Minor Updates and Lugia Speed Reborn! AKA Gatorade.dec

Hello there Bicyclists! How has everyone been? I really need to start updating this alot more but alas, school doesn't let up. I'll try and get a more consistent schedule going, and probably start touching upon some other topics of the TCG that I'd love to get into, including the collecting aspect! I'm also thinking of starting up a Youtube channel finally but I'll have to get out and invest in a camera and such. Luckily, my tax return came in, so I can't wait to start recording deck lists, test battles etc. I'm also getting more involved with the VGC again, as I was initially a VGC player (though I never got that far in it). Perhaps that could be something to look forward to as the year progresses and as World's draws near.

After poking though all my aforementioned thoughts and predictions of the meta, I feel like there are points that I made that were face palm worthy. Even though I still despise VirGen as a deck, it's still holding out well in events. I've seen others garner success with Darkrai/Hydrigon but that deck still won't listen to me. I still refuse to let up on Flareon every now and then, which is probably unhealthy (though I'm getting into building more "meta" decks like Blastoise). I still throw in weird cards in meta builds which don't do well for me, but then someone somewhere ends up piloting the choices in the right day and time to a stellar finish. But its from stumbling and falling flat on your face that you learn to get up, to see what works and what doesn't and to grow as a player. Granted, I felt like my best times of growth were when I re-entered the game back in 2012 and threw myself in higher level tournaments after doing some research and playtesting. The best times were when I could playtest against high-leveled players, but I'd kind of lost that now since a few have quit and I don't have the courage to get myself re-entered into the playtesting circles I know will help me grow. But there's still plenty of time between now and World's to come out of left field and grind in, so I'm not giving up!

Today we're going to take a look at a deck idea that I've been spinning around that still needs some tweaking to be good, but in a format where speed and numbers are key, Lugia stands out as the fastest Prize winner in the format. Ending a game in two hits on EX's does wonders on the clock. A good majority of decks nowadays run EX's as main attackers and with the advent of XY, we got more stuff to aid Lugia speed. Without further ado, let's look at Gatorade.dec!

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!