do you think? Personally, I think this has the chance to be quite game changing, but unfortunately I don’t see that happening. Here are a few reasons why:

• Nowhere in the press release does it say that we’ll get to have non-theme deck cards
• Even more importantly, nowhere does it say that we’ll get to construct our own decks
• It is apparently going to be run through Pokemon.com, which, although a fantastic resource, isn’t always the most stable website on the entire internet.

Don’t get me wrong, if OP wants to roll something out in the same vein as Magic The Gathering Online – that is, the ability to buy, sell, and build real decks, real-time set releases and events with prizes and relevance to the game — then that would be amazing, and I would fully support that.

In fact, if something like that were to happen for Pokemon, I would probably get even less article writing done. So maybe its not such a great idea. =\

Let me pose this question to you: If something like MTGO were opened up, and let’s say you could create an account for $10, and with that account you would receive a pack of the newest set, as well as infinite basic energy, a few theme decks, and a few hundred staple cards, would you join?

With the idea being, of course, that you would purchase packs at full-retail price (there would also be a marketplace where you could buy/sell/trade cards), and then in turn could participate in events for prizes, trips, packs, etc. Would you be down? Why or why not?

- I also assume that you’ve all heard of the new rule regarding game 2 of top cut matches? For those who aren’t aware, earlier in the year the rule was changed to say that the winner of game 2 was the player who had taken the most prizes (regardless of the number taken).

There was a bit of an outcry over that (for reasons that I can’t go into at the moment, but would be more than willing to write an article on, if anyone would be interested), and it was recently announced that it was being changed back to say that, in order for game 2 to count, the player in the lead on the prize count had to have taken 50% or more of his/her prizes.

There’s quite a big discussion going on about it over at the Pokegym that I suggest you check out. I mainly bring this up because it just goes to show you how much the people in charge actually care. Sure, they make poor decisions sometimes and they’re often hard to read, but most of the time when it really matters and when it’s something that the community is truly passionate about (the 30+3 rule comes to mind), they make it right.

Even in the times when they don’t, they typically have sound reasoning for why they can’t make it so, and are typically very transparent in their practices.

- Speaking of OP and controversial decisions, how does everyone feel about States trophies being transformed into medals? For those who aren’t aware, while perusing the SPT forum on the ‘Gym I noticed that a few TOs had listed medals as the prizes, instead of trophies.

My friend Amelia made a thread about it on the Gym, wherein it was confirmed that we were getting medals as replacements for trophies, and members of OP made solid justifications for it, in my mind. You should go check out the thread if you’d like to read more about it.

Overall, I can understand the decision, but I have to say it is a little depressing. Because I am a master trainer, I was excited about winning some kind of trophy this year, and it looks like that won’t be happening, at least not at a States or Regionals level. I suppose there are worse things in the world, especially considering that we don’t pay for tournaments and such, but it’s still a disappointment.

- Who wants to convince the SixPrizes crew to do another podcast? Because I sure do. If you’d like us to record another edition of 6P radio, please e-mail (read: spam) adam@sixprizes.com, voicing your concerns. Also, if you have any suggestions for articles, videos, podcasts, or anything of that sort, please shoot me an e-mail at kenny@sixprizes.com, as it’s obvious I’m quite desperate for ideas.

- Has anyone been testing winning Gengar lists lately? If you have, please hit me up! Haha. We’ve tooled around with a crapton of different lists, and for some reason we can’t get any of them to have decent match-ups against SP.

I’ll go deeper into why in a later article, but for now, all I can say is that I’m quite disappointed with how this deck has turned out, but I’m keeping my mind open, and I honestly believe that someone will break this deck before too long. I’ve only been playing Pokemon seriously for the past year or so, but has anything been so hyped like this, and fallen so flat?

I mean, I know there are hyped cards all the time, but it seems like almost all players of all skill levels were hyping this deck, and now all of those same players just aren’t finding a home for it. Maybe (read: hopefully) I’m wrong and someone is cracking this in half in secret, but for now I’m really unsure.

One last thing, here’s my most recent LuxChomp list that we’ve been tooling around with. I’m not sure that it’s completely optimized and there are still some slots I’m tooling around with, but it’s had solid match-ups across the board thus far. Let me know what you think!

A few explanations…

- The 2-2 lines of SP Lv. Xs are mainly to combat the Gengar threat. As I said before, I’m not sure if Gengar is an amazing deck yet, but either way I know it has the power to “Gastly, Rare Candy, Gengar, Attach P, Hurl Into Darkness targeting your one-of Garchomp C Lv. X”, and that’s enough of a reason, at least in my meta, to go with the 2-2 lines.

- Weavile G is also to counter the Gengar threat. I played around with Absol, Honchkrow SV, and no counter at all, and found that for this deck, Weavile was strictly the best.

It’s a basic (easy to tutor for), is an SP (can be Poke Turned/Energy Gained/Healing Breathed/Provide prerequisites for Power Spray/Can be Aarons’d), has a relevant first attack, and can OHKO Gengar with relative ease.

All of these factors combined make Weavile undoubtedly the best play, in my mind.

- I really want to fit in Promocroak, but I’m not sure what to cut for it. Any edge in the mirror is relevant and needs to be at least considered, though.

- I’m not too sure about my Spray/Radar/Junk Arm/Ball numbers, I’m still working on all of those, although I do live 2 Premier Ball and 1 Junk Arm, and am not entirely sure I need more than 2 Spray. We’ll see though, as I said, some of these slots are definitely being worked on.

- The Dark Energy is for Weavile, of course. Still trying to find room for a P and a Promocroak, as I said.

That’s all I’ve got for this week, let me know what you’d like to see for next week, what you thought of this article, my LuxChomp list, etc. in the comments, and as always, if you’d like to contact me directly, please hit up kenny@sixprizes.com, or follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook, whatev.

Until next time!

Kenny’s Wisdom: Writing about Pokemon is Hard, Random Discussion, and A Decklist is an article featured on SixPrizes - Pokemon TCG Tips and Strategy.