To get the donk is what we call a play that finishes a game in the very early stages, befóre your opponent has time to set up anything substantial. Usually a donk happens in the first of second round. When your opponent has just one basic that is placed in the active spot, or maybe a second weak basic on the bench and you start strong with a T1 attack, you can donk in the first or second round.

Normally you use fast, hard hitting Pokémon to achieve the donk. Yanmega Prime, Zekrom (ZPS), Cinchinno, Tornado etc. but you can also use a Trainer card like Seeker to assist in the T1 donk!

Let’s say you’re opponent starts with Reshiram in the active spot and Cyndaquil on the bench, to build up Typhlosion Prime. A plausible setup for the very popular TyRam of ReshiPlosion decks.

You win the flip and go first. Let’s say you play ZPS and you draw Zekrom, a Dual Ball which gives you Pachurisu and Shaymin after 2 good flips (that’s why it’s called ZPS), with a Plus Power and a Seeker (I know, a dream hand, but I’m just trying to explain the best situation to clarify how it works). What you do is attach 2 lightning energies to Pachurisu and use Shaymin to move those 2 lightning energies to Zekrom, add an energy of your own: ready to attack with Bolt Strike on T1, 120 points of damage, add PlusPower (+10) and you knock out Reshiram. 

But before you attack with Bolt Strike you play Seeker. Seeker makes you ánd your opponent to return a Pokémon from the bench back into your hand. You pull back Shaymin because you don’t need it anymore so it goes back into your hand. 

Bút now your opponent has to pull back a Pokémon too! So he will probably pull back Cyndaquil. After that you knock out Reshiram with Bolt Strike + PlusPower: DONK!

Battle Roads Autumn is getting closer! The 2011/2012 season has begun. Everybody is getting their decks together, adding those couple of cards provided to us by the new Emerging Powers set and adjusting their decks.

Because of recent successes, one deck, or card, or strategy, call it what you will, will def see more play and is kryponite to many decks out there. That card is Vileplume. Now if you’re into Pokemon TCG you must’ve heard about Vileplume. To make a short story even shorter: when in play (read: sitting on the bench), no Trainer cards can be played by both players. Forget Rare Candy to evolve your Pokemon, forget Catcher to kick ass, no Plus Powers can be played to KO that big Pokemon, no Juniper or Sage’s Training to get new cards… nothing at all. 

And because lots of decks in this format are pretty heavy on Trainer cards, Vilemplume (aka lock decks) decks are going to be more popular than ever! Another Trainer lock Pokemon is Gothitelle, but she’s not as effective as Vileplume. Sure, the main advantage is that it will lock your opponent but not you! So your opponent cannot play Trainer cards but you can. Awesome! Problem is that Gothitelle must be in the active spot and can be easily attacked and KOd. Not good.

The greatest thing about Vileplume is, is that it can sit on the bench very comfortably and still do its thing. You can’t use Catcher, Reversal or Circulator to bring it to the active spot and attack it cuz you can’t play Trainers! The only way to KO it is by sniping, with fe Yanmega Prime, Kingdra or Sygyliph…

Vileplume would be disastrous for my deck which is very Trainer heavy, so as soon as I see any Oddishes (Basic Pokemon that evolves into Vileplume) I bring it up with Catcher and KO it, snipe it, Seeker it away, or whatever! Anything to avoid that damned Vileplume to come up on the board! 

Acoording to sites like Pokebeach.com the new season starts on September 17th with Fall Battle Roads. At least in North America, here in Europe, especially here in the Netherlands, no dates have been released yet. I did send the Pokemon Organised Play organisation an e-mail and they assured us that dates and locations will be released at the end of the week for us here, so we can start making plans.

The prizes the players can win will also change, in the past only the first place winner would recieve a champion promo card, now the top 3 players will recieve a special Victory Cup promo card, Gold, Silver and Bronze.

Let’s get ready to battle!

I’ve always liked this card, this green cute fella wrapped in a ball of jelly. His name is Reuniclus and he’s a little bit weird. But weird in a good way!

Reuniclus has always been an interesting card, it’s ability Damage Swap lets you swap damage counters from one Pokémon to another as you see fit. This opens up a lot of interesting ideas and concepts but untill Worlds 2011 no deck with Reuniclus in it was very succesfull. Ross’ Deck (yes, it’s an official name now) used Reuniclus, in his super rogue deck together with Vileplume, Zekrom, Donphan Prime and the rest of his unorthodox deck. It earned him 2nd place at Worlds 2011.

The way Ross used it was to use the damage counters to charge Zekroms Outrage attack, and of course, to relieve damage from his other main attackers, like Donphan Prime.

Let’s take a closer look at this green fella: it’s a psychic Pokémon that starts as Solosis, a Basic Pokémon with only 30 HP, making it a very easy target for Pokemon Catcher. His Stage 1 is Duosion, a 60 HP Pokémon. Reuniclus himself has 90 HP, which is pretty low for a Stage 2 Pokémon. The fact that it’s a Stage 2 Pokémon means he can be ready to rumble at T3, or if you use Rare Candy (and go straight from Basic to Stage 2) T2 at the earliest. It has a retreat cost of 2, which is… acceptable. His attack, Plywave, is not that good either, doing 30 points of damage + 10 points for every energy card.

You can use his ability as Ross did, to charge Zekrom, or you can just move damage counters around to spread that damage out. Or you could use a tank, a big, heavy Pokémon with lots of HP like Tyranitar or Wailord (most HP in our current format) to move all the damage to.

Wailord in particular would be perfect for the job, as his first attack, Underwater Dive copies the Moo Moo Milk trainer card, letting him flip 2 coins, removing 3 damage counters per head, so he could theoretically heal 60 points of damage if needed. You would need Switch to get him into the active spot so he can use Underwater Dive, but Wailord can dish out serious damage too. Swallow UP does 50 points of damage, and if the defending Pokémon has fewer HP than Wailord, which is very likely, an extra 50 gets added to the damage. So doing 100 points of damage for a Stage 1 Pokémon is not bad, and against the popular fire decks (weakness vs water), Underwater Dive hits for 200 points of damage!

If you decide to use Reuniclus, be sure to playtest it a lot, it’s an interesting card, but if you want to use it in tournaments and competition, make sure you have your battle plans and strategy all figured out. Reuniclus’ biggest weakness, in my opinion, is his low HP: 90 is my biggest concern. With Pokémon Catcher now in our format and lots of Pokémon with big attacks that hit for 120 or more, it just seems so vulnerable, sitting on the bench.

Reuniclus: 7,5/10

After a weekend of epic battles and cardsplitting games of Pokemon, 3 new Pokemon world champions emerge!

Masters: David Cohen (US)

Seniors: Christopher Kan (AUSTRALIA)

Juniors: Gustav Wada (BRA)

Chris (left), David (middle) and Gustav (right)

David and Chris both played Reshiram variants and Gustav played a deck with Yanmega as its main attacker.

Lots of Euro players as well with a large group of Dutch players, no idea how they did though, lots of Italian and German players as well, as Pokemon is quite popular there and of course a large pool of players from the UK as well.

Worlds 2012 will be held in Hawai. There are worse places in the world to be playing some Pokemon, right? :-)

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