Still fun to play

The house has been in an uproar because of home improvement and we've been offline. With no Internet amusments for Sarah, now a tenth grader, I suggested we play a few hands of Pokemon TCG since I'd stumbled across my treasure trove of cards while reassembling my office. We pulled out our stuff and sat down to play, and about 4 hours and six rounds (and some deck twiddling) later, we stopped. I think it ended in a draw, three rounds each. Once I switched to my water/eletric deck with Manectric and Ludicolo, I started winning handily.

Anyhow, my point was that it was still lots of fun to play. That really surprised me. It did get slow toward the end; we are so used to instant response in our battles in WoW. Good fun though, and we put the cards away carefully, knowing we'd want to play again sometime.

Fixing D Tyrannitar with Unseen Forces

I decided to try to fix my old Dark Tyrannitar deck. I loved that deck, and it sometimes worked well. But it ws my first real deck and it suffered from a lack of good trainers and a dogged determination to stick with Tyrannitar and Crobat. It really is nuts to have two main line families that are three stage evolutions. It just takes too long to fire them up to full power.

I was inspired by the new cards, the Unseen Forces cards. There are some sweet tricks in the release. For openers, there are special energy cards that actually function as both energy and trainer cards. For instance:

Warp Energy - provides * energy. When you attach this card from your hand to your Active Pokémon, switch that Pokémon with 1 of your Benched Pokémon.

When you switch out between active and benched, there is normally a retreat cost that is paid by discarding energy cards. Here you switch and not only do you not discard, you get to add an energy!

Cyclone Energy - provides * energy. When you attach this card from your hand to your Active Pokémon, switch 1 of the Defending Pokémon with 1 of your oponent's Benched Pokémon. Your opponent chooses the Benched Pokémon to switch.

So let's say you're getting hammered by some pumped up attacking Pokémon and you can't retreat, maybe because you don't have enough energies to pay the retreat cost or you don't want to discard those energies that took you so long to acquire. Add this energy and force that attacker off the stage. The opponent will be able to retreat the card he brings out in order to bring his previous heavy hitter back into play, but it's going to cost him a retreat card, and you have perhaps bought yourself a way out with the extra energy you've just added. Hope that made sense to you.

And on top of that there are some wonderful new trainers and tools:

Mary's Request - Draw a card. if you don't have any Stage 2 Evolved Pokémon in play, draw 2 more cards.

Man, you can't beat a three draw card, with NO discards! Most of the draw trainers require you to discard from your hand. And of course, if you're working a stage 2 evolution family and they aren't out and evolved yet, you are desperately searching that deck for cards. Extra draws is just the medicine you need for your ills.

Protective Orb - As long as Protective Orb is attached to a Pokémon, that Pokémon has no Weakness.

This is a great card for my Tyrannitar deck because my favorite Dark Tyrannitar, the one with the sand poké power, is weak to grass. If he is attacked by a grass card, the attack counts double. Instead of being hit for 30 points, he is hit for 60 points. =ouch= And there are a lot of grass decks out there.

So, fixing the deck...I decided to finally let go of my Dark Crobats. =waaaah= But I replaced them with Dark Electrode. First off, it's a short hop from the Basic, Voltorb, to the evolution, Dark Electrode. Experienced Pokémon players use this card with Dark Dragonite, which also lets you manoeuver energies around. I just wanted to use it to get out some dark energies and move 'em to Tyrannitar. I figure it's good for maybe two hits before it dies. It's both dark and electric, so though it only hits for 30 (with only one energy, mind you), if someone's playing a water deck I can score a big punch. Here's the card:

Poké-Power - Once during your turn (before your attack), if Dark Electrode has no Energy attached to it, you may search your dekc for a Dark or Dark Metal Energy and attach it to Dark Electrode. ...

Energy Bomb - 30 - You may move all Energy cards attached to Dark Electrode to your Benched Pokémon in any way you like.

So you keep doing that till you are dead. And, of course, I have some Potion Cards that remove 2 damage counters, and I have Mr. Briney, which lets me put D.E. back into my hand before it dies. I've also got a couple of Dunsparce and Goudon in there, but mostly for place holders till I figure out what I really need. I know it's got problems, but I'm going to work on this deck. I kinda like it.