I don’t know if this deck is good enough to ever be brought to a small tournament, but its a deck that is fun to play.  I came up with this deck idea last Thursday night in a time of great sorrow.  My area had just experienced a nasty thunderstorm, I was okay but the great sorrow happened when my cable (and internet) went out for almost a day.  So all I could do was watch my Seinfeld DVD’s and play games on Redshark.                    

The idea is to take a basic Lady Gaga deck then take out the Luxray Gl line, trim down the Garchomp C line, and add in a 2-1 Alakazam 4 Lv.X line.  Then for the trainer line add in some Warp Energies, Energy Exchangers, and extra Pokemon Collectors, and you basically have the list.  The goal of the deck is to get a Dialga G Lv.x active with at least 2 Special Metal Energies, an expert belt.  Once you get set up, you can move damage counters from Dialga G Lv.x…

I wanted to talk about some cards from Unleashed that actually caught my attention! Just to forewarn you this is an article geared towards SP’s. The two cards that caught my attention were Drifblim and Muk believe it or not.

I’ll start with Drifblim. Drifblim is good for two reasons: one he is a good counter to Mewtwo X, and two as a Machamp counter, it could also be used as a quick/cheap way to end the game if need be. Driblims first attack “Balloon Tackle” for one Psychic energy and one Colorless energy lets you do 60 and 20 in recoil, but with Mewtwo’s X2 Weakness to Pschic it gets OHKOed making it worth the 20 in recoil damage. Also if you have Lucario GL in play and you can use Crobat G’s Poke Power “Flash Bite”, you can the OHKO Machamp. Then we get to Drifblims second attack, “Take Away” lets you shuffle Drifblim and the defending Pokemon back into each players deck. This could easily be a game ender as I…

As we know, after this month’s Worlds tournament, SP decks have become even more popular.  But since then the new Vileplume card has come out, some people think this will change the format.  The interweb has been abuzz lately with players talking about trainer lock.  There is two distinct camps, one saying that SP decks will endure past trainer locks easily, and others who have tested the matchup and don’t see a way for SP decks to continue.                                                                                                                                                                                          

While I don’t think I am qualified enough to settle the debate today, I will write an article for beginners about all aspects of trainer lock.  At the end of the article, I will add a little of what I have learned.  So without further interuption lets talk about trainer lock and highlight some of the cards that have started this controversy.

How does it work?

So what is trainer lock?  Well that is a very easy question, it involves not letting your opponent use any trainers.  That seems simple right, but it is something very important.  If you can maintain a trainer lock…

But before I do that I want to kind of apologize for the lack of new updates on the site lately.  I’ve been busy with work and stuff,  Ed and his family are crawling around caves somewhere in Utah, and Omar for some reason hasn’t been writing much anymore.  But hopefully if Ed makes his way out of the caves we will be up and running with more articles soon.

Card #1-The Staple-Luxray Gl X.

Description- Here is the card that everyone wants, the money maker, Luxray Gl Lv.X.  Of course we will start out by looking at the cards basic stats.  It is a basic Lv.X lightning Pokemon with 110 HP, has free retreat,  a x2 weakness to fighting, and a -20 resistance to metal.  It has one Poke-Power named “Bright Look.”  “Bright Look” lets you switch the defending Pokemon with any of your opponents benched Pokemon, but the power can only be…

We all know that most decks in the upcoming format will rely on Uxie LA for draw power.  Just by putting him on your bench you can draw until you have 7 cards in your hand.  A lot of decks will be counting on getting good draws with Uxie for their deck to work.                  

But we also know what the counter to Uxie La is, Power Spray.  As long as you have 3 Pokemon SP in play you can play this card on your opponents turn and cancel out the effects of your opponent’s Poke-Power.  And without drawing those extra cards, most decks are locked down.

So Power-Spraying Uxie is good, but what are the best ways to use Power Spray, and what ways can you get around Power Spray?  Here are a list of ways to use Power Spray effectively and how to play against it effectively.

Ways to use Power-Spray

1. Use it Early- The most effective Power Sprays come early in the game before your opponent can fully setup.  You might want…

Adam over at 6P had this bright idea to get some webmasters to add chat capability to their sites. His plan was to link the chats up such that anyone using any one of the participating sites will be chatting live with everyone from all the sites.

I believe that the list of sites using it will be:

• Team Omar
• HeyTrainer
• J-Wittz
• Six Prizes

I already chatted with J-Wittz using TeamOmar.com’s chat client this morning. He’s working on getting his set up. Adam already has the Six Prizes one running.

If you want to join the conversation, head over to TeamOmar’s Chat Page.

This tournament report starts the way all Pokemon reports start, with the sentence: “I woke up early the morning of the tournament not having slept very much the night before. “  Seriously does any Pokemon player sleep before a tournament?

Well I got my day off to a groggy start and chugged down a couple of glasses of water, got changed into my Team Omar uniform, then went to Burger King for a quick breakfast.  The breakfast turned out to be not so quick, and left me about 10 minutes late.  Then I was 10 minutes later when I ran into a traffic jam.  Anyway, I make it to the card shop just when the organizer was about to hand out the decks.

After paying for the two tournaments (sealed theme deck…

Before we get started I want to remind you guys to check with your local tournament organizers because Pre-releases will soon be under-way for the Undaunted set.  These tournaments are always a blast because you get to play some fun games with people from your area, you get a lot of cards, and you can trade for the cards you need.  Just a heads up for you guys, if your local tournament organizers offer a sealed theme deck event I would recommend going to that too.  TPCI has changed the format for theme decks this year so that there are less energies in the deck, more rares (5!), and each deck comes with a pack of Undaunted cards.  Add all those extras to the 4 packs you get just for being in the tournament and thats 5 packs,…

Way back when the deck was first starting to come to the forefront (right after it made some impressive showings in certain State Championships), we covered it. At that time, TeamOmar.com ran a Sablelock Deck Workshop in which we discussed how the deck worked and, with reader help, built a workable list for it.

At the time, some considered it a secret deck, but now it’s a known top-tier headache (for its opponents, of course). It is so well known now that even POP (aka PP) has even posted a decklist for it. So, let’s take a look at it.

Sablelock Deck List courtesy of http://www.pokemon.com/us/news/op_nationals10_analysis-2010-07-28/:

Pokemon: 19
4 Sableye (Diamond & Pearl—Stormfront, 48/100)
2 Uxie (Diamond & Pearl—Legends Awakened, 43/146)
1 Uxie LV.X (Legends Awakened, 146/146)
2 Garchomp Champion (Platinum—Supreme Victors, 60/147)

…

In an official statement released earlier today, Nurse Joy stated that Claydol is suffering from “severe exhaustion.”

It seems that trainers have been asking him to use “Cosmic Power” so many times over the last three years that they have worn the Clay Doll Pokemon out. Many trainers are gathering at the Lost Tower to pray for Claydol’s quick recovery.

As we all know, Claydol was formed thousands of years ago when clay statues were exposed to cosmic rays.  Although he has been around for a long time, Claydol’s popularity shot up in February of 2008 after perfecting his Cosmic Power technique. Since then, he has had little rest. Witnesses claim to have seen him use Spinning Attack, but even then, it was usually proceeded by Cosmic Power.

Claydol, now resting in an undisclosed Pokemon Center, still vows to make the upcoming trip to Hawaii in two weeks to be available for the 2010 Pokemon TCG World…

On my drive home, though, I was kinda depressed. It’s been a good ride, and I feel like it’s coming to an end. I started to reminisce about the past year. When I left, I told Omar to have a good trip and have fun at college. What’s that? That doesn’t mean anything. So, I thought I’d write this, and he (and I) could keep it as an archive of what Team Omar once was.

Maybe years from now one of us can look back on it…

This weeks theme is “Hand Refresh,” so if your looking for a card that can help your deck recover from bad hands hopefully you will find what you are looking for here.

Just for clarification a Hand Refreshing Pokemon is a Pokemon that has an attack that allows you to draw cards.  It is kind of like a starting Pokemon because it speeds your deck up, but it is mostly used towards the middle of the game, whereas a starter is used right away. A hand refresher also normally takes only 1 slot in your deck, where as a person normally runs 4 starting Pokemon.  Having a card that can refresh your hand is really important if you have a bad start, it is sometimes worth sacrificing a Pokemon.

Card #1 Chatot Md

Description- Chatot is basic normal type Pokemon with 60 HP.  He…

Like many of you out there I am working on post-rotation decks.  I have had little success getting a successful draw engine for a stage 2 deck out of Uxie La, so I tried something different.  This deck uses Ninetails HGSS for a draw engine, which I find to be more consistent then Uxie La in stage 2 decks.                             

Now that I had my draw engine set I just needed a main attacker.  The most popular combo with Ninetails is Chariard Ar, but this has been done too much and is a little slow because of the fact that if you use Uxie La you then lose damage on each of Charizard’s attacks.  So I looked at other Fire type Pokemon and Normal Pokemon.  I saw a deck with Regigas and Mesprit that I liked, but I didn’t like the fact that Regigias’s best attack has a metal, fighting, and water requirement.  Next, I looked at Garchomp SV.

Garchomp SV was never hyped that much after its release, but it was valued highly after it’s release.  I have seen some decks that…

The basis of the deck isn’t completely novel. I mean, the idea of pairing these two cards that came out in the same set should have been considered by many. The same powers have been around since base set. Base Set Venusaur’s “Energy Trans” Pokemon Power does the same thing as Meganium Prime’s “Leaf Trans,” and Blissey Prime’s “Blissful Nurse” Poke-POWER does the same thing as the Base Set Pokemon Center trainer card. You can see that the themes are nothing new. In fact, I played a deck that centered around Chansey, Alakazam, and Pokemon Center in a recent unlimited tournament. It has the same idea, except that it moves damage to an energyless Pokemon, while this Egg-Meg deck moves energy to an undamaged Pokemon. The Alakazam deck I played recently was based off a deck that my wife used to play back in Base Set. When I saw the HGSS cards,…

It is that time of the year, when the players who’ve had a great season pack up to go to worlds, and when the rest of us test our new post-rotation decks.  I hope all of you out there who are not going to worlds are having a better time at building post-rotation decks then I am.  I’m getting tired of all my decks starting really fast and then stalling out on turn 4 or 5.  But, I guess if success was easy it wouldn’t be as sweet.  So I hope that those of us who are having problems will soldier on and eventually find something that works.  Maybe you will find something while I “Pikk” three.                                          

The Staple- Machamp SF

Description: Machamp is a stage 2 Pokemon with 130 HP, a +30 psychic weakness, a 2 retreat cost and 3 attacks.  His most popular attack is “Takeout,” which does 40 damage for 1 fighting…

Before we get started I would like to talk a little about Twitter.  I loved hearing you guys tweet during Nationals, and because of that I decided to get into Twitter more.  I have started to tweet about my decks and have found a couple of other people who do the same.  So if you are on twitter I would love to have you follow me and hopefully we can converse about the game.  Also, if you know anyone in the game who tweets also about it, please let me know.  My user name on there is “Pikkdogs.”

Like most of you, I am currently working on getting my decks post-rotation ready.  Some of my decks are working well, and some aren’t.  One that I am kind of on the fence about is Gyarados.

Just a small run through the strategy of the deck for all the new-comers.  Gyarados decks try to discard three Magikarps by turn 2 and then promote a Gyarados SF to do 90 damage with its “Tail Revenge” attack.  To get the karps in the discard pile, most people…

First, a little about the event. My daughter and I have been planning to attend Nationals this year ever since we failed to go last year. We knew we were golden when we convinced my wife to come along and treat it like a family vacation. The drive from Michigan was easy, about 5 hours, and we made it with plenty of time to get the early registration t-shirts. We didn’t really grasp the scale of the event until Friday morning though.

The venue was gigantic, easily the biggest single room I have been in for a long time (in fact I am having difficulty recalling another time when I was in a room this size.) There are tons of people milling about. There are people in line for the Video Game Tournament. There are side rooms with vendors, open playing, and just hanging out. In the main room there are separate sections for each of the age groups, one for league play and side events, one for eating with tables and one for the video game stuff too.

Throughout the weekend we see people we know from Michigan…

Before we get into that, I’d like to say a little about Nats, which was held this weekend.  I wasn’t able to make it there, but I heard it was a great weekend.  A sablelock deck won, and luxchomp decks had a great showing.  So it looks like disruption decks are huge late in the season, but will it continue into the next season?

That is what this article is about.  Some players (Sp players) will be able to take 1 or 2 cards out of their deck and replace them with similar cards to make them modified legal.  But other people will have to totally remake their decks.

So what exactly will be popular after rotation?  Well no one knows exactly but here are a couple of decks we know will see lots of action.

1.  Sp Decks- As mentioned we know SP decks won’t lose much, so if their good now, they will be good later.

2. Donkphan Decks-…

He mentioned that there were 1336 players (which he pointed out was one short of the LEET 1337 / 826 masters, 300 seniors, 210 juniors). That field is split into two groups, and there will be a top-64 in each group. I believe that the field will be cut down to top-16 in each group by the end of Saturday.

Abdi and Benny are also representing Team Omar. Each of them are 3-4 at the end of Day 1. That puts the team at 12-9, which I’m very proud of. Cheffords, reporting for #TeamOmar, went 4-3 for the day with his daughter going 3-3 in Juniors.

I also heard a little about the rest of the MN players. This could be completely wrong, but I’ll mention it anyway. It sounded like Andy, Radu, and Emmanuel were having a tough time with their…

I wish to say “Good Luck” to all those headed to Indy at the end of this week for the U.S. Pokemon National Championship. I hope you guys have a fun time and get to meet a lot of cool people.

For those of you, who like me are unable to go, I hope that we get some good testing done.  It is a good time for us to take apart all our decks and make new ones that fit the post rotation rules.  This year Teamomar.com will hook us all up and with twitter feeds live from the tournament, so we just have to check in at the .com and see how our twitter correspondents are doing and what kinda things they are seeing.  I don’t think the list of correspondents is finished yet but I know a Minnesota player here, Andy, will be updating us, and also my buddy…