Pokemon TCG

The hacking was disgusting and their behavior makes me think (or hope) that they're small children, or at least minors.
If they are grown adults, then it is simply nothing but pathetic.
Oh, they're adults alright


This all started when rapper Logic bought a Pokemon card attempting to recapture a childhood he never had

then Logan Paul got involved

soon enough


then McDonald's' Happy Meals got very difficult to find due to scalpers

then the Wall Street Journal got a hold of the story and started praising the scalpers

so it is as you said, simply nothing but pathetic, if on a grander scale
 
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Pikachu315111

Ranting & Raving!
is a Community Contributoris a Top Smogon Media Contributor
The hacking was disgusting and their behavior makes me think (or hope) that they're small children, or at least minors.
If they are grown adults, then it is simply nothing but pathetic.
Oh, they're adults alright
Read the PokeBeach article, they make it clear it wasn't only adults, these were very pro hackers from OVERSEAS (so, yeas, not only were they demanding Pokemon Cards, they were demanding the cards to be sent overseas which likely would have cost extra to do, and you know they would have demanded first class/express).

From what I learned now, Jon Sahagian probably has a large collection of rare/unique cards which the average joe likely wouldn't have access to just by pulling cards from packs. Over the years the Pokemon Company has made special cards to giveaway at special events and TCG tournaments (and even one-of-a-kind to give to TCG tourney winners). Sahagian likely has collected many of these cards over the years and, now more than ever, these are SUPER valuable if not possibly priceless. They weren't just holding a random fan site hostage just for some holos you could pull from packs, they were after unique collector items.

Or, at least until the bubble bursts and the value of these pieces of cardboard drops considerably. I really should get onto selling my old cards, could use the cash...
 
...knowing how that guy has had a history of making an ass of himself, I’m not surprised things went pear-shaped.


Or, at least until the bubble bursts and the value of these pieces of cardboard drops considerably. I really should get onto selling my old cards, could use the cash...
I for one would rather have them appraised and insured, since I plan on keeping mine. The majority of mine are from the Gen 1 period so there’s got to be some worth a pretty penny.
 

Deleted User 465389

Banned deucer.
then the Wall Street Journal got a hold of the story and started praising the scalpers
you know what, let’s see what they said! I’m slightly curious about how they praised it, and this post’ll get reaction points but that isn’t the focus

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oh, he also did this with ps5’s/whatever the new xbox’s called! Fun, they’re praising m o r e kinds of scalping! also why are patio heaters being scalped huh.(also what does 110,00 on 1.7 million to revenue mean, im not an analysis but that sounds weird(you can correct me if it actually means something logically))

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nnnnnooooooo, don’t write an essay on how to scalp, your teacher probably won’t like that.(do it on Pokémon cards instead, it works for me on smogon dot com.) also they’re talking more about not pokemon scalping, including ketchup and hot tubs.

aaaand that’s all i can read, because I’m not going to be paying for wall street journal! fffuuuun, paywalls(i know i can listen to it, but I’m not skilled enough at posting to do the timestamp technique that pikachu315111 does. good job pikachu on doing those posts btw :blobthumbsup:)

Xaviere does not promote scalping, and he does not like it. If you scalp, he’ll be mad, and use his smogon sensetm to make you get stuck in traffic.
 

Pikachu315111

Ranting & Raving!
is a Community Contributoris a Top Smogon Media Contributor
also why are patio heaters being scalped huh.(also what does 110,00 on 1.7 million to revenue mean, im not an analysis but that sounds weird(you can correct me if it actually means something logically))
Patio Heaters: He likely bought up those during the Winter months. Nothing says capitalism like depriving people of warmth and selling it back to them at premium prices.

$110,000 Profit on 1.7 Million Revenue: I THINK I understand what they're saying. The best way for me to explain it is via examples:

Let's say you start the year with 10k.
Each month you spend that entire 10k on reselling and make it back plus 1k profit.
By the end of a 12 month year, you'll have 22k: a 12k profit on 120k revenue.

So, yeah, those numbers are deceiving. He doesn't have 1.7 million in his bank, rather that's the total he spent since the start of the pandemic. He would buy up stuff, sell them off, use that money to buy up even more stuff, sell them off, and so on and so on. At most what we know is he has over 100k in his bank account as he made that much in profit, though whether he have even half a million is questionable.

but I’m not skilled enough at posting to do the timestamp technique that pikachu315111 does. good job pikachu on doing those posts btw :blobthumbsup:)
Thanks but you give me way too much credit, lol.
 

Deleted User 465389

Banned deucer.
Another Xaviere Cardboard Essay
(plus a 1,000 like celebration);
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Stats; 200 HP was normal for a stage one gx, and it’s retreat cost was fine with a dce. This doesn’t really fit in anywhere else, but there was a really good eevee card, that evolved when you put an energy on it. Since you can do that on your first turn, you can have a turn 1 sylveon, and if you go second(which you want to) you can immediately start magical ribboning.


GX attack; This was a good attack, and could be annoying for the opponent. If you were facing a metagross or gardevoir deck that just finished setting up their big attackers, you could immediately restart the process for two of the attackers, as long as they were on the bench. (don’t use plea gx against a tapu lele gx though, you just made them be able to wonder tag again, without them having to use an acerola).


Second attack; The important part is that it did damage, and when you were finished setting up with your magical ribbons, you could disrupt them so much that the damage could stack up.


First attack; This was really good in the early game, and being able to disrupt your opponent. Being able to get any 3 cards was amazing when you could start doing this on the first turn, and the amount of possibilities it gave you for the future turns was incredible. You often played single copies of certain supporters in this deck, and as long as they/your gladion wasn’t prized, you could specifically have a guaranteed way of grabbing them.


so, when i first logged into smogon, i honestly never thought this would happen(gosh that sounded sappy wow). I think starting the card posts defined my niche, and I’ll be doing more of that from now on. Also, I’m not going to be slacking on the quality now that i reached 1,000 likes. After all, ol’ flinchinator has more than 100,000, and it would be nice(although not very probable) to dethrone that.


Thanks to Users;

Pikachu315111 for helping me with posting tips, and also for those descriptions of the eevee/ high class alt arts

-all the people i follow, you’re all amazing

- TPP
- The Mind Electric
- Plague von Karma
-pikachu315111
- JustinTR
- Finchinator
- emma
-Eisenherz
- DrumstickGaming
- bdt2002
- awa
- Archiiiie17
- aqua∞ring
-you, the person reading this. thank you for listening to me and the other smogoners converse, and also because the world’s a better place with you in it. you’re loved more than you know.
 
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Ok, so I decided to be smart and preorder my Ultimate edition box of Celebrations pretty early. As you can expect, in most e-shops they were already sold out. But luckily I managed to find one that still takes preorders. I was a little apprehensive, but I decided to go for it - and it´s great I did.

Today I got from them a free package as a thank-you for preorder, where they wrote that I will be waiting a little while, since the box is released at 22nd of October, but that they are sending me some pokemon paraphenalia as a thank you. Well, I expected a few little things, but I got very, VERY suprised.

The first thing was Ash sticker - the sort of thing I expected. Well, ok. But then the suprises came.

There were also four cards. Three classic GXses - Bewear, Umbreon and Entei.

GXcards.jpg


I was like OK, that´s pretty nice. But that wasn´t all. There was also rainbow rare Raichu GX. And as Raichu was is my favourite mon (at least the Kanto variant), I was pretty happy.

RRRaichuGX.jpg


But the suprises didn´t end here, no. There was also a smallish box.

krabicka.jpg


In it, I got 24karat gold pokemon coin, edition limited to 1000 pcs.

medaile1.jpg
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Of course, it also came with a certificate.

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Like, I am still in shock. Who gives freebies like that??? They are pretty nice things, not to mention the gold has a pretty much worth in an of itself. Well, i see if they deliver my order in october (or december, given that it will be shipped from US to Europe), but still, I am pretty stunned.
 
you might wanna look into your source for these materials. right away you can tell that Umbreon GX they sent you is a fake - the text font on the GX attack and in the GX rule box is different from on legit cards and the second attack has the wrong name (Solar Blade instead of Shadow Bullet from the actual Umbreon GX). chances are pretty good that's not the only bootleg merch they have sent out or will send out
 

Deleted User 465389

Banned deucer.
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so they showed what a vstar card looks like today!

-evolves from a v like a vmax, but only gives up 2 prize cards

-have a ‘vstar power’, only once per game so it’s basically like a gx attack

-has a star in the background, but only one’s revealed so i’m not sure if it’s a universal thing
 
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Deleted User 465389

Banned deucer.
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Zororak’s Tech Against Rayquaza, And Another Sylveon Essay:

So going into worlds 2019, rayquaza gx was the hyped deck coming out of celestial storm. With a choice band attached, dress up would do 90 damage for a double colourless energy, which would ohko a rayquaza gx because of rayquaza’s fairy weakness. This was enough to convince two players to tech this in their zororak decks going into worlds.

precious ribbon sucks btw, don’t use it

can you really call this an essay?
 

Take Azelfie

More flags more fun
Screenshot 2022-03-01 1.02.20 AM.png

This is one of the most recently built decks in person and I've been really enjoying going back and forth on how to optimize it and settle on the final changes but I think I've reached my final version of the build. Basically if you are unaware about the current standard format the most oppressive and top deck of the moment is Mew + Genesect. Mew is a super flexible mon and gets access to a lot of powerful attacks between Genesect's Techno Blast and Meloetta's Melodious Echo which hit for 210 usually. Though Mew can also amplify its own damage through Power Tablets (your Fusion Strike Pokemon do an extra +30 damage) and Choice Belt (A tool that makes your Pokemon deal an extra +30 damage to Rule Box Pokemon.) On top of this Mew has free retreat and a powerful energy accelerator in the form of Elesa's Sparkle who simply takes two Fusion Strike Energy (basically rainbow energy for Fusion Strike Pokemon) and attaches them to two separate Fusion Strike Pokemon. Finally to seal the deal is Genesect's ability to draw up to the amount of cards = to the amount of Fusion Strike Pokemon in play. This usually means that Genesect is a draw til you have up to 6 cards in hand with a full bench of Fusion Strike Pokemon. Not only that but this is per Genesect and not once per turn so this means that a Mew player can do this usually about 3 times a turn. This incentivizes Mew to play a load of items that can be easily played and potentially whiffed to gain access to more draw and basically the deck has the potential to reliably see half of it's deck and set up powerful turn 1 or 2 attacks with no problem whatsoever.
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Since Mew is a deck that simply isn't fair and can crush most decks with ease. It makes sense that decks would arise that don't treat Mew fairly either. This is whether this pile of cards comes in. Initially pioneered by Ross Cawthon, famously the person who invented 'The Truth' which was a revolutionary deck that took second during Worlds 2011, the deck aims to use a multitude of dark type attackers who don't give Mew the leeway to win off the prize trade and can threaten to knock out big Pokemon and comeback from about any scenario. The deck has been altered and experimented with by other players and gone through multiple variants and while the deck doesn't have a consensually agreed upon best build, I'm pretty satisfied with my testing thus far.
Screenshot 2022-03-01 1.04.03 AM.png

To start, Galarian Moltres is one of the headline attackers of the deck and pretty much the identity of the deck as a whole. The energy cost is more of a requirement than a goal since Moltres can auto accelerate the energy onto itself and another manual attachment will get the job done. The attack itself is rooted in basically how long the game has been going on for and how many Pokemon your opponent has knocked out. Since you play very few 2 prize Pokemon, you usually have some amount of control over how quickly your opponent is taking prizes. As we mentioned before Mew tales the biggest beating from it's attack due to its weakness taking an astonishing 340 damage when they have taken 3 of their prizes. Even if they have an Oricorio in play which reduces damage done to Fusion strike Pokemon by -20, you'll still reach Mew's 310 HP threshold. Moltres can rarely take on other threats entirely by itself and usually relies on the other Pokemon to help get some chip damage such as Galarian Weezing, Hoopa, or Inteleon's Quick Shooting. Moltres helps to fill the role as a game conditional attacker alongside Sabelye who's a damage conditional attacker to help score KOs. Finally is the fact that Klara is basically a one card trick that fetches you Moltres and 2 energy from the retreat making it so you only need 1 more energy from somewhere else to be able to attack immediately.
Screenshot 2022-03-01 1.06.19 AM.png

Hoopa is this deck's lead attacker. Its use is not that apparent at first glance as it does a minimal amount of damage in comparison to the threats of today's metagame and is even handicapped by requiring a condition before it can even use its attack. On top of that it doesn't even have the privilege of hitting for weakness. All of these sound bad in theory but Hoopa is far from bad and is in fact one of the key members of the deck. While Assault Gate may not be doing enough damage on it's own to V Pokemon it still is certainly good enough to take out a lot of basic supporter Pokemon in this format. Cards like Sobble, Houndour, and Bidoof loiter the fields in during all parts of the game and Hoopa is able to snag some KOs for you while you are waiting for cards like Sableye and Moltres to be able to take the lead. Against other single prize decks Hoopa is invaluable too as this deck's greatest strength is being able to swing huge prizes quickly for itself and single prize decks often don't have this deck that luxury. It's important for Hoopa to be able to snag a KO or two by itself in the early game to make sure that you don't end up behind in the prize trade. Hoopa is also a great way to KO Meloetta, a deadly single prize attacker for Mew who can be set up in turn 1 if the opponent goes second. Being able to reliably clear Meloetta is great for turning down Mew's pressure. Hoopa is supported by the excessive amount of Scoop Up Nets inside of the deck which allow you to return a non-rulebox Pokemon to the hand which can be used to help maneuver Hoopa in or out of the active position, on top that this deck also runs a Tapu Koko and Air Balloon which are both ways of freely retreating into other Pokemon.
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And finally for our last single prize 'attackers' we got Galarian Weezing. Weezing situationally is one the best ways to completely slow down an opponent and allow yourself to build up a board in the meantime. The hard ability lock slows and turns off many engines in the format such as: Shady Dealing Drizzile/Inteleon, Cincinno's Make Do, Genesect's Fusion Strike System, Houndoom's Single Strike Roar, Arceus VSTAR Star Birth, Octillery's Rapid Strike Search, Crobat's Dark Asset as well as too many more abilities to mention here. To simplify it, practically every deck in the format is reliant on abilities in one way or another and most of these abilities are often key for setting up. This additional time allows you to establish your own Shady Dealing line very easily and apply chip damage to opponent's Pokemon for Sableye to more than likely come in and clean it up. On top of that if you end up going second, Koffing has a great attack which allows itself to evolve and get into play setting up the ability lock going into their second turn shutting off Drizzile, Arceus, and Houndoom.
Screenshot 2022-03-01 1.21.59 AM.png

Sableye is one of the few Multi prize Pokemon worth running, with minimal damage on the opponent Crazy Claws can scale to an insane amount of damage. Just to do some quick math, let's say Weezing poisons a target and they take 40 damage passing a turn. They then evolve, clearing the poison and KO back. You move Sableye into the active and with the help of Raihan + a manual attachment you can attack right away.
40 (Weezing's damage) + 10 (Crazy Claws base Damage) + [60 x 4] (Crazy Claws scaling on the already placed damage) = 290 Damage. While this doesn't okay any VMAX Pokemon this does straight up any VStars or lower Pokemon by default which is impressive on its own. This is also accounting for the worst case scenario where they evolve immediately after Weezing's attack and don't have to take another 40 damage passing the turn back or swapping out of the active to cure the poison. And even then in that case you can rectify the damage with a Quick Shooting Inteleon to ping an extra 20 damage to score the KO. Sableye + Hoopa is just a straight 2HKO on everything in the game and even manages to still do enough to beat a Duraludon with a Crystal Cave up (Crystal Cave is a stadium which heals 30 from each of your Dragon/Metal Pokemon once during your turn) making the two a vicious duo. Sableye is often important for scoring 2/3 Prizes a game and on top of perhaps an early Hoopa, giving you only 1 to 2 more prizes to take to win the game while the opponent may still need 3-4 prizes.
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Galarian Zapdos is a unique inclusion because as far as I know I'm the only person I've seen run it so far. Though that's not to say the idea is completely unheard of. Zapdos itself can reduce the cost of its attack very easily to 1 or 2 energy for an attack and is primarily only being deployed to attack Pokemon weak to it, such as the brand new Arceus VStar or the rising in popularity Gengar VMax. This also gives you the ability to more easily combat one of the most frustrating decks to face against being Jolteon VMax due to their ability to KO two Pokemon on your field at once. Even if your opponent only has 2 V Pokemon in play Zapdos can still reach its energy threshold in one turn thanks again to Raihan being able to accelerate an energy. We also do run 2 Energy Search in the deck which can be fetched off of Shady Dealings in order to grab the single of Fighting energy to pay for the cost of the attack.
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For the primary engine of the deck we are relying on the Inteleon line, a current favorite and popular engine in the current format right now. Sobble offers a great attack when going second on your first turn to quickly establish a whole board of Sobbles who can then be evolved into Drizziles which then help to search a bunch of other important search cards to establish your attacking Pokemon and if you manage to make it to the end of the line you are either rewarded with a Pokemon who can help apply an extra few points of damage every turn or a Shady Dealings+ which allows you to more effectively search for combos in your deck. On top of that we also play a surplus of Scoop Up Nets which allow you to add the full line back to your hand and replay all of these cards. It shouldn't be too hard to grasp why such an engine can lead to a wide array of plays and is commonly seen throughout the majority of the metagames top decks.
Screenshot 2022-03-01 1.48.55 AM.png
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Tapu Koko is probably striked as an off inclusion in this deck at first glance. We don't even play Lightning Energy and if we did the attack is quite cumbersome to use anyways and weak so what is the main use of this card. Well the first attack is not the worst thing in the world in case you end up bricking but the most important part of this card is the free retreat cost which allows you to safely pivot between Pokemon. More than any other deck in the format, this deck relies on being able to put down a Pokemon and immediately attack with it and this also means being able to move that Pokemon into the active slot easier. For Moltres you need to play it down as a burst option with enough energy in your hand, Hoopa needs to meet the requirement of reaching the active this turn for its attack to even work, and while the two V Pokemon aren't as restricted by their conditions you'd much rather keep your board clear of multiprize Pokemon if you could in order to slow and control the opponent's access to prize cards. Having a free retreat Pokemon just makes the deck just flow some much better when you are letting mons die and immediately playing down a new one to attack with next.
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Finally for Pokemon we got Manaphy. SInce this deck has much lower HP Pokemon then the majority of the metagame, they are way more vulnerable to attacks that hit the bench, decks like Rapid Strike Urshifu and Jolteon whose main niche is carved by their ability to score multiple KOs off of bench vulnerability. Manaphy helps to remedy this by blocking all bench damage done til your opponent is fed up enough with it to Boss' Orders your Manaphy up and KO it. Usually this helps to slow those decks down for long enough for you to find a path to victory or establish your own set of threats to compete with the opponent. Manaphy is invaluable for being able to curve what was considered an impossibly hard matchup.

The deck's main strength is it's multitude of attackers that are able to capitalize on different situations and pull you ahead of the game even when the cards are stacked against you. Sableye's insane damage output with set up and Moltres responsive ability to dish out a lot of damage are the primary reasons why the decks come back potential is highly regarded in the current metagame on top of it being able to play dirty against the best deck in the format, Mew.


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The basic search cards probably don't need much of an explanation. Quick Ball fetches out most of the attackers in the deck by itself and can occasionally set up an energy into the discard area to be used by either Raihan or Klara at a later date. Other than a really efficient card for what it does. Level Ball fetches out most of your supporting Pokemon like Sobble and Koffing and also can be used to snag a Drizzile too. Evolution Incense is more or less the same thing as the Level Ball but for their evolutions targeting Drizzile, Inteleon, and Weezing if need be. Lastly are the Energy Search which are important for helping to easily set up attacks alongside Raihan and especially important for being able to grab your one Fighting Energy when you need to use Galarian Zapdos V.

The Evolution Incense targets are much smaller than the Level or Quick Ball targets which is why it's fine to drop it down to 3 and while most Dark Box decks would opt to run 1 Energy Search, it's important to have an extra for sure just because Zapdos is special and demands its own energy unlike the others.
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For our draw supports I run a 4 set of Marnie, the card is great for limiting an opponent's hand size down or removing cards they might be hoarding onto from their hand temporarily. It's also the least resource destructive draw supporter in the game right now which is great for a deck that loves its ability to make plays instantaneously from its hand. Professor's Research may be the opposite of everything I just said but doing it once or rarely twice is still good enough just thanks to its huge upside in being able to kick start your early game or to give you a sizable hand after playing most of the other cards in your hand. Finally is a single of Cynthia's, by the time your Pokemon start getting knocked out you'll be wanting to start using cards like Raihan and Klara to set up offensive pressure but if you are still trying to set up Cynthia is this awesome middle ground between Professor and Marnie and often does wonders.
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These supports are often used to apply pressure. Klara, while seemingly inconspicuous as an 'offensive card' combos incredibly well with Galarian Moltres since it fetches it back as well as the two energies needed for its ability all in one card only leaving you to find the one additional energy elsewhere to attack immediately. Raihan is the main supporter for your V Pokemon and especially Sableye V. Its ability to charge up an energy is incredibly helpful but it also immediately searches for another card from your deck which helps to set up for your future plays or helps to further establish your board and make your turn better. Either way he's essential for being able to deal incredibly nasty damage and maintain your tempo while also not being forced to play your Vs too early and face them being knocked out before they could even attack. Finally is Boss who isn't as powerful as he usually is seeing how strapped we are for which supporter to play every turn but he can be helpful for occasionally letting a Moltres KO a benched V or letting Zapdos target a Fighting weak Pokemon. Hell you can even use it with Hoopa to target down your opponents support Pokemon.
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Lastly are some additional cards who help to move our Pokemon around. Sometimes you may have a Hoopa stuck in the active and need to get it out or don't have a free retreater in front and need to get a different Pokemon into the active who can attack. Scoop Up Net usually helps with that. On top of that it allows you to regrab your Inteleon lines which can lead into a play where you use Shady Dealings Inteleon to grab this + 1 extra item and then immediately evolve another Sobble or Drizzile on the field for an additional 3 more items. Air Balloon fulfills a similar purpose to Tapu Koko but it can be slapped down onto any Pokemon. Both Pokemon have some ups and downs like them being weak to Collapsed Stadium and Tool Scrapper so it's best to just have the mix of both to help out.

I hope you guys enjoyed my analysis of this deck. I've been having a lot of fun and it really does play the game so much more differently from anything else in the game right now that gives it a unique feel and skillset.
 

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Thanks for this! I haven't played Pokemon TCG since 2016, but one of the things I always liked about it was Weakness giving even the most broken deck an inherent countermeasure, and this deck exploits that really well. In addition, all the staples make almost every deck consistent too. Good to see the Trainer powercreep is somewhat under control (Scoop Up Net in particular looks a really interesting card from the perspective of Expanded, it working on the powercrept EXs is a nice touch). The game however seems to be tending more and more towards archetypes, which while it works in things like YGO, I think the amount of generic Trainers/benchwarmers available in PTCG means archetype decks just inherently build themselves sadly.
 
I was looking through my old cards yesterday, and I decided to play a game against myself. I used to collect a ton of cards and play a lot when I was 12-13 maybe? (16 now). Don't remember. God, I need to get back into this, this a whole lot of fun.
 
The only Pokemon cards I care to still hold onto are the Gen I-II stuff(especially the e-card sets of Gen II, due to the fact that the left strips can unlock minigames and short videos on the e-reader, which I own). As such I grabbed everything from the basement in my parent's house when I visited forbthe holidays, and have been slowly selling everything(outside of e-cards and Gen I-II stuff I don't have duplicates of) to my local hobby shop for a buttload of store credit for other unrelated games(and picking up any e-cards they get in on rare instances, recently got a Skyridge Kabutops). Only recent set I bothered with was Celebrations. Got a complete set to put in a binder(including all of the promos with the 20th anniversary stamp on them, like the the gold cards. Also have the two metal cards). I have no plans to get back into the game, I'd rather play the Gameboy Color Duology(imported the Japan-only sequel)
 
So I have some cards I'm curious about if they're any good



This probably isn't great, but having the ability to snipe something for 160, or 180 with a Muscle Band seems pretty appealing. And you can choose anything as a target, not just their active. The setup is somewhat helped by the fact that there's Multiply Kakuna.



50 damage for one energy is pretty huge, and being normal means there's not too much loss in using this. It can follow up with a Pot Smash if necessary.




The ability disrupts a lot of EX and GX plays, and the move isn't horrible.



110 HP and burn are pretty ok, and you can also stall out your opponent to mill by repeatedly recycling Energy Recycler and Rescue Stretcher.

Also I do not care that these cards are out of circulation
 

Take Azelfie

More flags more fun
Most of those cards were not that great too my knowledge. The Beedrill is really clunky to set up and Heatmor has a relatively low reward for dropping 3 energy on it. Though the farfetch'd from base set in very old formats was decent for being able to wall out Hitmonchan. Though this one isn't very good. The Vileplume on the other hand is a very very good card. It's really good in the Expanded format since it can wall out strong Tag Team Pokemon like Arceus, Dialga, Palkia Tag Team GX and Pikachu & Zekrom Tag Team GX. People play it with Alolan Exeggutor and Rowlet Tag Team GX to quickly evolve it and also play it alongside the other Vileplume who can turn off items from being played.

https://play.limitlesstcg.com/tournament/61d5f77054b82a0ab7621003/player/pumpkaamy/decklist <- decklist if you were curious
 
That Farfetch'd helped me win a prerelease event for that set undefeated, but yeah 50 damage just isn't enough. I have memories of that Vileplume being used with Forest of Giant Plants (what were they thinking with that card, ah yes, one-sided Broken Time-Space will really end well won't it), but I think a lot of decks ended up dropping it mostly because you had to get a Float Stone on it before setting up your Item lock in order to put pressure on your opponent before they could find a way to get around the Item lock/set up through it, which was somewhat awkward. Not to mention a random Xerosic on that Float Stone could really ruin your day if you didn't have Guzma in hand.
 
Another card I have some interest in is Bodybuilding Dumbells, though it seems like another not super great thing


I've tried it with this. This is reliant on somewhat low damage to work, unless you have a way to repeatedly restore its HP. Against GX, it's probably going to be torn apart somewhat easily.
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These are also things I put some thought into, though they don't seem ideal. Overall, seems like a hard card to really take advantage of.

This one gives you cards, but unlike other Pokemon that give you cards, it has something to actually use the cards you get in an interesting way. You're probably just going to use those cards anyway, and it has mediocre HP, so its utility is questionable.
 
View attachment 385641Zororak’s Tech Against Rayquaza, And Another Sylveon Essay:

So going into worlds 2019, rayquaza gx was the hyped deck coming out of celestial storm. With a choice band attached, dress up would do 90 damage for a double colourless energy, which would ohko a rayquaza gx because of rayquaza’s fairy weakness. This was enough to convince two players to tech this in their zororak decks going into worlds.

precious ribbon sucks btw, don’t use it

can you really call this an essay?
I think you meant 2018 here given that Ray came out that summer and all the Gen 6 EX cards rotated out after that event. No EX cards would have been legal in 2019 given it was the last big SM-on event.
 

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