Uh Oh, It's Ho-Oh

Wow!

Yesterday myself, my husband, son JT, daughter Sarah, and Sarah's friend Makenna, all went down to the Irvine pre-release for Unseen Forces. JT has just moved back from NY and, though 26 and well above this sort of thing, decided it might be fun. He was a staunch Magic and Star Trek game player, so this isn't all that wacky to him. Makenna had never been to a pre-release before so she was very psyched about it.

We got there about 10 a.m. and found our way to the meeting rooms. Sarah and I had our POP cards , but the others had to fill out some forms. There were over 60 people, so the organizers decided to split the group. The kids, 14 and under, went to the adjoining room. I was glad Sarah had Makenna for company, though it was easy enough between rounds to hang out as a group. As usual, lots of organizational down time for the players. We got one round done before lunch, but got five rounds done by 5:30 p.m. We saw a lot of familiar faces. There was a lot of trading going on as folks were tweaking and such, before the Worlds. Many people in the room had invitations to Worlds. Impressive.

I love the excitement as you're staring at the shiny booster packs for the theme deck, waiting for the word to open them up. I'd heard there would be some cool changes in this set. When the signal came, we popped them open. THree of us at the same table got EXs! I got the much sought-after HO-OH EX. (Sorry, no images yet. The deck doesn't go commercial till September.)

I got a decent deck and thought I had a real chance to win more than one game for a change. I had HO-OH EX with 110 hit points, a great Poke-Power, and for only three Energies of any kind, great attack.

Poke Power Golden Wing -- If Ho-Oh ex would be Knocked Out by damage from an opponent's attack, you may move up to 2 Energy attached to Ho-Oh ex to your Pokemon in any way you like.

Rainbow Burn Does 10 damage plus 20 more damage for each type of basic Energy card attached to Ho-Oh ex.

To back that up I had Poliwhirl and Poliwag; Groudon, Smeargle and a few other good Basics. I won the first game handily. Then I lost every thing after that, mostly from lack of focus. My head wasn't in it. I don't know what was up. I was busy looking at the cards other folks had, and one guy I knew from other pre-releases was chatting me up a lot, which I found distracting. And, there was a lot of buzz about the upcoming World Championships. So...my attention wandered.

I really like the new cards. There are some very interesting attack moves, and most require only one specific Energy type, making it much easier to have variable kinds of families (water, grass, fire, electric, etc). Here's a link to the Japanese text spoiler for Unseen Forces.

Be sure you're checking in on the Worlds. There are videos and live updates. I intend to check the brackets and see how my buds are doing.

More when the deck comes out...

Pretty cool.