Brent Halliburton
Author Archive
Investigating the Inner Workings of Pokémon Teams “1. Does your team have a name? What is the name and how did you come up with it? I’m on two teams actually. One is the more well known Team Hovercats, the origin of which is a trade secret. My main testing team however is named Honor Roll. I’m not sure exactly where the came from on that one, but it’s the brainchild of teammate Kenny Wisdom. 2. How many members does your team have? How many have you added or subtracted this year? How do you recruit new members? Honor Roll has 14 members, 12 of which actively…
Juniors Top 4 Lancaster, PA Regional Championship Report with Vespiquen/Flareon “The results from Houston and Phoenix demonstrated that Yveltal and Blastoise were the top plays among Masters and we spent a bunch of time playtesting these two decks. While we are not the smartest Poke-players on the block, I want to talk a little about our results. Mega Rayquaza is actually an extremely difficult deck to play against. The possibility of a 220 HP Pokemon that consistently OHKOs everything on the board starting T1 or T2 is extremely challenging. My kids played Yveltal/Archeops in Expanded at side events at both Nationals and Worlds. My oldest won the Expanded side event at…
42nd Place Junior World Championship Report with Manectric/Tool Drop “As I have told people previously, the Junior meta is heavily informed by the Masters meta, while lagging slightly. With so few tournaments in the post-LTC ban format, I felt like there was very little momentum behind any given deck and the format was a very matchup-based rock-paper-scissors format centering on Landy/Bats, Toad, and Mega Manectric. We spent a lot of time testing a lot of things. Here is a little commentary on our findings: Hippowdon We tested Hippos based on its performance in my deck analysis article, but found that it was surprisingly brittle. Any sort of Energy suppression broke the deck…
A Follow-Up to ‘In Defense of Net Decking’ “Similar to my last article, I used data accumulated from Facebook to look at decks played by the Top 64 players at the US National Championship. I then scoured the web for articles written by players that placed in the Top 64. I found four players in the Top 64 that had written articles immediately prior to the tournament where they offered up decks that thought of as “good plays” for the National Championship. The authors and articles (in alphabetical order) were: Brit Pybas: “Dark Desire” – Crafting Yveltal for US Nationals (and a Nod to Toad/Bats) Dylan Bryan: “Night March…
BDIF by the Numbers and Tales of Junior Nationals “No point keeping you in suspense. It’s Wailord. Just kidding. No, it actually is Wailord. Just kidding. I could do this all day. Actually, it is a bit more complicated than that. I have complained before that people do a lot of net decking when a deck performs well … all without having any reliable way of determining whether the deck that won the tournament did well because it was a popular play or because it actually was the best deck. If everyone is running Wailord at a tournament, the odds of Wailord winning are very high, regardless of whether it is…
Sudden climate change wiped out this ancient kind of _______. This Pokémon absorbs others’ life-force through its branches. (Galarian Corsola)
Thoughts and Theories on the Junior Meta “The most frequently cited statement about the Junior meta is that it “lags” the Masters meta by a few months. I would like to start by adding some nuance to this statement to reflect the Junior mindset. This is the key difference between Juniors and Masters and reflects the more sophisticated perspective of the Masters meta. The way the Junior mind works is something like this: “I just lost to this deck that seemed awesome. I should play that deck! That deck just won the tournament … I should play that deck!” Whereas the Masters mind works more like this:…
Why Copying a List Can Be Okay “As a Pokedad, I am frequently explaining to new Pokeparents the concepts of Pokemon. I generally distill success at Pokemon down to a three-step process: Good cards: Given two people playing, best cards win. Skill: Given two equally good decks, most-skilled player wins. Luck: Given two equally good players playing equally good decks, it is still a card game and luck plays a role! Good cards at the highest level, where it can be assumed that every player has access, more or less, to every card, is equivalent to calling the meta. Having said that, I would contend that this…
Hypergeometric Distribution and the Pokémon TCG “Let’s look at a common Virizion/Genesect build with 4 Virizion-EX, 4 Genesect-EX, 1 Jirachi-EX, and 4 Ultra Ball. When using this deck, starting the game with a Virizion-EX is important. There are lots of ways to get there: Draw a Virizion-EX in your first 7 cards and use that as your starting Pokemon. Draw a Virizion-EX on your first turn and have a plan to switch it into the Active position. Draw an Ultra Ball and have a plan to switch it into the Active position. Part of the fun of Pokemon is that it is a complex game. In the…
As soon as it’s born, it burrows into an apple. Not only does the apple serve as its food source, but the flavor of the fruit determines its evolution. (Applin)
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