Kenny Wisdom
Author Archive
A Quick Look at Primal Clash “Recently, some department stores started selling an auxiliary product from the upcoming Primal Clash expansion, the Hoenn Collector’s Album. Because of this, the set has leaked in English earlier than any set that I can remember. Today, we’re going to take an initial look at some of the more interesting cards from the set. I can’t promise I’ll get to everything, because I’m limited on space. I also can’t promise that I’ll be right about everything, or otherwise explore every angle of every card, as I’m limited on brain space. What I can promise you is a few quick looks…
On Being a Positive Contributor to the Pokémon Community “In my mind, the reason that you want to be a good ambassador for the game is a simple one — you love playing Pokemon, you want to see Pokemon succeed so that you can continue to play Pokemon, and Pokemon is more likely to succeed if its community is a caring, welcoming, passionate one. It’s easy to disregard the feelings or opinions of others, and it’s certainly easy to go about living your life in such a way that you offer no compromises. However, taking a look at the paragraph above, it should be easy to understand why being…
Tips to Prevent Cheating in the Pokémon TCG “Cheating happens. We’ve all seen it, and it has been a regular topic at the forefront of Twitter and Facebook, especially with the rise of streaming over the past few seasons. Players are now regularly being scrutinized on camera, and even if they’re not playing a feature match, the rise of social media has certainly given way for more discussion and openness about the topic. With that being said, I would like to make it clear that I don’t think a lot of people cheat. I would argue that maybe 2 or 3% of players enter a Pokémon tournament with…
All About Alternate Formats “Sam Chen talked a little bit about this format in Raymond Cipoletti’s article from last month, so go check that out if you haven’t. For those who aren’t aware: Mental Pokémon is based on Mental Magic and, as the name suggests, is all in your head. You start with a normal deck (keep in mind that a random stack of cards works as well) of Pokémon cards, but instead of what’s printed on the card, the cards you draw can be anything of that same classification of card (Basic, Stage 1, Stage 2, Supporter, Item, etc.). The cards have to…
Building a Better Tournament Structure “After my last article received the feedback that it did, I decided that I would write one in a very similar vein, this time about the actual tournament structure. To clarify, my last article was about how to improve the way that players earn invites to the World Championships, whereas this article will be focused on how to improve each single tournament. Hopefully, there is enough distinction in the topics that this article can spawn a whole new discussion, as I know tournament structure is on every competitive player’s mind basically all the time. This article will be organized by my…
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)
Building a Better Worlds Invite Structure “The following is my detailed plan for altering the invite structure to give players more of what they want, and address all of the issues listed above. Note that I do not have enough data to make a judgement at what CP totals should be changed to, but I will do my best to make suggestions. Overall this is much less about the specifics, such as each event’s CP and Best Finish Limit (BFL), and more about the overall theme of the process of earning an invitation to Worlds. We’ll go ahead and tackle this event by event. League Challenges…
My Play for US Nationals 2014, Proper Prep, and a Summer Mailbag “Before we get into the list and the discussion, let me point out that this is only my opinion, and I don’t necessarily think everyone should just jam with the deck I’m suggesting (we’ll go deeper into that a bit later). I obviously think the deck is very good, but the format is wide open and I will admit that there are a whole lot of choices, many of which I can’t label as outright incorrect. I’m sure the majority of readers understand how this deck works; it’s been in the format for a while and has had tens of…
It emits psychic energy to observe and study what’s around it—and what’s around it can include things over six miles away. (Orbeetle)
They came over from another region long ago and worked together with humans. Their green skin is resistant to water. (Copperajah)