Christopher Schemanske
Author Archive
A Primer on Game Flow and Mechanics for SM-on, a Pair of Zoroarks, and a Suite of Lists for Testing “To me, in a format with many players bemoaning the lack of consistency options, I think Zoroark-GX is positioned incredibly well. It’s still the broken card we all know it as, but now it just lacks some of the tools it had previously (mainly, Puzzle). This removes a lot of versatility; true. Nevertheless, Trade is a wonderful deck-thinning and draw mechanism that makes the deck pretty impervious to many of the problems other decks currently face just trying to get off the ground. The 2019 Standard format is in an odd spot where it seems like many decks are trying…
The Debut Friday Flyer, with Farewells and Thoughts “Welcome to the first edition of the Friday Flyer! In addition to me still not really being sure whether it should be Flyer or Flier, it’s a bit of an odd time to talk Pokemon. Fortunately, Pablo kicked us off earlier this week with our first looks at the Sun and Moon-on rotation. At this point, play is mere hours from beginning in the first tier-2 tournament of the year using the format, as the Melbourne Open will kick off. If, at this point you’re going “what on earth am I reading?”, it’s a good time to head back to…
A SixPrizes Site Update and Christopher’s 2018 World Championship Recap “We’re super excited to have a number of new initiatives to share with you this year. Through what we have planned, we believe it’ll be easier than ever to integrate SixPrizes with the rest of your Pokemon experience, communicate with the writers and your fellow subscribers, and, most importantly, take your game to the next level. We’ve always had a bit of a hard time deciding what to do with Fridays. It’s really too late in the week for most of us to learn anything new to impact the upcoming weekend’s tournaments, and full-fledged articles on things that aren’t specific…
A Look at Magnezone and Vikavolt as Answers to the 2018 World Championships Meta “We haven’t seen a truly mainstream Stage 2 deck since Gardy fell off the map after Europe’s International Championship. Arguably, my Top 4 there was on borrowed time for the deck, as the new Zoroark regime wasn’t too kind to things that evolved twice—a fairly surprising twist considering Zoroark itself evolves and on the surface doesn’t have any superpowers to shut down Stage 2s. But, as it turns out, the inherent consistency is undeniable—in fact, the last deck to do well with a Stage 2 was Zoroark, with a token Gardevoir presence. Equally surprising was that Gardevoir fell off despite…
Considering the Realm of Worlds, On the “Right” Ease of Invitation, and Open Season On the Open “When considering the structure at Worlds, I want to first remind people of what we’ve had in the past. First off, it’s necessary to consider how players qualify for the big event. For most of the game’s modern era, and through 2012, a certain number of players were invited from each rating zone based on pre-announced cutoffs. For example, in 2012, the first year with Championship Points, the Top 40 from each division were invited from North America. A key change that came with 2012 was a shift from a modified Elo Rating system to the Championship Point system we know…
When scared, this Pokémon cries. Its tears pack the chemical punch of 100 onions, and attackers won’t be able to resist weeping. (Sobble)
The US+CA Delegation to the 2018 World Championships by the Numbers “This year started off with a few interesting announcements: a relatively low CP bar for Day 1 (compared to historical barometers) and the removal of the best finish limit for Regional Championships. With the low bar came a new set of incentives for chasing the Day 2 bye, which I’ve blogged about, and a new set of players who saw their first Day 1 invite on the horizon. The removal of the best finish limit only created a perception that Day 2 would be harder, which set this race up to be even crazier than last year. I’ve argued extensively…
A Look at the Stars in the Upcoming Celestial Storm “Sceptile Unfortunately, as clever as this seems on paper for dealing with the Buzzwole swarm, I don’t think a soft-lock Stage 2 prevention mechanism is going to be something with all that much potential in the end. Maybe back in the Forest of Giant Plants days we’d have had something to work with here, but since Grass is mortal, there’s probably not as much as we’d need. Shiftry-GX Normally, I probably wouldn’t even mention this, but considering Grass is the competitive equivalent of a desert wasteland in this set, I’ll toss it a mention. Confusion is never a bad thing…
Christopher’s Tip and Tricks to a Day 2 Worlds Run for 2018/19 “For some perspective real quick, I believe I traveled more than any other NA16er this year, and this is what my travel year looked like: Or, you can see the States a bit better here: Realistically speaking, that was probably as much travel as anyone could’ve put into this year’s race without being truly overzealous—and arguably, I was overzealous! If I had to do it again, I’d: Eliminate California. As a Midwest/Great Lakes player, California is an obnoxiously expensive place to get to—and the tournaments aren’t even that small to compensate! In its place, even a weekend off entirely would’ve…
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Looking at International All-Star Zygarde-GX/Lycanroc-GX for NAIC ’18 “Zygarde-GX FLI was printed alongside a fairly unique Supporter effect in Bonnie, allowing the repeated use of GX attacks. As it happens, Supporters are too important in this format to spend them on attacking (as odd as that sounds!), and the Stadium discard is a bit too weird. For many of those that foraged into testing Zygarde upon release, the Bonnie route was often the chosen course of action, and I think that trip into the weeds is why it wasn’t a mainstream concept at the set’s release. As it is, Cell Connector is a very strong attack, especially in…
Christopher’s Data Dissertation on the 2017/18 NA Masters’ TCG Regional Championships “A few key issues and trends have emerged this year that seem worth exploring: Location shifts. We saw Philly vanish; Hartford replace. We saw Seattle “move” to Vancouver. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m pretty interested in seeing how attendance moved along with those events. On the whole: growth! For the second year in a row, the circuit seems to have grown substantially. With all but 3 events beating their prior year’s overall attendance number, for many, it was a successful year. But, about those 3…Expanded as a common thread? Roanoke, Costa Mesa, and Salt Lake City were the 3 events that did…
Powerful legs and jaws made it the apex predator of its time. Its own overhunting of its prey was what drove it to extinction. (Dracovish)
Methods of Madness from Madison Greninja and Discussion of the Froggy Future “Most of your matchups are fairly straightforward: setup as many Frogs as possible, Counter Catcher something big, N, and Shadow Stitching a lot. Of course, it’s important to be aware of caveats—if your opponent can’t use any meaningful Abilities, you probably Moonlight Slash instead, for example. The Buzzwole matchup follows this general script, but with a few details worth calling out. More often than not, you’re down 2 Prize Cards before you set up a Greninja. In games where this doesn’t come to pass—unless they have simply amassed a large body of Energy and missed a critical Float Stone or…
On Best Finish Limits and Barometers of “Best” in the Pokémon TCG Championship Series “Now, from the top, I want to be clear: I do not aim to take a position, nor do I personally really have a position, on whether it is “right” that a player earn an invitation to the World Championships one way or another. I do strongly believe that the people crowing it’s “beneficial to good players to have more (worse) players on Day 1” are naive in their evaluation—if you told me I needed to go 4-2 against 6 of the 54 Day 2 invitees we’ll have this year or 7-2 against the field of Day 1 invitees we’ll have…
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A SixPrizes Site Update on NAIC Article Marathon, Coupon Promotion, and More “Last year, we had 10 days in a row of NAIC coverage for the run into the event, and it was such a success that we’ve brought the approach back this year. Each day, June 25 through July 4, we’ll have a profile on a different deck you may want to consider for NAIC. Each writer had a slightly different approach, but in all cases, it was super exciting all-around and one of the coverage ideas I think we’re most proud of. We’re super excited to see how it turns out. We obviously don’t quite have decks dealt out yet, but…
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Looks at Night March, Trevenant, Zoroark/Exeggcute, and Buzzwole/Lycanroc for the Final Expanded Regional of 2018 “It’s not all that exciting of a list, but the power is still here, and that is what makes Buzzwole playable in both formats right now. I would say this would enter the weekend as a BDIF-presumptive if it weren’t set to be hard-countered. Nonetheless, as we’ve seen in Standard the last few weekends, Buzzwole can be hard-countered and still thrive, so I think it’s probably a playable archetype nonetheless. I’ll talk a bit more about the Buzzwole/Zoroark matchup a when we get to Buzzwole itself, but it’s no coincidence that the other two decks I’m going to get into…
A Review of Christopher’s Forbidden Light Favorites and Initial Beast Box Musings “This also means that I have to go through and choose what I’m ordering from the upcoming set, which is entirely its own issue. I’m guessing most of you will have already gone through this by now—I’ve just been behind schedule because of the onslaught of Regionals/ICs in recent weeks (and, okay, I might’ve been hoping to win boxes to minimize the need to buy stuff too). Nonetheless, I’m going to list my own buy list here just in case there’s something that may differ from your own that could be of note: Buys Alolan Exeggutor FLI Frogadier FLI Greninja-GX…
The powerful muscles in its tail generate its electricity. Compared to its lower body, its upper half is entirely too small. (Dracozolt)
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