1,230 results for: Underground
A Pokémon Progress Report and Top 10 List for State Championships “A Pokémon season is much like a school year, in that both will test your abilities and those who give their best effort are likely to find success. Think of the decks of the 2015 season as students, being tested on all different levels. League Challenges are homework; you can miss some assignments but these will prepare you for future tests. Fall and Winter Regionals were our first real tests covering the opening chapters of the year, and Cities were quizzes thrown in between. Now we are in March and it’s time for midterms, also known as State Championships. It…
1st Seed Recap, Favorites from Florida, No-Shows, and Expanded Experimentations “3 Seismitoad-EX As I said above, I predicted going into the weekend that the two most popular decks would be Landorus/Crobat and Night March. Seismitoad is an excellent card in both matchups. Against Landorus/Bats, establishing a Quaking Punch lock with Garbodor’s Garbotoxin active really hinders the opponent’s strategy. Without the extra damage from Golbat and Crobat, the deck becomes pretty lackluster. Against Night March, you can use Lysandre’s Trump Card once the opponent builds up some Night March Pokemon in the discard. Follow that up with a Quaking Punch and your opponent will be left scrambling to discard their Night…
A Piece on the Spectrum on Teching “Teching Fundamentals The Beartic Dilemma Hard and Soft Teching Teching in Today’s Metagame Conclusion In its history, players of the Pokemon TCG have utilized techs successfully, to the point that one’s claim to fame can often come in the form of one or two cards being added to an otherwise standard deck list. Teching is very much a useful skill to have in this game, and within the past couple of years it’s only seemed to grow in importance. Teching also carries with it vagueness. Does a card have to be a Pokemon in order for it to be a…
Top 8 VA Regionals Report and Scouting for States “Prior to the event, I had actually done quite a bit of testing. The weeks before, I had narrowed my Day 1 choice down to three decks: Landorus/Bats, Virizion/Genesect/Bats, and Night March. Here are the three lists I was considering: I had been experimenting with this deck for a little while because I have always really liked Landorus-EX as a card since its days as a partner for Tornadus and Mewtwo-EX. I think the version with the Super Scoop Ups is vastly superior to any version without them. This was a very good play for the weekend due to the…
An Exploration into Primal Clash’s Expanded Format “The Rainbow Fish Blastoise’s Big Break Silent Tales Night March’s Ace in the Hole Almost Good Conclusion No, not the children’s book … one of the best combos to come out of Primal Clash: Huntail PRC & Ho-Oh-EX. Ho-Oh-EX gained a lot of traction in Expanded with the release of Battle Compressor, which makes Ho-Oh decks a lot more consistent, but it was lacking the right partners to push it into contention against other top decks. Being able to quickly get Energy onto the field works perfectly with Huntail’s Powerful Storm, which does 20 damage for each Energy attached to all…
These daring Pokémon have coins on their foreheads. Darker coins are harder, and harder coins garner more respect among ______. (Galarian Meowth)
Preparing for Florida and the Suddenly Stocked Primal Clash Format “Over winter break, I was able to come home without responsibilities, meet up with friends, and log a ridiculous amount of playtesting. My friends and I built almost every deck that we believed had any merit. We figured out what we thought should be played in different types of metagames, which decks had bad matchups that could be forged into wins, and which decks we could expect to always have a presence. One thing I’d like to note, however, is that I did not play a single game in testing with the deck I’ve used at each event so far — Virizion/Genesect. I felt…
What We Learned from Week 1, or the Front Runners for Florida Regionals “Landorus/Crobat Night March Manectric/Suicune Gardevoir/Aromatisse Hyped Cards of Primal Clash Conclusion The Shift to Landorus/Crobat From my experience, Landorus/Crobat struggled the most with the defensive Yveltal/Hard Charm variants and Seismitoad variants that played healing cards such as Super Scoop Up. In every other matchup the deck was very strong once it managed to get a couple of Zubat and a Fighting attacker into play. Yveltal/Hard Charm is hard for Landorus/Crobat to trade with efficiently due to a combination of Hard Charm, Fighting Resistance, and other healing cards making it difficult to even two-shot an opposing Yveltal-EX. However, the deck only came into the…
Top 8 St. Louis Regionals Report, Net Decking Revisited, and Dialogue on Cheating “If I can bother you to think all the way back to my last article (December!), I wrote a lengthy bit on my distaste with net decking. Dylan’s quasi-invention of the Donphan archetype led to many copying him at Fall Regionals and it would end up becoming one of the most popular decks throughout all of City Championships. However, after this past weekend, the deck just absolutely died by Winter Regionals. This, I believe, can be attributed to the fact that a lot of the deck’s popularity was largely a result of its status as a “flavor of the month.”…
Pioneering the Primal Clash Metagame “I say this literally every time a new set comes out: there’s no reason cards can’t be better. Every card doesn’t have to be good or playable even. What cards should be is more interesting. The new Lombre PRC is about as exciting as watching somebody else get roses on Valentine’s Day. Of course, the only reason to play Lombre is to get to Ludicolo (if that), but still, why would the creators of the Pokemon TCG want my Ludicolo journey to be so dreadfully boring? Right now the dominant strategy in regards to Stage 2 Pokemon is to wait until…
High-Risk, High-Reward Plays for Regionals & Interview with the ECC Winner “1. Congrats again on your win! First, would you mind saying a bit about your Pokémon career and yourself in general? Thank you! My name is Niklas Lehnert-Rappel, I have been playing the Pokémon TCG for about 3 years now. I got my invite for Worlds last year just by playing 9 tournaments over the course of the season. I got my invite this year by placing 2nd and twice 4th at Regionals. Besides winning the ECC this year I won 2 Regionals and many Cities, but the ECC is my first big win at a major tournament. Besides playing…
The special metal that composes its body is very light, so this Pokémon has considerable agility. It lives in caves because it dislikes the rain. (Duraludon)
The Mental Map to VA Regionals “What Can We Expect? Charting a Course The Next Step Last Thoughts Notes on Primal Clash Conclusion Let’s spell things out a little with the “story” that represents what happened during City Championships. To me, there are three main parts to this story. See if you agree with them: When City Championships started, players quickly asserted Donphan PLS as the best card in the game. As a result, decks based around this card placed very well while everything else struggled to keep up the pace. I should note this was mainly a result of poor deck construction. Most decks early…
On Seismitoad/Garbodor, Bronzong/Mewtwo, and Yveltal/Hard Charm “Now I would like to go over some cards that I have chosen not to include in my current list. All of these cards are good cards, and I have tested with them at one point or another, but they just did not make the final cut for one reason or another. Crushing Hammer, Enhanced Hammer Most lists that I have seen for Seismitoad/Garbodor have played three to four Crushing Hammer and one to two Enhanced Hammer. I am not saying that this is a poor route to take — I just have never been a huge fan of “all-or-nothing”…
Primal Clash Creations for Florida Regionals and Beyond “Jirachi-EX Discussion Kingdra Mega Aggron Mega Kyogre Emboar/Camerupt Diancie Toolbox Mega Gardevoir Sabelhaus Special Virizion/Genesect Conclusion It seems like everybody has their own opinion on whether or not Jirachi-EX should be played ubiquitously. The discussion never seems to revolve around a certain deck; instead it’s more of a general attitude of whether Jirachi-EX should be run at all. The answer seems to come down to personal preference — some people run it in every deck and others run it in none. In my mind, I feel Jirachi-EX should be played in just about everything right now with the exceptions being decks that don’t run…
The Coolest Decks for the First Round of Winter Regionals “T2:ES Y-Bird Guano Eau de Chien Expanded Expectations Conclusion Leading up to the first weekend of Cities I knew what deck I was going to play. Usually it is rare for me to have decided on a deck prior to the day before a tournament. With the hours of testing that the New England crew, mainly Chris Murray and myself, put into Virizion/Genesect we knew it was going to be a strong play the first weekend of Cities. It was a safe deck which had good matchups for what we predicted the metagame to be. Generally when a format changes…
A Look at 10 Different Deck Choices for the Upcoming Winter Regional Championships and Primal Clash Favorites “Quaking in My Boots Seismitoad/Slurpuff Seismitoad/Yveltal Time to Go “Turbo” Manectric/Seismitoad/Drifblim Manectric/Pyroar “Repel’s Effect Wore Off” Landorus/Crobat Mewtwo/Crobat/Wobbuffet Wiley Old Veterans Virizion/Genesect/Drifblim Donphan/Hawlucha New Kids on the Block Bronzong/Dialga/Aegislash Yveltal/Hard Charm Primal Instincts Conclusion This deck is fairly new around the tournament scene and has made quite the splash during City Championships. I piloted a list that was three cards off the one presented above and made top 8 at the first tournament of the Georgia Marathon. From personal experience with the deck, it is an extremely competitive choice that is possibly one of the most annoying things to play…
It shows no mercy to any who desecrate fields and mountains. It will fly around on its icy wings, causing a blizzard to chase offenders away. (Frosmoth)