The Top Ten Cards from XY

Back on the road!

Hello there bicyclists!! It's been quite a while since my last post! School has taken a much bigger toll than I would have hoped but I want to get back into the swing if things-and what better way to do so than to cover the newest set to be hitting the Pokemon TCG-XY! (And I'll even be revisting a deck of mine that I absolutely love that slightly inspired this blog so be on the lookout for that!)

After getting a huge chunk if preliminary scans the set is already shaping up to be the next big shake-up in our format (so soon? Yep, and I thought the first turn rules were crazy enough!)

Without further ago here are what I take as the top 10 cards to watch out for in the new upcoming XY set!

Pleasanton Regionals And the Aftermath

I took my beloved pet deck Flareon to Pleasanton Regionals two weeks ago in California (I'm an SF native so it wasn't very far) The looming threats of BART striking the whole weekend plus having barely two to three hours of sleep AND being sick made my performance more lackluster than I had wished.

However,as far as I knew, I think I was the only one playing it. I switched back last minute to running Fighting energy, a Landy EX and Stunfisk and stuck another Leafeon for the Blastoise match-up.
I'm surprised I managed to play even slightly coherently and did better than I normally do at tournaments. I did end up dropping after round 4 because I nearly lost my lunch during the match (though the poor fellow didn't know it). I managed to make the day better by having James Good sign a Ducklett Card, meeting Aaron Zheng aka Cybertron, the founder of Nugget Bridge and Alakapimp.

Seeing the results of this Regionals and Arizona's, straight Darkrai with a few choice tech's is definitely the play. However, in a swiss format like this, you are more likely to run against your bad match-ups as I did in mine. Rouge is always harder to pilot in an uncertain meta and I didn't mind blowing the 20 buck to get a glimpse before the new rule changes-which is why I'm not sad I didn't go to "the Dark side" last minute as I always loved Darkrai as a meta deck.

I won't go over specific rounds, but I had such a diverse set of rounds that you'd be hard-presed to do well with a rouge in such an untested environment.

Round 1-Toolbox
Round 2-Genesect/Virizion w/ Balloons and Lugia
Round 3-Plasma w/Absol
Round 4-Darkrai/Garbo (this round I was deathly ill at this point and dropped with a 1-3-1 record

I'll be shelving Flareon for now until I see what X/Y brings to the table, but I think that with the oncoming Yveltal EX, I'll feel more strongly about going back to Darkrai. I don't have much in the way of writing material as I'm currently being slammed by school but I'll definitely pick things up again when the next set comes out in November.

Bicycle Away!
Kalyst

New Rulings-X/Y Format

I just want to get this out of my system right now.

*takes a deep breath*

I LOVE the new upcoming format!! The new rule changes are going to be effective in Japan starting November 8th. 

For those of you that haven't heard the rulings, I'll go over them here, including my thoughts!

Balloon Party Redux!

As the first Fall Regionals of the season draws closer, the amount of testing that I've been doing has gone up. Since my finals have just finished (well, technically, it's over-I still have some tweaks to do and re-rendering and my "one week break" isn't really a break) I've had some time to rethink, re-test and re-play my Flareon deck. It's nice to step away from it for a bit and come back to it so I'm revisiting it with some more thoughts and insights.

Making the Case for Flareon

Observation 1: Flareon relies on Pokemon in the discard to hit what is known as the "magic numbers" or the OHKO's via it's first attack, Vengeance.

Conditions to help boost the damage output: Silver Bangle, LaserBank (Hypnotoxic Laser/Virbank) Deoxys EX

Observation 2: To make Plasma a more favorable match up, the deck needs certain techs to combat the speed.

Conditions to help the Plasma match up: Drifloon PLB, Driflblim DRX, Drifblim PLB, Enhanced Hammer.

Observation 3: To make the Blastoise match up more favorable, it needs a way to punish Energy commitment and big attackers

Conditions to help punishment: Leafeon PLF, Zoroark NXD, Garbodor

The list I'm testing currently has some really funky card choices but so far, it's somewhat improved my Darkrai matchup without having to sacrifice too much in the others.

Thoughts on Upcoming NorCal Regionals + Flytrap STOMP

I'm looking forward to the first Fall Regionals of the new season (even if I'm a tad bit sour faced about 20 dollars entry fee). Arizona already has one-uped the event by also providing Visa Gift cards as part of the prize pool which is so much more universally better than...tons and tons of cards. There's not much the folks in NorCal can do now as far as editing and upping their prizes, and some of their events and door prizes are shaping up to be pretty good, so I'll still give them a whirl. I'm still on the ropes about my deck (testing a weird variant that I'm close to perfecting as much as possible) and I'll post my updated list as the tournament draws near.

Traditionally, I never seem to do well in big tournaments and I blame this sometimes on my horrible luck but I guess it's also due to my inexperience in tournament settings. On top of people being more thirsty for their invites, I'll have to contend with my stage-fright-but-not-really-stage-fright.Oh well, it is what it is.

In the process of developing a new deck, I started looking through all our current sets and stumbled upon something that could actually have a huge impact if played right or with the right build. It's a gimmicky idea at best, and I'm not certain it can hold well against blazing hot starts, but I'd be a bit sad if I couldn't get the concept to work.

Popping Balloons And A Return Of The Deep Sea Guardian

Things didn't go so well with Flareon this past weekend (then again, it was a bunch of rouges that hit Flareon for Weakness + not a true next format prep tournament as it was Bo1 instead of Bo3) but I still felt rather bumed out by it.

WHAT did you say about me?

Maybe I really shouldn't, as they're decks that will never see that much play (I would hope at least-too much Suicune around for Flareon to enjoy itself) and the amount of non-special energy floating around rendered about 5-6 cards completely useless. For now while I test a different variant, I'll be taking a look at my old time friend that got crushed by the rotation-Lugia Donk!

Balloon Party! (Flareon/Drifblim/Friends)

Taking Vengeance since 2013!

It's Fall, and a whole new season of Pokemon is upon us! With a nice selection of League Challenges in my area to playtest in and hopefully earn my first few points on the road to World's, I'm very optimistic. Between being close to graduation, internships, and getting a new job, I've been extremely busy. But despite my hectic real life duties, I still want to make time for something to distract myself and keep me sane.

After the top 16 success of Dylan Bryan's deck, and wanting to have a strong start out the gate in the new competitive season with all new tournament changes, I've decided to take up this deck with a  few modifications to current meta plus a few choices of my own due to my playstyle.

Without further ado, let's take a look at what I like to call "Balloon Party!"

First Post! What is B4x4?

Hello and welcome to Bicycle For Four! Bicycle For Four or B4x4 is a blog written and managed by Cheryl Twilleager (Kalyst)

Inspired by all the wonderful blogs that have been in circulation in the past year or so since I've come into the competitive Pokemon TCG scene, I decided to start one up of my own. "Bicycle for Four" is a phrase I found myself able to say frequently when playing a variant of the Speed Lugia Donk deck that was on TCG With Hats. (Sadly, that beast was laid to rest with rotation, but I may pick him up again if Legendary Treasures has anything to say about it) I also have a rather unhealthy obsession with running Bicycles in decks, especially speedy decks.

I have yet to have any major breakout tournaments, but I'm hopeful in the coming format that this year will be the year of great things. I primarily like decks that trolls, run against meta or are my take on meta decks (unsuccessful as they may be), so I guess you could say I'm more of a rouge player!

West Coast needs a bit more love, and I hope that over the course of this upcoming season we can get some of that, especially for our female players! Here's to a great 2013-2014 season and bicycle away!

-Kalyst