pokemon.comOne of the most played Pokémon cards at the moment is Azelf from Legends Awakened. Its Poké-Power “Time Walk” is often taken for granted, but it seriously is one of the best Powers in the game.
Being able to rescue a Magikarp or your Luxray LV.X from your prizes is huge. In the past, you would have to hope to pick the right prize when you got a Knock Out. There was much more luck involved, so you would be forced to play multiples of certain Pokémon to make sure your prizes were never an issue.
Azelf has eliminated this need and allows you get away with playing singles copies of Pokémon in your deck without losing any consistency.
Aside from being able to pluck a Pokémon from your prizes, you get to look at all your prizes. If you can remember what your prizes were when you put them back down, you will essentially be playing with your prizes face up the remainder of the game. This is crucial because it allows you plan your turns even better than before. You now know what your bonus card will be for getting a knockout. This is incredibly important and can literally help you snatch victory from the jaws of defeat if you play things correctly.
I really like to drop Azelf early on if possible…turn 1 or 2 is best. You will know exactly what prizes you are working with for the whole game and can plan accordingly.
How are you going to remember what your prizes are if you put them face down again? I admittedly am not very good at memorizing what my prizes were and how I positioned them, but here are some things I try to aid my memory.
I am a big fan of mnemonics, so I try to organize my prizes using memory aids. For example, there are 3 basic different types of cards: Energy, Pokémon, and Trainers. What I will do is put my prizes back, grouping them by which of the 3 types they are. I arrange them like this:
Energy (top)
Pokémon (middle)
Trainers (bottom)
I arrange them in that order so it is alphabetical and I won’t forget which are where.
Next I will put the cards back in their rows in alphabetical order. For example, say you have a Roseanne’s Research, Bebe’s Search, and Expert Belt prized. You could put them down in alphabetical order, Bebe’s Search, Expert Belt, then Roseanne’s Research.
But what if you forget which cards you had prized? Just putting them in alphabetical order won’t help you too much.
What you could do is use the first letter of each card and make an acronym or acrostic. BER would be the acronym for these cards in the current order, but you could arrange them any way to help you remember better. You could think you have “beer” prized, and that might help you remember Bebe’s, Expert Belt, and Roseanne’s.
If you make and acrostic, an example might be “Babies Eat Rutabagas”. Anything to help you remember the first letter of the card.
Of course, you are going to have to think of these memory aids fairly quickly. Maybe during your opponents turn after “Time Walk” would be a good time to think out how you want to remember your prizes, as they should still be fresh in your mind at that point.
One last thing you can do is turn a card sideways if you either know you need it or don’t need it. For example, you might want to turn a Call Energy in your prizes sideways if you already started with one.
EDIT: There is a ruling that you cannot orient your prizes differently than they were to start, so you can’t turn a card sideways or change from 2 rows of 3 to 3 rows of 2, or anything like that; you have to keep them how the were to start, only changing the positions of the prizes. My bad!
Thanks for reading and please comment with any techniques you use to help you remember your prizes.
-Adam
Note to self: Get Azelf
:p
These are some great Ideas
this is actually a really great article. thanks adam.
Nice tips, Adam.
One thing, though, is that you can't in any way change the position of cards in your prizes. So if you start the game with six cards all positioned vertically, they must remain in that position, in the same spacing and “design” as before. Really, they're just forcing you to use memory techniques like the ones you mentioned.
Your memory aid techniques are also how I learn foreign languages, awesome article
Personally I tend to put the prizes in the order I think I'll need them and try to remeber where I put them. But these tips are great :) Thank you!
Good luck LOL!
I usually put them in order by how much I need them!
Good article! I usually post in the order I think I need as well, but it is really frustrating in some games to realize you need a specific prize card but can't remember the exact placement of it after using Time Walk.
Just a side note that having Spiritomb active and playing Azelf on the bench helps ensure a successul “Time Walk” without being Power-Sprayed (with the Dialga G Lv X exception). I hate it when I play against SP decks and have a critical card prized and am able to get Azelf in play only to have Time Walk sprayed.
I loooove doing that when I'm playing SP hahaha
You can't turn the card sideways.
Really I'm learning spanish but it never struck me how you could do things like this, I might have to think of ways.
Jaws of defeat. Literally. :P
Sure sure, let me give you an example. When learning the German word for green, you have to memorize “Grün” is german for green (pronounced “grewn”). An easy way to accomplish this is to remember that Grün is pronounced Grewn which sounds similar to Grew the english word for “to grow”. What is it that grows, grass, which also is aparently the color green. Often times it wont be as simple as this but you get a general idea of how it works. The more elaborite you make the memory process the better the results. Sounds stupid but it seriously works great, even in something as simple as “Time Walking” with Azelf. It's probebly the only reason i have taught myself to learn German, Russian, ASL, and Chinese. If you need more help with Spanish just let me know i would be glad to help out in any way I can because if there is anyhing I love more then Pokemon it's language!
Oh man my bad, I didn't know that.
Can you rearrange the layout of your prizes? Like instead of having 3 rows of 2, can you make 1 row of 1, 1 row of 2, and 1 row of 3?
I was going to mention that you cannot rearrange the prizes on unique order. As far as I know, you must rearrange your prizes on the same layout as your prizes were before you Time Walked or on the normal 2-2-2 layout. So you cannot make an unique pyramid layout by Time Walking. I'm not 100% certain that would it be possible to put prizes on 1-2-3 layout during the set up. If it is, then you can Time Walk 'em on the same layout.
I've used 3-3 layout on this game past ten years. Every time I use Time Walk, I rearrange my prizes in certain order. usually I can remember at least 66% of the prizes. I choose the Pokémon from there and replace it with another card. Then I put the ones I won't need during the game on the last prize cards (such as starters, possible extra BTS's, Pokémon I don't need during that matchup, etc). Then I put the most vital cards on the first prize cards (Magikarp, lvX, Belt, etc). I usually put other cards on the middle prizes on the order I expect to need em. Normally I rearrange my prizes so I would usually take em in this order
[3][2][1]
[6][5][4]
In example on Gyarados deck; if my prizes would be Gyarados, SSU, BTS, Warp Energy, Sableye, and Belt, I would prob rearrange em in this order:
[SSU] [Belt] [Gyarados]
[Sableye] [BTS] [Warp]
First thing I would do is to ensure I have Gyarados in my hand. If I know I would need to draw Belt to get KO during next turn, I would grab it instead. SSUs is usually needed at T4+ when you have your setup. This is why you don't usually need to pull it before of the middle game. I usually put Energies in places I remember where I put those. This is why I usually place em on the 4th prize slot. On 5th slot I usually place Supporter or stadium. If I need it to get my game faster, I will pick it up when I need it. The 6th prize is one I need least during the match. Sometimes if my prizes countains 3 energies, I usually place 'em all on the upper row of the prizes. The rest I place the most important on right and least important on left.
I've heard that some peoples plases their prizes witch alphabet order. The first letter order sound kinda cool idea too. I plan to continue on the way I have mastered myself. Maybe someone else finds my way useful, maybe not. If people have problems with remembering at least at half of their prizes, I think they should test out some other way to remember those. There's no need to switch a style if they remember most of prizes of the most of time.
I really liked this article actually. Very informative is what I can say to this. Thanks to this article, I finally had found a way to use Time Walk easily. Thanks Adam!
Nowadays, what I do is, like you mentioned in this article, put my prize cards down alphabetically. I put down all the trainer cards in alphabetical order, then the Pokemon, then the energies, and so on. Through this way, I can easily rememeber which prize cards are which from my side.
Once again, thank you Adam! This very article has helped me tremendously to use Azelf's Time Walk very efficiently.
No problem man! Glad this article has helped you out.
Lately what I've been doing is putting cards I know I won't need furthest
away from me, then arrange the cards in their rows of two and come up with
some kind of acronym for the two cards in a row. Seems to be working pretty
well for me.
We're excited to let you know that Adam Capriola has invited you to Dropbox!
Adam Capriola has been using Dropbox to sync and share files online and across computers, and thought you might want it too.
Visit http://www.dropbox.com/link/20.lhkXAzLikm/NjEzO… to get started.
– The Dropbox Team
____________________________________________________
To stop receiving invites from Dropbox, please go to http://www.dropbox.com/bl/4f856c86ae6d/notifica…
Sorry for the necroposting, but I searched everywhere and I couldn't find an official source for this:
“There is a ruling that you cannot orient your prizes differently than they were to start, so you can’t turn a card sideways or change from 2 rows of 3 to 3 rows of 2, or anything like that; you have to keep them how the were to start, only changing the positions of the prizes. My bad!”
I accept the rule and a I want an official source in case of needing to prove it to my opponent. So can somebody give me one please?
I hope someone sees this xD.
I'm looking for an official ruling, but I don't see it on the Compendium.
Ruling should be here somewhere:
http://compendium.pokegym.net/compendium-lvx.html
Maybe someone else knows where it is…
The new pokemon rule is that all prizes must be oriented in the standard “two rows of three with space between each prize” layout this becomes official at Nationals, but most tournament organizers have been enforcing it for a while to get people ready for the new rule. First time I heard about it was at regionals and they've been really strict about it since then.
Thank you for your fast reply. I also looked on the compendium but it doesn't say anyghintg about the position of the prizes. What's more, Pokegym Admin PokePop said:
“There is nothing stopping a player from arranging his cards how he likes.
As long as they are all visible and in the same general area, go for it.”
Source: http://pokegym.net/forums/showpost.php?p=127507…
But it was posed on 2008, maybe they added the rule later.
So judges in my area should be aware of it by now, or at least they will be after Nationals.
Thanks for your help. But I hope they put it in some official site (or in the rulebook).
Looking for this? http://pokegym.net/forums/showpost.php?p=166667…
Prizes must remain on the same pattern it were before Time Walk or in original 2×3 pattern. It isn't the “same” if you turn some of the cards at 90 or 180 degrees. IMO, this would be “marked” prize card.
Great, that was exactly what I wanted. Thank you vm.
More rulings: http://pokegym.net/forums/showpost.php?p=150597…
Sorry for the necroposting, but I searched everywhere and I couldn't find an official source for this:
“There is a ruling that you cannot orient your prizes differently than they were to start, so you can’t turn a card sideways or change from 2 rows of 3 to 3 rows of 2, or anything like that; you have to keep them how the were to start, only changing the positions of the prizes. My bad!”
I accept the rule and a I want an official source in case of needing to prove it to my opponent. So can somebody give me one please?
I hope someone sees this xD.
I'm looking for an official ruling, but I don't see it on the Compendium.
Ruling should be here somewhere:
http://compendium.pokegym.net/compendium-lvx.html
Maybe someone else knows where it is…
The new pokemon rule is that all prizes must be oriented in the standard “two rows of three with space between each prize” layout. Tthis becomes official at Nationals, but most tournament organizers have been enforcing it for a while to get people ready for the new rule. First time I heard about it was at regionals and they've been really strict about it since then.
Thank you for your fast reply. I also looked on the compendium but it doesn't say anyghintg about the position of the prizes. What's more, Pokegym Admin PokePop said:
“There is nothing stopping a player from arranging his cards how he likes.
As long as they are all visible and in the same general area, go for it.”
Source: http://pokegym.net/forums/showpost.php?p=127507…
But it was posed on 2008, maybe they added the rule later.
So judges in my area should be aware of it by now, or at least they will be after Nationals.
Thanks for your help. But I hope they put it in some official site (or in the rulebook).
Looking for this? http://pokegym.net/forums/showpost.php?p=166667…
Prizes must remain on the same pattern it were before Time Walk or in original 2×3 pattern. It isn't the “same” if you turn some of the cards at 90 or 180 degrees. IMO, this would be “marked” prize card.
Great, that was exactly what I wanted. Thank you vm.
More rulings: http://pokegym.net/forums/showpost.php?p=150597…
are you allowed to write down what your prizes are?
Nope.