Looking Past the Fundamentals

Recently I’ve convinced my roommate to start playing the Pokemon TCG. He’s an avid Magic the Gathering player and plays rather seriously and competitively. He attended a couple of Battle Roads with the members of our Pokemon Podcast TCG group, Team Bouffie (formally Team Whimsy Tackle). Being new to the game we’ve had a lot of in-depth discussion about what the Pokemon TCG looks like as a whole. Last night we discussed information poisoning.

Information poisoning dictates a trend. For example, a lot of the decks we play in the US are influenced by what places well in Japan. Dragons Deck for example ranked fairly high Japan but here in the states hasn’t really shown much face. I have no doubt that the deck would have existed without Japan building it but would serious players have played it had it not done well in Japan?

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A Wilde, Oscar has Appeared! (to Discuss Deck Building)

Lets talk Durant for a second. The deck is out of tier 1, probably even 1.5, but the actual skeleton of deck is solid. Ten to thirteen energy, a large trainer base, and probably no more than six Pokemon with three to four of them as same main attacker. Durant used this because Durant’s devour attack required more Durant in play to be effective however it’s working for other decks as well. This skeleton is also used for the mono-Terrakion build that saw some play at states. This week at the Whimsy Tackle table SBJ brought a new contender into the ring with a mono-Kyruem build. What is making these decks function so well?
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