All the Pokemens

[Aura]

 

   

Due to the somewhat obscure nature of this game, I couldn't find footage of the intro on its own, nor could I find any commercials for the game, so I'll just post screenshots of the intro and title screen.

As we transition from 2000 to 2001, the first Pokemon game to start the year is Pokemon Card GB 2: Here Comes Team GR! This game was released only in Japan. If that was where this ended, I probably wouldn't be spending very much time on this. However, it turns out there's a fanmade mod out there that translates the entire game. I won't be linking the mod for legal reasons, but a quick google search should get you what you're after if you're interested.

I'm not really sure what to expect, but from what I heard, this game is very much an improvement on its predecessor with new features, new cards, and most importantly an actual full-fledged story that's supposedly really interesting. I'm really excited to see what this game has in store because the original, while a little slow in the beginning, was a really fun experience once I got a decent deck going. From what I heard, this game is a bit more challenging than the last. I'm not sure if the same strategies used in the original would work, but I'll just have to see what kinds of cards I get. From what I understand, the new cards include ones from Base Set, Jungle, and Fossil that were excluded from the previous game but mostly from the newly included Team Rocket set. 

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Right away, starting a new game we can see a new feature: We can be a boy or a girl this time, just like in Crystal! The boy is the same as the protagonist of the original but the girl is an entirely new design. The boy shows right away that this must be a direct sequel to the original.

As the intro plays out, it's very clear that, boy or girl, it's implied that your character is the same as the one who went through the story of the original. It's a little silly that you're just suddenly a girl now, but I suppose that's why they do a quick recap of the story of the original before the action begins here.

 

One day, a mysterious group calling themselves Team Great Rocket attacks the clubs of Pokemon Card Island and steals the cards from the trainers of each club, one by one.

 

Everyone's cards are stolen, including your own! So you rush to Dr. Mason's lab to inform him of the thieves!

Upon first entering the lab, we're met by the little prick Ronald himself who, upon learning about Team GR, immediately runs to scope them out to "get a leg up on you." Good to know good ol' Ronald hasn't changed.

  

And of course, Dr. Mason tells us everything we already know. With our cards stolen, we'll need to build a new deck from scratch and go take on Team GR to stop them from stealing cards! He of course gives us a new Starter Deck and the Mini-Com! The Mini-Com, as the name implies, is a portable PC that lets you access your mailbox and a few other things remotely. I'll cover it in more detail next time. For now, let's focus on our starter deck.

Unfortunately, you don't get your choice of Starter Deck this time, you're just stuck with a deck that I assume to be identical to the Charmander and Friends Deck from the original.

    

For the sake of keeping things simple, I'm going to be posting the images of the original card art rather than screenshots of each info page. Otherwise I'd have to post anywhere from two to three or even four screenshots per card. I'll hide these under spoiler tags so they don't take up too much space. I figured showing the original cards might also bring in an extra sense of nostalgia for some of you out there.

Spoiler

 

  

  

  

  

  

 

Japanese-only cards:

Growlithe is part of the "intro pack Squirtle deck" a japanese half deck designed to introduce kids to the trading card game. As this was never released in America, this card never got a localization. Its first attack is Lunge: A move that deals 20 HP on a coin flip. The second move is Ember which is identical to Base Set Charmander's Ember.

Spearow is also from the intro pack Squirtle deck. Its moves are Peck and Wing Attack respectively.

Meowth is from the intro pack Bulbasaur deck. Its first attack is Bite and its second is Fury Swipes which deals 10 times the number of heads in three coin flips.

 

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I took a quick peek through the menus. It's all mostly the same from the original, but I don't recall the original game featuring the ability to choose the menu border. I switched it to Blue, but you can pick between four colors including the default red. It also looks as though you can choose different coins for coin flipping, an interesting touch to be sure!

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Here in the first room of Dr. Mason's lab, it looks like you can battle Sam here for a repeat of the original tutorial in case you don't know the rules of the game. I didn't bother with this because I already played the original!

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The room to the east is very much redesigned. There is now the deck-builder machine from before but beside it is a new machine that apparently lets you quickly record and build decks, allowing you to have access to more than one deck at a time without having to dismantle your current deck to reuse cards between multiple decks! This is great because it allows you to use your valuable staples like Prof. Oak and Bill across multiple decks without any problems!

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The room to the west is where we're going to be spending our time today. Here you have a series of challenges made by our friend Aaron you can do to earn prize packs. They require you to use some pretty standard strategies but the cards I got out of it seem pretty nice!

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This first step is all about strategies with evolution. When to evolve and when not to. Basically, just keep in mind that pokemon retain damage after evolution and sometime can't attack if they're evolved too early. Make sure to leave the basic form on the bench while you pile on enough energies for its evolution to make a move.

  

 

Seaking was able to deal with his Hitmonchan before it was able to get the energy up for Special Punch. 

  

His Spearow was able to finish off Seaking, but Dratini was able to hold out a little bit while I built up energies on the Charmander I'd set on the bench.

  

By the time he was able to pick off Dratini, Charmeleon was readly to go. A single Slash was all it took to finish off Spearow.

  

Since I had plenty of HP and Fire energy in my hand, I figured there was no reason not to go for Flamethrower to finish off Machop in one hit.

  

A simple Slash was all it took to finish off his Diglett, allowing me to pick up my last prize card!

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The prize for this simple challenge is just a pack of assorted energies. I figured that's all I'd get but an early lead on Energy balance would be helpful all the same, so I decided to press on to step 2!

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This one is all about status problems and the various ways they can be dealt with. Just keep in mind that status problems are healed on evolution and certain card effects can also heal them or help you work around the issue.

  

Note: I'm using the english card art for Team Rocket Grimer, however this leads to some inconsistencies. Strangely, the move Poison Gas was changed so that it puts the opponent to sleep when it was printed in english. I'm not sure why they would do this without changing the attack's name, but in the japanese version of the card, this move had the more appropriate effect of poisoning the defending pokemon. On a less intrusive note, another change between the japanese and english printings of this card is the censorship. In the japanese version, the Grimer is looking up, giving the impression that it's looking up the girl's skirt. Since this is a fan translation of a japanese game, it naturally uses the japanese card effect and art. Had this game been officially released in America, the art likely would have been censored, though I'm unsure if they would have changed the effect of Poison Gas or swapped this Grimer out for another pokemon that can poison the player.

  

Note: Squirtle Deck Squirtle's first move is "Bite" and his second is "Skull Bash"

After taking out Goldeen, his Grimer paralyzed my Squirtle with Sticky Hands. 

  

Note: Wartortle's first move is Bubble which has a coin flip chance of paralysis and its second attack is Surf.

Thankfully, I was able to evolve my Squirtle to cure its paralysis and finish off Grimer with Bubble.

  

  

Gloom was next. It managed to poison Wartortle as well, so I played Switch to switch Wartortle out with Charmander who would have a much bigger advantage thanks to the doubled power of Ember.

  

His Rattata was also just a single Ember away, so out came the fire!

Since Aaron had no pokemon on his bench, I won without needing to collect my last prize card!

 

To my surprise, this one rewarded me with a Premier booster pack with some pretty great cards!

Spoiler

   

  

Japanese-only cards:

Ivysaur is from the Bulbasaur deck. Its first move, leech seed, heals one damage counter if it damages the opponent at all. The second move is Vine Whip.

Bulbasaur is also from the Bulbasaur Deck. Its moves are Tackle and Razor Leaf respectively.

After getting a Prof. Oak from this pack, I just knew I had to keep pressing on to see what other prizes I could get!

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As said by Aaron, Step 3 is all about Pokemon Powers and basic strategies surrounding them. And Aaron chooses to do this with the most toxic and annoying strategy in the entire game.

  

The moment anyone who's played the first game knows exactly what's coming the moment they see this stupid Chansey. This battle was going to take a while. While Magikarp is chipping away at Chansey's health, Chansey is building up energy for Double-Edge. Behind the scenes, Aaron is setting up an Abra on the bench and once he gets two energies on Chansey, he'll start using Scrunch every turn, giving my moves a chance of doing absolutely nothing against it. And once is Abra is a Kadabra, out comes the card we all saw coming.

With this Alakazam's Damage Swap ability, he can now freely lift all damage counters from Chansey and redistribute them among his benched pokemon, including, you guessed it, another Chansey. The whole purpose to this strategy is to stall you out until you draw out of all your cards. It's dumb, obnoxious, and completely toxic. Thankfully, he isn't totally toxic in his approach because he does make a genuine effort to attack. Normally using this strategy it would be more effective to just have Chansey soak up damage and disrupt your opponent's strategies with trainer cards. But, thanks to Double-Edge, he's dealing lots of damage to himself which quickly builds up even with Damage Swap. 

If only we had a way to take advantage of the fact that this pokemon deals massive damage to itself at the end of its turn and leaves itself open to a powerful attack during my turn since it didn't go for Scrunch!

Well, it just so happens that you're given just the tools to do that.

  

With Blastoise's Rain Dance Pokemon Power, I can give as many water energies as I want on water pokemon which works especially well with the Prof. Oak card I drew into. I can dump all of the water energies that fill my hand and draw seven more cards to boot! This was my favorite strategy to use in the previous game and it's just as satisfying here! With a 60 power Hydro Pump, I was able to tear into Chansey and take it out.

  

Note: Jynx's first attack is Pound and its second is Double Slap which deals 20 times the number of heads in two coin flips.

His Jynx could take a Hydro Pump and be saved by Damage Swap, but that obviously wouldn't last long and with its low energy count, all it could really do was use pound to chip away at Blastoise.

  

Haunter was next and it has a pokemon power that lets it avoid damage on a coin flip. Thankfully, I got a good flip and took it out in one turn.

For some reason, at this point he played Scoop Up on his Alakazam instead of his second Chansey. The typical strategy with this move is to Scoop Up Chansey and play it to the bench again with a free heal. But since he scooped up his Alakazam, Alakazam and Kadabra got discarded leaving him only with an Abra.

  

And it's thanks to that misplay with Abra that he was stuck with no final defense against Blastoise after his Haunter got shot down.

This led to me collecting my final prize card and winning the duel!

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My prize this time was a Legends booster pack!

Spoiler

   

  

Japanese-only Cards

Magmar is from the Squirtle Deck. Its first move is Fire Punch and the second is Smog with a coin flip chance of poisoning the opponent.

Cubone actually is the the first of a unique set of japanese-exclusive cards. He comes from a series available through special vending machines in Japan. His attack, Bone Toss, has an interesting effect. You toss a coin and if heads, you deal 30 damage to the opponent. If tails, it deals 10 damage to one of your opponent's benched pokemon instead.

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Since there was a table labeled "four," I assumed there would be a Step 4 that unlocked the same way as the other two, but apparently it's not available at the moment. I'm unclear on whether or not this is a mistake on my part or if this step simply isn't available yet. It's possible it could not be available because it utilizes mechanics that have yet to be introduced? I'm not sure what kinds of new additions the Team Rocket booster pack brings in, but I'll try coming back here later on to see if I can do step 4. Until then, it looks like I'm done with Mason's Lab!

[Aura]

As promised, we'll do a quick run through the Mini-Com to see what it has to offer. It's nothing too super exciting, just some simple quality of life improvements.

The most significant of these is the Deck Record Machine which has previously been described. It can now be accessed remotely without the need to visit Dr. Mason's lab.

The Mailbox allows you to remotely check your mail, but I don't have any yet to show much of this feature off. Don't worry, we'll get some soon!

Lastly we have the card catalogue where you can view all the cards you currently own.

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Now that we've gotten that out of the way, it's time to finally leave the lab and set out to explore the new world this game has in store for us! The game takes place on the same island as before. All of the clubs from the previous game are still around, but Team GR is up to no good in each of them. I wasn't sure what to expect going in, but I figured the Grass Club would be a good place to start since I started with a starter deck built around Charmander.

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On entering, we're met by Ronald. He reassures us that, indeed, everyone's cards have been stolen by Team GR! He also gives us a valuable tip that there's been a sighting in the Rock Club. We could head straight there, but I still want to check out the damage here.

 

Since he's low on cards himself, he suggested we use Card Pop! This was a feature in the previous game that seems to be a sort of predecessor to Mystery Gift in Gold and Silver. Two players with the game connect their systems and both players receive a random card. It's something I wasn't able to play around with before without a second game, so it's cool that there are NPC's in this game that will card pop with you!

I got Doduo! Sorry for the especially large image, Bulbapedia's image has a really ugly white border around this card for some reason.

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In the club lounge, we can see many of the club members from the first game who've had their cards stolen. Many of the players here still have some booster packs to share with you, though!

Heather here gave me a Lost Isle booster pack!

Spoiler

   

    

Japanese Only:

From the Vending Series 3 is Hypno! Hypno comes with an interesting Pokemon Power called Puppet Master which makes it so that it can attack from the bench if your active pokemon is a Clefairy Doll! Its attack is Mind Shock, which isn't affected by weakness or resistance.

 

Likewise, Kristin also gave me a legends pack: 

Spoiler

   

    

Japanese-only:

 

Brittany is once again hiding the Grass Master Nikki from us. You'll need to talk to Nikki in order to defeat GR No. 2 apparently, but she won't tell us where Nikki is until we beat her in a duel. Since I still just have my pathetic starter deck, I'm not super interested in tracking down this stuff at the moment. If I'm getting free card packs, I want to search around the clubs and gather as many free cards as I can before I do any dueling!

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It was at this point when I realized I suddenly had mail! As always, Dr. Mason's mail always comes with a free pack. In addition to him, you'll also get mail from Ronald giving you insider information on each of the GR member's decks. It's actually pretty cool of him to help you out like this after being such a dick in the last game. Anyway, the latter two of Dr. Mason's are the only ones that come with booster packs. The first one is just an introduction to the minicom mail system.

The first of these packs was a premier pack.

Spoiler

   

   

Japanese-only

 

 

The other pack was a Present pack which naturally came with an assortment of energies.

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Stepping into the play hall, we can see that, indeed, the entire area is vacant and the entrance has been tagged with the initials GR!

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As I said previously, I could head straight to the Rock Club and investigate the rumors of a Team GR sighting, but I want to collect any free cards I can find before making any advancements in story, so I decided to stop at the Water CLub next.

No one here has any cards to give me, but this old man is distressed over the Amy being imprisoned by Team GR!

 

Sure enough, entering the play area, we can see GR No. 3 holding the girls of the Water Club hostage! We'll need to free them, but I'm not so confident in our deck just yet. We'll definitely have to come back to save them soon!

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Next up is the club we're not allowed to talk about.

 

Here, there's a player willing to duel with you to help you get stronger, but perhaps more significantly in this senior offering a trade! Here you can trade his Lv. 60 Mewtwo for a Lv. 23 Hitmonlee.

 

Hitmonlee is from Vending Series 2. His first move is double kick which does 30 times the number of heads in two coin flips. His second move is Rolling Kick which comes with a coin flip chance of paralysis. I can't say this is too terrible of a trade! Energy Absorption is a pretty skill that can help Mewtwo quickly build up the energy needed for his attack. Just keep in mind he'll be taking a hit in the process.

I believe I've stressed this before in my blurb on the original game, but it's worth noting here. Don't over or underestimate a card just because of the source material it's based on. Many legendaries really aren't super great because their attacks require too much energy to really be viable. Often times, the better cards have good attacks with low energy requirements. This is the sort of thing you need to look out for.

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Of course, iniside the play area, we can see that the room is vacant once again and the GR logo has been tagged here, too.

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The Lightning Club

 

Here, you can find a girl looking for Voltorb Lv. 10 for... some reason. She's offering a PIkachu lv. 16.

 

Whether or not this trade is worth it I would say is up to you. Neither of these cards seem too impressive. PIkachu looks like a better standalone card, but I think both of these cards really would be used for evolution. So I suppose it depends on whether or not you want to use an Electrode or a Raichu more. Keep in mind though, that she's looking for four Voltorb and only offering one Pikachu. 

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The rest of the NPC's here mention that the club was taken over by GR No. 4. 

 

Entering the play area, we can see her. GR No. 4 will offer to challenge us only if we can defeat her two lackies. Once again, we'll be coming back to deal with this.

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Next up is the Psychic Club.

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You can't even enter the play area until you defeat GR No. 4. 

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In the lounge, you'll find that the members of this club almost seem to be in support of Team GR, with one member even accusing you of being a spy trying to gather information on them! Curious...

 

There is a student here who will offer to trade his Kangaskhan Lv. 38 for your Alakazam Lv. 42.

 

In the real world, this Kangaskhan Card is actually extremely rare and highly saught-after by collectors. It was only given out during a Parent/Child Tournament to parent and child teams who scored a certain number of wins during the event. Is it worth it here, though? Well, the Alakazam he's asking for is one with a really useful Pokemon Power. The Damage Swap that was responsible for that obnoxious Chansey/Scoop Up strategy from before. The Kangaskhan itself really isn't all that impressive in terms of viability. Its first move is Dizzy Punch which does 10 damage per heads in 2 coin flips. Its second attack is Mega Punch for a flat 30 damage. I think Alakazam is overall the much more useful card between these two. Unfortunately, despite the rarity of this Kangaskhan, I just don't think it's worth the trade in terms of gameplay. If this were the real world, though? You bet your ass I'd make this trade in a heartbeat!

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Next up: The Fire Club. 

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Once again, we have yet another trade offer. This time a Meowth Lv. 14 for a Flareon Lv. 28.

 

Meowth's first attack is Scratch and his second, Clear Profit, allows you to flip coins until you get Tails, then draw that many cards. Depending on your luck, this could help you gain a lot of card advantage. On the contrary, it could much more likely cause you to waste your turn. Once again, I'm not sure this is a card I'd use much in actual gameplay. I feel like I'd be much more likely to use a pokemon like Flareon.

  

It's here that we can also find the mysterious Imakuni? This quirky character was in the previous game and from what I understand, he was a part of some promotional campaign for the TCG in Japan which led to some honestly pretty hilarious cards based on him.

 

On speaking to him, he'll force you to Card Pop with him.

The result seems pretty scripted. I got the Imakuni? Trainer card. This card is completely useless as it only serves to confuse your pokemon. But the description is pretty funny. While this card was never officially printed in English, it did receive an english translation as it was in the original game. The description is translated as: "Your Active Pokémon is now Confused. Imakuni wants you to play him as a Basic Pokémon, but you can't. A mysterious creature not listed in the Pokédex. He asks kids around the world, "Who is cuter-Pikachu or me?""

After card popping with Imakuni, he leaves.

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Entering the play area of the Fire Club, you're met with the members of the club all locked up in a cage by GR No. 3 as well! In order to free them, well have to defeat GR No. 3, too!

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Here in the science club, it's immediately made apparent that Team GR has locked up all of the club's machines making science things impossible to happen! What's more, the Club Master Rick has been kidnapped by GR No. 2 as well! 

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Even the Pokemon Dome isn't safe! The Grand Masters have all been abducted by Team GR! Here we meet GR No. 5 who reveals to us that team GR's goal is to collect all the pokemon cards in the world! They'll keep the best cards for themselves and lock up the rest so no one else can have them!

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Naturally, with everyone's cards gone, the Challenge Hall isn't in operation at the moment. 

 

But, in the lounge, there is this boy offering his Wigglytuff Lv. 36 for yoru Graveler Lv. 29

 

I would say that this is actually a pretty decent strategy. Wigglytuff's Do the Wave can rack up some serious damage on the opponent. And Lullaby can help stall for time to set up if necessary. 80 HP isn't too shabby either. I do believe this is one of the more meta-defining cards of the time. I would say this actually is a very solid trade to go for!

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The last area is Ishihara's house. There doesn't seem to be much to do here. Ishihara is here expressing his concern over everyone's cards being stolen, but other than that the place seems mostly unchanged.

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There is a new area on the map: An Airport. You need 4 GR Coin Pieces to take the airship at the airport. I can only assume this leads to the endgame. We're probably not ready for such a responsibility in the first place, so back to the drawing board.

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Now finally, we can progress the story by heading into the Rock Club. We'll start by taking a peak in the lounge as usual.

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Here, there is a girl offering a Jigglypuff Lv. 12 for a Snorlax Lv. 20

 

Once again, this is a trade I really cannot recommend out side of collecting purposes. There's just better Jigglypuff out there. It certainly doesn't seem worth getting rid of your Snorlax over!

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Over in the play area is where the real action starts! We've arrived just in time to catch GR No. 1 Red-handed!

This badass, Gene, managed to turn a close battle against GR No. 1, successfully defeating him and defending his club! He seems to be the only one capable of doing so which seems to be quite an impressive feat! After GR No. 1 is forced to leave, the Club returns to normal.

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And with the Club back to normal, this means we can finally start dueling our way to the top in order to collect some more cards and strengthen our deck! I think I'll proceed form here tomorrow since this post has already gone on for quite a long time. It seems like at least this part of the game is just going to be a wild goose chase in following these GR members until we can beat them into submission, get the coin pieces, and head to their island for the final boss. With that in mind, there shouldn't be nearly as much in between important battles. I think it's pretty fair to split this into two chapters. There wasn't a whole lot of action, but I was able to get some battling done. Imgur is already accusing me of being a robot with all the screenshots I've uploaded, so let that speak for itself. 

[Aura]

 

As previously stated, today we're going to be dueling the members of the Rock Club in order to improve our starter deck.

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Starting out against Andrew's Stylish Fossil Deck, things got real annoying real fast. This deck seems all about stalling you out with moves that reduce the damage you deal which is perfect for countering all of your early-game options.

  

He led with Onix which was a major pain. Thankfully, I led with Spearow which resists Onix's Rock Throw, so it was impossible for him to deal any damage to me. This ultimately turned into a race where we both struggled to build up our back row. 

Eventually, he played Switch to send out his Snorlax which he'd attached two double colorless energies to and finally 

  

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Machop had an advantage over Snorlax in that Snorlax has a weakness to fighting, but machop really lacked in the strength to take full advantage of that weakness voer Snorlax's high HP. I was eventually able to take it out, but not before taking a massive hit to my HP.

  

His Onix of course came right back out and finished the job with Rock Throw.

Thankfully, I was prepared to deal with Harden this time. I played Charmander from my bench and immediately evolved it with the Charmeleon I'd been holding onto this whole time.

  

Between Slash and Ember, I was more than prepared to deal with Onix's harden. Harden only prevents damage if it deals 30 HP or less, it doesn't actually reduce the damage by 30. So if an attack deals more than 30 HP, he has to bear the full force of it all. Knowing this, Andrew instead opted to use Rock Throw to whittle away my HP.

 

I played a potion to heal the damage dealt in the two turns it took to take Onix out. While this may not be the most strategic application of this card, it was still fun.

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Next came Rhydon. His first move, Mountain Break, requires you to discard the top five cards of your deck on use, but adds any fighting energies among them to your hand. His second move, One-Two Strike, deals 30 damage plus a coin flip chance of an additional 20 damage.

Obviously, Charmeleon wasn't going to last in this matchup, so I just attached a PlusPower and went for Flamethrower to burn off 60 HP.

  

Base set Ponyta is certainly a force to be reckoned with. Two energies really isn't much of a cost for a 30 damage attack on a base pokemon. Especially for early game. Thanks to Flame Tail, i was able to finish off Rhydon no problem. Now we were down to one prize card each.

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Out came another Snorlax and this is where things got ugly. Since he only had one prize card remaining, I couldn't allow any of my pokemon to go down, so I paid the retreaat cost to swtich into Magmar and used Fire Punch to deal 20 damage. Due to Body Slam, I was once again put into death range.

 

I dumped as many cards from my hand as I could before playing Professor Oak to discard the remaining cards in my hand and draw seven more. From there, I was able to evolve my Machop into Machoke. 

  

The obvious downside to switching into Machoke from here is that he didn't have the energy to attack the first turn, so he had to bear a hit. In addition, Karate Chop gets weaker the more damage counters you have. Once he's below 30 HP, it doesn't deal any damage at all. To make matters worse, Snorlax's Body Slam has a coin flip chance of paralysis which he got off, preventing me from attacking the next turn either.

At this point, I had no choice but to go for Submission, which deals 20 damage to myself. In other words, it would knock both of our pokemon out and we  would both collect our last prize cards. I've never had a draw before so I had no idea how such an event would be ruled. But it looked like this was the best case scenario as Charmeleon wouldn't have been able to win the battle with the hand I had.

 

Apparently, when you tie, at least in this game, you have a Sudden Death duel with one prize card.

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Once again, I was able to lead with my Spearow, but Rhyhorn's Leer very quickly got annoying.

  

He evolved Rhyhorn into Rhydon, making my task a lot more difficult. And that Ram attack was terrifying. I thought I'd lost this duel here.

 

  

Thankfully, instead of goign for Ram, he went for Horn Attack, so I was able to switch into a Charmeleon and hit him with a Slash before playing my Switch and changing into Meowth to protect it from being taken out. Meowth was able to finish the fight with a simple Bite and win the game for me thanks to the recoil damage from Ram, winning the Sudden Death and by extension, the duel!

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Spoiler

   

   

Japanese-only:

Venonat is from the Vending Series 3. His first attack, Disable, offers a coin flip chance to striking one of your opponent's attacks for the next turn so that they can't use it.

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Next up is Ryan and his Important Truth Deck.

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Ryan has a really annoying deck. It's also built around stalling, but Cubone is much more effective at it. Snivel is much more consistent for early game stalling than anything Andrew had to offer. It perfectly blocked out Magmar's damage and unlike Onix's Harden, it actually reduces damage from any stronger attacks. What's more, Rage will allow it some powerful counter attacks as its damage counters grow.

After a Fire Punch, it eventually started using Rage to take advantage of the damage counters it had accumulated. In the background, though, I'd been building up a Machop on my bench.

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His Diglett came next to finish off Magmar. I immediately evolved my Machoke and was set up for a fairly clean sweep. Obviously, one Karate Chop was all it took to take this guy out.

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Next was yet another Diglett. This one had two fighting energies allowing it to use Mud Slap and chip off some of the damage from Karate Chop.

Thankfully, I had a PlusPower waiting in my hand to increase Karate Chop's power exactly by ten which was the perfect amount to finish off another Diglett for free.

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Sandshrew was his last hope. With Sand-Attack, he could theoretically stall out with lucky coin flips stopping my attacks. All it took, though, was landing a single Submission which I eventually did get off, finishing off his last pokemon and earning my last prize card!

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The prize for defeating Ryan was a Legends pack.

Spoiler

   

  

Japan-Only:

Marrowak is actually a card made exclusively for the GB. It has an effect that is impossible to play in the physical card game that involves randomness. There is a scan of the card in an official japanese card listing, though, so here it is. Its first attack is Bone Attack which has a coin flip chance of stopping the opponent from attacking. The second attack is Wail, which causes each player to fill their bench with as many basic pokemon as possible chosen at random from their deck. I'm not sure why the bothered with this RNG aspect, though. This card very easily could have been adapted to the physical card game just by picking up cards from the top of the deck until you find the basic pokemon instead.

Magnemite (listed as Lv. 15 on the scan, but Lv. 14 in the game); is another GB-exclusive card. Its first attack is tackle and its second is Magnetic Storm which removes all of the energies from your pokemon and randomly redistributes them.

=============================

The final club member was Matthew and his Rolling Stone deck which relies on luck not for defense, but for a threatening offense.

------------------------------

  

Matthew opened up with a Diglett which, between Dig and Mud Slap, was able to finish me off before I was able to get much damage off, forcing my hand into sending out my benched charmander.

  

Thanks to an Ember, I was able to make quick work of Diglett, but it left me in a very vulnerable position.

  

It seems he was caught a bit off guard by having his Ponyta drawn out early as it wasn't prepared to attack yet.

I used an energy retrieval to get my hands on some more energies for Charmander and with that, I was able to Ember off Ponyta.

  

Up next was his Geodude, from Vending Series 3. Its first move is tackle and its second is Harden which works identically to Onix's. This is basically an inferior Base Set Onix with the capability of evolving into Graveler. 

  

And this is where the luck factor becomes apparent. While the others were more about using luck to stall, Graveler uses luck to potentially deal massive amounts of damage. Graveler is from Vending series 2. Its first attack is Stone Barrage which requires you to flip coins until you get a tails, then it deals 20 damage times the number of heads. His second move, Earthquake, deals 50 damage at the cost of dealing 10 to each of your own benched pokemon.  After this evolution, he couldn't attack, though. From there, he had really bad luck with coin flips and ended up getting multiple tails in a row, meaning he just couldn't get any damage piled up with Stone Barrage and I eventually got him into range to take out with Ember.

-------------------------------

  

Up next was another Geodude which was able to take out Charmander with tackle.

  

It sure was convenient that this entire time I'd been building up another charmander on my bench and prepping it for evolution. I evolved my next Charmander and took out Geodude with Slash.

-------------------------------------

 

With my Premier pack, I accidentally forgot to take a screenshot of the second page of cards so I don't remember exactly what I got, but I think at this point it's kind of redundant to keep posting images of a bunch of cards I already have anyway. I'll just focus on significant ones. Namely: The level 20 Snorlax that I pulled!

=======================

 

Rock Club Master Gene and his Rocky Summit deck is the final opponent to face here. 

  

I led with Spearow against his Rhyhorn. Thanks to my resistance, I'd be able to stall for a long time, but that seems to be his plan, too, going for Leer every turn.

  

He eventually used Switch to send out his Onix as soon as it was ready. Onix is from Vending Series 2. Its first attack, Bind, has a coin flip chance of paralyzing the opponent. His second is Rock Seal which has a coin flip chance of making retreat impossible for the defending pokemon on the next turn. It didn't take long to finish off Spearow.

  

Thanks to the Charmeleon I had been building up, I could easily use Flamethrower to burn through the remainder of his HP.

------------------------------------------

  

Up next was a Graveler he'd previously evolved. With 60 HP it took just two Slashes to finish it off. Thanks to his bad luck with Stone Barrage, I was able to avoid damage, but he did play a Potion to heal off some of the damage, forcing me into using Flamethrower to finish it.

--------------------------------------

  

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get an attack off with Charmeleon before it went down. I instead spent my time building up a Charmeleon in the background.

  

Charmeleon was of course able to take out Onix using a combination of Slash and Flamethrower.

  

Up next was another Graveler. After using a potion to heal off my damage just in case he got a lucky break with several heads in a row, I was able to take Graveler out with two Slashes.

  

Next up was Marowak. which I could finish off with a Slash and Flamethrower, earning my final prize card!

-----------------------------------------

 

 

My reward for defeating the Rock Club Master once again was the very deck he used to defeat GR No. 1 and the Fighting Coin!

=======================

GR No. 1 K.O. Deck:

This deck is presumably designed to counteract GR No. 1's strategy. It's built around a mixture of fighting and grass pokemon. This is more than just a deck list like I initially expected, he actually gives you the cards necessary to fill out the deck, too!

Spoiler

Grass Pokemon:

4x Caterpie Lv. 13

2x Metapod Lv. 21

3x Nidoran M Lv. 20

1x Nidorino Lv. 25

2x Tangela Lv. 8

   

--------------------------------------

Fighting Pokemon:

3x Diglett Lv. 8

4x Geodude Lv. 15

2x Graveler Lv. 29

2x Onix Lv. 12

3x Rhyhorn Lv. 18

   

----------------------------------------

Trainer Cards:

2x Energy Search

1x Professor Oak

1x Gust of Wind

2x Switch

1x Pokedex

   

---------------------------------

Energy Cards:

12x Grass Energy

15x Fighting Energy

 

 

This deck helps us in a lot of ways. Not only does it give us a large boost of cards and what I assume to be a decent deck to make quick work of GR No. 1, it also helps pad out our need for more generic cards. Especially the stapes of Energy Search and Professor Oak. Beyond that, it also gives us an abundance of Grass and Fighting Energy! I have a lot of good grass cards so I just might be able to make a decent grass deck of my own now! I'm tempted to modify this deck to make it better in general, but I'm going to assume that its balance is specifically catered to GR No. 1 so I might give it a try as-is. Armed with this new deck, I think it's time we head out and start fighting back against Team GR!

[Aura]

 

Vs. GR No. 1

After being defeated by Gene, it seems GR No. 1 retreated to the Fighting Club he'd previously conquered. He addressed the fact that I'd defeated Gene which has me implies to me he'll only duel you once you have done so. He'll challenge you to a 6 prize card duel. As I said in the last post, I'll be giving the GR No. 1 KO deck that was already tailor made for this battle a spin.

  

Poliwag is from Vending Series 1. Its attack, bubble has the usual coin flip chance of paralysis. GR No. 1 moved first but didn't have any energy for Poliwag to attack, so with a lucky coin flip, my Nidoran was able to take it out in one hit thanks to its weakness to grass. I can just hear the stadium announcer loudly exclaiming that I took it out on the word "go".

-----------------------------------

  

Up next was Electrode. Chain Lightning can actually be a bit intimidating if you weren't expecting it. But since Electrode came out early game, I didn't have to worry about getting caught with my foot in my mouth having a bunch of geodude on the bench just soaking up damage. I unfortunately failed the coin flip for Horn Hazard, so I wasn't able to get any chip damage before Nidoran got taken out.

  

Out came Geodude to match his energy. Since I didn't get the Horn Hazard off, I couldn't go for the safe option of hardening until next turn so I instead just had to go for tackle to put him into kill range for my next attack.

It was here where he played his Magnemite to the bench. Magnemite has a Pokemon Power, Magnet, that gives you a coin-flip chance once per turn to add a Magnemite from your deck to your bench. His attack is Superconductivity which places a damage counter on one of your opponent's pokemon while ignoring weakness or resistance, including the ones on the bench. This is a key player in his deck's major strategy.

  

The next turn, I evolved Graveler and Rock Throw was more than enough to finish off Electrode and leave him in a really awkward spot.

----------------------------

  

Kangaskhan's first attack is Bite and his second, Tail Drop is way too inconsistent to make this card worth while. It deals a massive amount of damage, but you have to flip two coins and both have to be heads for the attack to land. 75% of the time it'll be a waste of a turn. That's not to mention the amount of energy it requires to even use. Needless to say, it was able to get a bite off before getting completely destroyed with Rock Throw.

------------------------------------------

  

Next up was one of the biggest "threats" his deck had to offer: Team Rocket Magnemite. He didn't really get the chance to get set up, but it seems clear that his goal is to stack up a whole bunch of Magnemite with Vending Magnemite's Magnet ability, then use Magnetism to deal a large amount of damage. However, since I got the upper hand too soon, he wasn't able to get any energies on this thing and it went down as soon as it came out.

-------------------------------------------

  

Poliwag could take a hit, but also didn't have any energy to attack with.

------------------------------------------

  

Next came his next Kangaskhan. Graveler was only one bite away from being knocked out, so I unfortunately had to let him go.

  

Next up I actually mistakenly assumed I had a fighting energy in my hand, so I sent out Geodude with the intention of evolving him right away. Unfortunately, I found I didn't have the energy I needed to I had to improvise and used harden to protect myself from bite. Even after he started using Tail Slam, he couldn't land a hit because of the ridiculous coin flip requirement.

  

Eventually, I got a fighting energy and was able to finish the job with a Rock Throw.

-------------------------------------------

 

And with that, I collected my last prize card and defeated GR No. 1!

========================

GR No. 1 was surprisingly complicit with his loss. He gave me not one, but two booster packs!

The first pack was my first ever Rocket booster pack!

Spoiler

   

   

Japanese-Only

(I've decided to treat Team Rocket Grimer as a japanese-only card due to the differing effect of his first attack, Poison Gas. Reminder that in Japan, Poison Gas, as its name implies, poisons the opponent. This is the effect used in this game. In the english printing of the card, Poison Gas puts the opponent to sleep strangely enough. Its second attack, Sticky Hands, is unchanged, though. The attack has a coin flip chance of dealing an additional 20 damage on top of paralyzing the opponent. I'm really not sure why they changed this card as the ability to poison the opponent and then stall them out with Sticky Hands while the poison damage builds up. Without poison, this card seems kind of pointless in the english release.

None of these cards seemed particularly useful to me. Even Dark Rapidash didn't seem worthwhile because its attacks were pretty much identical to the Ponyta already in my starter deck. The only addition is that Flame Pillar can add a damage counter to a single pokemon on the bench in addition to the damage it deals to the opponent, but that just doesn't seem worth it to cram an entire card into the deck over unless the deck is specifically designed to counter a strategy like Damage Swap Alakazam.

---------------------------------

The other pack I got was a standard Premier pack.

Spoiler

    

   

 

---------------------------------

 

He also gave me my first GR Coin piece before telling me that the Fighting Club Master, Mitch, was being held at GR Island. If I want to rescue him, I'll have to collect the rest of the coin pieces and head over to GR Island myself. This GR Island is feeling a lot less like a single area just for the final boss and a lot more like a second part of the game. I'm interested to see what the island is going to be like!

===================

 

Before I did anything else, I decided to take a look into Dr. Mason's deck diagnosis. This is a tool that's supposed to help give advice on deck building. I don't think it's super important because I feel like I've developed a pretty solid understanding of what makes a good deck from my playthrough of the first game, but I decided I'd check out the advice he has to offer anyway and get my starter deck checked for consitency.

As expected, Dr. Mason criticized my deck for having "too many energy cards" but this is a judgment I disagree with, especially for a deck built around Charmeleon's Flamethrower. You want to be able to consistently get ahold of your energies. You don't want to have too few basic pokemon, but with these numbers I'm pretty consistently drawing into them, especially whenever I use cards like Professor Oak or Pokedex to seek them out. I think the biggest issue I have with this tool is that it seems to only check numbers but not the actual content of your deck. It assumes you're trying to find everything you're looking for just by randomly drawing into it rather than the trainer cards you might be using to search them out. I tend to have a preference for trainer cards that effectively thin out your deck and allow an easy gain in card advantage. It may seem bad on the surface to draw too many cards too quickly because you do lose if you run out of cards in your deck, but with a solid strategy this should never be an issue.

=================

In order to prove my point, I went across the room to battle Michael here. 

 

And... that proved to be extremely unfortunate for him. his only lead was a Rattata, mine was Machop. With no benched pokemon to fall back on, his Hang in There! deck didn't have much to hang onto in the first place.

 

My prize was another Premier deck which proved well worth my time.

Spoiler

   

   

Japanese-only

This Rapidash will definitely make a great addition to the roster. While its moveset doesn't look that much more impressive than Ponyta's, Agility deals a respectable amount of damage and can also evade a counterattack! This is not only a great stall card but it does more than just waste time. 

[Aura]

 

If you remember before, Brittany from the Grass Club told us to battle her if we wanted to talk to Nikki about defeating GR No. 2. Now that we've got a good deck going, let's come see what info she has for us.

-----------------------------------

  

It didn't take long for her Tangela to take out my lead Spearow, but that's fine because my real focus was the Charmander I'd set on my bench.

  

Of course, I evolved Charmander as soon as it was sent out and took out Tangela with Slash.

---------------------------------

  

Her Nidoran was next. It didn't have a weakness to fire, so it would take a Flamethrower to finish it in one hit. That's fine because I had Fire energies to spare.

-------------------------------

  

Next up came her Ivysaur which, thanks to its weakness, could also be taken out with a single Flamethrower.

--------------------------------

  

Next came her Venonat which used Disable to stop me from using Slash. That was fine because I still had enough Fire to finish it off with Flamethrower, earning my last prize card.

-----------------------------

 

For defeating Brittany, I earned not one, but two Premier Booster Packs!

Spoiler

    

   

Japanese-Only

 

 

Spoiler

   

    

 

--------------------------------------

 

After giving us the packs, Brittany tells us that Nikki is once again at Ishihara's house. So, off we go!

====================

  

It turns out, we don't even have to duel Nikki! She just gives us the GR No.2 Defeat Deck and Grass Coin for free.

-------------------------------

Spoiler

Grass Pokemon (14):

4x Bulbasaur Deck Bulbasaur

2x Bulbasaur Deck Ivysaur

2x Base Set Weedle

1x Base Set Kakuna

3x Jungle Paras

2x Jungle Parasect

   

 

-----------------------------------

Water Pokemon (9):

2x Base Set Seel

3x Jungle Goldeen

2x Jungle Seaking

2x Base Set Magikarp

   

-----------------------------

Colorless (3):

3x Base Set Doduo

---------------------------------

Trainer (8):

1x Energy Removal

2x Energy Search

1x Professor Oak

1x Defender

2x PlusPower

   

 

---------------------------

Energy (26):

15x Grass Energy

11x Water Energy

 

As I hope you can quite obviously see... this deck is kind of hot garbage. The only remotely decent pokemon here are Bulbasaur and Ivysaur. Aside from Ivysaur and Seaking, Nothing else is capable of dealing more than 20 base damage and there is absolutely no strategy that links these cards together. I guess the idea is to use Defenders to keep your pokemon alive and Plus Powers to boost your damage, but you could alternatively... I don't know... use better cards? I mean, two Magikarp and not even a single Gyarados to even try to justify that? WHY?? This deck isn't totally unsalvageable, but it would need some pretty significant cuts. Really, the only thing I appreciate this deck for is the abundance of energies as well as the extra Professor Oak and Bill it splashed in. Yeah, this is a deck to cannibalize for its better pieces and throw out the rest, honestly.

Still, out of respect for Nikki, I'll be using this deck as-is to duel GR No. 1. At least for now, I'll try to use the GR counter decks as they're built without any modifications during their bossfights until that starts to prove unrealistic. Though I don't think it would be disrespectful to improve the deck by splashing in your own cards, I'm seeing a trend that these decks are basically going to be completely changed in the process. Still, I'll at least give each boss fight an honest attempt before I make any adjustments or just downright built my own deck. I'll take this as a sort of self challenge.

======================

 

With Nikki's deck in our hands, it's time to head back to the Grass Club and take down GR No. 2!

------------------------

  

I led with Goldeen against his Geodude. I was able to make some decent headway since we were both only dealing 10 HP each turn.

During this battle, GR No. 1 evolved the Diglett on his bench into Dark Dugtrio. Dark Dugtrio's Sinkhole power has a chance to damage any pokemon that retreats. Keep in mind that Pokemon Power can still be used even if the pokemon is on the bench. For this reason, I'll need to refrain from switching out if I can. That's asking quite a bit with this deck.

  

I sent out a second Goldeen after the first one was taken out. With a Plus Power, I was able to finish off Geodude with Horn Attack.

------------------------------------

  

His Dark Dugtrio came out next and hit me with a Knock Down. Needing to keep my Goldeen alive, I decided to let it evolve. Now it should be able to take at least one 40 HP hit if he happens to get the additional damage off.

  

He was unable to get the extra damage on either of his next hits, so Seaking managed to last an extra two turns to finish it off.

----------------------------

  

Of course, with only 10 HP remaining, his Paras was easily able to finish Seaking off, dragging out my own Paras. Since I had the upper hand, it was just a matter of Slashing away at it until it went down.

-------------------------------

  

Ekans was of course able to do the remaining 20 HP necessary to finish off Paras, so out came Bulbasaur who, thanks to Razor Leaf, was able to finish the job against Ekans.

-------------------------------

  

Unfortunately, Onix was able to take me out with Rock Seal before I could exploit its weakness with Bulbasaur.

  

But even with Bulbasaur, it was going to take two hits to finish it off anyway, so out came Paras to do the deed. A couple of scratches was all it took to finish Onix off thanks to its weakness to grass-types.

----------------------------------

  

I managed to draw into my Parasect, so now Slash could make quick work of Ekans. In hindsight, I probably should have let Paras take at least one hit before evolving, just in case he managed to poison or paralyze me with his moves. Thankfully, he kept getting bad coin flips for Spit Poison and went down to a second Slash.

  

His Sandshrew tried to stand its ground with Sand-Attack, but it was no help for him!

------------------------------------------

And with that KO, I collected my last prize card, defeating GR No. 2!

 

Once again, my prize for winning was two packs: a Rocket Booster Pack and, this time, a Legends pack!

Rocket Pack:

Spoiler

   

   

 

Legends Pack:

Spoiler

   

   

Japanese-only

 

--------------------------------------

 

Of course, we also got another GR Coin Piece! We now have two of the four!

========================

Now then, before we leave the room, we need to make sure to change our deck. I didn't see what was about to happen coming and ended up having to redo the GR duel. You want to be prepared with a deck that's not absolute garbage.

With the cards I currently owned, it seemed my best bet was to go for a Grass and Water deck to cover for Grass' weakness to Fire. Thanks to the KO Decks, I do have a much more consistent source of staple cards, allowing for me to build a surprisingly good deck for this early on. It's gonna be fun to be able to use some of the better cards I've had my eyes set on this whole time. I named this new deck the Rainforest Deck.

Spoiler

Grass Pokemon (13):

4x Bulbasaur Deck Bulbasaur

4x Bulbasaur Deck Ivysaur

1x Base Set Venusaur

3x Base Set Nidoran M

1x Base Set Nidorino

    

------------------------------------

Water Pokemon (8)

3x Squirtle (1x Base Set, 2x Squirtle Deck)

1x Dark Wartortle

3x Jungle Goldeen

1x Jungle Seaking

   

---------------------------

Trainer Cards (15)

4x Energy Search

4x Professor Oak

2x Pokemon Trader

1x Pokemon Breeder

4x Bill

   

----------------------------

Energy (24)

12x Grass Energy

12x Water Energy

 

Like I said, heavy adjustments were necessary to the GR No. 2 Defeat Deck. I gutted most of the deck's padding with cards that would actually prove useful. I added in some more Bulbasaur and Ivysaur so that I can get them more consistently. I also threw in my Base Set Venusaur.

Venusaur's Energy Trans isn't quite as powerful as Blastoise's Rain Dance, but it can help reuse a small collection of leaf energy for an extended period of time and avoid the energies ever being discarded as long as you're not caught off guard. Ideally, you'll have Venusaur resting on the bench and transferring the leaf energies around between your other pokemon. But once he's drawn out, he can pull the leaf energies off the benched pokemon and tear through your opponent's defenses with Solar Beam. It may not be as scary as Blastoise suddenly dropping a full hand of Water Energy with Rain Dance, but it's still a powerful ability regardless. And Venusaur's Solar Beam is more powerful than Blastoise's Hydro Pump can ever possibly be to boot.

Ideally, I would have more than one Venusaur so I can draw into him more consistently. But I do have Pokemon Trader to help with those consistency issues.

In addition, Pokemon Breeder will allow me to evolve a Bulbasaur straight into Venusaur if necessary.

  

These are three cards I like to run four of in every deck. They all basically serve the same purpose: Trade one card to either break even or plus with new cards. All of these cards can extend your turn and imrpove your options and even if they don't get you the card you're looking for, they'll help thin out your deck making those cards easier to find. Energy Search is great for decks with multiple types because you can use it to search out a particular type of energy if you have a lot of the wrong type in your hand. When you draw one of these, you're basically drawing an energy of whatever type you want. It's very rare you'll find a deck where this isn't useful. Likewise, Bill is just a straight +1 and Professor Oak can help you get rid of a dead-end hand and get a completely new hand that could be a total game changer. Depending on how optimal your hand is when you play this card, you could get as much as a +6 out of it! Just be careful not to discard any important cards when you play it. If you consistently find yourself getting stuck with important cards in your hand but no way to play them, you may want to consider rebalancing your deck to focus on what's important.

Now, this deck isn't totally ideal. Ideally, I'd be running another grass-type that's weak to fire in the place of Nidoran who is weak to Psychic which my deck has no cover for. In addition, I know from experience that there are much more powerful water-types out there. I would love to get my hands on a Dewgong or a better Wartortle. Until then, though, I'm stuck with what I have. Seaking isn't terrible and Dark Wartortle's Mirror Shell can be pretty devastating if I pull it out at the right time. Also, since Venusaur is my only second stage evolution, and I have so many Ivysaur, Pokemon Breeder isn't really all that useful. Ideally, I'll either replace it with more Pokemon Traders or I'll have at least one other second stage evolution that can take advantage of it. Since Ivysaur is pretty good on its own, I think the former is the better of the two options, but if I find a card I really want to throw in, then I might give the later idea a try and weed out some Ivysaur to make room for more strong Grass-type final stages.

=====================

Anyway, why did I make such a big deal about preparing a decent deck? 

  

You probably guessed it by now, but the moment you walk out of the play hall, just like in the previous game, you get immediately challenged by Ronald with no chance to prepare your deck. And if you're using your starter or the GR No. 2 deck with no modifications, you're just gonna get crapped on here because his deck is full of decently powerful water-type pokemon that will destroy your fire-types. You don't actually have to win, but if you do win, you'll earn a rare promotional card. So losing isn't an option if you want that card!

  

This Lapras is from Vending Set 2. Its first attack is Sing. It's a pretty useless move with a coin flip chance of putting your opponent to sleep. This doesn't sound too bad until you realize that, when asleep, the opponent gets a coin flip chance to wake up in between each turn. In other words, just to stop them from attacking once you'll have to get lucky with two coin flips in a row. The odds of sleep being any more effective than Paralysis are abysmal. And there are attacks out there that deal damage and have a coin-flip chance of paralysis. Its second move is Surf.

After a bit of a back and forth, Lapras was able to take out my Squirtle with a couple of Surfs.

  

Taking up Squirtle's spot was Bulbasaur who I'd been building up and preparing to evolve into an Ivysaur I was holding onto. I decided to go ahead and go for Razor Leaf to take out Lapras.

----------------------------------------

  

Up next came the infamous Haymaker Hitmonchan which is one of the top meta cards in the game due to its high HP and the strength of Jab. It has one solid counter in a certain Scyther card that unfortunately I lack at the moment. Still, I happened to draw into a secret weapon...

Using Pokemon Breeder, I was able to evolve my Bulbasaur directly into Venusaur!

  

And now it was time to bring the pain! Two Solar Beams was all it took to take out Hitmonchan.

-----------------------------------

  

Tentacool didn't last long at all.

---------------------------------

  

Chansey tried to protect itself with Scrunch but failed to do so.

--------------------------------------

  

Shellder never stood a chance.

---------------------------------------

  

And his last pokemon, Tentacool, went down just as easily as the last. This may seem like incredible luck that I was able to get Venusaur so easily, but that's just the power of drawing through half my deck with Bill and Professor Oak!

--------------------------------------

 

After collecting my last prize card and defeating his last pokemon, I won the duel!

My prize was the special card Super Energy Retrieval! This card has a pretty high cost, requiring you to discard two other cards in your hand, but ultimately gives you a plus by adding four energy cards to your hand. I'm not really sure how terribly useful such a card would be. I think if any deck would be able to take full advantage of a card like this, it'd need to be something like a Rain Dance deck. Still, I think the cost is just a bit too high for something as simple as retrieving energies from the discard pile. Because you'll need to have four energies in the discard pile in the first place which really doesn't happen all that much in my experience. I think in most cases that I would draw this, I'd probably rather just draw an energy search or an energy itself. Especially considering you can only play one per turn anyway. It could also find use in this Rainforest deck, though as a sort of backup in case something unexpected takes out all the energies I've been relying so much on. I'll keep the card in mind and might splash it in if I'm not starved for space in my deck. We'll just have to see.

[Aura]

Next up it's time to deal with GR No. 3 in the water club!

----------------------------

 

Before we get in there and fight, though, we should take a moment to duel with Joshua here in the lounge.

  

Squirtle was able to take out Krabby whie it continuously used Call for Family to get more Krabby on his bench.

During this round, I evolved a Bulbasaur on my bench all the way up to Venusaur.

Vensaur's Energy Trans lets you freely relocate leaf energies across your team. This is fantastic because, as previously mentioned, you can reuse the same energies across several different pokemon. This can be used to fill out a newly placed pokemon in one turn without having to go through the hassle of placing one energy per turn. In this case, I was able to place a second Bulbasaur and move leaf energies from Squirtle and Seaking to it so that it could already use its base attack. And, if necessary, I could always send Venusaur out and bring in all of the leaf energies from the other pokemon and pull out a Solar Beam. A useful pokemon power like this is what a good deck should be built around!

-----------------------------------

  

Up next was a Magikarp that, needless to say, went down pretty easily.

--------------------------------

  

Next was a Krabby that was able to deal the finishing blow.

---------------------------------

  

Next came Ivysaur who was able to finish the fight with Krabby while using Leech Life and healing off some of the damage he'd taken.

---------------------------------------

  

Next came yet another Krabby who took a Vine Whip but, seeing as I only had one prize card, took the opportunity to retreat.

  

He next sent out Seel which also took a Vine Whip before retreating.

   

He probably thought he could get away with getting the upper hand on Ivysaur since Ivysaur only had 20 HP left, but of course with Leech Seed I was able to heal some damage counters off while simultaneously putting his last Seel in kill range of Razor Leaf.

--------------------------------------

 

The prize was once again two Premier packs!

Spoiler

   

   

Japanese-only

 

 

Spoiler

   

   

Japanese-only:

 

Now then, before we go and challenge GR No. 3, it's important to note that we never actually got a KO deck for him, so we're gonna have to do the research ourself in order to be prepared.

Thankfully, Ronald sent us an email a while back explaining that his deck focuses on Grass and Fire Pokemon. Going into this battle with my Rainforest deck would be a terrible idea. With this in mind, the best counter here would be a Water and Fire deck!

  

So, I pulled my cards together and got to work on the new Lakefire deck. This is basically a modified version of my starter deck that replaces the fighting pokemon with water pokemon instead. (side note, this is actually the first time I found out you can press start to list only the cards in the deck. Up until now I had no idea you could do this. This should make listing deck profiles a lot easier.)

Spoiler

Fire pokemon (16)

   

 

Water pokemon (6)

 

Trainer Cards (16)

    

 

Energy (22)

 

There's not much to say about this deck. I'm still starving a bit for water pokemon so I decided to build my deck with more of a lean toward Fire pokemon. I figured Dark Wartortle didn't really have the damage output I wanted from a water-type, so I decided to drop it and Squirtle in favor of Goldeen and Seaking. Again, these aren't the ideal water-types, but they're better than anything else I have. I do have a Gyarados, but I'm missing other key players for a water-focused deck and Gyarados needs a lot of focus with some really expensive water-based attacks. He works well with Rain Dance, which I currently don't have access to. I did decide to give Super Energy Retrieval a shot in this deck, though!

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Vs. GR No. 3

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I got a pretty poor start with my selection of lead pokemon, but thankfully Goldeen had an advantage over his lead Magmar.

  

Thankfully, I was able to get my hands on a Seaking the next turn and evolved Goldeen right away. With a Waterfall, I finished off Magmar.

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Next up came a surprise: Moltres! The legendary birds don't share the standard elemental weaknesses of their types and due to being flying pokemon, they resist fighting attacks to boot. This Moltres is from Vending Series 2. Its first move, Dry up, was actually pretty intimidating for me. After using the attack, you can choose one opposing pokemon and flip a coin until you get tails, then you can remove as many water energies from that pokemon as heads you flipped. Thankfully, I managed to catch him with his foot in his mouth because he only seemed to have a grass energy to place on this thing. Even though he lacked the weakness to water, I was still able to finish it off without any damage.

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Up next came Exeggcute which healed off some damage with Leech Seed, but that wasn't enough to save it from a second Waterfall.

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Next up was another Exeggcute which was able to finish the job against Seaking.

 

While this was going on, he played The Boss's Way to search Dark Charmeleon from his deck to his hand.

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I responded to this with a Charmeleon of my own which made quick work of Exeggcute.

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This was apparently unfortunate for him because it seems it drug out the very Charmander he was planning to evolve. This Charmander is from Vending Series 1. Its first move is growl which reduces damage Charmander takes from the defending pokemon by 10. His second attack is called Flame Tail.

Unfortunately, with only 50 HP it was a prime target for my Charmeleon's Flamethrower.

---------------------------------

  

Next up is another Magmar which was also had 50 HP, meaning it, too, was one Flamethrower away from going down.

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And with that, I defeated GR No. 3 who gave me a Rocket Pack and Lost Isle Pack.

Rocket Pack:

Spoiler

   

   

Japanese-only:

Jynx is from Vending Series 2. Despite being a psychic pokemon, her attacks only use water energy. The first is Ice Punch which has a coin-flip chance of paralysis and her second attack is cold breath with a coin flip chance of sleep.

Lost Isle Pack:

Spoiler

   

  

Japanese-only:

Aerodactyl is from Vending Series 2. Its first attack is Supersonic. As usual, it has a coin flip chance of confusion. Its second attack is "Spiral Attack" which also deals 10 damage to itself.

This Haunter is from Vending Series 3 and actually has some pretty interesting moves. Its first attack, Poltergeist, allows you to look at your opponent's hand. It deals 10 damage times the number of trainer cards in their hand. His second move, Bad Dreams, on top of dealing 20 damage, has a coin flip chance of putting the opponent to sleep. But, even if you get tails, the opponent will simply be confused instead. It's a very interesting application of a coin flip that never fails to offer a secondary effect. And depending on your opponent's hand, Poltergeist could deal some pretty high amounts of damage as well. This is definitely a card I'll be experimenting with if I ever built a psychic deck.

Koffing here is from the Bulbasaur Deck. Its first attack, Poison Gas, has a coin flip chance of poisoning the opponent, its second attack, Confusion Gas, has a coin-flip chance to confuse the opponent instead.

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Lastly, the girls are freed from their cage. But GR No.3 has yet to admit defeat. He still controls the Fire Club and is keeping the club members prisoner there as well! It looks like it's gonna take a bit more time to earn ourselves the next GR coin piece.

 

As thanks for rescuing her, Amy gives us the GR No.3 Punish Deck and the Water Coin!

One surprisingly dark note is that the girl on the left actually mentions that, sure enough, the cage they were in wasn't shallow. This whole time the girls were getting exhausted treading water and she says you came just in time, implying these girls were about to drown! That's some Shadow Game shit right there.

  

Spoiler

Fire Pokemon (11)

   

 

Water Pokemon (15)

   

 

Colorless Pokemon (1)

Trainer Cards (6)

   

Of course, there are changes I'd like to make to this deck, but overall it doesn't seem as utterly unplayable as the one that came before it. This one comes with some pretty good firepower and lots of good cards that, even if you don't use this deck specifically, will certainly prove useful in your own decks. This one was a bit more difficult to get my hands on, but it's kind of funny that what was probably the best KO deck so far was used by a player who lost their duel against the GR member.

------------------------------

 

On our way out, we're given PTSD as Ronald comes right out to meet us. Thankfully, he doesn't challenge us to a duel here. Instead, he mentions that the GR member ran past him and dropped two packs. He kept one for himself and shares the Legends pack with you.

Spoiler

   

 

Japanese-only:

Hitmonlee is from Vending Series 2. Its first attack, Double Kick, deals 30 damage times the number of heads across two coin flips. This is a much better damage output for a move with this sort of effect. There is a 25% chance it'll miss completely, but most of the time it will deal at least 30 damage and the 25% chance of a miss is balanced out by the 25% chance it'll deal 60 instead! Its second attack, Rolling Kick, has a coin-flip chance of paralyzing the opponent.

  

=====================

 

It's time to chase after GR No.3 and finish the fight once and for all!

--------------------------

  

My lead pokemon was Vulpix whose real purpose was just to stall for time while I built up the second pokemon in my starting hand. After taking a few Fire Punches from Magmar, it went down.

While this was going on, he played his Dark Gloom which has a pretty scary power: Pollen Stench which, decided by a coin flip, can confuse either your opponent or yourself. If you're unlucky, this thing could ruin your life.

  

Thankfully, it had bought enough time for Magikarp to be ready for evolution!

  

I already had Gyarados in my starting hand, so I'd basically already won. Strangely enough, Gyarados has a weakness to grass instead of electricity which I hadn't noticed until now. Usually water-types are weak to electric attacks instead, so this is bizarre, especially considering Gyarados has a quad-weakness to electric attacks in the main series and grass deals neutral damage to it. Still, with its powerful attacks and high HP, taking out the opponents shouldn't be an issue, even if it does take some strong hits here and there. Magmar went down to a single Dragon Rage.

----------------------------------------

  

Thankfully, Gyarados' weakness to grass was enough to convince him to send his Dark Gloom out against it. It used Poison Powder and this poison was going to be the major factor in weakening Gyarados going forward. But, it was still just one Dragon Rage away from going down and I no longer had to fear Pollen Stench.

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Note: Tangela's card has a very different design due to being officially released as a physical card much later on. It was released through an expansion called Pokemon Web which was available only through the Japanese Pokemon Center Online Store. Its first attack is Stun Spore with a coin flip chance of paralysis. Its second attack, Poison Whip, always poisons the opponent. Fortunately, Tangela didn't have any energies to attack with, so he couldn't get any paralysis hax on me and I was able to blast away at his HP with another Dragon Rage.

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Last but not least, of course, came Charmander. it went down with, say it with me, another Dragon Rage.

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With no more pokemon on his bench, I won the duel early! 

======================

I'm not sure what exactly happened, but I ended up losing the rest of the screenshots I took this session. While uploading the images to imgur, I must have accidentally hit some keyboard shortcut I wasn't aware of because the thumbnails for some screenshots I'd selected rotated 90 degress. I hit Ctrl+Z to undo this and suddenly all the screenshots that were in the folder were replaced with screenshots that I'd moved to another folder. I assumed it just undid the move and that the new screenshots should still be there, but I couldn't find them anywhere. They were completely overwritten. Normally when something like this happens, Windows will give you a warning message asking if you'd like to delete or rename the files, but here it just completely overwrote them. I can't even find them in my recycle bin! It seems like the screenshots just completely disappeared. Whatever the case, nothing super significant happened after defeating GR No. 3. I got another Rocket and Lost Isle Pack as well as the third GR Coin.

I'll list some of the more significant cards that I remember getting:

Spoiler

 

   

   

Machoke is from Vending Series 3. His first attack, Wicked Jab, has a coin-flip chance of paralyzing the opponent. His second attack, Focus Blast, has a coin-flip chance of inflicting 20 damage to any pokemon of your choice.

 

Beyond the above cards, I mostly just got a bunch of repeats of cards I already had. Nothing else really stood out to me.

In addition to the card packs, I also got the third GR Coin piece from GR No.3 and the Fire Coin from the Fire Club Master Ken!

-------------------------------

And with all of that behind us, all we have left to worry about are GR No. 4 and 5. One of these two is going to have to give us our last coin piece! And judging by the abundance of cards the game just dumped on me, I imagine I'm about to hit a difficulty spike real soon. I'm curious to see what the game has in store for me.

[Aura]

  

Now it's time to track down GR No.4! If you recall, she was here in the Lightning Club and she wanted us to defeat the club members before we could challenge her. 

Shortly after arriving, I got an email form Dr. Mason talking about new deck building tips added to the PC. There's nothing I haven't already discussed in this new collection of tips and I'm only mentioning this email because it came with a free Legends pack!

Spoiler

   

 

Japanese-only:

Magneton from Vending Series 2 has one move: Microwave; this attack deals 20 damage to any pokemon of your choice ignoring weakness and resistance. In addition, you also have a coin-flip chance of removing one energy from that card. It's a pretty powerful attack all things considered.

  

----------------------------------

In preparation for battling members of the Lightning Club, I needed to build a new deck to counter Electric pokemon. After all, going into an electric club using a deck that uses water-types was a no-go. I decided to build my deck around Fighting pokemon. Of course, these decks are also going to be splashing in some flying pokemon to resist fighting attacks, so I'll also have to add in Electric types to clip their wings. The problem was, looking at the cards I had... my options were disgustingly limited for such a deck. I had some decent fighting types but when it came to ground-types, the ones that actually resist electric attacks, I didn't have very many options. Geodude and Graveler weren't abundant enough to be reliable so I decided to focus primarily on the Machop line as well as Machoke. As for electric types, I didn't have nearly enough electric energy to use any more powerful pokemon and I lacked the parts to even build up most of them. There was that Magneton I just got, but not only did its attack require two electric energies, it only did 20 damage which wasn't affected by weaknesses. It's more of a support card for an electric deck than an electric card to add support to a fighting deck. Because of my lack of good electric types, I decided to use both Magnemite and Voltorb along with their evolved forms. Dark Magneton and Dark Electrode were the only electric types that had any sort of real offensive presence. The problem with this is that I was spreading myself way too thin with no real primary focus. This deck was trying to be two different things at once. Honestly, I think I would be better off going for my Venusaur deck again, but I wanted to give this deck I scavenged together a chance. it's certainly not going to be the most consistent thing I've ever made.

  

Spoiler

Electric Pokemon (7)

   

Fighting Pokemon (14)

   

  

Trainer Cards (23)

  

 

Energy (23)

  

So let me just go over some of the major deck building sins I've committed putting this deck together. First of all, there are way too many different evolution lines going on here. You typically want your deck built around a single full evolution line with a secondary line or two. But since just about every pokemon in this deck has an evolution that's also in the deck, I'll very often have long stretches of time where I'm only drawing evolved forms which I can't use. What's more, most of the basic pokemon in this deck are pretty useless on their own. Because of this, Pokemon Trader is suddenly more of a necessity to make my cards work than a commodity to boost consistency. Additionally, there's a lot of filler with no real central strategy here. The only strategy I really had was using the strongest attacks I had access to. Lastly, I barely had any electric energies to build off of. Ideally, this deck would have a bit more electric energy and I would have more Magnemite and Magneton, or perhaps Pikachu and Raichu and I'd be able to cut Voltorb and Electrode altogether. Mankey could also be dropped in favor of more Machop, or the Machop line could be dropped altogether for some better Geodude. (The reason I didn't run Graveler is because I just didn't have enough to be able to use it consistently. I had far more Machop and Machoke.)

Anyway, with my atrocity of a fighting deck, it's time to deal with my opponents.

====================

First up as Nicholas and his Overflow Deck.

  

Right off the bat, I was met with the matchup I was dreading. With Rhyhorn against Farfetch'd, there was literally nothing at all I could do without evolving Rhyhorn. And even then, Rhyhorn can only do 20 damage with a four-energy attack.

  

Luckily, this is exactly why I was packing Switch, to work around Rhyhorn's absurdly high retreat cost.

  

After a turn, I was able to evolve Magnemite into Dark Magneton and finish off Farfetch'd with Magnetic Lines.

----------------------------

  

Up next, I was met by his own Magneton. Thanks to Magnetic Lines' secondary effect of redistributing the opponent's energies, I was able to keep Magneton from being able to use SelfDestruct and cause serious damage to my bench.

  

Shortly after, I used another Switch to bring RHyhorn back and finish the job with Horn Attack.

----------------------------

  

Up next came the most bizarre Voltorb card I've ever seen. I'm not sure if there's a story behind this crudely-drawn Voltorb art, but I'm definitely concerned for the poor creature. This deformed Voltorb is from Vending Series 2. Its first attack is Thundershock with the typical coin flip paralysis effect and the second attack is Group Spark which deals an additional 10 damage for each Voltorb in play. Needless to say, a Horn Attack was all it took to finish this job.

  

Up next was his Doduo. All this took was another Switch into Dark Magneton to finish the fight.

------------------------------

And with that, I collected my final prize card. Unfortunately, you don't actually earn booster packs for winning these duels. This duel may seem like my deck works fine, but keep in mind this was actually my third attempt at this duel. I made minor adjustments to my deck multiple times before settling on this build. Hence my overly pessimistic attitude toward it. In most cases, I'd end up having to reshuffle my starting hand searching for a basic pokemon to play and I would usually end up with just a Voltorb or Magnemite which can't do more than 10 HP. Being caught with no bench pokemon was pretty common with this deck.

=====================

Up next was the Lightning Club Master Isaac and his Sky Volt Deck. Great... more flying-types.

  

Starting out the battle was my Rhyhorn against his PIkachu. Spark is a move I can't risk stalling against with Leer, so I quickly dropped a Switch to bring out a pokemon that could attack more easily.

  

Unfortunately, he was one step ahead of me and after getting one Low Kick off, he retreated his Pikachu.

  

This PIdgey from Vending Series 1 has two moves. Its first is Gust and its second is Quick Attack with the standard coin-flip chance of 20 extra damage. Obviously, with this matchup, Machop couldn't do anything to Pidgey, but Machop's retreat cost is much more affordable than Rhyhorn's, so I could retreat pretty easily.

  

Of course, when I switched out into Magnemite, he also retreated to avoid his weakness to electricity.

  

Thankfully, his Zapdos didn't have any energies so it would take a few turns for it to even have the opportunity to use Thunderstorm. I took full advantage of this time to build up my own energies.

  

A few turns in, and I was able to take out Zapdos without him being able to get off a Thunderstorm attack. I even evolved my Magnemite in the process to hold his energy count down! Finally, I managed to collect my first of 6 prize cards!

----------------------------------

  

Out came a different Pikachu than before, but a Magnetic Lines and Sonicboom later and it was taken out as well.

--------------------------------

  

Out came the PIdgey I'd been piling removed energies using Magnetic Lines. He took advantage of the free energies and evolved his Pidgeotto. It was back for revenge! It used Whirlwind to switch me out, but I just dropped a Switch to bring Magneton back out and finish the fight.

---------------------------------

  

Up next was another Pidgey which was just a quick zap away. Unfortunately, it got the coin flip on Quick Attack and knocked Magneton out.

  

I sent my Voltorb out next, but on its own, it wouldn't be doing much. Thankfully, Dark Electrode was just one Pokemon Trader away.

  

With an Electric bomb, Pidgey was no more, but the same fate awaited its energies.

---------------------------------

  

In hindsight, I actually misremembered Electrode's moves here. I assumed both of its attacks required electric energies, so I attached a Fighting Energy to it just so that it could retreat. I culd have just ended the battle here by using Rolling Tackle to finish off Pikachu, but I decided instead to retreat assuming I would be unable to attack.

  

This was inconsequential, though, because Rhyhorn was obviously able to finish the battle all the same.

----------------------------------

Since Isaac had no more benched pokemon, I was able to win the duel prematurely!

 

GR No.4 is angered by Isaac's loss, and left for the Psychic Club. It turns out the members of the Electric Club were under hypnosis and being controlled by GR No.4. This likely also explains the Psychic Club's devotion to Team GR. If you weren't convinced these were the Rare Hunters yet...

----------------------

 

Of course, Isaac thanks us and rewards us with the Lightning Coin!

=====================

Once again, it's looking like we're going to be battling a GR member without a KO deck. So, it looks like we're going to be battling our way to be relying on Ronald's inside information to prepare a deck for GR No.4!

 

Looking at Ronald's email from before, it seems GR No.4 uses a deck build around Grass- and Psychic pokemon. He goes on to clarify that she uses "evil spirits," which implies ghost-type pokemon to boot. Fighting types are gonna be a no-go as Psychic-types tend to resist them. Since her deck is built around water and psychics, ideally I'd like to have Electric-types to counter her water types. Normally, I'd want to target the weakness of Psychic types as well, but psychic types are a bit problematic because they're actually weak to other Psychic types. This means you can't really safely get the upper hand just by using a pokemon that has their weakness without being weak to them yourself. Instead, the better option is to go for normal-type colorless pokemon! These pokemon don't have a type advantage against psychics, but they do resist Psychic attacks, and while ghost-types do share their fighting resistance from the games, they don't share their resistance to colorless pokemon.

Due to my clear lack of electric pokemon, I decided my best bet was to go for Grass-types as there are water types that are weak to grass instead of electric. A grass deck with colorless as a secondary focus would be much more consistent than trying to force together an electric-colorless deck just because.

Of course, if I'm going to build a deck using colorless energy, there's one pokemon I want to get involved. For that, I'm going to be trading away my Graveler for a Wigglytuff at the Challenge Hall!

 

And now, I can feel free to build my deck.

  

Spoiler

Energy (22)

 

Grass Pokemon (10)

   

Colorless Pokemon (8)

   

Trainer Cards (24)

  

  

Right away, you might assume that Energy Search is redundant with only one set of basic energy. But remember, Energy Search still comes with an extra purpose: It helps to thin out your deck! You're basically drawing two cards in one. Although, admittedly I probably could have replaced Pokemon Breeder as this deck still only has one second stage evolution, but in a way this card can be seen as a fifth copy of Ivysaur.

====================

 

Back in the Psychic Club, we can see that, indeed, GR No.4 has the club under her control and in order to defeat her, you'll have to beat the Psychic Club leader, Murray, first.

----------------------

First up is Stephanie and her Psychokinetic Deck!

  

She led with her Gastly against my Tauros. This Gastly is from Vending Series 3. Its first attack, Spookify, prevents the opponent from using Trainer cards. Its second attack, Darkness, has a coin-flip chance of confusing the opponent. This actually looks like a really useful Gastly card and its Spookify attack works really well in conjunction with Haunter's Poltergeist attack. Anyway, this Gastly was only a couple of Stomps away from being taken out.

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Next up was the very Haunter that was ready to Poltergeist it up. Gastly before it kept locking my trainer cards away, but now that we were, I was ready to drop a whole bunch of my trainer cards, so Poltergeist wasn't quite as scary anymore. Not to mention Tauros' resistance. However, Bad Dreams managed to confuse Tauros, forcing me to drop my Switch and swap it out for the Venusaur I'd been building up in the background.

With Venusaur's Energy Trans, I could pull the Leaf energy off of Tauros so that Venusaur was ready to attack!

  

And now, Solarbeam could tear through the rest of Haunter's HP.

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Up next was another Gastly which also went down to a single Solarbeam.

-----------------------------------

Since Gastly was her last pokemon, I won prematurely!

=======================

 

Next up was Psychic Club Master Murray

------------------------------

  

The duel opened up with Bulbasaur vs. Clefairy. This Clefairy is from Vending Series 1. Its first attack, Follow Me, allows it to switch the defending pokemon with one on their bench. The second attack, Shining Fingers, puts the opponent to sleep.

During this battle, he placed Mr. Mime on his bench. Mr. Mime's power is Neutral Damage which nullifies all weaknesses and resistances as long as he remains on the bench. Juggling does 10 damage times the number of heads across four coin flips.

  

I next evolved Bulbasaur into Ivysaur so that I could finish off Clefairy with Vine Whip.

------------------------------------

  

Next came Mr. Mime which I was able to take out in one shot by evolving Ivysaur and blasting away.

---------------------------------

  

Next up was Abra who didn't stand a chance. This Abra from Vending Series 1 only has one attack: Psychic Beam, which does 10 damage to one of your opponent's pokemon ignoring weakness and resistance. Not that that matters when he gets Solarbeamed right out of that tree.

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And once again, Murray had no pokemon on his bench leading to a premature victory for me. It seems Murray went from being the most infamous club master to probably the fastest victory against a club master yet. In the original, this is the player who used the annoying Chansey, Damage Swap, and Scoop up strat. It's good to know they got rid of such an obnoxious strat. It seems instead that his deck is built around stopping you from countering the Psychic type. But that doesn't matter when Venusaur just rips through everything without discrimination.

==================

 

After defeating him, Murray pushes us all the way down to the south end of the room for... some reason. He then tell sus the mind control has been dispelled by his defeat.

 

We also earn the GR No.4 Crafty Deck and the Psychic Coin!

  

Spoiler

Energy (27)

  

Electric Pokemon (10)

   

 

Psychic Pokemon (13)

   

Colorless Pokemon (1)

Trainer Card (7)

   

 

Just when I thought these specialty anti-GR decks were going to start getting more useable... holy crap. This deck doesn't look too terrible on the surface, it's got some pretty good cards here and there but it's seriously lacking in good basic pokemon and draw or search power. This isn't nearly as bad as the GR No.2 Defeat Deck, but it's still going to take a while to get anywhere with this setup. Those potions and Super Potion really have no business being here. Energy Retrieval isn't totally necessary either. The only way energy is going to get discarded is a pokemon gets eliminated or with Kadabra's Recover. Still, I'm more than thankful to be given Electric and Psychic energies as these are the last energies I really needed.

I'd honestly rather use the Safari Deck I'd previously put together, but I've made it a point to use these specialty decks as they come, so I'll continue to do it here!

===================

 

And now it's time for GR No.4 herself. 

  

Opening up was Pikachu against Jynx. I could have the potential to rack up decent damage, especially if I got lucky with Doubleslap. Unfortunately, on its second try, it was able to hit twice with DoubleSlap, defeating Pikachu even with a potion used on it.

  

Up next came the Abra that would pretty much be carrying me through the rest of the duel! Thanks to Psyshock, I was able to paralyze Jynx, allowing me to take it out.

-----------------------------

  

Up next came the infamous Mew card. This card is well known for its Devolution beam which has the potential to instantly KO evolved pokemon who have taken more damage than their previous stage can survive. This can even devolve pokemon from the bench as well. This ability can be used for a variety of tactics. Not only can it instantly KO a pokemon under the right conditions, it can also stop an Evolved Pokemon's Pokemon Power or make a bunch of turns building up energies to prepare for evolution completely wasted. Its cards like these that prove it's not always a good idea to evolve a pokemon before it's sent out for battle. Thankfully, this mew didn't prove too much of an issue since I was able to paralyze it with Psyshock, allowing me to take it out the next turn.

-------------------------------------

  

Her next pokemon is a pretty intimidating Krabby. This Krabby is from Vending Series 2. Its first attack is Bubble with its typical coin-flip paralysis effect while its second attack is guillotine. Naturally, it took Abra out with a Bubble.

  

Thankfully, I had a second Abra on the Bench, ready to be evolved. And with Mew out of the equation, at least for now, there was nothing stopping me from getting reckless with this Kadabra's Super Psy, which naturally took out Krabby in one shot.

-----------------------------------------

  

Up next was another Krabby, but she had a surprise waiting for me.

She placed Drowzee on the bench. Drowzee has a special power: Long-Distance Hypnosis that works similarly to Dark Gloom's Pollen Stench but with sleep instead of confusion. With this sitting on the bench, things have the potential to go really sour for me on an unlucky day. However, compared to Pollen Stench, Long-Distance Hypnosis has an extra layer of luck that kind of weighs the odds in your opponent's favor. If you put your opponent to sleep, after you end your turn, they'll get a sleep check between turns. If they flip heads, they'll wake up right away. But if you put yourself to sleep during your turn, you don't get the luxury of a sleep check at the start. Your first chance to wake up is after you end your turn. I suppose this is to balance out the fact that you can basically put your opponent to sleep for free and still use any other attack you like. Ultimately, I'm not a fan of inconsistent luck-based strategies like this, but there is potential with powers like this, still, in combination with Snorlax's power: Thick Skinned which makes it immune to status conditions like sleep and confusion. 

  

Anyway, her plan completely backfired because Drowzee ended up putting Krabby to sleep, making it unable to attack and rendering it vulnerable to Super Psy.

--------------------------------

  

Next was her Psyduck. Unfortunately, Long-Range Hypnosis worked as intended here and put Kadabra to sleep and I wasn't able to wake up during the sleep check before my turn. Thankfully, Psyduck was focused on drawing cards rather than actually attacking with Water Gun and I was able to take it out the next turn with Super Psy.

----------------------------------

  

Drowzee himself unfortunately lacked the energy to actually fight. All he could do was was continue to go for Long-Range Hypnosis. All it took was for me to wait it out until either he put himself to sleep or I woke up immediately and then finish him off.

--------------------------------------

And with that, I defeated her last pokemon and claimed my last prize card!

 

GR No.4 rewarded my victory with two packs once again, this time introducing a new pack: Ambition!

Ambition Pack:

Spoiler

    

   

Japanese-Only:

This Chansey is from Vending Series 1. Its first attack is Sing with a coin-flip chance of putting the opponent to sleep while its second attack, Double Slap his for 20 HP per heads across two coin flips.

Lost Isle:

Spoiler

   

  

Japanese-only:

I was genuinely surprised to see Bill's Transporter in this new Ambition pack. This card wasn't introduced in the Team Rocket expansion, but in Neo Genesis! I thought this game only featured new cards up to Team Rocket but apparently that's not the case. This is very significant because Neo Genesis is the expansion that introduced Generation 2 pokemon to the TCG! 

This is especially interesting because I noticed as far back as when I first turned this game on and watched the intro that there seemed to be a mysterious energy added among the familiar ones, right between Fighting and Grass. I can't remember if this icon was in the original game's intro or not, but it doesn't directly resemble any types  in the real-world card game, but if I were to assume this is representative of any type, I would assume it to be Steel.

  

Neo Genesis did introduce a Metal Energy and a handful of Metal pokemon, but it doesn't share an identical icon to the one used in the intro. There's also no "metal" category in the deck building menu. The jury's still out on what all of this means, but including a card from Neo Genesis does open up the possibility for some Johto Pokemon to make their way into the spotlight going forward! Perhaps the game is really only just beginning and there's more to discover on GR Island? Or perhaps I'm really overthinking all of this. But it was alluded to by NPC's early on that Team GR uses their own cards from GR Island and we did just get introduced to a brand new pack right here at what appears to be approaching the end of the game...

But let's not let all this excitement take away form some of the really cool cards I pulled from both of these decks! I've got some really interesting moves going forward!

 

Of course, we've also earned our final GR Coin Piece, so we're either nearing the final boss or the game is only just beginning!

And with that, GR No.4 tells us to go to GR Island now that we've defeated them all here in Card Island.

 

Stepping out, I had half a heart attack because I had yet to save after that duel or change my deck back and Ronald started walking up to me. Thankfully, Ronald was just here to talk about the airship that arrived. He managed to sneak aboard and steal back some of the stolen cards! Ronald really is turning out to be a pretty cool guy.

Spoiler

   

   

  

Japanese-only:

And now, all that's left for now is to check out what GR Island has to offer!

[Aura]

 

With the GR Coin finally completed, it's time to make our way to the airport and take the airship to GR Island!

----------------------------

  

And, from the looks of things, it seems my gut feeling was right. This game is only just beginning. Welcome to GR Island!

Right from the get go, it's pretty clear we're not exactly wanted here. But, if these guys wanna steal their cards they're gonna have to put up with us until they can beat us!

----------------------------

  

This island, or, archipelago, really, seems to be divided into three different sections. The first section is the landing area where there's a "Game Center" as well as a Sealed Fortress and Grass Fortress. Beyond these is the central area which features the GR Challenge Hall as well as the Electric, Fire, and Water Fortresses. Beyond those is a section featuring the GR Castle as well as the Psychic Stronghold, Colorless altar, and... Ishihara's House?? None of these areas can be accessed yet, presumably I'll have to do something in the Fighting Fortress at the area's entrance.

It seems I'm going to have to fight my way through each of these Fortresses in order to make my way to the top and battle the GR King.

The first area that piqued my curiosity more than anything else was this Pikachu-shaped Game Center here. 

 

Right away on entering, we're met by Ronald who got sidetracked by the many attractions here, just like we're about to do! He does give us an interesting card that he was able to win, though...

"Bill's Computer"

This card can't be used in actual duels, but it's actually based on a real-world promotional campaign where you would mail this card in along with one of the listed pokemon cards in ordeer to retrieve a promotional card of that one's evolution. I'll go over these when we get to the machine we can use this card at.

-------------------------------

As we try to move forward, we gain 10 chips for free from this receptionist right here. This person will give you 10 chips anytime you don't have any to use. As you can probably tell at this point, this place is basically the Game Corner from the main series.

The receptionist to the left allows you to store your chips. You're not aloud to leave the building with any chips in your pocket, so you can leave them with her to reclaim later. To the right is a receptionist that will allow you to trade your chips in for prizes! These prizes include some exclusive promotional cards including the Bill's Computer card used to get others.

 

This Mew is a GB exclusive and its only attack is "Mystery Attack" which deals a random amount of damage and has a chance of inflicting a random status ailment as well. Both of these cards were available in the previous game, but they were exclusive to Card Pop! and couldn't be obtained any other way. They were collectively referred to as "Phantom Cards." Pokemon Card GB2 also has two new Phantom Cards that cannot be purchased here:

 

This Lugia's only attack is Aeroblast which deals 20 damage plus 20 more per heads across two coin flips. It was packaged with the game. You can technically take this right here as confirmation that Johto pokemon are included in this game and you would technically be correct, but telling me there are Johto pokemon in the game and showing me a single card that's only available in a very specific way would be incredibly disappointing, so I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that this doesn't really count.

Of course, you can also get more copies of Bill's Computer, a Jigglypuff Coin, and a "present pack" which is presumably a random booster pack.

----------------------------

  

 

In the next room, there are three attractions. First is this Coin Toss Combo Game where you can potentially win a different promotional Mew card:

This Mew's power, Neutral Shield, seems absurdly powerful. It nullifies all damage and effects of attacks from evolved pokemon. Its attack, Psyshock, has a coin-flip chance of paralysis to boot. It only has 40 HP, but this thing looks like a pain in the ass to deal with.

Needless to say, though, getting 10 heads in a row is kind of absurd. That's an independant 50% chance for each coin flip. If you do the math, that means you have a 0.5¹⁰ chance, which is roughly 0.001 or 0.1%. I think I'd rather use that kind of luck to get myself a Scope Lens or Lucky Egg in Gold and Silver, thank you. Still, this attraction is very useful for building up coins as it only costs 1 chip to play and you get 10 chips for every heads and it isn't even a double or nothing situation. No matter what, you always flip until you get tails and earn your coins. Given the 50% chance, that means you also only have a 0.1% chance of flipping tails 10 times in a row and losing all of your profit. At that point, I'd much rather use that luck to win a Mew card...

=======================

Across the room is Bill's Computer where you can use your Bill's Computer Card along with one of the listed cards to trade for a promotional evolution card. The cards in question are as follows:

Trading in an Omanyte with Bill's Computer earns you this Omastar. Its first attack, tentacle grip, lets you flip a coin for each water energy attached and draw two cards for each heads. Its second attack, Corrosive Acid, asks you to flip a coin. If Heads, it paralyzes your opponent. If Tails, you can't use the attack on the next turn. On one hand, the downisde of Corrosive Acid may put you off, but if you're running a rain dance deck, you might find yourself starved for water energy. In these situations, a move like Tentacle Crip might prove quite helpful. Plus, 40 power along with the chance of paralysis followed up by another 40 damage is pretty powerful on its own! This is definitely a worth while card! It is a bit of an odd duck among these promotional cards though, because the rest are themed around pokemon that evolve by trade in the main series games. But for such a useful card, I'm not really complaining!

---------------------------

Trading in a Haunter will earn you a Promo Gengar which comes with the power Power of Darkness. When Gengar is played from the hand, you can flip a coin. If heads, you can choose one of your opponent's pokemon and return it to the hand. Its attack, Psy Horror, will either put the opponent to sleep or confuse them dictated by a coin flip. Power of Darkness is an insanely scary attack and that alone could make this card worthwhile. Your opponent could be building up a Snorlax on their back row and it just gets popped back to their hand along with those 4 energies they painstakingly attached to it. Similarly, you could use this to get rid of an annoying Pokemon Power or even get a surprise victory by scaring off their one benched pokemon and finishing their active pokemon in the same turn! To add to that, Psy Horror may lack in offensive power for a second stage, three-energy attack, but a guaranteed status condition including confusion is well worth it. 

-------------------------------------

Trading in a Machoke earns you Machamp. This card is pretty standard fare for fighting types. Still, it's really good at what it does. With 90 HP, Seething Anger has the potential to do as much as 100 base damage in one turn with no real downside other than knowing Machamp is about to go down. And the minimum 20 damage isn't all too shabby either. If your opponent isn't 50 HP away from being KO'd, you can use Seething Anger to rough it up if not outright destroy it completely.

-----------------------------

Trading in Graveler naturally gives you Golem. Its first move is rollout which is a pretty pathetic attack for a stage 2 evolution costing two energy just for a flat 20 damage. But its second attack, Rock Blast, is where this one shines. You can remove up to 5 fighting energies in order to deal 20 damage to pokemon of your choice per energy dropped. You could use this to pick off your opponent's weak benched pokemon or focus all your hits on one pokemon to take out a serious threat before it even sees the light of day.

---------------------------

Trading a Kadabra earns you an absurd Alakazam. Its first attack is Psycho Panic which doubles its base power if used against a Psychic pokemon (keep in mind that psychic pokemon are already going to be weak to attacks from Psychic pokemon). Its second attack, Trance Damage, is the main draw. Alakazam can discard all of its energies in order to dump all of its damage counters onto the defending pokemon. Since this is direct transfer of Damage Counters, it is unaffected by resistance. This is truly the ultimate anti psychic card and even has an out to anti-psychic types like Snorlax. Granted, he'll be tearing through quite a few psychic energies, but I think this specific card is well worth the effort.

---------------------------

All of these cards seem really powerful for different reasons. I think I'm going to take a while to decide if I want to use any of these because they almost seem too powerful... I think I'll probably wait until I need to build a deck for which one of them would be especially useful.

=====================

 

In the back of the room is The Black Box. This machine lets you insert 5 cards you no longer need in exchange for new cards. I'm not entirely sure how this works, but apparently different combinations makes different cards

 

Since I had 8 copies of Bulbasaur Deck Bulbasaur and five of Base Set Caterpie, and you can only use up to four of any one pokemon in a deck, I figured these extra would be better off being turned into something more useful.

It takes a little while for your prize to be mailed to you, so it'll have to wait a bit before I see the results of this.

========================

 

 

Up next are the slot machines. This is pretty standard fare. The ones on the left are cheaper to play but offer lesser rewards while the ones on the right are higher risk with higher reward.

=================

Lastly, there is the Card Dungeon where we're going to be spending the rest of the day. It's time to buckle down and face off against some tough opponents!

-----------------------------

 

After paying the initial entry fee, you'll enter the first room of the dungeon where you'll be faced with your first opponent: Pawn. You'll need to wager 10 coins in order to duel him. 

  

I had a pretty bad start with my starting hand. Burning Fire dealt a standard 20 damage to Bulbasaur who was weak to Fire, leading him to be taken down pretty quick.

  

My only other pokemon was Snorlax who couldn't attack yet, but he could at least soak up some damage.

 

Unfortunately, he pulled out an Energy Removal and took off my Double Colorless, forcing me to use Switch in order to get Snorlax to retreat.

  

Thankfully, Tauros was more than prepared to finish the job against Magmar.

-------------------------------------

  

Up next was another Magmar. Thanks to the damage from its Magma Punch, I was able to take it out with Rampage at the risk of confusing myself. I managed to avoid confusing myself, though and hit right through.

-------------------------------

  

Next up was a Lickitung. Its only real defense was Lick which has a coin flip chance of paralyzing the opponent but doesn't actually deal any damage. Its other attack, Stomp, is identical to Tauros'. None of this matters because his coin flip failed and I just Rampaged right through Lickitung as well. 

------------------------------------

  

Finally came a Kangaskhan which was able to finish of Tauros with its Bite attack.

------------------------------------

  

Out came Snorlax this time with his full set of energy. A few body slams later and Kangaskhan was no more.

-------------------------------------

 

My prize for winning, of course, was double my wager in chips and the option to advance further into the dungeon.

====================

 

My next opponent was Knight who would allow me to choose between either wagering 10 chips once again or go double or nothing by wagering 20 chips.

--------------------------

  

Knight led out with yet another Kangaskhan. Not the best start since Kangaskhan has no single-energy attacks, so I had the opportunity to build up some damage. Unfortunately, I didn't exactly have the best start myself...

 

He played Fossil Excavation which has the effect of adding a Mysterious fossil from your deck to your hand.

After benching his mysterious fossil, the next turn he evolved it into Omanyte the next turn. Omanyte's pokemon power gives it a coin-flip chance of adding 10 damage to any pokemon that evolves from Mysterious Fossil. His other attack is Rolling Tackle.

  

One evolution later and I was able to take Kangaskhan out with a Vine Whip.

-----------------------------

  

This was very unfortunate for Knight as he was pretty much caught with his pants down here. Omanyte wasn't prepared to attack and due to its weakness to grass, it was one hit away from being taken out.

----------------------------------

  

This forced his Mysterious Fossil to take the stage, so a simple Leech Seed took out his last pokemon.

---------------------------

 

And with no more pokemon on the bench, I won prematurely. Of course, my prize was double the wager and the choice to advance further!

======================

 

Up next was Bishop who allows you to wager either 10 or 30 coins this time.

-------------------------------

  

My hand was forced into the unfortunate fate of leading with Snorlax this duel. He led with this Porygon whose first attack, 3-D Attack, deals 10 damage times the number of heads across three coin flips. Conversion 2 allows you to change your resistance to any type except for colorless. To my knowledge, this is the only way to get a resistance to most types. Thankfully, he seemed to be having some pretty miserable luck with his coin flilps and only seemed to be dealing 10 HP each turn.

---------------------------------

After a little while of waiting, I was able to use Pokemon Breeder on a Bulbasaur to evolve it into Venusaur.

  

And from there, I was able to use Energy Trans to move all of the energy I'd been building up onto a pokemon that can attack.

Lastly, I played another Switch to bring that pokemon out.

  

It didn't take long at this point for Tauros to get this Porygon on death's door. Unfortunately, with no retreat cost, Porygon was able to retreat for another one on the bench.

In addition, he used Scoop Up to remove all of the damage counters from his Porygon and drop it right back onto the bench.

  

It didn't take too long to knock out this new Porygon and bring out the first.

--------------------------------------

  

The next Porygon also went down with relative ease.

--------------------------------

  

Up next came a pretty standard Zubat. Its first attack is Bite and its second, Suspicious Soundwave has a coin-flip to confuse the opponent. Just when I thought I was about to take it out, it retreated to the bench to switch out for a Golbat he'd previously evolved.

 

  

Golbat was a pretty annoying opponent to deal with. With a Wing Attack, it took Tauros out with a single shot. This caught me off guard and I wasn't able to transfer the energies off of Tauros.

  

I sent out Snorlax to Body Slam Golbat and this was where I realized just how much of a pain in the ass Leech Life was going to be. Every time I dealt 30, he'd deal 20 to me and heal off 20 of that damage. I just had to hope for paralysis before being able to take this thing out. I did have a plan, though. After a bit of stalling, I managed to load up a pokemon on my bench with some energies before paying the daunting 4-energy retreat cost to switch Snorlax out of there.

  

This was a switch he certainly didn't see coming and with the pokemon now sitting on the bench, his Golbat was right in the range of Wigglytuff's Do the Wave!

-------------------------------------

  

Last but not least was Cool Porygon. This thing has the potential to do some serious damage with its 3-D Attack. Thankfully, by dumping a few more pokemon on the bench thanks to Professor Oak, Do the Wave was able to do 60 damage and take Cool Porygon out!

----------------------------------

 

And of course, with my last prize card collected, Bishop was defeated, I claimed my prize and advanced to the next opponent.

===================

 

Rook here no longer gives you the option to wager 10 chips. Instead, you can only wager 30 or 50 chips.

Dungeon Master Rook:

Colorless Energy Deck

(I actually forgot to get a screenshot of Rook, so here's a mockup)

Rook challenges us to a 5 prize-card duel as opposed to the typical 4 we've done so far.

  

I was forced into leading with Jigglypuff against his Spearow. I decided not to bother trying to attack with Jigglypuff and instead used Lullaby to try and stall Spearow out while I set up my bench.

 

In the meantime, he played Moon Stone which lets him search out a colorless evolution card and add it to his hand. He used it to search out Dragonair.

He also played a Recycle Energy on his Spearow which is automatically added back into the hand whenever it hits the discard pile, but it only counts as a colorless energy.

  

It didn't take long for Spearow to power through the constant sleep and take Jigglypuff out but by this point I was a bit more prepared.

  

Out came Tauros who was able to take out Spearow with just a couple of Stomps.

----------------------------

  

Out came the Dragonair who used Slam to take me out with two heads. Ouch...

  

Thankfully, I was pretty well prepared with a Wigglytuff I'd evolved from a second Jigglypuff I had on the bench. Do the Wave wasn't quite a one-shot, but neither was a maximum power Slam, so all was well and Dragonair was taken out.

-----------------------------------

  

His Eevee got the extra damage on Quick Attack. While I could have left Wigglytuff in to go down, I had a much better idea in store to end this duel a bit faster while he still had no pokemon on his bench.

 

Using Venusaur's Power Trans, I moved all of Wigglytuff's leaf energies onto Venusaur before playing Switch to bring it out.

  

After attaching one more energy to Venusaur, I was able to blast away at Eevee with Solarbeam to finish it off.

----------------------------

 

With no more pokemon on his bench, I won prematurely yet again, and again came my prize in chips and advancing

=======================

 

Up next came the Queen who explains that she's the final opponent and the dungeon has no king. This makes sense in a way since the Queen is the most powerful piece in chess. In a way, I suppose you could say the King is the grand prize you walk away with.

Against the queen, your choices for wager are only 50 or 100 chips.

Now, let me tell you right now, good lord was this battle a pain in the ass. This Queen does not know how to admit defeat. Her deck is absolutely full of powerful basic pokemon of varying type and she absolutely loves retreating.

  

I opened up having to lead with Jigglypuff and tried stalling with Lullaby. This was where I learned really quickly how annoying this battle would be.

 

She played a Rainbow Energy onto the Hitmonchan on her bench. This card damages it slightly but it's the key to her deck's success. She then played a Switch to bring the haymaker right out.

  

With Hitmonchan's type advantage, it was able to make quick work of Jigglypuff.

  

With Jigglypuff out of the way, I needed to get rid of this Hitmonchan fast before it laid waste to my entire team with Special Punch. Thanks to the Rainbow Energy, though, it was in kill range of Solarbeam, so out came Venusaur!

-----------------------------

  

Lapras came back out and took two Solar Beams. It went for Confuse Ray but thankfully, I avoided the confusion from it.

  

Next came Magmar who I would be okay taking a few hits from if it wasn't for him getting a lucky coin flip on Smog, poisoning my Venusaur!

  

Knowing Venusaur was my main way to deal with most of what this lady was going to throw at me, I hastily paid the cost of retreat to it out and get rid of that poison. Tauros got a bit of damage with Stomp off before getting hit with Smog and poisoned as well. At this point, I was gonna go down by the next turn anyway so I may as well go for Rampage to take Magmar out!

-------------------------------------

  

Out came another Hitmonchan to make quick work of Tauros.

  

I was able to send Venusaur out again to blast it with Solarbeam and it fucking retreated again.

  

Lapras came out and once again tried to go for confusion and once again (thankfully) got a tails. I was able to take it out with Solarbeam.

---------------------------------------

  

This was where things started to get really nerve-wracking. Venusaur was taken out by her Electabuzz and the number of cards in my deck was starting to run really low at this point due to my constant drawing and thinning. Normally this isn't as much of an issue but I was doing it carelessly not realizing it was going to be an issue in this duel. But my deck was rapidly approaching single digits and I'd just lost my hardest hitter with three more prize cards to go...

  

Out next came Bulbasaur. I needed to take this enemies out as fast as possible and the only way I was gonna do that was by constantly pelting them with damage. Of course, Electabuzz gets the lucky heads and takes Bulbasaur out in a single Thunderpunch...

  

I was really on the edge of defeat right here, but I wasn't going to give up just yet! I went for a Sing and managed to keep Electabuzz asleep for his turn.

  

I then dropped whatever basics I had in my hand and evolved my Jigglypuff, going for Do the Wave. 30 damage wasn't a whole lot but it was enough for a 2-turn KO if things went my way. Thankfully, Electabuzz didn't retreat and I was able to take it down.

---------------------------------------

  

Another fucking hitmonchan came along and punched Wigglytuff in the face, taking out most of its health. I did draw into another Professor Oak and took the risk by playing it so that I could get more basics to boost the power of Do the Wave. My deck was now in single digits but Do the Wave was now just as powerful as Venusaur's Solarbeam!

-----------------------------------------

  

Next came the Hitmonchan that retreated before!! with this, she was able to beat Wigglytuff and draw out my Taruos. To clarify, Tauros is very close to being dead himself, but Rampage is still dealing quite a bit of damage and I was able to take it out.

-------------------------------------

  

At this point, I was absolutely terrified something unexpected would happen. My worst fear was that she'd drop a double colorless or something and retreat into another Hitmonchan, but thankfully, she never was able to get any energies on her Electabuzz and I was finally able to finish this duel with two cards left in my deck.

Two. Cards. Left. 

In case you're unaware, you lose the game if you can't draw at the start of your turn. There are decks built around this as a strategy. Again, I kind of put myself into this situation by just mindlessly playing my Bills whenever I drew into them instead of when I needed new cards. But up until this point, I never really needed to worry about that so I had no reason to believe this duel would be any different until it was too late. But, I must say, this was probably the most exciting duel I've done all game. My heart was racing toward the end. I did not want to do all those duels all over again! Surely I must get some sort of incredible prize for dedicating so much time into this dungeon! Some kind of rare promo card? Maybe a card pack with multiple rare cards? Or at least a collection of several packs? ...one pack?

 

....I mean... my 100 coin wager was doubled, so I technically could use these coins to buy a... single... pack...

and... bragging... rights...

 

...

 

I could have gotten 200 coins in a fraction of the time just playing the coin flip game... I really just wasted an entire day of my life here, didn't I?

---------------------------

Oh, but hey, it's not all bad, it looks like I got an email about the cards I deposited into The Black Machine!

I mean... okay... yaaay...

[Aura]

After wasting all that time at the Game Center, it was time to focus on the mission at hand. The next location I wanted to visit was this Sealed Fortress.

 

This mysterious Sealed Fortress it seems won't be opening anytime soon. The engravings here explain that this is where the "catastrophe decks" are sealed. Once again, I'm getting very heavy Battle City vibes from this game. It seems like there's not much to do here right now, so I suppose we'll just double back and leave.

----------------------------

Next in line is the GR Grass Fortress.

 

Upon entering the fortress, we're met by a mysterious character: GR X.

And immediately when the duel begins, his identity becomes pretty clear...

  

Opening up was a Mewoth. It wasn't aabel to do much of anything before getting taken out with Razor Leaf.

During the process, he placed Rattata on the bench whose Trickery lets him swap out his prize cards with the top card of his deck. A near useless power but I suppose it has its niche uses.

-----------------------

  

Next was Grimer which is a really annoying opponent, to be sure.

  

Thankfully, I drew into an Ivysaur and evolved Bulbasaur to eliminate the poison. And with Vine Whip, I was able to one-shot Grimer to stop the annoying spread of poison.

----------------------------------

  

Next came Zubat which could only Ram against me.

  

Admittedly, evolving Ivysaur here was a bit reckless. I had no reason to do it yet since Ivysaur wasn't low on HP and Zubat was in kill range of Vine Whip. This is significant because, if Ivysaur got afflicted with a status ailment from the following pokemon, I'd be able to get out of it free by evolving it into Venusaur. But, I'd be lying if I told you it didn't feel good to get Venusaur out and start blasting away.

--------------------------------

  

Up next was yet another Zubat which was vulnerable to another Solarbeam.

---------------------------------

  

And then there's another Grimer which also went down as fast as it came out, though it did manage to poison Venusaur, putting a drain on his health.

---------------------------------

  

And last but not least was his Rattata who did its best with a Quick Attack, but ultimately couldn't pull through.

---------------------------

And with that, GR X was defeated.

=====================

Surprise! GR X was actually Ronald! It's not like his deck name gave it away or anything... Ronald reveals to us that he's going undercover to spy on Team GR before giving us a couple of packs.

 

Ambition Pack:

Spoiler

   

   

Japanese-only

Growlithe from Vending Series 3 has two attacks. The first, Errand-Running, has a coin-flip chance of letting you search a trainer card out of your deck and into your hand. Its second attack is the typical Ember.

Rocket Pack

Spoiler

   

   

Japanese-only:

The Dark Venusaur print I have listed here shares a similar story to Tangela, though it's a bit more interesting. Dark Venusaur actually did get an English physical printing that was given out to participants of Best of Game events at BattleZone in 2003. This game does originate from this game, and the attack Horrid Pollen is slightly different in that it chooses which status conditions to apply based on RNG rather than coin flips. I don't know how the RNG works, but I would assume there's an equal chance of each effect in the game while the physical card, requiring coin flips, has a 50% chance of sleep and poison and only a 25% of either of the others. (This is because Asleep and Poisoned requires one heads and one tails which is a result that can be obtained either from a heads and then a tails or a tails and then a heads. Whereas the other two results require specifically a heads and another heads or a tails and another tails. Regardless of how the effect is decided, this is a very powerful attack. The poison alone will effectively make this a 40 power attack, but the additional status condition that can potentially stop the opponent from fighting back makes it an incredibly powerful card. I would certainly splash this into my Venusaur deck if there wasn't a major problem. I don't believe we've been met with this complication just yet, but this is a second stage Dark evolution card. These second stage cards cannot evolve from a regular Ivysaur. This Venusaur can only evolve from specifically a Dark Ivysaur. Because of this, if I threw this into my deck, I'd only be able to play it with Pokemon Breeder. There is a plus, though. Dark evolution cards don't count as the same species as the regular card since they technically have a different name. Because of this, I could run, say, four Dark Ivysaur and four Ivysaur if I so chose, but that would be putting a bit too much emphasis on 1st stage evolutions. 

  

After giving us our packs, Ronald gives us a heads up on what exactly to expect. Of course, Team GR likes to use Dark pokemon, but he also tips us off that certain opponents are going to have special rules during their battles which their deck is of course going to be built around. You'll have to keep these rules in mind when preparing your deck for each major duel.

-------------------------------

 

Over in the lounge, I had to make a really tough decision. This guy here was offering a trade... A second copy of the Venusaur I've been using, this one with alternate card art, for the Dark Venusaur I just got from my pack. Dark Venusaur definitely seems like an incredible card, but I can't guarantee Dark Ivysaur will be as useful as the Ivysaur I'm currently using and while it could potentially get me more milage out of Pokemon Breeder, it just doesn't seem consistent enough to cram into my deck. I've also been needing a new Venusaur card, so I ultimately decided to go through with this trade.

 

After performing this trade, I made some minor adjustments to my deck. I removed Pinsir who had yet to see very much real play as well as one of my Switch cards in favor of the second Venusaur and the Challenge! card I got. Challenge! Is a pretty great card for this deck as it has great synergy with Willytuff's Do the Wave and it can help me search out a good variety of pokemon including Venusaur himself. Even if the opponent declines the challenge, I'll still get to draw 2 cards instead, effectively turning this card into a fifth Bill.

=================

Normally, I would prepare a Fire deck to counter the Grass Fortress, but I wanted to give this modified Safari Deck a spin.

 

Right in here, we can see that the Master of the Science Club, Rick, is being held captive in this fortress! We're going to have to defeat Melissa if we want to rescue him!

 

I forgot to get screenshots of the first round, but she opened up with her Rattata against my Bulbasaur. Rattata was able to get the heads on its Quick Attack and on the next turn evolved into Dark Raticate, making quick work of my Bulbasaur.

  

Due to the quick defeat of Bulbasaur, I wasn't really prepared. Tauros was unable to attack yet so I had to pass my first turn and take a Gnaw. Thankfully, it wasn't long before I was able to get the Bulbasaur on my bench evolved into a Venusaur, allowing me to transfer over the energy I needed to finish Dark Raticate off.

----------------------------------

  

I took a bit of a gamble with Tauros and went for Stomp instead of Rampage. Since Caterpie could only deal 10 HP at a time I figured I'd be able to chance take a bit more damage before risking confusing myself with Rampage. Unfortunately, Caterpie ended up Parahaxing me into submission with String Shot.

  

Out next came Jigglypuff. I wasn't quite ready to evolve it, so I let it stay in its base form for now while I pounded away at Caterpie.

----------------------------

  

Venomoth was originally released as part of the Vending Series 2, but the only scan available on Bulbapedia is the Pokemon Web print. Its first attack, Stir Up Twister allows it to deal damage to the opponent and then switch both the opponent and the user with a pokemon (of each player's choice) on the bench. His other attack is Rainbow Powder which will either paralyze or poison the target based on a coin flip. She decided to go for Stir Up Twister.

  

This proved to be a gravely unfortunate for her because she was not prepared to deal with my Venusaur. It blasted away at her Weedle.

--------------------------------

  

Her next pokemon was Scyther who, again, was not prepared in the slightest and went down in just a couple of hits.

--------------------------------

 

With the last prize card collected, I won the duel! As usual, I won a pack for this achievement.

Spoiler

   

   

Japanese-only:

 

--------------------------------

In addition to the pack, I also freed Rick who in turn rewarded me with a Hungry Snorlax card!

Hungry Snorlax was a promo packaged along with certain Nintendo 64's in Japan. Its first attack, Eat, adds a "food counter" to Snorlax (you can have up to two). Its other attack, Rollout, deals 20 base damage plus you can remove food counters for an additional 30 damage per counter removed. This is no doubt a very strange card with potential to deal a massive amount of damage, but it also takes a while to get anywhere so it may not be worth it overall.

After rewarding us with this card, Rock leaves for Card Island to return to the Science Club where we can now battle him whenever we want!

==================

  

For the rest of the fortress, I decided to upgrade my fire deck to feature electric pokemon.

Spoiler

Energy Cards (22)

 

Fire Pokemon (14)

   

Electric Pokemon (6)

   

Trainer Cards (18)

   

 

==================

 

In the next room was our next opponent: James, A.K.A. GR No. 1!

  

Opening up was Voltorb against Zubat. This was a matchup that was obviously going to end in my defeat, so I switched out as soon as I had another pokemon ready to attack.

  

Out came Ponyta who was able to take out Zubat just fine.

---------------------------------

  

Up next was another Zubat.

  

I evolved Ponyta into Rapidash so that I had the chance of triggering Agility's protection effect each attack and finished off Zubat.

  

Next was a really annoying Dark Golbat who loves to pick off your benched pokemon. Between Sneak Attack and Flitter, he was able to work around Agiity and pick off two of my benched pokemon before finally going down.

--------------------------------

  

Last but not least is Bulbasaur from Vending Series 1. Its first attack, First Aid, lets it remove one damage counter from itself. Poison Seed poisons the opponent. Thanks to its weakness to fire, it went down to a single Agility.

------------------------------------

 

With his last pokemon defeated and my last prize card drawn, down went James and I earned another Rocket Pack!

Spoiler

   

   

 

=========================

And just one duel after putting together a fire deck, I was met by Liz who doesn't battle opponents using any energy cards other than pure grass energy. At first, I thought the solution would be a simple as using my Safari Deck. But, she still took issues with my use of Double Colorless Energy, so I decided to replace those with a couple of Grimer.

--------------------------------

 

After making adjustments to my deck, I was now allowed to duel Liz.

  

She led with her Grimer, but I my hand was forced into the unfortunate circumstance of sending out Tauros with no energies. And without Double Colorless, there's no way to quickly pile energies onto it either. Between Poison Gas and Sticky Hands, Tauros was going to have to take one for the team.

  

I still had my own Grimer to go against hers. Thanks to Sticky Hands, I was able to paralyze hers allowing for a free KO.

-------------------------------

  

Behind that came yet another Grimer, which also went down to Sticky Hands. It tried to paralyze me first but failed the coin toss.

----------------------------

  

Of course, Liz here decided she'd get real smart. Exploiting the exclusive use of grass energies, she decided to slip in a Fire-type pokemon that could still attack with only colorless energies. Obviously, scratch isn't a very strong move so I'd probably be fine with Sticky Hands, but if she had a Charmander here, it wouldn't surprise me if she also had a Base Set Charmeleon to burn through my grass types with Slash. I didn't want to give her that chance.

 

Thankfully, I drew into a Professor Oak which let me fully evolve the Ivysaur on my bench and lay down some more pokemon on the bench. With Venusaur out now, I could move all the grass energies off of Grimer and play Switch to send Venusaur out.

  

Wait... that's not Venusaur... Yup, I ended up misclicking and accidentally selected Bulbasaur instead of Venusaur. Thankfully, Venusaur's Energy Trans works as many times as you want each turn, so I was able to move some more grass energies onto Bulbasaur and hit Charmander with a Razor Leaf. This wasn't exactly the one-shot kill with Solarbeam I wanted, but it was more than a tackle.

  

Then I was able to evolve Bulbasaur and use Leech Seed to help heal off some of the damage he'd taken. Thankfully, no surprise Charmeleon here.

-------------------------------------

  

For a few turns, she kept switching between Ekans until finally one of them went down and ended the game by giving me my last prize card.

---------------------------------

 

With Liz defeated, I earned yet another Rocket pack!

Spoiler

   

   

Japanese-only

==================

 

Last but certainly not least wat the GR Leader of Grass: Parker.

 

This duel comes with a special rule: Chlorophyll. With this, all grass pokemon are immune to status conditions. And of course, his deck is going to be built to take full advantage of this rule. This actually comes with the unfortunate side-effect that it's pretty clear he's going to be relying heavily on his grass pokemon for his strategy.

  

He opened up with a very intimidating Kangaskhan, but all it seemed interested in was using Fetch to draw a lot of cardss.

  

Eventually, I was able to evolve my Charmander and pick off his Kangaskhan and all the energies he'd piled onto it.

---------------------------------

  

Of course, he did have a water line splashed in there to help counter any fire pokemon, but this Squirtle had no defense for Flamethrower burning right through its 50 HP.

--------------------------------------

  

Before I knew it, he was down to just his Oddish which I tossed aside without a problem leading to my victory!

---------------------------

 

My reward here of course included two Rocket packs:

Spoiler

    

   

Japanese-only:

Kabuto is from Vending Series 2. His Pokemon Power is Fossilize. On a coin flip, this allows you to remove all evolution cards from a mysterious fossil. This doesn't seem like all that great of an ability, especially considering the target can't have even a single damage counter on it or Mysterious Fossil will be destroyed. Maybe the idea is to reuse a power that activates on play. I don't believe you can immediately evolve the fossil again, but the card doesn't specify so I can't be too sure.

 

Spoiler

   

   

 

 

In addition to the packs, I also earned the GR Grass Coin!

[Aura]

Unfortunately, today I was a bit preoccupied to play any of the game. It's my brother's birthday so we went out to eat instead. But, while I don't have the time to make any progress in the game, I thought it would be nice to keep the energy up by sharing an interesting pokemon card:

This is "_____________'s Pikachu", commonly referred to as "Happy Birthday Pikachu". There's a blank in its name where the owner of the card is meant to write their own name. Its attack, Birthday Surprise normally only does 30 damage, but it has the special effect that, if it's your birthday, you can flip a coin for a chance at an additional 50 damage.  It's a silly but fun promotional card that can't actually be used in official tournaments. Obviously, this is partially due to the fact that anyone could claim that it's their birthday when playing the card and of course the damage output is pretty insane for a standard basic pokemon. With the 50 extra damage, this attack deals 80 base damage. Other moves on par with that usually take at least three or four energies and usually have some major drawback such as removing energies or inflicting a status condition on the user. Even without the added 50 damage, 30 damage is a pretty respectable amount for a basic pokemon. The only downside is that, since the card isn't named "Pikachu," it can't actually evolve into any Raichu card in much the same way that Dark Charmeleon cannot evolve into Base Set Charizard. On the flipside, if this card was legal to use, it could be played alongside four regular Pikachu as well!

Anyway, I'm sorry I can't make any progress! With tomorrow being Father's Day, I can't guarantee I'll make any updates then either, but I'll try to get back to the game as soon as possible!  

[Aura]

 

I got an email from Dr. Mason who explained that the Auto Deck Machine has been upgraded to now allow the use of the new cards from GR Island! This doesn't really matter at all to me, but I'm only calling attention to it because it came with a Lost Isle Pack!

Spoiler

   

 

Japanese-only

Poliwhirl form Vending Series 1. Its first attack, twiddle, will either confuse or put the opponent to sleep decided by a coin flip. Its second attack, body slam, has a coin-flip chance of paralyzing the opponent.

 

 

I also stopped back at the Game Center to take advantage of Bill's Computer. I traded in my cards for an Alakazam because I figured this card would likely be the most useful among the options. However, I currently have far more Dark Kadabra than regular Kadabra, and trading in one of my only two kadabra isn't my favorite idea, but hopefully I could make it work with Pokemon Breeder if I ever want to use it.

In addition, I realized I was slightly wrong about my assertion that the Coin Flip game earned you more chips. I was under the impression that you got 10 chips for every heads because I thought I got 80 chips for getting 8 heads on my first try. This isn't actually true. You only get 20 chips if you flip three heads in a row and I assume more heads means more coin flips. I just wasn't paying attention. This makes the option much less consistent, so perhaps the card dungeon really is the best place to earn more chips, but it'll take a looong time to get some of the more expensive cards.

===================

 

It was now time to enter the GR Electric Fortress. Apparently, we were unable to enter here before because we needed the GR Grass Coin to get past this gate!

  

In preparation for this fortress, I went ahead and prepared a fighting deck.

Spoiler

Energies (24)

  

Fighting Pokemon (9)

   

Psychic Pokemon (4)

 

Colorless Pokemon (6)

  

Trainer Cards (17)

   

This isn't particularly a good deck for countering the electric type but, at least the idea, was to have a more general deck. But as are a lot of my more improvised decks, it really lacks in focus.

 

In the lounge is this guy, Peter, who is offering booster packs if we beat him.

  

Opening up against his Pikachu, I tried to slow it down with Darkness, but once it got its second Spark up and I was unable to confuse it, there wasn't much Gastly could do with my starting hand.

  

After building up the Tauros on my bench, I was able to put myself on the offensive and take out this Pikachu before it was able to do too much damage with Spark.

---------------------------------

  

his Dratini managed to put me on edge a bit with a lucky paralysis off Wrap (had he not gotten the paralysis, I could have gotten an early victory right then and there because for a moment he had no benched pokemon). Regardless, I was able to get around Wrap and take him out with Rampage.

----------------------------

  
Another Pikachu came along and of course took out Tauros using Spark, pulling out Jigglypuff. I used Pound to soften it up a bit before switching to someone who was more suited for the matchup.

  

With Machop now out, I was able to finish Pikachu off with a quick Punch. Unfortunately, he had some more pokemon on the bench now.

------------------------------

  

Another Dratini came next which was the source of quite a bit of anxiety in this duel.

  

I made a critical misclick. I was intending to double check the descriptions of Dark machoke's attacks but ended up accidentally using Drag Off which forced me into switching his Snorlax into the fray. My original plan was to use Knock Back to put Dratini on the bench and pull out his Snorlax which wouldn't be able to counterattack, then use Drag Off to finish the duel there. But instead, I was going to have to deal with giving him some extra free turns.

As for the Snorlax, it's a promo card printed from an art contest. Its pokemon power, Guard, prevents the defending pokemon from retreating. Its other move, Roll Over, puts Snorlax to sleep and then you can toss a coin and, if heads, the opposing pokemon also falls asleep.

This misstep gave him the time to evolve his Dratini into Dragonair and use its Evolutionary Light to put Dragonite into his hand. This is very scary for me because Dragonite resists fighting.

  

I kind of panicked here and made a pretty big mistake once again. I very easily could have finished the duel by using Knock Back to finish off Snorlax, but I was much more focused on getting rid of Dragonair to prevent a Dragonite from walling me. So, I used Drag Off to get some preemptive damage on it.

  

Thankfully, I was able to send out Dark Machamp and use Fling to shuffle his Dragonair, Dratini, and all their energies back into his deck. All he had now was his Snorlax which went down to a simple Mega Punch.

----------------------------

And with that, I defeated his last pokemon and claimed my last prize card.

 

As promised, I was rewarded with two booster packs: Legends and Premier.

Legends Pack:

Spoiler

   

   

Japanese Only

Premier Pack:

Spoiler

   

   

 

The lounge is also home to this girl who's trying to join GR but needs a Dark Raichu. She's offering a rare promotional Pikachu card.

 

This isn't a trade I would recommend. Surprise Thunder can be a very powerful asset. It can deal 10 or 20 damage to all of your opponent's benched pokemon which can build up a lot of damage and potentially knock out multiple pokemon at once. It's a great counter stall option and works well with Jungle Pikachu much better than it does with this Pikachu. I would definitely rather hold onto my Dark Raichu. But again, it's a rare trade so you may want to consider it after all.

---------------------------------------

I also got the Alakazam in the mail after that last duel! Unfortunately, as I said before, I don't have the cards to really use this thing consistently yet, but it's by far the most impressive of the promos available through Bill's Computer so it's definitely the one I wanted to go for. With any luck, I'll be able to get some more Kadabra in the near future so I can build a good deck around him!

=======================

When it came to actually storming the fortress, I was quickly reminded about how intrusive these special rules could be on your deck building. Cassie here will only duel you if you use 4 standard Pikachu in your deck. (Flying Pikachu counts as a different species). This forced my hand into modifying my deck to focus on the PIkachu rule.

  

Spoiler

Energy (22)

 

Electric Pokemon (7)

  

Fighting Pokemon (11)

   

Colorless Pokemon (1)

Trainer Cards (21)

   

 

Now it was time to put this Pika-charged deck to the test against Cassie's Pikachu Zapper Deck.

  

Aaaaaand it's done on turn 2...

That was unfortunate luck for the poor girl who seems to already struggle with confidence issues...

But, for winning, we got ourselves a Rocket Pack!

Spoiler

   

   

 

With Cassie defeated, we can move on to the next room where the Card Master Steve is being held!

=================

 

Here, we meet Chip, AKA GR No.3! He'll only challenge us if our deck only uses Electric Energy.

  

Spoiler

Energy (20)

-------------------------------------

Electric Pokemon (11)

   

 

------------------------------

Fighting Pokemon (4)

-----------------------------------

Colorless Pokemon (4)

---------------------------------

Trainer Cards (21)

   

  

Once again, I had to modify my deck. This time I decided to continue using Machop since he has an advantage over electric types and his punch only requires colorless energies. No other basic fighting pokemon that I currently own have any damaging colorless attacks. I also decided to give Jolteon a try as Eevee has always been a pokemon I've never really used to the best of its ability before.

===================

  

Opening up was the classic rivalry: Pikachu vs. Eevee!

  

It didn't take long for me to evolve Eevee and I quickly realized just how much of a goddamn powerhouse Jolteon is. Pin Missile can deal anywhere from 20 to as much as 80 base damage with no downside!! Normally I'm hesitant to use damage times heads attacks, but across four coin tosses, the odds of you not getting a single tails is pretty slim. With Pin Missile, I was able to take out PIkachu in the blink of an eye.

  

With some really strong luck on my side, I was able to finish off the Zapdos I drug out pretty quickly as well with four heads! Since I made such quick work of his pokemon, he didn't even have the chance to set up any more pokemon on his bench. Jolteon is most certainly going to be a pokemon I keep around on any electric teams going forward.

And with that, Chip was defeated!

Surprise surprise, we were rewarded with another Rocket Pack

Spoiler

   

   

Japanese Only

Upon defeating Chip, Steve is freed from the capsule he was trapped in. He thanks us and rewards us with a special promo card:

I'm not sure how terribly useful this card is, but I appreciate the gesture all the same.

On his way out, an unexpected moment happened. Chip calls Steve by the name "Stan," which I assume is just a mistranslation. What was really interesting to me is what comes next.

 

Chip gives Steve a collection of Booster Packs to distribute across Card Island, to which Steve, who has been held captive this entire time, responds "You're a good man." Did Chip have a change of heart, or is there something more to what's going on in this story? This was such a bizarre moment. Let's not forget GR No. 3 was the man who kept the fire club members locked up and the water club members in a cage where they could have drowned. I'm not really sure what to think at this point, but I'm certainly intrigued.

 

Of course, on his way out, Steve offers to battle us at the Pokemon Dome on Card Island. And then Chip unlocks the door to allow us to battle the head of the fortress.

===================

To prepare for Catherine, I was going to need to make yet more adjustments to my deck in order to accomodate for her special ruling in which all electric pokemon deal 10 extra damage. To take full advantage of this, I needed some electric pokemon that could benefit from the extra damage as well as Fighting pokemon that can resist electric attacks. The result was my upgraded version of that garbage Badlands deck from before.

  

Spoiler

Energies (11)

  

-----------------------

Electric Pokemon (9)

  

-------------------------------

Fighting Pokemon (5)

 

-------------------------------

Colorless Pokemon (4)

-------------------------------

Trainer Cards (21)

   

  

 

==================

 

It was now time to battle the leader of the fortress!

  

Opening up, of all cards, she just happened to lead with her Doduo against my Rhyhorn.Because of its resistance to fighting, Rhyhorn was going to be hard walled for quite a while. In addition, Fury Attack was rapidly building up lots of damage.

  

Eventually, I was able to build up enough energy on my benched Eevee to evolve it and then played Switch. Thanks to a lucky coin flip, I was able to pick off Doduo in one hit with Quick Attack.

------------------------------

  

Somehow, I managed to flip four tails with PIn Missile my first hit against Voltorb, allowing him to get a bunch of damage on Jolteon before I was able to take it out.

---------------------------

  

Naturally, her Dark Jolteon was able to take my Jolteon out thanks to Voltorb.

  

Between her spamming of potions and defenders, it was pretty annoying taking out Dark Jolteon, but eventually I managed to power through. Thankfully, regardless of the fact that I wasn't don't damage, Magnetic Lines was able to keep Dark Jolteon from attacking and so she focused her efforts on building up energies on her other pokemon. Eventually, I did take out Dark Jolteon with Magnetic Lines.

----------------------------------

  

The big final boss here was Dark Raichu. As I mentioned earlier, Surprise Thunder is a terrifying attack if you're caught off guard.

  

Wanting to take this thing out as quickly as possible, I evolved my Eevee and switched it to the front lines to launch Pin Missile.

  

I only got one heads unfortunately, but that was fine as I was expecting Pin Missile to be a two-hit KO anyway. Unfortunately, Surprise Thunder landed and damaged my entire bench for 10 HP, taking out Rhyhorn and getting her one prize card closer to victory. On my second attack, Pin Missile once again only got a single heads, turning the matchup into a 3-hit KO which I didn't have time for!!

  

Out came Magneton who used Sonicboom to finish the job. But it was too soon to celebrate because she'd managed to take out yet another pokemon on my bench.

---------------------------------

  

Her next Voltorb came along to take Magneton out with Speed Ball, leaving me with only my last pokemon. But I was prepared.

  

While it had endured quite a bit of residual damage while being built up on the bench, my Rhyhorn was ready to be sent out and evolved. With a Horn Attack, I was able to take out her Voltorb and finish the duel!

--------------------------------------

 

And with that, I claimed my last prize card! These duels are certainly getting much more difficult as that was a very close battle. With a little bit of bad luck, things can go south very quickly!

 

Of course, my reward was two more rocket packs for the road!

Pack 1:

Spoiler

   

 

Japanese Only

   

Pack 2:

Spoiler

   

   

 

 

And we have also earned the GR Thunder Coin which grants us passage to the GR Fire and GR Water fortresses! So we've got choices ahead of us!

[Aura]

So, we now have access to the Fire and Water fortresses, but I wanted to take a moment to explore the Challenge Hall of this island. 

 

Here in the lounge, there is a child offering a Bill's Computer in a trade for a Chansey Lv. 55

 

I've already mentioned just how powerful the cards are that you can get with Bill's Computer and being able to get a second one just like that is fantastic! Base Set Chansey is a pretty rare card to give up, though, so make sure you don't intend to use this guy before you give it away.

================

 

It seems that we've arrived just in time as there is a tournament about to start! The prize here is a Dark Persian.

This card really isn't anything super impressive and I honestly wouldn't even bother with it under normal circumstances, but I figured I may as well show this tournament off for the sake of the thread.

The goal of this tournament is straight forward. There are no special rules to meet and you just have to win three duels in a row in order to win the championship and claim your prize. I decided to go in with my Safari Deck.

===================

Leading off in this tournament is a duel against Jess, a fire type specialist. Given that my deck is built around Venusaur, this is gonna be a rough battle for round 1.

--------------------------------------

  

Starting off was his Growlithe against my Jigglypuff. I was able to stall a bit with Lullaby while building up energy.

  

Eventually I was able to evolve Jigglypuff and take Growlithe out with Do the Wave.

--------------------------------------

  

Meowth came next and went down just as quickly to Do the Wave.

----------------------------------

  

Growlithe was next and was able to finish Wigglytuff off with Ember.

  

Thankfully, this wasn't before I could get Tauros prepared to keep up the pace. With a stomp, I got Growlithe down to kill range, but because I was only my last prize card, he retreated of course.

  

It was the same story with Ponyta.

  

Lastly was Magmar who stayed in after a Stomp, but after getting a hit on me with Smog, it had made the crucial mistake of placing two damage counters on Tauros. This meant I'd be able to take it out in one shot with Rampage, claiming my last prize card.

---------------------------------

 

=================

My next opponent was none other than James!

 

You're actually given the opportunity to make adjustments to your deck between duels. This means that you can actually just straight-up access your pause menu which gives you the chance to save between rounds as well! Still, I wanna use my Safari Deck for the entire tournament if I can.

It was time for our rematch with James!

  

He led off with his Gastly's Spookify which prevented me from using my Trainer Cards. Still, I was determined to keep going!

-----------------------------

  

His Darkness did confuse Bulbasaur, but I was able to evolve it to get rid of the confusion and use Leech Seed to heal off the damage. From there, he got off another Confusion on my Ivysaur but I was able to attack through it before taking him out with another Leech Seed and healing off the damage once again.

-----------------------------

  

Next came Zubat. Once again, I was able to heal off my confusion by evolving Ivysaur and then blasted away at Zubat with Solarbeam!

-----------------------------------

  

Same story with his Gastly.

---------------------------------------

  

And his Bulbasaur as well.

-------------------------------------

 

And with that, I'd claimed my last Prize Card and was able to move on.

======================

 

Our next opponent was Kara and my deck was certainly unprepared for this opponent because it took me several tries to win this duel using my current setup. I was heavily considering using a different deck entirely.

------------------------------

  

Opening up was Jigglypuff against her Squirtle. This round was simple enough thanks to my double colorless. But throughout my multiple failed attempts, I was very wary of relying too much on Double Colorless as one of Kara's favorite things to do is drop Energy Removal on you to stop you from attacking. It's absolutely obnoxious. This is why I placed an extra leaf energy onto Jigglypuff, because any turn she could drop an Energy Removal and take off that double colorless, so I wanted to make sure I'd be able to counterattack the next turn.

---------------------------------

  

Up next came Doduo which took out Jigglypuff with its Fury Attack, dragging out Bulbasaur who wasn't afraid to go in kicking.

  

I got lucky and she actually got two tails with her Fury Attack. I should mention how incredibly lucky this felt because one of the most frustrating things across all of these rematches is that EVERY. SINGLE. COIN TOSS. WAS IN HER FAVOR. I am not joking when I tell you that coin tosses in my favor always ended up Tails and coin tosses in her favor always ended up on heads. This was especially infuriating whenever she got out her Dark Charizard who loved to use Rapid Fireballs which deals 50 damage per heads. Anyway, since she wasn't able to damage Bulbasaur, I was able to finish of Doduo with Leech Life without actually needing to use its healing effect.

------------------------------

  

Next came another Squirtle which was just lunch for Venusaur's Solarbeam.

  

Last was her Charmander which gave an honest effort by fighting back with Fire Tail, but just couldn't take a Solar Beam, sadly.

---------------------------------------

 

And with that, I finally won the duel! I know it didn't look like much when looking at my successful run, but so much of my bad attempts was just my pokemon getting their energies removed constantly. I had one duel where she played two energy retrievals in one turn just to ensure I couldn't attack. And Charmander's Fire Tail is a really powerful attack, especially having an advantage over Bulbasaur. Admittedly, I probably could have had an easier time had I just used a water deck, but this Safari Deck has done me so well that I wanted to see it through to the end.

=====================

As promised, my prize for winning the cup was Dark Persian. I highly doubt this card is going to see any sort of actual use...

[Aura]

 

As Catherine from the Electric Fortress told us, the Electric Coin will give us access to the Fire or Water fortresses. My initial thought was to go to the water fortress next as I have much more cards that are well-equipped to deal with water types. However, from experience I can only assume I'll be dealing with a special rule somewhere in there that will force me to only use water energies and we all know how well that turned out.

-------------------------------

 

The first thing I noticed upon entering this room was... Imakuni? Or, a red one, anyway. He swears that he always dresses in red and that the Imakuni dressed in black is an imposter. I'm pretty reluctant to believe this, but whatever the case, Imakuni is Imakuni!

  

Starting off with Bulbasaur against his Meowth, I was able to make quick work of it with a couple of tackles and a razor leaf.

---------------------------

  

His Slowpoke came next and went down just as easily as its predecessor.

----------------------------------

  

Psyduck as well wasn't too far away from getting KO'd as well. He was drawing a few cards, though, but at this rate, nothing he drew would help him.

----------------------------------

  

Mr. Mime, too, came and went.

-----------------------------

  

His final defense was one of the most infamous stall cards in the game: Mr. Mime who protects against all damage from attacks that deal 30 or more. This means that, at the very least, it will take two hits to take it out with full HP.

Thankfully, he played "Imakuni?", causing his Mr. Mime to become confused and hurt itself. Not that this mattered too much because Ivysaur was well equipped to handle Mr Mime anyway thanks to Leech Seed completely shutting down his Meditate attack.

--------------------------

And with that, I'd collected my last prize card, leaving this strange Imakuni?... copycat? in the dust.

 

After this very strange encounter, it still took a little bit for him to register that the duel had not only started, but ended already... what a strange guy.

Whatever the case, he rewarded me with an Ambition pack!

Spoiler

   

  

----------------------------

Japanese Only

 

I'm not sure if we've seen this Pinsir card before, but I figured I'd go ahead and cover its moves here just in case. Its first attack, Slicing Throw, has a coin-flip chance of dealing 10 extra damage. his other move is Slash.

 

Imakuni? Seemed pretty upset with his loss as he stormed off, but I suppose that'll be the last we've seen of him for now.

----------------------------

 

Down here, we have a man searching for a Dark Charizard and offering a Charizard Lv. 76 in its place.

 

This specific version of Charizard happens to be a japanese-only promo reprint of the standard Base-Set charizard with different art. Its ability and attacks are the same, just like the Venusaur I got in the other trade. But since I haven't gotten a regular charizard yet, here's the standard one it's based on:

You should recognize the card design as it's probably one of the most famous pokemon cards of all time. And, specifically the "shadowless" print of this card (a print of the card without the drop shadow behind the border of the card art) is one of the more famous collectors items among pokemon card collectors. Unfortunately, this leads a lot of people to believe this card is more powerful than it actually is. 

 

Whether or not this card is better than Dark Charizard, well, I'd definitely say without a doubt that Charmeleon is better than Dark Charmeleon. as Dark Charmeleon has a chance to do more damage in one turn, but this requires a coin flip and regardless of what you flip, there's a downside. If heads, you have to discard a fire energy just like Flamethrower. If tails, the attack is wasted and does absolutely nothing. Considering this move has a 50% fail rate, Flamethrower is a much more consistent option. Plus, Slash deals more damage than Tail Slap and with Team Rocket Charmander, it's pretty easy to get three energies on it before evolving it. That said, Dark Charizard can be viewed as a strict upgrade from Charmeleon. By investing several fire energies into the card, it can flip a coin several times and build up some insane damage if you're lucky enough. Regular Charizard on the other hand doesn't really feel like a strict upgrade from Charmeleon as its Fire Spin, while it does more damage, is its only attack and has a much harsher cost than Flamethrower. Charizard doesn't have a standard attack to fall back on against weaker opponents. But the more damage you do with Dark Charizard's attack, the more energies you'll have to discard and with no way to control it, you could deal way more damage than necessary and waste a ton of Fire energies. Pokemon that have more than 100 HP are pretty rare to begin with, not to mention Charizard's Energy Burn allows it to use double colorless energies as fire energies to help pay for the cost of Fire Spin after discarding two fire energies. So I would definitely say that standard Charizard is much more useful overall. Just remember to keep your deck stocked with Energy Retrieval options. Needless to say, I did go through with this trade. Having at least one charizard in my deck could be useful.

===================

  

I went ahead and updated my Lakefire deck for this club focusing on my new Charizard card along with water cards to give me a leg up against the other fire types I'll be dealing with. I decided to get a bit more experimental with this deck, trying out a larger variety of trainer cards and fewer energies. I'll be adjusting this deck periodically going forward but for now, this is what I'm settling on. I built this deck around dealing heavy damage to take out the opponent's heavy hitters quickly while also putting a large emphasis on removing energies from the opponent so that they can't use their attacks as consistently.

Spoiler

Energy Cards (19)

8x Fire Energy

7x Water Energy

  

-------------------------------

Fire Pokemon (11)

   

-------------------------

Water Pokemon (8)

  

------------------------------

Colorless Pokemon (6)

 

-------------------------------

Trainer Cards (16)

   

 

I'm unsure about the consistency of this deck at this point and I'll be tweaking the numbers a bit as we go forward, but I didn't put too much mind into the deck's issues because I was inevitably going to be restructuring to accommodate for special rules anyway.

 

Our first opponent, you may recognize from the tournament: Jess! Apparently he's perfecting a recipe here in this... volcanic room that looks absolutely nothing like a kitchen. Huh...

  

Opening up was Charmander against Kangaskhan. I'd prefer to have another pokemon on the front lines, but Kangaskhan is not a bad opponent to face off against. The worst it can do is draw more cards but it won't be dealing any damage against me unless he plays Switch or dedicates at least two turns to placing energies on it.

  

A few turns in and I was able to gather enough fire onto Charmander to evolve it and finish off Kangaskhan with Slash.

----------------------------------

  

Flamethrower made quick work of Meowth

-----------------------------------

  

...and Growlithe too

-----------------------------

  

Last but certainly not least was Ponyta who was also not safe from Charmeleon's wrath and went down in seconds.

-----------------------------

 

And with that, my last prize was claimed and the duel was over. My prize was a Lost Isle pack.

Spoiler

   

   

------------------------------

Japanese Only

 

Of course, Jess also opens up the door allowing us to enter the next room.

====================

 

 

Our next opponent was the infamous Kara who we also battled at the tournament. She gave me a lot of problems there with her affinity for Energy Removal. I must say that her personality here was actually got quite a few laughs out of me. She's constantly mixing up lines and reading from a script and muttering to herself which makes for quite a few humorous. Of course, it's while reading from her script that she reveals what the special rule for her duel is. And, of course, it's the typical only-fire-energy duel.

  

So, using the cards I had, I adjusted my deck to accomodate for only using Fire energies and this is what I ended up with.

Spoiler

Energy Cards (14)

---------------------------

Fire Pokemon (13)

   

-------------------------------

Water Pokemon (3)

 

-----------------------------

Colorless Pokemon (10)

   

-----------------------------

Trainer Cards (16)

   

  

Of course, I included whatever water pokemon I had that had colorless attacks to deal with the obvious main threat of fire types. In addition, I was armed with plenty of energy removal myself this time around. Of course, colorless pokemon are always a nice addition to have in these duels, though I'm not sure how good of an idea Wigglytuff was to include. Perhaps I would have been better off running a flying-type to counter fighting types in its place, but hindsight is 20/20.

===================

  

Opening up, she led with her Doduo which got pretty lucky with its coin flips and was able to take out Charmander without a problem.

  

Tauros was able to get a bit of damage on Doduo, but Doduo retreated...

...and she played Scoop Up to restore its HP. Not sure why she retreated first, but the retreat was free so this didn't really affect anything.

  

After dealing a bit of damage to Squirtle with a lucky coin flip, she played... scoop up. I see. This is going to be one of those duels.

  

There wasn't much I could do against the strategy at the moment, but I had something cooking on the bench. For now, I'll just have to tough it out.

  

She retreated again into a machop but thankfully didn't have any energies to attack yet. I took the opportunity to deal as much damage as I could to Machop with Rampage. I really didn't think this through because double colorless aren't allowed in this ruleset, which meant that Machop wouldn't be able to attack for at least one extra turn. Thankfully, the confusion didn't end up mattering against Machop and I was able to take it out with Stomp regardless.

-----------------------------

  

Of course, with Tauros' HP so low, it was easy pickings for Charmander.

  

Now came my own Squirtle who was ready to kick some shell against Charmander!

------------------------------------

  

Doduo came back out once again and this time stayed in to go down.

---------------------------

  

Dark Charmeleon came next and unfortunately Squirtle was in kill range of Tail Slap thanks to Doduo.

-------------------------

  

Thankfully, I'd been raising up an Eevee on my bench. Perhaps she was expecting to see a Flareon. I certainly would have been surprised to see this Eevee filled with Fire energies evolve into a Vaporeon! Thanks to Dark Charmeleon's weakness to water pokemon, I was able to take it out with a single bite and finish the fight!

-----------------------------

 

After collecting my last prize card, I won the duel and my prize was a Rocket Pack!

Spoiler

   

   

-----------------------------

Japanese Only:

This was actually a very, very nice pack. Lots of pretty good cards!

After exclaiming "Open Sesame Seeds!" which I unfortunately missed the screenshot of, Kara opened the door to the next room so I could duel the next opponent who goes by the name Ellen!

=======================

Entering the next room, we can see another of the Grand Masters, Courtney, trapped on an island in the lava.

 

As expected, she'll be released once we defeat Ellen.

Ellen's special rule requires us to use a deck that includes 4 Eevee. This is pretty easy for us to work with since our deck already has four Eevee!

  

Her first pokemon was Eevee which went down to a couple of Stomps.

----------------------------

  

Her Magmar managed to build up some damage against me which may not have been her best decision ever because now Rampage could deal enough damage to take it out in one shot!

-------------------------------

  

Unfortunately the Electabuzz that followed proved to be quite the handful. It naturally took out Tauros without a problem.

  

Charmander was able to hold out for a little bit but was taken out pretty quickly.

  

The next one drug out was Eevee who was secretly prepared for evolution!

  

She did have a second Electabuzz, but it didn't have any energies and she seemed pretty energy starved at the moment. I was pretty confident that with my Energy Removal, I could stall out a bit until I could get myself another Water Energy either through drawing it, Energy Search, or Energy Retrieval. Either way, I would be making sure that Electabuzz wouldn't be doing anything for quite a while. With this in mind, I went ahead and evolved Vaporeon and took out Electabuzz with Bite.

---------------------------------

  

Predictably enough, out came her next Electabuzz which was energy starved. I never got my second Water Energy for Whirlpool but it ultimately proved unnecessary and I was able to take it out with Bite.

--------------------------------

 

And with that, I'd drawn my final prize card!

 

As a prize, I won two packs, Ambition and Rocket!

Ambition:

Spoiler

   

  

------------------------

GB-Exclusive Cards

Normally GB Exclusive cards had an official card at least designed even if never officially printed or released. In this case, however, I actually found some cards that are entirely exclusive to the Gameboy Game and never seen anywhere else at all.

  

   

---------------------------

Japanese Only

Dark Fearow is a GB2 Promo card! It was available inside the strategy guide for the game. A pretty cool gift, to be sure, because this card isn't actually all that bad.

Its first attack, Fly High, causes its second attack, Drill Dive, to deal double the damage on the next turn. Drill Dive cannot be used twice in a row and also prevents him from retreating on the next turn. Still, it's a really powerful move for only a cost of two colorless energy, it has a resistance to fighting types, and the downsides of Drill Dive can be worked around thanks to other trainer cards like Switch. In addition, if it didn't use Drill Dive the previous turn, its retreat cost is zero!

Rocket

Spoiler

   

   

Japanese Only

 

And of course, as promised, Courtney is freed from the island she was trapped on. Just like the others, Courtney, too, grants us a special promo card:

This is certainly a powerful Arcanine that I wouldn't be against splashing into my deck... if only I could get my hands on a decent Growlithe, that is. 

===================

 

With Courtney freed, our next step was to challenge the fortress' leader: Bernard

 

The special rule of this duel is Flame Armor. This rule protects all of his Fire-types from their weakness against Water-pokemon. On the surface, there doesn't seem to be any reason to run water-types against him without the weakness, but thanks to the Dark Starmie card I got from that last Ambition pack, and the effect of Vaporeon's Whirlpool, there definitely still seems to be a reason to run these water-types against a deck built around Fire pokemon. So, I made some adjustments to my deck. Since Ponyta and Rapidash haven't been seeing much play, I tossed them out of the deck in favor of adding more weight to more important cards in my deck. I mostly focused on increasing my energy count to 10 fire energies, 8 water energies, and 4 colorless energies. Of course, I also added in Dark Starmie.

----------------------------

  

Against Bernard's Magmar, I led with Eevee and managed to get some lucky coin flips to keep it from attacking until I got the energies to evolve Eevee!

  

The plan was to continuously use Whirlpool to keep his Magmar energy starved, but unfortunately, I couldn't attack through Smokescreen enough to keep his energy below two and he was eventually able to power through my onslaught and overpower Dark Vaporeon. Yes, I could have been more efficient at taking him out just by using Bite, but it was an intentional decision to drag this out as long as possible. By removing as many fire energies as I could and forcing him to waste them on his Magmar, he'd run out of Fire Energy much faster and being starved for energy is a big concern for decks built around fire pokemon, so even though Dark Vaporeon went down, it did its part.

  

My hard hitter Charmeleon came next and was ready to haul ass against Bernard's deck. With a Slash, Magmar went down without a second to spare.

----------------------------------

  

Wanting to preserve my own energies in case he had some energy removal strategies of his own, I decided to go for Slash against Ponyta, not realizing that it had a free retreat cost which it, of course, took advantage of. This Ponyta is from Vending Series 3. Its first move is Smash Kick and its second, Live Coal, requires you to flip a coin and discard a fire energy if you get a Tails. I'd say this is actually a pretty solid Ponyta for an early start. Especially with its free retreat cost.

  

His Dark Charmeleon went for Fireball and missed the coin flip. And this right here is exactly why Charmeleon is better than Dark Charmeleon. Even if Fireball did hit, it still wouldn't be enough to take out Charmeleon. Bernard had invested three energies into this thing, so I was going to show no mercy and burn it down with Flamethrower.

-------------------------------

 

My next opponent was Dark Ninetails. This is yet another GB-exclusive pokemon that doesn't have an official print. Since I don't have this card or screenshots of its bio, I'll just have to describe the card for you.

Dark Ninetails as 60 HP and, at least under normal rules, is weak to Water. It has two attacks. The first of which, perplex, costs one fire energy and prevents the opponent from drawing on the next turn. It second attack, Nine Tails, costs two fire energies and one colorless. When you use it, you flip 9 coins and it deals 10 times the number of heads. Perhaps sooner or later I'll take the time to create these GB-only cards in a card maker online to serve as a visual aid, and if this becomes a consistent issue going forward, I'll most certainly do that. But at the moment, this will have to do.

Anyway, Ninetails tried to stump me by stopping my draws, but the fact is I already had all the cards I needed to win in play or in my hand. This Perplex attack was just too little too late.

---------------------------

  

My next opponent was another Magmar. His Smokescreen was going to be a pain, but I had some workarounds. I managed to attack through the smokescreen to weaken him with Slash before paying the retreat cost to switch out.

  

On my back row was a lowly Charmander who was able to use its Gather Fire ability to borrow one of Charmeleon's Fire energies.

  

And it just so happened that I had been sitting on a second Charmeleon in my hand this whole time! With a Flamethrower, I was able to pick off the rest of this meddling Magmar's health.

-------------------------------------

  

Out came another Ponyta which I was able to burn away.

--------------------------------

  

Of course, he had yet another Magmar on the back burner. But, with some good luck, this wasn't going to prove a problem. Why? Well, remember that Ponyta he retreated a while back?

  

My plan was to send out Dark Starmie and use Spinning Shower to finish the fight by avoiding this Magmar altogether and taking out the Ponyta behind it on the bench. Unfortunately, I missed the coin flip and thanks to Smokescreen, I was unable to ever get the attack to land. Unfortunately, it seems this plan was destined to fail and I got a little too greedy with the idea and tried it one more time instead of doing the smart thing and using Rebirth to at least get some damage on Magmar so that it would be in kill range of Flamethrower. It would have been really cool to pull this strat off but them's the breaks.

  

I wouldn't be a true duelist if I didn't have a backup plan! And indeed, my secret weapon was ready to fire. I got a slash on Magmar before getting hit by a Smokescreen. Obviously, going for Flamethrower would be a pretty big risk. I wouldn't want to pay the cost only to have the attack miss! So...

  

I evolved Charmeleon to get rid of the Smokescreen status and absolutely decimated Magmar with Fire Spin! 

--------------------------------

What an incredible duel! Looking at the stats, the duel may not have looked as close as it was, but had I relented at any point in any of my strategies, he easily could have turned the duel around. Even though some of my plans fell through, it still felt good to have so many different ideas at play and that finish was like something out of an anime! It's worth noting that I was actually quite starved for cards myself by this point in the game so had I not been able to get Charizard out, I'm not sure I would have been able to win.

 

And of course, with every leader defeated comes two prize packs! Ambition and Rocket once again!

Ambition:

Spoiler

   

  

----------------------------

GB-Exclusive:

  

-----------------------

Japanese Only

 

Rocket:

Spoiler

   

   

 

And of course we also have the Fire Coin, bringing us one step closer to our goal. Next we'll have to take on the GR Water Fortress!

[Aura]

 

On our way out, we're met by none other than Ronald once again.

 

Ronald tells us that we'll need both the Fire and Water coins in order to access the Fighting Fortress. He also tells us that the Fighting Fortress is going to be larger than the fortresses we've explored so far. That'll be interesting to see, for sure. But we'll get there sooner or later.

 

This time, though, there's no getting out of our duel with Ronald!

   

He led off with Hitmonchan against my Tauros. Thanks to his super-effective Jab plus a strange use of Pluspower, I was able to deal max damage with Rampage and take him out.

-------------------------------

  

Of course, his Eevee came next and took me out with an effortless tackle the next turn.

  

Charmander was next in line and, thanks to an energy removal, I was able to keep Eevee from dealing any damage as I burned away at its health.

---------------------------

  

This Jolteon he'd previously evolved came out in Eevee's place. It's a GB-exclusive card from the first game. Its first attack, Double Kick, deals 20 damage per heads across two coin flips. Its second attack, Stun Needle, has a coin flip chance of paralysis. With Double Kick, it was able to take Charmander out. Luckily, I thought ahead and, when the first double kick failed to kill me, I used another Charmander's Gather Fire to absorb the fire energy off of this one so that I could get a leg up the next round.

  

With Charmeleon on the field, all it took was a couple of slashes to take him out.

----------------------------------

  

His Hitmonlee was my next opponent and, wanting to conserve my fire energies, I avoided using Flamethrower and just went for some slashes knowing I'd be safe from at least one attack.

--------------------------------

  

The next pokemon was Vaporeon: Another GB-exclusive card. Its first attack is actually slightly different on the scan of the card. In-game, Focus Energy costs one colorless energy to use and doubles the power of its other move, Bite, on the next turn. Despite my weakness to water, Vaporeon lacked the energy to actually use Bite, so I was able to fearlessly slash away at it until it went down.

----------------------------------

  

Ditto is a pretty unique GB-exclusive card. Its first attack is pound, but its second attack, Morph, removes all damage counters from it and allows it to be replaced with a copy of a random basic pokemon from your deck. If you build your deck in a certain way, you could only take the form of pokemon of a certain type or pokemon that have colorless attacks. Even though the damage counters are removed, energies attached are not, so it's almost like a special type of evolution in a way. Thankfully, I didn't have to worry about this as its 50 HP made it a prime target for Flamethrower.

-----------------------------------

 

With that, I'd collected my last prize card and won the duel!

My prize was the rare promo card: Computer Error! This card seems to do far more harm than good. Drawing five cards sounds like an extremely useful ability, but your opponent also gets the option to draw five cards and your turn ends immediately, giving your opponent the chance to start their turn with five free cards and god knows what sorts of combos you just allowed them to enter. Even for deck-out strategies, this card doesn't really work as intended because your opponent can draw up to 5, which means they could choose simply not to draw a single card. I'm really not sure what purpose this card was supposed to serve but this is a card I certainly don't see myself using any time soon.

=====================

 

Our obvious next destination was the GR Water Fortress. I'm a bit less confident going into this fortress because I seem to be lacking pretty heavily in the water department. While energies aren't much of a concern anymore, my water cards are still lacking quite a bit in actual strength. Obviously, electric pokemon are the way to go in countering water-types, but we all know this fortress is going to have special rules that force me to use water decks.

---------------------

 

Over here in the lounge, we have yet another trade. Can you guess what for? That's right, Dark Blastoise for a promotional version of Base Set Blastoise.

 

Is this a good trade? Abso-fucking-lutely.

Here is the english print once again, in case you're unaware.

Blastoise's Rain Dance power is the focal point of every good water deck. Being able to dump all of your water energies from your hand in one turn is an insanely powerful ability. Coupled with Hydro Pump which has power rivalling Venusaur's Solarbeam at the cost of one extra water energy (which isn't much of a demand considering you can drop them all at once), Blastoise is a force to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, I lack the Dark Blastoise necessary to make this trade so I'm unfortunately going to have to pass on it, but I'll definitely be coming back to make this trade if I ever pull a Dark Blastoise from a pack!

-----------------------------

Also in the lounge, we can find Amy from the Water Club in disguise. Just like Ronald, she's here to get back the stolen cards from Team GR! Unfortunately, no one from the Water Club came with her.

==================

 

We've spent enough time in the lounge, so we're going to have to press on! Right off the bat, we're met with the very restriction I wasn't looking forward to. Jacob here will only accept our challenge if we only have water energies in our deck. Working around the limitations of what cards I had in my collection at the time, I put together a mono-water deck:

  

Spoiler

Energy (18)

----------------------------

Water Pokemon (7)

  

------------------------------

Electric Pokemon (7)

  

----------------------------

Colorless Pokemon (8)

  

------------------------------

Trainer Cards (20)

   

  

Obviously, there's a lot of filler in this deck. Like I said, I really lacked in offensive power with water pokemon. My strongest water-type was Gyarados but he'd need several turns to build up energies and I don't really have any water-types capable of surviving for an extended period of time while productively stalling. Gyarados would be much more usable in a deck built around Rain Dance. I did away from my typical Pokemon Trader and replaced it with some Gusts of Winds and I also added in Scoop Up. These are some pretty basic strategies, but Scoop Up actually can be a pretty useful card, especially if your deck doesn't use a lot of evolved cards. If you're not using an evolved pokemon, Scoop Up can be used as a better version of Switch since it can also target your benched pokemon. Gust of Wind can also help me get rid of unfavorable matchups if I don't have anything on the bench to switch to.

-----------------------------

  

Starting off, it was a mirror match of Staryu against Staryu and I had a pretty fun plan using my starting hand. 

  

I evolved Staryu into Dark Starmie early on to take some hits. 

Using Spinning Star, I was able to knock out this Staryu and damage one on the bench as well. 

----------------------------

  

The next Staryu came out to return fire, but once I was in kill range, I simply used Dark Starmie's Rebirth power to restore it back to its base form and remove all damage counters.

  

From there, I just had to attach another Water energy to it and slap this Staryu silly.

---------------------------------

He tried to counter my Staryu with a Voltorb, but I used Scoop Up to quickly draw Starmie back to my hand and send out a better matchup.

  

At this point, it was only a matter of time before Voltorb went down to my Magnemite. 

---------------------------

 

With no more benched pokemon, I won the duel and earned a Lost Isle booster pack.

Spoiler

   

  

---------------------------------

Japanese Only

  

=========================

 

The next room is where the Grand Master Jack is being held. In order to free him, I'll have to duel Cody who requires four... magikarp in my deck. Thankfully, my deck is a bit more flexible thanks to being allowed multiple energy types.

  

Spoiler

Energy (20)

  

----------------------------

Grass Pokemon (2)

 

----------------------

Water Pokemon (7)

  

----------------------------

Electric Pokemon (9)

  

-----------------------------

  

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Trainer Cards (14)

   

Since I had more flexibility this time, I wanted to build my deck around the expectation that I'd be dealing with a deck full of Gyarados and Magikarp. Of course, I'd have to build my own deck around these cards as well, but I could also sprinkle in some outs to opposing ones. That's why I built my deck mostly around electric types to make quick work of Magikarp and other water-types early on while having some grass-types to make quick work of any Gyarados that slip through the cracks. Jolteon would also be a big help in dealing with opposing Gyarados. To avoid dealing with too many different types of energies, I focused my grass-types on a limited selection of pokemon that could attack without the need for Grass energies. Ideally, I would use two scythers here, but I only have one copy of it so I used a Pinsir which is virtually identical save for its lack of a fighting resistance and inferior HP.

---------------------------

  

Leading off was Magikarp against Magikarp, but it seemed he didn't have any pokemon on his bench. Still, Magikarp wasn't going to be doing much on its own so I let it just sit here while I built up energies on my benched pokemon.

  

Eventually, he was able to evolve his Magikarp into Dark Gyarados. Gyarados' Final Beam was a bit scary to look at but if I could make quick work of it without letting it pile on too many water energies, it shouldn't be an issue. Of course, it made quick work of Magikarp with Ice Beam.

  

I wasn't quite ready to send out my other pokemon, so I was forced to let Magnemite take the stage to stall for a bit of extra time. I didn't equip it with any more energies because it would be taking one for the team.

  

Pinsir was the one I was preparing in the background, and it was able to exploit Dark Gyarados' strange weakness to grass in order to make quick work of the behemoth. Final Beam ultimately didn't matter because he was never able to get any other basic pokemon to put on the bench!

-----------------------------------

 

Since that was his only pokemon, I won the game prematurely and was rewarded with a new pack type: Assault!

Spoiler

   

--------------------------

Japanese Only

Pidgeotto is from Vending Series 3. Its first attack, Twister, has a coin-flip chance of returning all trainer and energy cards attached to the opposing pokemon to their hand unless the pokemon is knocked out. Its second attack, Fly, has a coin-flip chance of avoiding any attacks the next turn, but if you flip tails, it won't do anything.

--------------------------------

Eevee is from Vending Series 1 and is pretty basic. Its first attack is Gnaw and its second attack, Lunge, has a coin-flip chance of doing nothing. It's got really cute card art, but aside form that there's nothing note-worthy about this card.

---------------------------------

Nidoran F is from Vending Series 1 as well. Its first move is Tail Whip which has a coin-flip chance of preventing the defending pokemon from attacking it the next turn. Its second attack, Poison Sting, poisons the opponent.

------------------------------

Shellder is from Vending Series 2. Its attack is Water Spout which does 10 extra damage for every water energy not used for its cost (no more than 20).

--------------------------------

Nidoran M is from Vending Series 1 as well. Its first attack, Focus Energy, powers up its second attack, Horn Rush, which has a coin-flip chance of doing nothing. On the surface, this looks better than the standard Nidoran M from Base Set, but part of what made Base Set Nidoran M so special was that Horn Hazard could potentially get off turn one with a powerful 30 damage. 40 damage isn't so impressive on a two-energy attack, especially with a coin-flip chance of failure. Even with Focus Energy bumping it to 80 damage, it still takes two turns to set up and if you fail that coin flip, 

 

In addition to the pack, Jack is of course set free as well.

As a reward, Jack gave us another promotional card. This time, a special Magikarp. Looking at this thing on the surface, it looks very impressive for a Magikarp. But once you translate its attacks, it's not nearly as good anymore. Its first attack is Trickle which deals 10 damage per heads across two coin flips. Its other attack is Dragon Rage. It deals 50 damage but if either of two coin flips are tails, it misses. I think I would rather just use Team Rocket Magikarp. That way, if I'm forced to send it into battle, it'll be able to at least call Gyarados to my hand for a quick evolution.

 

Of course, Jack reminds us that Grand Master Rod still needs to be saved. 

  

This guy's got some... interesting mannerisms. That aside, his special rule doesn't actually limit my deck building so I decided now would be a good time to prepare a decent deck I'd be using against the fortress leader.

  

Spoiler

Energy (20)

  

--------------------------------

Grass Pokemon (7)

  

------------------------------------

Electric Pokemon (9)

  

-------------------------------------------

Colorless Pokemon (8)

  

------------------------------------------------

Trainer Cards (16)

    

 

Alex comes with a new Special Rule: Small Bench. This rule allows for only 3 pokemon to remain on the bench at a time. This conflicts a bit with part of my deck's strategy, but I shouldn't have too many issues as long as I'm careful about what pokemon go on the bench.

  

This Seel is from Vending Series 2. Its first move, Gorwl, reduces damage taken on the next turn by 10. Its other move, Ice Beam, has a coin-flip chance of paralysis. I was able to work around this thing's Growl with some lucky coin flips to take it out.

  

The second Seel used Ice Beam to hit Eevee for some decent damage.

  

I sent out Jolteon next to finish the game with Seel. It took another Ice Beam to the face but managed to avoid the paralysis.

-------------------------------

  

This Tauros proved to be a major hassle. Its only attack, Kicking and Stomping, has a coin flip chance of damaging the opponent for an extra 10 HP, or forcing a switch on the opponent if it gets tails. This thing was either going to knock Jolteon out or send it back to be easy pickings later. It got the second effect with its attack, forcing Jolteon to retreat.

  

I sent out my Magnemite to do a bit of damage to it.

  

I brought Jolteon back out but unfortunately had pretty bad luck and failed my Pin Missile completely.

  

Next came Grimer who was able to poison the thing, but unable to get the paralysis with Sticky Hands.

  

Grimer didn't go down in vain though, Tauros was defeated thanks to residual damage from the poison!

----------------------------------

With some extra Magnemite on my bench, I was actually able to use Magnetism to greater effect.

  

This didn't prove all that necessary though as is final pokemon was just a Magikarp which would have gone down to a simple tackle anyway.

-------------------------------

 

With his last pokemon down and my last prize card claimed, I won and earned an ambition pack.

Spoiler

   

   

GB Exclusive

 

======================

Last but not least was Brooke, the leader of the water fortress.

 

Brooke's special rule, Running Water, This reduces the retreat cost of all water types. Now it should be clear why I decided to go with Grimer and Dark Muk!

-------------------------------------

  

I was able to hit Goldeen, but thanks to its free retreat cost, it was able to retreat with no problem.

  

Out came Articuno which was poisoned right away. This thing clearly had the inention to stay in battle before retreating a little while later, but I had other plans...

  

Evolving Grimer into Dark Muk, I was able to trap this Articuno into battle. Thanks to Sticky Goo, all of her pokemon's retreat costs are increased by two energy, completely shutting down her easy retreat strategy. With this, I was able to take out her Articuno with no further issues.

-------------------------------------

  

Next came Lapras whow as able to deal half of Dark Muk's HP thanks to the water energies she'd piled on while Articuno was walling me. I would have loved to poison it, but being in kill range made that less enticing. Instead, I retreated.

  

With a full bench, Do the Wave was at max power, so I was able to make quick work of Lapras.

---------------------------------------

  

Articuno came and went once again with little influence on the battle.

-----------------------------------

  

Another Goldeen fell to the monster that was Wigglytuff

----------------------------------------

  

...and yet another one met the same fate.

-----------------------------------

  

Finally, a Seaking was able to stand its ground against Wigglytuff and take it out with Waterfall. What a relief for her!

------------------------------------

  

...now I hope she has an out for Jolteon.

------------------------------------------

 

Spoiler alert: She didn't. And with my last prize card claimed, I took Brooke out with a pretty clean sweep!

 

And the prize was, once again, more Rocket packs. I have enough of these at this point to build a house out of 'em, but I suppose I can't turn down new cards.

Pack 1:

Spoiler

   

   

 

Rank 2:

Spoiler

   

   

 

And of course the GR Water Coin came along with the packs and with this and the GR Fire Coin, we now have access to the GR Fighting Fortress! Supposedly this fortress is much larger than its predecessors, so I'm not entirely sure what to expect or how much time it's going to take me to go through. Depending on that, you may have to wait a bit longer than normal for my next post, but we're making steady progress!

[Aura]

And we've already made it to the 3rd area of GR Island! 

 

As promised, we'll need the GR Fire and Water coins to enter this fortress.

With the door gone, we can advance further! This fortress has no lounge, at least not in the traditional sense.

-----------------------------

 

We'll need to defeat the Fortress leader, Brutus, in order to get the Fighting Coin and open the gate behind him, granting us access to the rest of the island. But in order to challenge him, we're going to have to duel is subordinates as per usual. But there's a catch that sets this fortress apart from anything we've dealt with so far.

 

The GR members here are hidden in a labyrinth filled with trap holes.

Falling into any of these holes will bring you into this basement area with a staircase that leads back out to the main hall. As you've noticed by now, there are chests hidden throughout the dungeon. These can hold various cards and booster packs.

For example, the chest here in the basement area holds a Fighting Energy. Most of these chests aren't as lame as this, though, don't worry. Most of the chests are hidden throughout the labyrinth. Due to the fact that many screens look very similar, I can't guarantee I was able to find all of the chests, but I'm pretty certain I was pretty thorough in my search. Most of the chests are surrounded on all sides by trap doors but as far as I could tell, there was no way to notice a trap door as you explore the corridors, so it mostly just seemed like tedious trial and error.

 

This chest contained a Rocket pack:

Spoiler

   

   

---------------------------------------

Japanese Only

--------------------------------

 

This next chest gave me a Premier pack!

Spoiler

   

   

-----------------------------------

Japanese Only

 

------------------------------------

 

Yet another chest was here holding an Ambition pack.

Spoiler

   

  

---------------------------------

GB Only

  

 

--------------------------------

Japanese Only

---------------------------------

 

This chest contained a Present pack!

Spoiler

   

   

---------------------------------

Japanese Only

Weedle is from Vending Series 1. Its first attack is Peck and its second attack, Poison Horn, poisons the opponent.

Hey look! I finally got the Blastoise I really would have love to have had back in the Water Fortress one post ago. Oh well, I can't complain too much. Better late than never, Blastoise is a very powerful card I'm glad to have!

------------------------------

Last but not least is this centeral room in the labyrinth with a single chest. There are trapdoors at the east and south entrances to this room, so you'll only be able to enter from the north.

This chest contains this promotional Diglett card! Its first attack is Peck and its second, Trip Over, has a coin-flip chance of doing an additional 10 damage.

========================

With that, it seems like I've collected all the cards in the labyrinth. It's entirely possible I may have missed a chest or two, but I felt pretty thorough in my search. Anyway, in this room we have our first opponent, Tony, and in the cage behind him is the Fighting Club Master Mitch. Of course, we'll have to defeat Tony in order to free him. Tony, also, has a special condition for his duel: You can't run any Energy Removal or Super Energy Removal cards. How convenient for a duelist specializing in Fighting-types.

  

Spoiler

Energy (22)

  

--------------------------------

Grass Pokemon (10)

   

--------------------------------------

Psychic Pokemon (7)

   

----------------------------------

Colorless Pokemon (6)

  

--------------------------------------

Trainer Cards (15)

   

I threw together a deck to counteract this deck. Is it a good deck? Absolutely not. I wanted to give Alakazam a shot, but my lack of Kadabra to make Alakazam more consistent is seriously hurting here. Still, did my best building a solid anti-fighting deck for this duel. It could be argued that perhaps it would have been more worthwhile going with the Ghost-types, but knowing the special rule of the final duel (thanks to Ronald's email), this idea seemed a bit less appealing. Hopefully, between Pokemon Trader and Breeder, I might not need more than one Kadabra.

====================

  

Leading off, it was Bulbasaur against Lickitung but I had a pretty solid starting hand to work against this foe. Thanks to a few lucky coin flips avoiding paralysis from Tongue Wrap, I was able to get a pretty clean amount of damage on this thing.

  

After a short while, I evolved Bulbasaur and took out Lickitung with a Leech Seed to heal off some of my damage.

--------------------------------------

  

Following suit was another Lickitung which I was almost able to take out before it finished me off with Tongue Wrap.

----------------------------------------

  

Thankfully, I had another Bulbasaur on the bench waiting to spring into action and finish the job!

---------------------------------------

  

Next up was Dark Dugtrio and now the sweep was set up. With a single Vine Whip, Dark Dugtrio went down quickly thanks to its weakness to grass.

-------------------------------------

  

Graveler tried to get some damage off with Stone Barrage, but didn't got a tails on the first flip, leaving it to be taken out with a Vine Whip once again.

---------------------------------------

And with my last prize card claimed and his last pokemon defeated, Tony was beaten!

 

For winning, I was awared with an Ambition pack and an Assault pack.

Ambition:

Spoiler

   

   

-------------------------------------

Japanese Only

Assault:

Spoiler

   

 

------------------------------------

Japanse Only

JIgglypuff is another GB Exclusive card from the first game which has been given a scan but never been physically released. Its first attack, Friendship Song, gives you a coin flip chance to place a random basic pokemon onto your bench from your deck. Its second attack, Expand, decreases damage taken on the next turn by 10.

-------------------------------------

Vulpix from Vending Series 3 has some really pretty card art! Its attack, Foxfire, allows you to switch your opponent's active pokemon with one of their benched pokemon before attacking.

-------------------------------------

  

 

And of course, Mitch is freed as well!

He rewards us with another Cool Porygon which... I'm pretty sure we got already from somebody else? Still, if you're interested in using this card, it's nice to have a second copy. Especially for free.

Mitch then tells us he'll be headed off to the fighting club.

 

And once again, it seems that Mitch has been given a collection of booster packs to share with Card Island!

====================

At the east side of the labyrinth, we find Grace. She has the typical limitation of using only fighting energies.

And she's a dirty cheater.

As always, she's not going to let you duel her if you have any energies other than fighting energies. Even special energies like Double Colorless. But you know what she has in her deck?

Three. Double. Colorless. Energies. 

To my knowledge, all of the other duelists with these restrictions followed the same restrictions as you, but I suppose this time you're required to win at a total disadvantage. 

  

Putting her cheating ways aside, I threw together a mono-fighting energy deck to compete against this opponent.

Spoiler

Energy (20)

-------------------------------

Grass Pokemon (4)

 

----------------------------------------

Fighting Pokemon (9)

  

---------------------------------------

Colorless Pokemon (6)

  

----------------------------------------

Trainer Cards (19)

   

  

  

Opening up was Spearow against a Machop that, on its own, would be unable to do a thing to me.

  

Since she didn't back down from putting energies on this thing, I imagine she was planning to evolve it to start dealing damage. Instead, I surprised her by evolving myself and taking Machop out quickly with Drill Dive.

-----------------------------------

  

I couldn't attack the next turn due to the effect of Drill Dive, but I was able to make quick work of Spearow no problem at all.

--------------------------------------

With no other benched pokemon, we won the duel prematurely!

 

As my prize, I was given an Ambition pack as well as a pack from yet another new series: Flight!

Ambition:

Spoiler

   

  

-----------------------------------------

GB Exclusive

 

 

Flight:

Spoiler

 

------------------------------

Japanese Only

Seadra is from Vending Series 3. Its Water Bomb attack lets it deal 10 damage per extra water energy not used for the attack's cost (up to 20 damage total) to your opponent's benched pokemon. This can be a very nice ability to have!

Omanyte is from Vending Series 3 and once again this card is sporting some absolutely beautiful art! Its pokemon power, Fossil Guidance, allows you to flip a coin for a chance to add a Mysterious Fossil from your deck to your hand. Its attack is Surf.

This Dewgong is from Vending Series 2. Its first attack is Rest which removes all damage counters from it and removes any status conditions it has, causing it to fall asleep instead. Its other attack, Aurora Beam, has a coin-flip chance of confusing the defending pokemon.

Sandshrew from Vending Series 2's first attack is Poison Sting which, you guessed it, has a coin-flip chance of poisoning the target. Its other attack, Swift, isn't affected by weakness, resistance, pokemon powers, or any other effects that would increase or reduce its damage. 

Bellsprout from Vending Series 3's first attack is Sway which gives it a coin-flip chance to avoid damage the next turn. Its other attack, Stun Spore, has a coin flip chance of paralyzing the target.

   

 

 

In addition to the two packs, Grace also revealed a secret chest.

This chest held a promotional Dugtrio to match the Diglett we got in the labyrinth. Its power is "Go Underground," which protects it from all damage while it remains on the bench. Its other attack, this attack deals 10 damage to up to 2 of your opponent's benched pokemon.

---------------------------------------

  

In anticipation of the duel against Brutus, I updated my Mind over Muscle deck to accomodate for the next special rule. You'll notice right off the bat that I took out Spearow and Fearow. THey're not going to be of as much help for reasons that will become pretty clear early on. In addition, I added in some Dark Kadabra as well. They won't help me get to Alakazam, but they still have some decent offensive capabilities so they're still respectable allies if I can't string together the right cards to get a Kadabra or Alakazam into my hand.

Spoiler

Energy (20)

 

------------------------------------------

Grass Pokemon (10)

   

-------------------------------------------

Psychic Pokemon (10)

   

-------------------------------------

Trainer Cards (20)

   

   

 

Brutus' special rule is Earth Power which nullifies the resistance of all pokemon that normally resist Fighting. This is why I cut the flying types out of my deck since their primary purpose would be rendered useless.

  

Leading off was Bulbasaur v. Kangaskhan. As usual, this Kangaskhan's sole purpose was to soak up damage while using Fetch to draw a bunch of cards. In other words, it wasn't going to be attacking any time soon.

  

Of course, I had to take this opportunity to build up my pokemon. I evolved Bulbasaur into Ivysaur before taking out Kangaskhan.

-----------------------------------

  

He used an Energy Removal to stall my evolution into Venusaur, but that was okay because I could easily replace the Grass Energy. It wasn't any wasted time since Kangaskhan would take two hits from Solarbeam anyway.

  

Of course, with the next turn I was right back up to par and blasted away at the rest of Kangaskhan's HP with Solarbeam.

----------------------------------

  

Dark Primeape was next, but didn't have the energy to attack so I was set up now for the sweep.

-----------------------------------

  

He tried to get clever by having Multiple Bone hit force a switch on my Venusaur to bring the Abra on my bench out. But I just played Switch to bring Venusaur right back out.

-------------------------------------

  

And Cubone went down as easily as you'd expect.

-------------------------------------

And with his last benched pokemon taken out, the game was over!

 

Again came the familiar reward of Ambition and Rocket packs.

Ambition:

Spoiler

   

  

-----------------------------

Japanese Only

  

Rocket:

Spoiler

   

   

--------------------------------

Japanese Only

----------------------------

 

Of course, the Fighting Coin was another reward and with this...

 

I can open the gate!

And now we have access to the rest of GR Island!

[Aura]

 

Once again, the auto deck machine has been upgraded and with it we get another email with a pack attached! Still not sure how you send a physical card pack over email, but this is technology I would appreciate.

Spoiler

   

Japanese Only

Squirtle from Vending Series 1. Its first attack, Water Power, triples the power of its other attack, pound, for the next turn.

Sandslash from Vending Series 3. Its first attack, Sand Veil, has a coin-flip chance of preventing damage during the next turn. Its other attack, Rolling Needle, has you flip three coins. For each heads, it'll deal an additional 10 and for each tails, it deals 10 to itself.

Abra from Vending Series 1. Its only move is Psychic Beam which deals 10 damage to any pokemon of your choice.

 

Ishihara's House is one of the destinations that caught my interest the moment I arrived at this island. Considering Ishihara already has a house on Card Island, I was very curious about what I'd find here.

--------------------------------------

In the first room, there seems to be someone studying up with Ishihara's books.

And in the back, just like Ishihara's house on Card Island, there are a collection of books that all give you tips and ideas for strategies. These tips focus mostly on GR's Dark pokemon and what to expect out of them: In general, that's more powerful attacks but lower HP. This book in particular describes the GR King's signature GR's Mewtwo card. I won't be looking this card up ahead of time, we'll just have to wait and see how it goes.

=========================

There doesn't seem to be anything else at Ishihara's House, at least not yet, so that leaves us with two options: The Psychic Stronghold and the Colorless Altar. Given the cards in my collection, I feel better equipped to take on the Colorless Altar, so let's go there first!

-----------------------------------------

 

Once again, we're met by Ronald. He tells us about our next destination, the GR Castle where we'll need to take on the GR King himself!

 

Of course, in order to get there we'll need the coins from the Psychic Stronghold and Colorless Altar. So, let's get to work!

 

As per usual, here in the Colorless Altar, we'll need to duel the three opponents who call themselves the Clerics of the Altar. But, this time there's a pretty hefty string attached.

In order to duel each of these clerics, you'll have to meet their deck building requirements. This isn't anything new, but usually whenever we've had to pass a deckbuilding requirement, it's either required some really common cards or simply required us to exclude certain types. No, this location is far more about testing your ability to find the cards you need.

The first Cleric, Seth, requires... four Pidgey. I have yet to find a single Pidgey and I think this is by design. To my knowledge, Pidgey is only available in the Flight booster pack and we've only gotten a handful of those. You'd have to be pretty lucky to get 4 Pidgey by this point even if they are common cards. 

Shortly after meeting the Clerics, we get a message from Ronald suggesting that we go back to Card Island to collect more cards. What's more, he also tells us in this same email that if you lose against these Clerics, you'll have to seek out a different card before you can challenge them again. What. A. Pain. Whatever the case, this will make a great excuse to revisit Card Island before moving on. But first, I want to finish up whatever we can here.

==============================

Since we can't complete the Colorless Altar, let's check out the Psychic Stronghold instead.

-----------------------------------

 

Here in the lounge is a lady who will trade her Mewtwo for a Dark Hypno.

 

I would definitely say that this is a fantastic trade! Mewtwo is much more versatile than Dark Hypno who requires the opponent to bench a lot of pokemon. Mewtwo's Psyburn is going to deal a consistent 40 damage for the same cost as an attack that has a chance of doing 40 damage only if the opponent has at least two pokemon on their bench. It does have the benefit of evading Resistance, but that also means it can't be super-effective either. Mewtwo, on the other hand, with just one energy attached can immediately attach the other two necessary to pay off the cost of Psyburn. I'd say this trade is a solid upgrade.

======================

Upon first entering the main room, it seems to be completely empty.

 

But as we try to leave, we're stopped by the leader of the Stronghold, Claire.

 

She will introduce us to our four opponents. We'll only have to defeat three of them, but we can duel all four if we like. After defeating three opponents, the elevator will be activated and we'll be able to advance.

=======================

  

I went ahead and did some minor deck reconstruction to deal with this first opponent's special rule. I wanted to focus on some fast and powerful attacks and splashed in some Trainer cards to help offset my lack of Kadabra. There are definitely some deck balancing issues. In hindsight, I'm really not sure why I included Jolteon at all. I guess I just figured Pin missile would make quick work of pokemon with sizeable HP.

Spoiler

Energy (20)

  

-------------------------------------

Electric Pokemon (2)

------------------------------

Psychic Pokemon (10)

    

 

-------------------------------

Colorless Pokemon (10)

   

---------------------------------

Trainer Cards (18)

   

  

========================

 

Our first opponent was Kevin whose special rule, Low Resistance, weakens the resistance of pokemon. This is incredibly powerful for Psychic types because aside from their weakness to other Psychic types, their most consistent counter is colorless pokemon that resists psychic.

  

Starting off, I led with an abra to stall for a bit of time while I built up my backrow. Obviously, he went down pretty quickly so there was no point giving it any energy.

  

The real hero here was Wigglytuff. The resistance wasn't going to be helping much but that's why I went for a pokemon with a powerful offensive presence.

-------------------------------------

  

Naturally, the Machop that followed up was able to defeat Wigglytuff in two rounds.

  

That wasn't going to stop my Jolteon from coming out next and finishing the job against Machop.

---------------------------------------

  

The last pokemon on his bench was a Drowzee which couldn't really hold its own and soon went down before he could get any more pokemon on his bench to stay in the game.

-------------------------------------

 

For defeating Kevin, I got two packs: Ambition and Legends!

Ambition:

Spoiler

   

   

---------------------------------

GB Only

---------------------------------

Japanese Only

 

Legends:

Spoiler

   

   

-----------------------------

Japanese Only

 

=====================

Our next opponent is Victoria, AKA, GR No. 4! Her special rule requires us to only use Psychic Energy! Here's hoping she's not a big ol' cheater like the last one.

  

When building this deck, I of course focused primarily on my psychic types with Machop to counteract the inevitable Colorless that would be used to wall me. Spearow was there to counteract any fighting types used to fight my colorless and lastly, my colorless were obviously there to wall the opponent's psychics and deal hefty damage.

Spoiler

Energy (16)

------------------------------

Fighting Pokemon (4)

--------------------------------------

Psychic Pokemon (10)

    

 

-------------------------------------

Colorless Pokemon (8)

   

----------------------------------

Trainer Cards (22)

   

  

=====================

Ah-- I thought from her overworld sprite that Victoria had a red streak in her hair, but apparently it's just a "GR" Hairpin.

  

Starting out, it was Spearow against Rattata. This Rattata is from Vending Series 1. Its first attack is Scratch and its second attack, Tail Whip, has a coin-flip chance of stopping the opponent from attacking the next turn.

Rattata was able to outlast Spearow, but I was able to buy enough time to build up energy on my bench.

--------------------------------------

  

It didn't take long for Tauros to take out Rattata.

-----------------------------------

  

I was actually caught off guard here. I completely forgot that, despite Dark Golduck having Psychic attacks, he's not technically a psychic pokemon. So Super Psy did far more damage than I expected and took me out.

------------------------------------

  

Thankfully, Kadabra was able to come in and save the day with Super Psy!

-----------------------------------

  

Note: The english print of this card has different card art, but unlike Grimer, the attacks haven't changed. Since this is the first time this card has been seen, I went with the english print of the card for legibility. I'll use this art here and any future appearances will use the japanese art consistent with the games to avoid confusion.

Next was Mewtwo who, thankfully, was still weak to Psychic, allowing me to make quick work of it thanks to its lack of energy.

--------------------------------

  

Last was Psyduck who, with 50 HP, was vulnerable to a single Super Psy.

-------------------------------------

 

Yet again, the prize for winning was two packs: Ambition and Premier.

Spoiler

   

   

---------------------------------

Japanese Only

 

Premier:

Spoiler

   

   

-------------------------------

Japanese Only

=========================

The next opponent has a pretty unique special condition. He requires us to have a total of 6 Gastly and Haunter. This can be any combination, as long as the total number of gastly and haunter cards is at least 6. Judging from the wording, I can only assume that Dark Haunter doesn't count toward this total, though I'm surprised the game wasn't super picky about specifically the number 6 I was able to do this challenge with 4 Gastly and 4 Haunter in my deck. But if we're going to build a deck around Gastly and Haunter, we're going all out.

If you recall, there was this NPC in the GR Challenge Hall Lounge who was offering to trade a Bill's Computer for a Chansey!

 

I think it's time to make this trade. Why?

Because I have an abundance of Haunter. 

It didn't take long at all for the mail to come along and deliver my Gengar! By the time I got back to the Psychic Stronghold it had already arrived! I couldn't be more excited to put this guy to work!

=============================

  

Spoiler

Energy (18)

 

Fighting Pokemon (5)

  

Psychic Pokemon (9)

   

--------------------------------------

Colorless Pokemon (6)

  

--------------------------------------

Trainer Cards (22)

  

   

Do you wanna see me win without a single KO?

  

I led with a Gastly and Clyde only had one basic pokemon in his starting hand. The first turn, I used Lick when there wasn't much to do. On his turn, he didn't place any other bench pokemon. Turn 2, I was able to play Pokemon Breeder and evolve Gastly directly into Gengar. On play, Gengar's Power of Darkness activated and I was able to pop one of his pokemon and all cards attached to it, back to his hand. Since he had no other pokemon on his bench...

Not a single KO was necessary to win this duel. Obviously, this was blind luck and doesn't say anything about the consistency of this deck. The odds of me starting with all three of these cards at once were pretty slim, much less him not placing a single pokemon on his bench after a whole turn in. Poor Clyde. I didn't even get a screenshot of the pokemon he led with. I believe it was Vending Gastly, if you're curious.

 

My prize was, again, two packs: Rocket and Legends.

Rocket:

Spoiler

   

   

Japanese Only

 

Legends

Spoiler

   

   

Japanese Only

With three opponents defeated, we can now advance to duel Claire, the leader of the stronghold. But I want to duel all four!

========================

Heidi here is the daughter of Claire. She asks that we don't use... trainer cards? At all?? This is probably the most bizarre request so far. Without Trainer Cards, your options for strategies are a lot more limited and the game's going to go by much more slowly. Still, it makes for a pretty unique deck building challenge, so I'm interested...

  

I decided to focus my deck on pokemon who used a lot of colorless energy and pokemon with low-energy cost attacks. The deck is almost entirely built around basic pokemon because evolutions would be difficult to get ahold of consistently without trainer cards to draw through my deck. Unfortunately, I was kinda lacking in pokemon with attacks that let you draw cards, so I decided to focus my efforts on Water and Psychic types so I could use Psyduck and Dark Golduck. I also threw in a lot of pokemon with lots of HP to stall for time, and Cool Porygon was there to cover pretty much whatever weakness or resistance I'd have to deal with. I'll definitely say that this is probably the only context I'll be using the Potion, Full Heal, and Recycle energies as this seems like the closest thing to Trainer Cards I'll be able to get.

Spoiler

Energy (33)

    

 

Water Pokemon (11)

  

Psychic Pokemon (2)

Colorless Pokemon (14)

   

  

  

Leading off was her Meowth. It seems like all she was focused on was using Clear Profit to draw cards. With a few slaps, it went down.

-------------------------------------

  

Her Dratini is next and, thanks to paralysis, it was able to turn the tides. I could have used a Full Heal Energy to fix this, but I wanted to save these for a much more powerful pokemon. Staryu was just here to get a quick lead, really.

  

Out next was the Dark Golduck I was lucky enough to draw into. With this, the rest of the duel was going to be a joke. Super Psy more than took out the rest of Dratini's HP.

--------------------------------------

  

And of course the same story for Slowpoke.

---------------------------------------

With no other benched pokemon, I won the duel!

 

The prize was two more packs: Rocket and Lost Isle.

Rocket:

Spoiler

   

   

 

Lost Isle:

Spoiler

   

   

Japanese Only

========================

Now, with all four opponents below defeated, I took the elevator to face off against Claire.

 

Claire reveals the presence of the Grand Master Rod who seems to have been discussing something with Claire before we arrived. But now it's time to battle duel Claire who has apparently been monitoring our duels using hidden cameras.

-------------------------------

  

Based on the email from Ronald, I could tell that this was going to be an especially difficult battle and, sure enough, I got my butt handed to me more than a few times. I made several adjustments to my deck and ended up with this one. I frequently adjusted the numbers and cards in this deck to match the cards that I was using. I found myself not using Professor Oak as much because every energy started to feel precious. You'll see why pretty quickly. Instead of Prof. Oak, I ran as many Challenge! and Bill as I possibly could. Thanks to the several Ambition packs I've gotten recently, I've managed to amass four Challenge! cards which was more than welcome now.

Spoiler

Energy (18)

 

Fighting Pokemon (5)

  

Psychic Pokemon (9)

   

---------------------------------

Colorless Pokemon (6)

  

---------------------------------

Trainer Cards (22)

   

   

 

Claire's Special Rule, Energy Return, makes it so that any time a Pokemon is sent to the discard pile, all cards attached to it are returned to the hand. This doesn't seem like it'll make things too much of an issue, but she takes full advantage of this to make sure you are constantly starved for energy. Her deck is chock full of Energy Removal, Super Energy Removal, and Itemfinder to reuse those cards. In addition, she'll always have an abundance of energy on her side. Your energies are precious here. Don't assume they'll be disposable just because they'll come back to your hand if a pokemon is KO'd with them.

  

Leading off was my Tauros against her Slowpoke. Slowpoke couldn't do anything to me so we were at a bit of a stand still. Her plan with this Slowpoke didn't seem to be dealing with damage but instead buildin gup Psychic Energies with Afternoon Nap and taking advantage of her special rule to have all those Psychic energies return to her hand once Slowpoke is KO'd. Since she wasn't attacking, I took the chance to build up energies on my bench. Of course, I had to accomodate for her constant barrage of Energy Removal and spend more time buildin gup, but it wasn't long before I was able to start attacking and took out her Slowpoke in two hits.

--------------------------------------

  

Next was Mr. Mime. This very easily could have turned into a huge ordeal thanks to Invisible Wall blocking Stomp any time its damage increased to 30. Thankfully, I got pretty lucky and both of my Stomps got through with a tails. (I could have gone for Rampage, but I really didn't want to risk the confusion at this point).

-------------------------------------

  

At this point, it became increasingly clear that she didn't really have an out to my Tauros. Her deck was leaning far too heavily toward Psychic pokemon. It seems like a bizarre oversight, but not many of her pokemon are capable of even dealing damage against Normal Types. With this in mind, Tauros was able to take out Slowpoke.

---------------------------------------

  

And again for the next one.

---------------------------------------

  

Kangaskhan is the only pokemon in her deck that was even capable of damaging a colorless pokemon, yet she strangely put zero effort into actually building this thing up with energies...

  

At this point, I figured the best option was to have Tauros retreat into Wigglytuff who had finally managed to get the energies necessary to attack (up until this point Claire had been assaulting me with a near-constant barrage of Energy Removal). With Wigglytuff, I'd certainly be able to take Kangaskhan out before it was able to get the energies for Comet Punch. At this point, the duel was in the bag.

-------------------------------------------

  

The only thing Dark Gengar can do is shuffle around damage counters and shuffle a random benched pokemon and all of its attached cards back into your deck. Still, I'd always be able to just drop another basic pokemon in its place to keep Do the Wave at max power. Not that that was necessary because, with no way to deal any damage to Wigglytuff, there was absolutely no danger here. Even stalling me out wasn't an option with her strategy draining her own deck while shuffling cards back into mine. Early on, I was under the impression that this was a really difficult fight because I just couldn't get the energies up to attack, but once I realized she didn't have anything to deal with pokemon that resist Psychic... well, it was all over for her right then and there. She's so focused on stopping you from doing anything that she forgets all about actually doing something herself. I'm not really sure what her strategy is. It's not a stall/deck out strat and she tends to just draw out her own deck. Worst case scenario, I can imagine stalling her out would be an extremely effective strat.

And with my last prize card collected, I had a surprisingly easy time dealing with this opponent. The only reason I lost so many times earlier was because my deck just didn't have enough Colorless pokemon, I suppose.

 

For defeating Claire, I was awarded with two Ambition Packs!

Ambition 1:

Spoiler

   

   

---------------------------

GB Only:

---------------------------

Japanese Only:

Ambition 2:

Spoiler

   

  

--------------------------------

GB Only:

 

----------------------------------

Japanese Only:

And of course the GR Psychic Coin is ours as well!

============================

Claire reminds us that our next target is the Colorless Altar. We'll need to get the Colorless Coin in order to gain access to the GR Castle!

 

After a brief exchange between Claire and Rod, Rod is free to go.

Rod explains that it is perfectly okay to use the cards from GR Island, but is obviously against those who have stolen cards. He encourages us to go defeat GR King Villicci and bring an end to this pillaging. 

In an effort to be of assistance, he gives us this promotional Dragonite card. This Dragonite doesn't seem all that useful at all. Its Special Delivery power seems useful on the surface, but you're still going to be locking yourself out of drawing any new cards on your next turn thanks to having to put a card from your hand right back on top of the deck. I suppose you could couple it with a card like Energy Search to shuffle the deck afterward, but I think that's a really roundabout way to just draw a single extra card (not even a plus). As for Supersonic Flight, 60 power seems nice, but it still has a coin flip chance of doing nothing. For a 2nd stage evolution, that's pretty sad. If Special Delivery was just a coin-flip chance of drawing a card, this card would be much more exciting, but as it stands, it's pretty underwhelming.

Rod also informs us that he'll be returning to Card Island where they will be hosting a Challenge Cup to award the Legendary Pokemon Cards from the first game to the winner! That certainly sounds exciting!

[Aura]

Well, now that we've done everything we can on GR Island, it's time to take the advice we've been given and head back home to duel all our friends from before! All of the Club Masters should be back and the Clubs should be up and running once again! Without further ado, let's head back to the Airport!

  

It's a long trip back home but we're finally here again! It's almost nostalgic being back here again.

And the first place to check out has to be the Mason Laboratory.

Now that cards have returned to the island, Aaron here is able to build his own personal deck to duel us normally.

 

This duel counts as the long awaited "Step 4" of our training. I'm not sure when exactly this was unlocked, but it's here now. Aaron actually has two different decks he'll challenge us with seemingly at random.

The first of these is his Beach Stroll Deck.

  

The duel opened up with Jigglypuff against Jigglypuff... yup, I forgot to change my deck. My Jigglypuff was able to overcome his which seemed more focused on building up his bench.

--------------------------------------

  

Poliwhirl was next and it sure as hell loved its Doubleslap, it was able to take my Jigglypuff out in one shot thanks to getting two heads.

  

I didn't really have the bench set up to support it yet, but Wigglytuff was my most solid option to send out. Do the Wave wasn't even close to its full power, but what choice did I really have? Soon enough, Poliwhirl did go down after some pretty bad luck on his part with coin flips.

------------------------------------------

  

Bellsprout came next and made quick work of Wigglytuff thanks to paralysis. It was also able to paralyze my Haunter!

  

Thankfully I was able to evolve Haunter to get rid of the paralysis, and with Power of Darkness, I was able to pop his Wigglytuff and all of the energies he'd been piling onto it back to his hand. This wasn't all that effective, but my main purpose of evolving Haunter was really just to work around the paralysis. Besides, Psy Horror does more consistent damage than Dream Eater ever could.

  

Needless to say, Bellsprout did go down.

-------------------------------------

  

Of course, by this point, he was able to get his own Wigglytuff out and his Do the Wave was set up to be much more powerful than my own.

  

I sent out Dark Machoke with the intent on evolving it into Dark Machamp next turn...

  

 but I didn't consider him just switching back to Wigglytuff and taking Machoke out with a single Do the Wave... oop.

  

Thankfully, I had Tauros to fall back on who was able to finish off Wigglytuff with Stomp.

------------------------------------

And with that, I'd claimed my last prize card and won the duel!

As for my prize? Why, it's none other than a Present pack!

Spoiler

   

  

 

----------------------------------

Japanese Only

This Raichu is from Vending Series 2. Its first attack, Short Circuit, allows you to choose any of your opponent's pokemon and deal 10 damage to it times the number of water energy attached to it. This sounds like it could be potentially powerful, and perhaps if used in conjunction with Dark Magneton who can rearrange energy distribution, perhaps you could pile on a whole bunch of water energies onto a single pokemon and tear through its HP, but this card's flexibility is pretty limited all things considered. It's more likely only going to be dealing around 0-30 damage. It might exceed that if you're lucky. Still, it is capable of damaging pokemon on the bench. Its second attack, Sparking Kick, has a coin-flip chance of paralyzing the opponent. But is any of this worth evolving your Jungle Pikachu that can damage the defending pokemon and a pokemon on the bench? I'm not so sure. But, maybe there are some niche strategies you may want to take advantage of here.

This Paras is from Vending Series 1. Its first attack is Scratch. Its other attack, Scatter Spores, lets you place a Paras from your deck onto your bench. Pretty standard stuff there.

 
 

 =========================

Aaron's other deck is... woah! "Bench of Hell Deck" certainly wouldn't have flown in the localization. For this duel, I switched over to my Safari deck.

  

This crudely drawn Hitmonchan is from Vending Series 2. Its only attack, Mach Punch, has a coin-flip chance of dealing 10 damage to a pokemon on the bench. This thing is scary and at this point, it should be pretty clear that this "Bench of Hell" deck is all about damaging the pokemon on your bench for easy knockouts. Naturally, he took my Bulbasaur out pretty quickly.

  

Fortunately, I had another Bulbasaur prepped for combat. It was able to take out Hitmonchan.

-------------------------------------

  

Then out came another Hitmonchan to put my Bulbasaur in critical condition.

  

I switched into Spearow, but the resistance ultimately didn't matter. Mach Punch still had that coin-flip chance to damage Bulbasaur and take it out.

  

In order to deal with Hitmonchan as quickly as possible in order to hopefully prevent Bulbasaur from getting knocked out, I evolved into Dark Fearow to take it out with Drill Dive.

-------------------------------------

  

Of course, I couldn't retreat after using Drill Dive, so I was stuck taking a Spark from PIkachu draining away a solid 40 HP. 

  

Even after switching into Bulbasaur, Fearow and the Bulbasaur I'd switched away from were both vulnerable to Spark even on the bench.

  

This was really my last hope for the duel, so I needed to evolve Bulbasaur to keep it from getting KO'd next turn.

----------------------------------------

  

Hitmonlee's High Jump Kick was a huge force to be reckoned with. Thankfully, between a couple of Energy Removal and Leech Seed keeping me out of kill range, I was able to force him to retreat.

  

He thought his Hitmonchan would be safe to stall for a turn, but thanks to my dropping of Venusaur, his fate was sealed.

----------------------------------------

 

And with that, Aaron's Bench of Hell Deck has been defeated leaving me with the prize of another Present pack!

Spoiler

   

   

-----------------------------------------

Japanese Only

This Slowbro is from Vending Series 3. I actually really like this card art. It's certainly a pose you don't see Slowbro in every day. it's kind of funny to look at. Its first attack, Big Yawn, puts both Slowbro and the defending pokemon to sleep. Its other attack, Big Snore, can only be used while it's asleep. It's certainly an interesting pokemon to say the least. Probably not a card I'd use, but with the abundance of coin flips involved, it just might work out in your favor a whole lot more. It could even take better advantage of Drowzee's Long-Range hypnosis power.

And with that, that seems to be everything new here in the Mason Lab. I think I'll be taking it easy, focusing on one area at a time going forward. The other posts are probably going to be longer than this because I imagine I'll be battling all the individual club members in each club, but overall I imagine these posts will be easier to get out earlier on, but maybe I'm counting my chickens before they hatch. Either way, we're gonna be here for a while!

[Aura]

 

Since I've been to Ishihara's House on GR Island, I wanted to come check out his house here and see if anything new is going on. Ishihara is here, but he doesn't say anything about his other house. Strange... But, he will offer a trade!

 

He'll offer his Flying Pikachu in exchange for Clefairy Lv. 15

 

I think the usefulness of this trade is best left up to you. On the surface, Clefairy obviously seems like the inferior card. While Follow Me can be pretty useful in disrupting the opponent's strategy by forcing a powerful pokemon onto the front line without the energy necessary to fight, but there are much better cards that do the same thing. Shining Fingers having a chance to put the opponent to sleep is pretty lame, too. After all, they'll have to go through a second coin flip just to stay asleep the next turn. Flying PIkachu's Thundershock basically does the same thing but much more consistently, and it's an electric pokemon which means it has the potential to be super-effective. In addition, Flying PIkachu covers for the typical weakness in an Electric deck. It's also a much rarer alternative to Clefairy. The major drawback here is that Flying Pikachu cannot evolve into Raichu while Clefairy leaves itself open for evolution into any Clefable card. 

I personally think this trade is well worth your time but that may be because I find myself much more likely to splash Flying Pikachu into my deck than any given Clefable.

====================

With that mess out of the way, it's time to get started on challenging our first club: The Fighting Club!

  

I decided to build a deck primarily focused on countering Fighting Pokemon, obviously. I'm running the Venusaur line to cover for Rock-types and the Gastly line to cover for the Fighting-types that I'll be abundantly facing. I probably should have assumed, though, that I'll mostly be facing Fighting-types, but I wasn't really putting all that much thought into it. I figured without having to worry about special rules, these duels would probably be much easier than the ones on GR Island. This deck definitely could have been improved, though.

Spoiler

Energy (17)

 

---------------------------------

Grass Pokemon (10)

   

--------------------------------

Psychic Pokemon (9)

   

---------------------------------------

Colorless Pokemon (4)

 

----------------------------------

Trainer Cards (20)

   

  

===================

 

Our first opponent was Michael and his New Machoke Deck!

  

Leading off was Bulbasaur against Hitmonlee. A pretty solid matchup for early game considering HItmonlee's lack of energy. I did get lucky, though, that Double Kick didn't get two heads or I would have been knocked out without any benched pokemon!

  

Thankfully, he only got a single heads, so I was able to evolve Bulbasaur and finish it off with Leech Seed to heal off some of the damage.

------------------------------------

  

Mankey went down quickly to Vine Whip.

---------------------------------------

  

Against his Tauros, I used one more Leech Seed to get it into kill range before evolving Ivysaur into Venusaur to finish it off.

---------------------------------------

And that was his last benched pokemon, so that means a premature win for me!

 

For defeating Michael, I was awarded two Lost Isle packs.

Lost Isle 1:

Spoiler

   

------------------------------

Japanese Only:

   

Lost Isle 2:

Spoiler

   

  

----------------------------------

Japanese Only:

This Electrode was a GB-exclusive from the first game with a sort of amusing story. Its first attack, Sonicboom, ignores weakness and resistance. Its second attack, Energy Spike, lets you search your deck for a basic energy card and place it on one of your pokemon. On the surface, it doesn't seem like there's any reason for this card to be a GB-exclusive. Unlike most GB-exclusives, it doesn't actually have any RNG involved in its card effects. The reason this card was created for the GB game was likely to replace Base Set Electrode:

This Pokemon Power, Buzzap, was likely difficult to program but has a similar effect to GB Electrode's Energy Spike. Attaching a pokemon card as if it were an energy may have conflicted with the game's programming, so this is a possible explanation for the GB-exclusive Electrode. Thanks to GB Electrode's lack of RNG effects, though, it was later printed as a physical card through Pokemon Web!

---------------------------------------

=======================

 

Next up was Chris and his Chivalry Adventure Deck!

  

I led off with Gastly against his Sandshrew. Sandshrew of course couldn't do much other than stall me out with the occasional miss. That was fine because Gastly has a free retreat cost. The main focus here was to build up the pokemon on my bench.

  

And with Venusaur prepared, I retreated and sent it out to tear through Sandshrew.

-----------------------------------

  

Machop was next.

-----------------------------------

  

He sent out his next Machop to buy him another turn to build up energy on his last pokemon, but...

Thanks to Gengar's Power of Darkness, that last pokemon was popped right back to his hand before I finished off Machop, leaving him with no pokemon at all.

--------------------------------

 

For winning this duel, I was awarded a Legends pack and a Premier pack!

Legends:

Spoiler

   

  

--------------------------------------

Japanese only:

  

Premier:

Spoiler

   

   

----------------------------------

Japanese Only:

 

=======================

 

The final club member was Jessica with her Battle Maniac Deck.

  

Opening up was Lickitung against Bulbasaur. All she tried to do was paralyze me with Lick, but thankfully it never got a paralysis off, so I was able to finish it pretty quickly.

----------------------------------

  

I'm unsure if we've seen this Machop before, but I'll go ahead and cover its moves here anyway just in case. Its first move is Focused One Shot. This allows you to flip a coin. If heads, it doubles the power of its second attack, Corkscrew Punch. But if tails, you can't use Corkscrew Punch at all next turn. I was under the impression I would be safe for another turn. I was fully prepared to evolve Ivysaur after finishing Lickitung. (I didn't want to evolve yet in case I was afflicted by a status condition or something). But, she caught me off guard completely with a Plus Power that gave Corkscrew punch just enough strength to knock Bulbasaur out and really ruin all of my plans!! (I had an Ivysaur and Venusaur in my hand, I was totally ready to steamroll the rest of her deck but due to this move, I was gonna have to improvise.

  

With Gastly out, Machop couldn't do much of anything and I was able to knock it out with my Darkness attack and confusion damage.

--------------------------------

  

Her next pokemon was yet another Machop. This story was much the same as the last one and it went down pretty quickly.

--------------------------------

  

Last but not least was her Machoke. I was able to confuse it with Darkness before switching into a Haunter I'd evolved on my bench to try making quick work of it.

  

My plan was to use confusion as a cover while I put Machoke to sleep, but I actually completely forgot that a pokemon can't be asleep and confused at the same time. Still, it didn't end up mattering and I was eventually able to get Machoke to fall asleep and stay asleep and from there, it was just one Dream Eater away from being knocked out.

------------------------------------

 

For defeating Jessica, I earned a single pack, this time it was Assault.

Spoiler

   

-------------------------------------

Japanese Only:

Vaporeon is another GB Exclusive for the first game. Its first attack, Focus Energy, doubles the power of its second move, Bite, during the next turn.

Metapod is from Vending Series 1 and, I never thought I'd say this, it's actually a pretty interesting card! Its power is Green Shield which nullifies the weakness of all of your grass-types. Its attack, Mysterious Powder, has a coin-flip chance of confusing the target.

   

=======================

 

Last but not least was the Club Master Mitch and his Surging Iron Fist Deck!

  

With this matchup, I knew it was an uphill battle so I didn't even bother giving Bulbasaur any energies and instead focused on building up my back row. It didn't take long for Kangaskhan to amass three energies and take out Bulbasaur with Mega Punch.

  

Out came my ivysaur which I'd been piling energies onto during our stalemate.

  

I got a little careless and hastily evolved my venusaur. This was definitely not a smart move because I didn't need the extra 20 power of Solar Beam and I was sacrificing the option of using Leech Seed to heal off damage or evolving to cure paralysis.

-------------------------------------

  

Sure enough, Lickitung came along and used Lick but thankfully it didn't get the paralysis off. Let's just pretend it successfully got the paralysis and I evolved here, okay? Okay.

 

Seeing an opportunity here, I evolved a Haunter on my bench into Gengar to try and bump his Benched pokemon back to his hand and finish the duel early. Unfortunately, I failed the coin toss so I settled on the next best thing and played an energy removal so that his Hitmonlee would be unable to attack on the next turn.

  

From there, I blasted away at Lickitung with Solar Beam!

-------------------------------------

  

Just as planned, Hitmonlee was unable to attack and I was able to take it out with no damage and with it, likely his last hope of survival.

----------------------------------

  

His Machop came and went.

---------------------------------

  

And so, too, did his Lickitung.

------------------------------------

And with his last pokemon defeated, the duel was won!

 

And my prize was two Flight packs!

Flight 1:

Spoiler

   

---------------------------

Japanese Only:

Rapidash from Vending Series 1! Its first attack, Flame Inferno, allows you to discard up to two fire energies in order to increase its power by 20 per energy discarded. A very versatile fire move! I'm still not sure if it's worth while over Charmeleon whose Flamethrower deals 50 HP with only one discarded energy, but the low energy cost of this card could very well make it worthwhile. Its second attack, Kick Away, forces your opponent to switch their active pokemon with one of the ir benched pokemon.

Horsea from Vending Series 3. Its first attack is Hide which gives it a coin-flip chance of evading the next attack. The second attack is Water Gun which has the typical effect that gives it 10 more damage per extra water energy up to 20.

  

Flight 2:

Spoiler

   

Japanese Only:

Machoke from Vending Series 2. Its first attack is Mega Kick. Its second attack is Steady Punch which has a coin-flip chance of dealing 20 extra damage.

   

===============

Other than that, we don't get a standard Fighting Coin or anything, so we're here for now. On to the next club!

[Aura]

The next club in line was the Lightning Club. We have battled some of the members here, but the ones we battled before now have new decks. In addition, there are other club members we can battle now that weren't here before.

 

Once again, I threw together a deck designed to counter electric pokemon: Rhyhorn and Rhydon, and the fire-type Charmander and Charmeleon to counter their weakness to Grass. Once again, I probably would have been better off building the deck around Fighting and Electric types, but once again, I overlooked that limitation.

Spoiler

Energy (20)

 

Fire Pokemon (8)

 

Fighting Pokemon (8)

 

Trainer Cards (24)

   

   

=======================

 

Our first opponent here is Jennifer with her Pikachu Maniac Deck!

  

Opening up was Charmander versus Pikachu. Thanks to Pikachu's Growl, this turned from a 3-turn to a 4-turn kill, so I was unable to finish it off with just Charmander, unfortunately.

  

This was fine, though, because next up was Rhyhorn who was immune to anything Pikachu could do to me, and with a quick Horn Attack, I was able to take it out. In all this time, Jennifer never played a second Pikachu so the duel was over before it ever really began.

------------------------------------

 

My prize for winning was a Lost Isle pack!

Spoiler

   

   

------------------------------

Japanese Only

 

=========================

 

Club Member Brandon and his 10,000 Volts deck was up next!

  

Starting off was Charmander vs. Eevee.

  

It didn't take too long to evolve Charmander into Charmeleon and finish the job with Slash.

-----------------------------------

  

Next came his Bulbasaur Deck Electabuzz which took a couple of slashes thanks to Brandon's potions keeping it out of kill range from Flamethrower. But thanks to my own energy removals, it was never able to get off any attacks.

  

Next came Base Set Electabuzz, probably the scariest opponent in the deck with 70 HP and some really cheap attacks. 

  

He used another potion to stay out of kill range of Flamethrower, but I caught him by surprise by retreating into my Rhydon on the bench which made quick work of him without a problem.

---------------------------------

  

His Jungle Pikachu was defenseless and went down in a single hit.

---------------------------------

And with that, I claimed my last prize and two booster packs: Lost Isle and Legends.

 

Lost Isle:

Spoiler

   

   

Japanese Only:

Golbat is from Vending Series 1. Its first attack, Leech Life, heals off the same damage it deals. Its second attack, Nose Dive, deals 40 damage to itself. I can see this card being a great counter to Rock-type pokemon and a wonderful choice for an Electric deck!

Legends

Spoiler

   

  

---------------------------------

Japanese Only:

  

==========================

Nicholas was next with his Triple Thunder Deck!

  

Aaaaand it's done.

-----------------------------------------

 

For winning, I was awarded two Flight packs, which means two chances to pull a Pidgey!

Flight 1:

Spoiler

   

---------------------------------

Japanese Only:

Kadabra form Vending Series 3! Its first attack, Psycho Panic, deals double damage against Psychic pokemon. The other attack, Blink, adds a coin-flip chance for an attack from the defending pokemon to miss.

   

Flight 2:

Spoiler

  

-----------------------------

Japanese Only:

   

   

Unfortunately, not a single Pidgey in sight, but I can't complain when I got a new Kadabra!

=======================

 

Finally, it's time for our rematch with Isaac and his Zapsplosion Deck!

  

Against Doduo, Rhyhorn was at a disadvantage. This is why I said before that I should be running electric types. Oh well, it didn't really save me any time in the long-run anyway. I just had to wait patiently for Doduo to take out Rhyhorn. This is what took so much time. Both of my Switch cards were buried at the bottom of my deck and I had no way to search them out. Wouldn't you know it, the turn after Doduo finally KO's Rhyhorn (only doing 10 HP every turn with Fury Attack, mind you) is when I finally draw Switch and my deck is already rapidly approaching single digits.

-------------------------------

  

Needless to say, Charmeleon was going to have to make up for a lot of lost ground quickly or I'd end up losing to a deck out. So, with a Flamethrower, Doduo went down.

--------------------------------

  

With Doduo out of the way, I could retreat and put Rhyhorn on the front lines. This time, I had a Switch to back me up if necessary, so I had no problems letting Rhyhorn tear through his defenses.

------------------------------

  

Magnemite went down next.

----------------------------------

  

When Electabuzz came along, Horn Attack wasn't going to cut it...

  

With no time to waste, I evolved Rhyhorn and used Ram to make quick work of Electabuzz.

  

He sent out another Doduo, so I used Switch to bring out Charmeleon and make quick work of it once again.

----------------------------------

  

I drew another card and tried to attack, but his Magneton paralyzed me with Thunder Wave! He able to take out Charmeleon thanks to Thunder Wave's paralysis effect and at this point, my deck was down to only one card left, yet in the same moment he took out Charmeleon, he sealed his own fate.

  

With my last card drawn, I sent out Rhydon and, with a Horn Attack, was able to finish off Magneton!

-----------------------------

I was able to claim my last prize card with absolutely no cards left in my deck. Had he managed to survive that one turn, I would have been doomed!

 

As a prize, I was given two Assault packs.

Assault 1:

Spoiler

 

----------------------------

Japanese Only:

 

Ninetails was a GB-Exclusive card from the first game. Mix-Up forces the opponent to shuffle all pokemon from their hand into their deck and add that many pokemon, chosen at random, from their deck to their hand. Its second attack, Dancing Embers, has you flip eight coins and it deals 10 damage per heads. I'd consider this attack a better version of Jolteon's PIn Missile since it shares the same 1-in-4 odds of dealing 20 damage while having a significantly lower chance of doing absolutely nothing.

   

  

Assault 2:

Spoiler

   

-----------------------------

Japanese Only:

Graveler from Vending Series 3! Its only attack is Boulder Smash which lets you flip 2 coins and deal 10 damage to one of your opponent's benched pokemon per heads.

Nidoran F From Vending Series 1! Its attacks are standard. Tail Whip has a coin-flip chance of stopping the opponent from attacking. Poison Sting has a coin-flip chance of poisoning the target.

  

And we've finally found our first Pidgey! Turns out it's available here in Assault packs, too! That'll hopefully mean we'll be able to get these a bit easier. Still, that's two clubs down and three more Pidgey to go!

[Aura]

Since the Rock Club never got taken over by Team GR, the opponents there never got their cards stolen and obviously had no cards to be returned. As a result, all of their decks are unchanged from the beginning of the game. I don't see any point in redoing these matches at the moment.

And so, the next club we're visiting is the Water Club!

  

For my deck, the only obvious answer was to focus on Grass and Electric types. I probably should have replaced some of those Challenge! cards with Energy Removals, but perhaps that would have been counterproductive to the Raichu. I also realize in hindsight that I accidentally ran three Jolteon where I meant to only include two. Oops.

Spoiler

Energy (20)

  

-------------------------------------

Grass Pokemon (8)

  

------------------------------------

Electric Pokemon (10)

   

 

--------------------------------------

Colorless Pokemon (4)

------------------------------

Trainer Cards (18)

   

=============================

 

Our first opponent here in the Water Club is Amanda and her Beachside Deck!

  

Starting out was Pikachu against her Shellder. Due to Shellder's weakness, I was able to make quick work of it.

--------------------------------------

  

Same story with the Kingler she had evolved on her bench. I think we've seen this card before with one of the GR Members, but in case we haven't, I'll go over Kingler's moves here because they're pretty scary. Kingler is from Vending Series 3 and its first attack, Salt Water, gives you a coin-flip chance to search your deck for up to three water energies and attach them to it, giving it immediate access to its second attack, Double-Edged Claw. This attack is an impressively powerful 80 power but comes with the drawback that all damage is doubled against it on the next turn.

Thankfully, Kingler failed its coin flip and was unable to get that Double-Edged Claw on me before Pikachu could take it out.

-----------------------------------------

  

Next was her Staryu. This Staryu is from Vending Series 3. Its first attack, Strange Beam, allows all your water-types to ignore their weaknesses during the next turn. Its second attack is called Spinning Attack. Thankfully, it doesn't have very much health and Raichu was able to take it out without too much of a struggle.

-----------------------------------

  

And, needless to say, her last pokemon, Shellder, went down to a single attack.

----------------------------------

And with that, I was victorious.

 

My rewards were Assault and Lost Isle packs!

Assault:

Spoiler

  

----------------------------

Japanese Only

Moon Stone is from Vending Series 1. It lets you add a colorless evolution card from your deck to your hand. This is a great deck thinner as it can be used to search out a Dragonair who can then be played to search out yet another evolution!

Fleareon is a GB-exclusive. It has Bite and Rage which deals 10 damage plus an extra 10 per damage counter. This can really build up fast!

   

 

Lost Isle:

Spoiler

   

   

----------------------------

Japanese Only

 

And we pulled our second PIdgey! That's two down, two to go!

========================

 

Our next opponent was Sarah and her Water Fight Deck!

  

It was pretty clear Zubat was in a bad matchup against this Horsea. As a result, I didn't bother giving Zubat any extra energies and focused on my bench as Zubat slowly whittled down Horsea's health.

  

It seemed she had a similar idea because it wasn't long before she switched into her Wartortle and used Surf to finish off Zubat.

  

Scyther came out and was able to finish off Wartortle, but not without some pretty heavy residual damage.

-----------------------------------

  

It's thanks to that damage that her Vaporeon was able to take him out in a single hit.

  

Electabuzz came next and hit Vaporeon hard with a solid Thunderpunch. I unfortunately didn't get the heads for the one-hit KO, but beggars can't be choosers.

  

She retreated into Eevee which I was able to take out without much of an issue.

------------------------------------------

  

Vaporeon took the stage once again and went down easily after failing a coin-flip with Quick Attack.

-------------------------------------

  

Last came her Seadra which she evolved from the Horsea from the beginning. It lacked the energy to attack, so I was able to finish it off with Thunderpunch.

-------------------------------------

 

My prize was two Legends packs!

Legends 1:

Spoiler

   

   

--------------------------------

Japanese Only

Legends 2:

Spoiler

   

  

---------------------------------

Japanese Only

Parasect is from Vending Series 1. Its first attack, Toxic Spore, poisons the target. Its second attack, Leech Life, heals it by an amount equal to the damage it inflicts.

 

===========================

 

Joshua is next. He was the only member of the Water Club who wasn't imprisoned in the beginning of the game, but he has a new deck now!

  

Starting out, this matchup was obviously not going to go well for me, so I was focusing my efforts on my bench.

  

Jungle Pikachu came out to meet this opponent and this was where I made the sudden realization that Poliwag wasn't... actually weak to Electricity. Needless to say, Spark didn't do nearly as much damage as I would have liked and before long, Pikachu got paralyzed.

  

Thankfully, I had a Raichu to evolve into, but no energy to use its Sparking Kick thanks to an energy removal, so I just had to settle on Short Circuit which wouldn't do nearly as much damage. The next turn I was able to get the energy I needed to finish the round.

------------------------------------

  

Out came another Poliwag which took another two turns to take out.

-------------------------------------

  

And then yet another Poliwag. This one was finally able to turn the tides on Raichu.

  

This wasn't totally a good thing for her because now I had Scyther out who was able to make quick work of Poliwag.

-------------------------------------

  

Next up came his Mewtwo from Vending Series 3. This Mewtwo's first attack is Full Recovery which discards all energy attached to it but also heals all of its damage counters and cures status conditions. Its second attack, Psycho Blast, gives it a coin-flip chance of discarding an energy from the defending pokemon. In anticipation of my Double Colorless being removed, I went ahead and gave Scyther a second Leaf Energy. It turned out this was unnecessary as Joshua was never able to draw into another Psychic energy to use any of Mewtwo's attacks, granting me an inevitable win.

-----------------------------------

 

And once again my prize was two Flight packs!

Flight 1:

Spoiler

 

-----------------------------

Japanese Only:

This Doduo is from Vending Series 1. Its first attack is Growl which reduces damage from the defending pokemon by 10. Its second attack is Peck.

   

   

Flight 2:

Spoiler

  

----------------------------

Japanese Only:

Weepinbell is from Vending Series 3. Its first attack is Regeneration which lets you remove all damage counters at the cost of removing all energies and devolving it back to a Bellsprout. Its second attack is Dissolve which has a coin-flip chance of discarding an energy attached to the defending pokemon.

   

 

And we've pulled our third Pidgey! Only one more to go! Things are looking pretty good from here!

======================

 

Last but not least was the Master of the Water Club: Amy and her Rain PRayer Confusion Deck.

  

I was able to lead with Electabuzz this time for a pretty powerful lead. Without much of an issue, I could finish off Lapras.

--------------------------------------

  

Following up on Lapras was a Team Rocket Squirtle that, also, was completely defenseless.

--------------------------------

  

Another Squirtle came along with the same fate.

------------------------------------

  

And this lucky SoB got a paralysis on Electabuzz, preventing me from finishing this duel right then and there. Still, I had some tricks prepared.

  

I switched into Scyther and, in hindsight, I'm pretty sure I could have retreated right back and Electabuzz's Paralysis would have been cured. But I didn't think of that in the moment and just left Scyther in. Of course, he was met with an Aurora Beam and by the time he could attack again, Amy played a Potion to heal Seel out of kill range.

  

Thankfully for me, I was able to retreat as soon as the paralysis failed on Scyther and Electabuzz was able to finish the job.

------------------------------------

And with no more pokemon on her bench, Amy had been defeated.

 

My prize was two Assault packs!

Assault 1:

Spoiler

   

 

-------------------------------

Japanese Only:

This Nidorino is from Vending Series 3. Its only attack is Swift Lunge which requires a coin flip. If Tails, it deals 20 damage to itself instead.

   

Assault 2:

Spoiler

  

-----------------------------------

Japanese Only:

   

  

 

And these packs gave us two more Pidgey! This puts us at 5 Pidgey! That means we can officially move on with the game's story! But, I figure we may as well check out the remainder of the clubs we've saved while we're still here on Card Island. Maybe we'll need some of the cards we get here going forward. Plus, I want to see how all these players rebuild their decks using the new cards!

[Aura]

The next stop on our homecoming tour is the Grass Club!

  

For this deck, I went for a Fire-focused deck and included a secondary focus on electric pokemon to cover their weakness to water. I also sprinkled in some Scyther to help with the water type with a grass weakness. Scyther's a great choice for this since he does some good damage without the need for any grass energy. The use of Double Colorless in this eck helps a lot as well. I still hold that Charizard isn't really all that useful and more often than not you're not going to need it. I probably would have been better off replacing Charizard in this deck with Tauros or some trainer cards. Charmeleon is more than enough nine times out of ten, especially with type advantage.

Spoiler

Energy (22)

  

----------------------------------

Grass Pokemon (2)

------------------------------

Fire Pokemon (10)

   

--------------------------------

Electric Pokemon (8)

   

---------------------------------

Colorless Pokemon (4)

------------------------------

Trainer Cards (14)

   

=========================

 

First up was Heather and her Quick Propagation Deck!

  

This duel was over before it began. She didn't have the time to set up any benched pokemon before her Oddish went down to Charmander's Fire Tail.

-----------------------------------

 

My prize was a single Lost Isle pack!

Spoiler

   

   

--------------------------------

Japanese Only:

 

===================

 

our next opponent, Kristen, is using her SHining Moth Scales deck!

  

Voltorb unfortunately couldn't hold its own against Tangela due to going second. But that's fine, he was really just here to hold the line a bit.

  

Charmander came next and burned right through Tangela.

-------------------------------

  

Her Jigglypuff was on the right track by putting Charmander to sleep, and Charmander did remain asleep on my turn as well.

  

Too bad for her that I had a Charmeleon waiting in my hand to wake it right back up and finish the round.

----------------------------------

  

All her Venonat could do was disable one of my moves. No matter which one she chose, though, I'd be able to finish the fight right here and now.

-------------------------------------

 

My reward for this win was a Legends pack!

Spoiler

   

   

Japanese Only:

=========================

 

Next up was Brittany and her Toxic Punishment Deck!

  

She led with a Weedle and her only defense was to poison Charmander.

  

As a bit of insult to injury, I evolved Charmander to cure the poison and slashed Weedle down.

------------------------------------

With no other defenses, Brittany went down as well.

 

My prize was an Assault pack and a Premier pack!

Assault:

Spoiler

 

=====================

Japanese Only:

Kakuna is from Vending Series 1. Its pokemon power is Poison Fluid which poisons any pokemon that damages it with an attack.

   

  

Premier:

Spoiler

   

   

 

========================

 

Finally, there was the Club Master Nikki and her Max Energy Deck!

  

For a brief moment, I thought this was going to be another one-and-done deal with Caterpie as her lead, but no, Nikki actually had benched pokemon!

------------------------------------

  

I evolved Charmander to deal with Exeggcute in a single turn.

-------------------------------------

  

Her next Caterpie went down in a single hit.

------------------------------------

  

Her next Caterpie put an honest effort into trying to top my assault with paralysis, but failed its coin flip, causing it to go down as well.

--------------------------------------

  

And, of course, her last pokemon, Exeggcute, went down in an instant as well.

--------------------------------

With a clean sweep, Nikki was down for the count before she even knew it.

 

My prize this time was two Lost Isle packs!

Lost Isle 1:

Spoiler

   

   

-----------------------------------

Japanese Only:

 

Lost Isle 2:

Spoiler

   

   

--------------------------------------

Japanese Only

 

======================

That was certainly the easiest club yet! This does make a bit of sense though, because this was the easiest club in the original game as well. I may have gotten lucky with the opponent not getting any benched pokemon, but the fact that I was able to get that situation so many times tells me these decks have some pretty hefty consistency issues. I'm not really sure I was really even able to get a feel for what the strategies of these decks were even really going for. Still, I'm not so certain the next club will be so easy. Perhaps we could consider this the calm before the storm?

[Aura]

 

The psychic club is the next on the list! Psychic is always one of the more scary opponents to go up against due to their limited selection of weaknesses, but this time I have the cards to make a much more consistent deck around Alakazam.

  

This deck went through a few minor alterations for consistency, but I ultimately left it on this. This deck is pretty much designed as a hard counter to the majority of psychic deck strategies. Kadabra and Alakazam are there for their psychic attacks that deal double damage against psychic opponents. This gives me a quick out even to the Ghost-types that lack the psychic type weakness, as well as dealing absurd amounts of damage to standard psychic types. I'd rather have more promotional Alakazam, but I threw a Damage Swap one in there. It still serves a nice purpose of fixing up any residual damage from awkward situations. I still don't have four Kadabra, but the three I do have here aren't bad on their own. I have some pokemon traders to help with the variety of evolutions throughout this deck. Mew's devolution ray can get some sudden back, row KO's, especially when paired with Cubone and Dark Marowak's ability to damage benched pokemon. Cubone and Dark Marowak also come with the added bonus of countering any colorless opponents a psychic deck might run to counter its own weaknesses and unlike many other fighting types like Hitmonlee or Machop, they lack the weakness to the Psychic type. And that's the same reason I'm running my own colorless pokemon. Early on I played with Dratini and Dark Dragonair instead of Jigglypuff and Wigglytuff to help search out Kadabra and Alakazam, but I quickly realized that I would need a lot more of these cards in order to use this strat consistently. I ran some energy removals to jam some of the more expensive psychic attacks and Switch to get Alakazam off the front lines if necessary. This deck suffers from having a lot of different evolution lines, so I also ran Pokemon Trader to increase consistency. This is probably the least amount of Energy I've ever had in a deck so far, but I think it's reasonable considering most of my resources are going into a single pokemon with the rest of the deck being full of pokemon with relatively cheap attacks.

Spoiler

Energy (17)

  

----------------------------------------

Fighting Pokemon (6)

 

-------------------------------------

Psychic Pokemon (11)

   

 

-------------------------------------------

Colorless Pokemon (6)

  

-----------------------------------------

Trainer Cards (20)

   

  

===================

 
Our first opponent here is Robert and his Phantom deck!

  

The first opponent here was Jynx, and this was a tough one to get over due to my reliance on coin flips. Unfortunately, my Cubone went down in just a couple of turns as I focused on my backrow.

  

Things were a little different for my second Cubone who was actually able to get some damage off and get some damage on one of his benched pokemon as well, but it still ultimately went down to a double slap followed by a Meditate.

  

Finally, a third Cubone came along to finish off Jynx.

------------------------------------

  

Next was his Gastly. It tried to put Cubone to sleep but he woke up right away. I wasn't going to be leaving Cubone in for a fight where it would be left unable to deal any damage, so I retreated.

  

Kadabra's Super Psy was able to finish Gastly off in one hit and this were looking pretty good.

-----------------------------

  

The next Gastly was met with the same fate.

---------------------------------------

  

The next opponent, Drowzee, did get the chance to use its Confuse Ray, but it unfortunately failed to confuse Kadabra so I was able to finish it off with Super Psy.

----------------------------------

 

And the duel was won, rewarding me with an Assault pack.

Spoiler

   

 

------------------------------------

Japanese Only:

This Charmander is from Vending Series 1. Its first attack is growl which reduces damage on the next turn by 10. Its second attack is Flame Tail and is a bit stronger than Team Rocket Charmander's Flame Tail. I think I'd still prefer Team Rocket Charmander, though, due to the low cost of its attack allowing it to get some quick kills early game. Plus, Team Rocket Charmander benefits from Gathering Fire which allows it to gain a Fire Energy without needing to play one from the hand which can help it to evolve much faster. This thing just wouldn't be so exciting to lead with. Still, I wouldn't say it's a terrible option. 

  

====================

 

Next is Stephanie who we actually have dueled before, but that was under some unfortunate circumstances. I think it's only fair to offer her a good, clean duel.

  

She led off by evolving her Abra pretty quickly. Kadabra's Blink quickly became a major nuisance because she kept evading my attacks. I actually got a bit confused by this attack because the translation of this game actually translated the card text incorrectly.

The description in-game reads that this move works like Agility in which you flip a coin when you use the attack to decide then and there whether you get the protection effect. However, when used, the move actually functions more like Sand Attack, where the opponent flips a coin when they attack. This is quite significant as the former effect allows you to start your turn with the knowledge you won't be able to attack it while the later forces you to take a chance with an attack that will end your turn. Because of the way the move was translated, I thought I'd simply missed the coinflip when I saw the protection animation play and chose to place an energy on a benched pokemon instead of placing another energy on Tauros to allow him to attack. It wasn't until the next turn that I raised an eyebrow and tried to attack, leading to me figuring out the move's actual effect. Still, I was able to work around this and was eventually able to overcome the coin flips and get enough damage out to finish Kadabra off. Thanks to Tauros' resistance, Kadabra was never able to actually deal any damage.

------------------------------

  

She played another Kadabra so this time I used Switch to send out my own Kadabra. This one was going to go by much quicker with Super Psy.

----------------------------------

  

Gastly came next but all it could do was use Frighten. I used an Energy Removal to stop the Mew on her bench from being able to hit me, but in hindsight, I really should have evolved Kadabra to prevent it from being KO'd by Mew's attack if she happened to draw into another psychic energy. It wasn't too much of a risk because I still had plenty of options on my back row to take Mew out, but I wanted to take it out as quickly as possible. I ended up using Super Psy without thinking things through, though.

------------------------------------

  

It ultimately didn't matter though because she couldn't draw into another Psychic energy. So, to add insult to injury, I evolved my Kadabra into Alakazam and blasted Mew into oblivion with a whopping 120 power Psy Panic.

-----------------------------

 

I didn't earn anything for defeating Stephanie before, but this time she gave me two packs: Flight and Premier!

Flight:

Spoiler

  

------------------------------------

Japanese Only:

Weezing from Vending Series 3. Its pokemon power is Poison Mist. During your turn, this power lets you flip a coin and, if heads, all poison damage is doubled to 20 until the end of your next turn. Its attack, Gas Explosion, deals 30 damage to itself. If it knocks out the defending pokemon and a new pokemon comes out in its place, that pokemon immediately becomes poisoned. This could potentially be a very dangerous attack for a deck focused on poison, but I just don't think that's a very effective strategy. If you're going you build a deck around stalling, you may as well go for decking out your opponent rather than knocking their pokemon out with poison.

   

 

Premier:

Spoiler

   

   

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Japanese Only:

=====================

 

Next was Daniel and his Puppeteer deck!

  

Leading off with Jigglypuff, I was able to use Friendship Song to build up the pokemon on my bench while Slowpoke couldn't do any damage to me.

  

Once I started placing more energy on Jigglypuff, he responded by switching into Clefairy Doll to stall my Wigglytuff's assault. On his own bench, he evolved his Drowzee whose Puppet Master power allows him to attack through Clefairy Doll. In addition, Mind Shock ignores weakness and resistance, so it was actually able to damage Wigglytuff! Of course, it only took a moment to finish off Clefairy Doll, but of course doing so doesn't actually count as knocking out a pokemon.

  

His next pokemon was the obnoxious Jungle Mr. Mime with the Invisible Wall power that stops all damage that deals 30 or more HP. Thankfully, I had an unevolved Abra on the back row whose Psyshock was able to deal 20 damage thanks to Mr. Mime's weakness. You'll notice, though, that in this screenshot Mr. Mime has three damage counters which should be impossible if Psyshock is doing 20 HP each turn. This is because, you know that Slowpoke he switched away form before?

He evolved it into Slowbro. In combination with Mr. Mime's Invisible Wall, Strange Behavior was an especially annoying pokemon power. Being able to absorb the damage off of Mr. Mime which, by nature of Invisible Wall, can be at most two counters each turn, Slowbro is was able to make Mr. Mime last a whole 3 turns longer than it normally would have been able to. 

  

I brought Wigglytuff back out to deal with his Hypno. He responded with a Gust of Wind to swap Wigglytuff for the Abra that was already nearing its death.

------------------------------------------

  

With a simple push, Drowzee was able to take Abra out without a question.

  

There was no need to send Wigglytuff out and risk it getting confused or something, so I just sent out Kadabra to make quick work of Drowzee.

----------------------------------------

  

Slowbro came back out, ready to take its hit. It tried to use Psyshock to paralyze Kadabra, but I simply evolved it to work around the paralysis and took him out with Confuse Ray.

-------------------------------------

 

The prize here was another Flight pack!

Spoiler

 

----------------------------------

Japanese Only:

   

  

===============================

 

Lastly is the Club Master Murray! Last time he was possessed by GR No. 4, Victoria, and was using a deck created by her. This time, he's using his own deck!

  

And when he led with his Chansey... it was very clear what his deck was. This is not a strategy you want him to get off. Thankfully, Cubone's Bone Toss, with super-effective damage, was able to take Chansey out pretty quickly thanks to a few coin tosses. Even if I failed to hit Chansey, I'd be dealing 10 HP to the Abra on his bench which was still pretty great. If it isn't clear, his deck is a stall deck built entirely around Alakazam's Damage Swap power. You want to try and knock out his Abra as soon as possible.

------------------------------------

  

After taking out Chansey, he sent out one of his Abra, but he was determined to keep it alive. After failing to paralyze Cubone and taking a solid hit from Bone Toss, he retreated to the bench.

  

Out next came the Abra I hit on the bench from before. I was able to get the Bone Toss off and take it out without a paralysis!

-------------------------------------

  

I could continue this strategy going forward, but I saw a potential opportunity to end this duel pretty quickly!

  

I brought out Kadabra to guarantee a hit on Abra. I did this knowing his only benched pokemon was incapable of dealing damage to me.

-------------------------------------------

  

Gastly was out with nothing but Spookify on its side. With Psy Panic, I finished the duel right here and now. I was not going to give this man a chance to get his obnoxious combo off.

-------------------------------------

 

For winning this duel, i was rewarded with an Ambition and Rocket pack!

Ambition:

Spoiler

   

  

---------------------------------------

Japanese Only:

Zapdos from Vending Series 2! It comes with some really cool artwork! Its first attack, Raging Thunder, has a coin-flip chance of dealing 30 damage to one of your own pokemon. With Thunder Crash, there's a coin-flip chance of either dealing 20 damage to your opponent or itself. 

---------------------------------

GB Exclusive

Rocket:

Spoiler

   

   

 

====================

And with that, the Psychic Club is clear! We're almost done with Card Island, just two more clubs to go!

[Aura]

The next club is the science club. This club generally specialized in poison pokemon in the last game and I imagine that holds true here. This means I can probably get away with using roughly the same deck that I did for the Psychic Club.

=======================

 

In the lounge, we found a familiar face, the alleged imposter Imakuni? Of course, we have to duel him while he's here!

  

His lead Farfetch'd got the coin flip for its Leek Slap, doing some very significant damage to my Abra before retreating.

  

This promotional Slowpoke was packaged with official Pokemon TCG Playmats in Pokemon Centers in Japan and was later released through Pokemon Web. Its first attack is Headbutt while its second attack, Amnesia, allows you to disable one of your opponents moves during the next turn.

Of course, it just headbutted my Abra off the stage.

  

Once Cubone came out and got a solid hit in with Bone Toss, he retreated again.

  

His Farfetch'd wasn't going to be capable of attacking anytime soon thanks to Leek Slap. Of course, Cubone couldn't do anything to Farfetch'd either, but thankfully I had other pokemon on my bench. Tauros was able to take care of Farfetch'd before it was able to get its energies up.

---------------------------------

  

My next opponent, Jynx, was pretty much helpless. Thanks to my resistance, Jynx would only be able to damage me 10 HP at a time if he got lucky enough to get two heads. There was pretty much no way Tauros was going to lose this round.

--------------------------------------

  

Following up was a second Jynx who proved to be quite annoying. Not because of anything it was actively doing, but because...

Imakuni? Decided to evolve his benched Slowpoke in an effort to keep Jynx around longer with its Strange Behavior power. Thankfully, it could only do so much since Cubone had previously conked it with a bone, but this was still quite annoying.

  

Eventually, though, I was able to power through Jynx's HP until Slowbro couldn't use his power anymore. From there, it was just a revisit of the previous round.

------------------------------------

  

Up next was Golduck who lacked the energy to do anything. It didn't help that Imakuni? played his own card to confuse it. 

------------------------------------

  

Slowbro obviously wasn't going to be doing much with its remaining HP. All it could hope for was to paralyze me and stall until he could draw into something.

--------------------------------

And with that, I'd defeated Imakuni?!

 

 

After commenting on my strength, he gives me two booster packs: Lost Isle and Premier!

Lost Isle:

Spoiler

   

 

---------------------------------------

Japanese Only:

   

Premier:

Spoiler

   

   

---------------------------------------------

Japanese Only:

======================

 

When it comes to the actual club area, our first opponent is Eric and his Nidoran collection deck.

  

And this was where I very quickly realized that it was quite a big mistake to keep Cubone as my fighting pokemon. Since poison types are usually grass pokemon, Cubone and Marrowak were going to be weak to just about everything these players were running.

  

Thankfully, I had Dark Marowak who could make a mess out of the opponent's strategies by forcing switches with random pokemon while dealing some pretty decent damage at that.

  

The first Multiple Bone Hit drug out Nidorino.

  

The next drug out Clefairy who was brought into KO range thanks to the damage on the bench.

-------------------------------------------

  

Next came the Nidoran from before who was also now in KO range!

---------------------------------

  

Next up, Nidoking came along which he evolved from the Nidorino from before. With this, he was finally able to get a hit on Dark Marowak.

  

Following up on this, I made probably the stupidest decision I've ever made in this entire game. What I should have done, was use Psywave to deal 60 damage to Nidoking, then finished it off on the next turn, but my dumbass decided to use Devolution Beam...

  

I think it's pretty clear where this is going.

  

Thankfully, Tauros got the coin flip chance to deal 30 damage with Stomp, so I was able to finish the job against Nidorino anyway.

---------------------------------

  

His Tauros was ultimately able to overcome my own.

  

I didn't have any good switch-ins, so I sent out Alakazam to stall and possibly get him with some confusion damage. Eventually, though, I was able to get a Cubone onto my bench and Tauros' Kicking and Stomping brought it out.

  

All it took at this point was a good coin flip and we were done!

-------------------------------------

 

My prize for winning was a lone Lost Isle pack.

Spoiler

   

   

-------------------------------------

Japanese Only:

 

=======================

 

I slightly adjusted the balance of my deck. I replaced Cubone and Marowak with Machop and Hitmonchan. I didn't bother with Machoke or Machamp because I really only needed them to help deal with colorless pokemon, so I needed low energy cost attacks on pokemon that could get out easily.

---------------------------------------------

 

Next up was David and his Natural Science deck!

  

Starting out, I didn't have much of a choice but to lead with Abra. I wasn't able to get the paralysis up with Psyshock, but he was unable to get the coin-flip for Horn Hazard. 

  

Defeating Nidoran at that point was as simple as using Pyshock again, but I decided to play it safe by evolving him first.

----------------------------------------

  

His Bulbasaur came next which used Razor Leaf to damage Kadabra.

  

Thankfully, I was able to evolve Kadabra into Alakazam and use Damage Swap to move all the damage counters onto a Tauros on my bench before turning the tides and taking out Bulbasaur.

------------------------------------

  

Thanks to Damage Swap, Alakazam was able to remain basically untouched before Blasting Zubat away with Confuse Ray.

-----------------------------------------

 

For winning, I earned two Premier packs!

Premier 1:

Spoiler

   

   

 

Japanese Only:

Premier 2:

Spoiler

   

   

 

========================

 

Joseph was next with the Poisonous Swamp!

  

I led with Tauros who got poisoned by Ekans. This is pretty inevitable but poison can potentially be really helpful for Tauros thanks to Rampage! I was able to take out the Ekans in a couple of turns.

-----------------------------------

  

Thanks to Koffing's attack, Tauros was unfortunately brought into Kill Range of poison. Somehow I didn't think that part of this plan through.

  

Machop was next and came out with a Punch.

  

He evolved his Koffing into Weezing and this was a pretty solid fight. Unfortunately, Machop was unable to power through the poison.

  

Luckily, he was roughed up quite a bit, so Abra was able to finish the job with a quick Psyshock!

----------------------------------------

 

For winning, I was awarded with two Legends packs!

Legends 1:

Spoiler

   

 

--------------------------------------

Japanese Only:

   

Legends 2:

Spoiler

   

   

-----------------------------------------

Japanese Only:

 

=======================

 

And finally it's time to challenge the Science Club Master, Rick!

  

Starting out was a somewhat familiar matchup, but this Ekans was a bit less annoying since it couldn't just poison me right out the gate. I was able to take care of it with a couple of Stomps.

---------------------------------------------

  

And then came Chansey. Never a fun opponent to see. Thankfully, I had a little something prepared for these guys.

  

 My Machop was a decent match up against it, so I went ahead and paid the cost to retreat into him. It took a few turns, but I was able to overcome Chansey with little resistance.

------------------------------------

  

Zubat was next and, due to its resistance to fighting, this was a matchup Machop had no business being in. Obviously, I'd just need to retreat, right? Well, tell that to my luck because not only did I get confused by Zubat's Suspicious Soundwave, I failed to retreat four times in a row.

  

My initial plan was to switch out to Tauros and deal with it that way, but by the time Machop was able to retreat, I'd already built up the energies on my Jigglypuff and it was already prepared to evolve!

  

From here, the rest of the duel was a clean sweep with Do the Wave. Zubat stood no chance.

------------------------------------

  

He sent out a Chansey which was able to take a hit, but unable to do anything about it before just taking a second one and going down.

--------------------------------------

  

Ekans went for a poisoning, but it failed. Even if it was successful, it would have been too little too late.

---------------------------------

  

And lastly, Koffing went down as well. It did manage to get the poisoning, but I can only assume he was hoping to stop me in my tracks with the confusion effect. A sad day indeed. (of course, the psychic types building up on my bench had another thing to say about just letting him win).

--------------------------------------

And with that, I'd defeated the Psychic Club Master, Rick!

 

My prize was Flight and Lost Isle!

Flight:

Spoiler

   

 

---------------------------------------

Japanese Only:

   

Lost Isle:

Spoiler

   

 

-----------------------------------

Japanese Only:

   

===========================

And now, the only of the clubs remaining is the Fire Club, so it's only natural that's where we'll be heading next time!

[Aura]

  

Before visiting the final club, I took a quick trip back to GR Island to make a quick trade.

 

If we're going to be building a water-focused deck, we're definitely going to be building it around this guy: Blastoise! We can trade in a Dark Blastoise for a promotional version of Base Set Blastoise. With this, we'll be able to make a much better water deck than anything we've made so far.

==========================

Now then, it's time to get back to the Fire Club!

  

The first draft of my Rainfall Deck suffered a bit in the consistency department. It's entirely built around the two Blastoise cards I have and I don't think I even noticed that I actually had three Dewgong but only 2 Seel. As for Trainer Cards, I threw in Computer Search to help pull out any specific cards I needed in the moment. Energy Removal also served to further my own energy advantages thanks to Rain Dance. The biggest drawback to this deck is the lack of Water Energy. You really have to get a feel for how much energy you need for this sort of deck. You want it to be abundant enough so that you can easily get a hand full of them, but you also don't want it to be too abundant to where it feels like you're only drawing them. Ideally, any time you play a card like Bill or Challenge!, you'll draw one water energy and another card. Of course, there's no way to guarantee that happening consistently, but we can adjust the number of energies as needed. The win condition for this deck is pretty clear cut: Get Blastoise out, attack five water energies to it, and blast away at the opponent's team. Diglett is there to provide counter to any electric pokemon that might come along to ruin my day while I'm trying to build Blastoise up. Professor Oak is especially useful for a deck like this because you can drop a handful of water energies onto your pokemon with Rain Dance and then use Professor Oak to draw a whole new hand of them.

Spoiler

Energy (15)

 

-----------------------------------

Water Pokemon (15)

   

   

------------------------------------------

Fighting Pokemon (7)

   

-----------------------------------------

Trainer Cards (23)

   

   

========================

  

Our first opponent is John with the Divine Blaze Deck!

  

since Vulpix couldn't attack right away, I was able to get an easy Aurora Beam on it, leaving it mostly pretty vulnerable.

  

Following that last round, I evolved Seel and fired an Aurora Wave to finish off Vulpix.

--------------------------------------

  

The next Vulpix used the effect of Foxfire to force me to switch into a Squirtle with no energies on my bench. Thankfully, I had a Wartortle on my bench, which means...

I was able to evolve Wartortle into Blastoise, giving me access to Rain Dance.

  

From here, I was easily able to drop some water energy onto Squirtle and fight back against Vulpix. Unfortunately, 40 HP isn't enough to take it out so it was able to get another Foxfire out.

  

Out came Dewgong who took it out with Aurora Wave.

---------------------------------------

  

The next Vulpix used Foxfire to force another switch, but I was able to attach an energy to Seel and let it retreat.

  

Since Vulpix was his last pokemon, I just sent out Dewgong to take it out in one shot.

---------------------------------------

 

My prize for winning here was two more assault packs!

Assault 1:

Spoiler

  

-----------------------------------------

Japanese Only:

   

  

Assault 2:

Spoiler

   

 

----------------------------------

Japanese Only:

Nidorina from Vending Series 3: Her first attack, deals 10 additional damage for each member of the nidoran family on the bench. It sother attack, Fury Swipes, does 30 damage times the number of heads across three coin tosses.

  

============================

  

After that duel, I made some adjustments to hopefully improve consistency for this deck. Most notably, I increased the number of Water energies and decreased the number of Dewgong, cutting Base Set Dewgong entirely. I added two more Challenge! cards for extra draw power as well as Energy Retrieval and Super Energy Retrieval to help get Energies back when I'm starved. I also cut Pokemon Trader and Energy Removal, figuring that with two copies of Blastoise and Computer Search, and with so much draw power and disposable cards in this deck, I shouldn't have to worry so much about searching out Blastoise and it should also be pretty easy to get my hands on Squirtle and Wartortle first. Plus, these pokemon are pretty competent at holding the front lines on their own while they wait.

=========================

 

Our next opponent was Adam and his Spark Voltage Deck! That's sounding like a deck full of electric pokemon which is a bit scary for my water pokemon, but that's exactly why Diglett and Dugtrio are here!

  

He started out with a Ponyta against my Squirtle and no other benched pokemon!

  

Ponyta was unable to attack for its first turn, so I evolved Squirtle to take it out. Since he had no benched pokemon, that was a quick win for me!

------------------------------------

 

For such a simple victory, I was awarded with a single Premier pack.

Spoiler

   

   

----------------------------------------

Japanese Only:

=============================

 

Jonathan is a little enthusiastic about Fire. Scarily so... his deck is the Immortal Flame Deck! We'll see just how immortal those flames really are...

  

Against Charmander, I used Dig Under to weaken it.

Since a single Scratch put me in kill range of Ember, I decided to think ahead and not bother using a second energy on Diglett to use Scratch and instead use Dig Under again to damage another Charmander on his bench. With both of these Charmanders down to 40 HP, they'd both be easy KO's for my next pokemon.

  

Squirtle came along and, as planned, took it out in a single hit.

----------------------------------

  

I evolved Squirtle into Wartortle to take care of Eevee. 

  

It tried to use Tail Wag to stop me from attacking, but I simply evolved Wartortle to work around that. With Rain Dance, I dropped some water energy onto Blastoise tore poor Eevee down.

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Kangaskhan tried to stall a bit, it was able to take a hit, but it went down not much long after. All it was able to accomplish was to draw a single card.

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It doesn't take much imagination to figure out what happened to Charmander here.

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My prize was two more legends packs!

Legends 1:

Spoiler

   

  

Japanese Only:

  

Legends 2:

Spoiler

   

   

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Japanese Only:

=====================

 

Last but not least was our final club master: Ken!

  

With Aurora Beam, I was able to take his lead Magmar out with my Seel in only a few turns. Smokescreen was a bit scary but I was ultimately able to work around it with good luck.

----------------------------------

  

His Hitmonchan came next and unfortunately I couldn't get a lucky paralysis combo to take it out before it could take me out. A couple of jabs was all it took to defeat my Seel.

  

Diglett's Scratch was able to do a little bit of extra damage before being taken out with Special Punch.

  

But that's alright because Diglett bought me enough time to get a Blastoise prepared! A Hydro Pump took out Hitmonchan, probably Ken's biggest threat.

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Doduo got some hits in with Fury Attack before blasting off.

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Growlithe hit me with a solid Ember before going down.

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His Vending Hitmonchan dealt another 20 damage with Mach Punch.

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Seel was all that was his last defense and it, too, went down without a hitch.

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And of course for winning, I was awarded with a Flight and Assault booster pack!

Flight:

Spoiler

 

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Japanese Only:

   

   

Assault:

Spoiler

   

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Japanese Only:

Rhydon from Vending Series 3 has two attacks. The first is Mountain Break. This lets you discard the top 5 cards of your deck and any Fighting Energy among them gets added to your hand. Its other attack, One-Two Strike has a coin-flip chance to deal 20 extra damage. It's an interesting card that can potentially get you a bunch of free energy in a deck built around Fighting pokemon. I'm not sure I'd ever run it myself, but it might make for an interesting experiment.

   

 

=======================

And with that, all of the clubs have been defeated! But I don't think that's everything we're going to be doing here on Card Island. We still have the Grand Masters who want rematches!

[Aura]

Finally it's time to visit the Pokemon Dome! Our final stop here on Card Island! It's here that the Final Cup is being held to award the winner with the Legendary Pokemon Cards! ...nevermind the fact that I've canonically already earned the cards. Apparently I have to win them back since they were stolen from me or something? I mean, I'm not sure how the Grand Masters get to keep their honor of holding onto the cards even after being not only defeated but captured, but I don't get to keep my honor of holding them despite being the only one able to defeat the majority of Team GR...

Anyway, complaints aside, all we have to do to enter the Final Cup is come into the Pokemon Dome and speak to Rod!

------------------------------

 

Of course, this works just like it did in the previous game. We'll have to duel the four grand masters one after another. And for winning, we'll be awarded their legendary cards.

===================

 

And to start out, we'll be dueling Courtney!

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Starting off was Squirtle against Magmar. Exploiting its weakness to water, I was able to tear through its HP quickly.

  

I took a bit of a gamble and evolved Squirtle into Wartortle without a necessary need in order to finish off Magmar. I had my reasons, of course.

----------------------------------

  

Moltres of course doesn't have its weakness to water. Its Dry Up attack is also pretty scary for Blastoise. Thankfully, it lacked the energy to use the attack and Hydro Pump was dealing enough damage to finish it off before it could get the needed energy.

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Ponyta came out to take one for the team.

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Up next was the Legendary Moltres card itself! When Moltres is played, it will randomly add 1-4 fire energy to your hand. Its attack, Dive Bomb, has a coin-flip chance of doing nothing. Once again, though, it was helpless to the onslaught of Hydro Pump!

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And then.... another one! Yet again, though, Moltres went down in two hits without a chance to get the energy to attack.

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Her Rapidash tried to use Agility to work around the immense power, but failed the coin flip. At this point, I was too well established for losing Blastoise to end my game, so the failed coin flip really only saved time.

--------------------------------------------

 

And with that, I'd made quick work of Courtney and advanced to Round 2!

========================

 

Steve was my next opponent.

Just like the card tournament and the previous game, you do have a chance to access your pause menu between duels. This lets you save and modify your deck to prepare for your next opponent.

---------------------------------

  

I gave my Brimstone deck a pretty heavy makeover for the sake of better consistency. I got rid of Charmander and Charmeleon and replaced them with Magmar which was a much nicer alternative that requires less investment. Charmeleon is great and all, but it still requires three energy to attack with and requires an evolution from Charmander. I'd much rather have easy access to a decently powerful fire-type and Magmar was my best basic pokemon. I also threw in some Diglett and Dugtrio. I don't think I realized just how useful they would turn out to be in this upcoming duel, though...

Spoiler

Energy (16)

 

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Fire Pokemon (4)

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Fighting Pokemon (15)

   

  

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Colorless Pokemon (2)

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Trainer Cards (23)

   

   

====================

  

My only pokemon to lead with was Tauros. You're going to want to be extra careful about your bench during this duel because of Steve's Legendary Zapdos card. We'll get into why that is later, but long story short, don't place anything onto the bench unless your bench is empty and your active pokemon is about to go down, or you're about to place energies on that new pokemon.

  

Knowing Tauros was going to be useful for later, I played Switch to bring out Magmar to hopefully chip off some of Electabuzz's HP. Unfortunately, he healed off some of the damage I was able to deal and I wasn't even able to get a poisoning with Smog before Magmar went down.

  

But that's where Diglett came in! At the most, Electabuzz would only be able to deal 10 damage at a time against a pokemon that resists it. Beyond that, if he fails the coin flip on Thunderpunch, he does nothing to me and damages himself in the process! Needless to say, Diglett was able to deal with him without too much of an issue.

-----------------------------------

  

Another Electabuzz followed suit but was just as helpless against a ground-type pokemon.

  

I evolved Diglett and took Electabuzz out in one shot with a solid Slash attack!

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Steve placed his Legendary Zapdos onto the bench here. This pokemon's power, Peal of Thunder, deals 30 damage to a random pokemon whenever it's put into play. Its attack, Big Thunder, deals 70 damage to a random pokemon, ignoring weakness and resistance. I believe these effects also include your own pokemon, so this card is a pretty heavy gamble. If you're not careful, you could knock out your own benched pokemon.

Upon being placed, Zapdos knocked an innocent benched Diglett out with its pokemon power. Vengeance must be obtained!!

  

In order to get to that Zapdos, though, I was going to have to work my way through the one that was already out. While Zapdos does resist the Fighting type, Dugtrio has an extra trick up its sleeve. Earthquake is powerful enough to bring some pain even with the resistance bringing its damage down to 40. The only downside is that every time I use Earthquake, all pokemon on my bench take 10 damage. It's just a good thing the only pokemon on my bench are Rhyhorn, who isn't going to be taking much damage throughout this duel otherwise, and Tauros, who benefits from having a lot of damage counters~ A couple of Earthquakes later, Zapdos went down without a sweat.

---------------------------------------------

  

Now my sweet vengeance was approaching! Legendary Zapdos' HP was a little bit awkward for Dugtrio to work around. No matter what, this was going to be a three-hit KO at minimum. But, looking at the cards I had access to, I had a better plan.

  

By the time I was able to get the energies onto Tauros for Rampage, Zapdos was already down to 20 HP. I had Dugtrio retreat to avoid KOing my own pokemon. There was no use in trying to go for Rampage and risk confusion when I could just use a Stomp to finish the deal.

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Unfortunately, this meant that the Electrode that followed up was able to take out Tauros before I was able to exploit its damage counters. That was fine, though, because at this point I was pretty much set to win.

  

Using Energy Retrieval to recover some of the energy I'd discarded from Dugtrio on retreat, I gave Rhydon the energy it needed to take Electrode out with a couple Horn Attacks. Unfortunately, Electrode's Sonicboom hit pretty hard thanks to avoiding resistance, but this wasn't going to matter too much.

-----------------------------------------

  

Following up was another Electrode which finished what its predecessor started. With another Sonicboom, Rhydon went down.

  

By this point, though, Energies were right back onto Dugtrio and I was able to finish the Duel with one more Earthquake!

------------------------------------

And with that, Grand Master Steve had been defeated! That's two down, two to go!

============================

 

Next up is Jack, the water-type specialist!

----------------------------

  

Once again, I modified my Powerplant deck from before. I mostly just played around with the numbers a bit to accomodate for new cards.

Spoiler

Energy (19)

  

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Grass Pokemon (8)

  

---------------------------------

Electric Pokemon (8)

   

-----------------------------------

Colorless Pokemon (6)

 

----------------------------------

Trainer Cards (19)

    

 

========================

Apparently lady luck was absolutely against me for the beginning of this duel. Every single coin flip that mattered was the wrong result for me.

  

Leading off with Electabuzz should have been a fantastic start! But Jack went first and immediately got the paralysis effect with Ice Punch. This would have been fine if it wasn't for her Cold Breath putting me to sleep the next turn. I stay asleep so I'm unable to attack, but that's all fine. Surely I'll be able to attack next turn, right? I wake up before her turn and she gets the coin flip chance to put me to sleep again. And again, I fail to wake up before my turn. This time, I fail to wake up before her turn, she hits me with another Cold Breath. I'm down to 20 HP now. Surely I can at least make a move, right? Wrong. I still remain asleep. Thanks to that, Jynx was able to take out my Electabuzz without a single scratch.

  

And so, Pikachu had to make up for lost ground. Thankfully, Spark would certainly help with the option to deal some splash damage to some of his benched pokemon.

  

And after evolving Pikachu, a solid Sparking Kick was all it took to finish off Jynx.

---------------------------------------

  

Lapras managed to stop me from attacking with Confuse Ray before finishing me off. Unfortunately, no powerful Sparking Kick to at least put a dent in this thing.

  

That was fine, though, because Jolteon was ready! I only got a single heads with PIn Missile, so I wasn't able to take Lapras out with one hit, sadly.

  

He retreated his Lapras into Articuno. Not really sure what he was planning to accomplish with this choice because Articuno wasn't able to do anything. I wasn't going to say no to a free KO, though, and this seems to be where my lady luck started to come back to my side. I got a whopping four heads with Pin Missile, more than enough to take Articuno out!

-----------------------------------------

  

Now he was getting desperate and sending out a bunch of weaker pokemon that were just there to stall for time. Magikarp went down to a single hit from Pin Missile.

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Same story with Krabby.

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And Krabby #2.

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And with Magikarp #2 out of the way, I claimed my last prize card!

------------------------------------

 

With Jack defeated, it was onto the final round!

Side note: He never actually used it against me, but the Legendary Articuno card has the power Quickfreeze. On being played, you have a coin flip chance of paralyzing the defending pokemon for free. Its attack, Ice Breath, deals 40 damage, ignoring weakness and resistance, to one of your opponent's pokemon, chosen at random.

========================

 

In facing off against Rod, I could think of nothing more fitting than giving my old faithful Safari deck and upgrade. I knew his legendary pokemon card was Dragonite, but the thing about Dragonite is that colorless pokemon already kind of cover their own weaknesses. The most I could expect was some ground types to cover for the electric weakness of any flying pokemon he might have on his deck, but really, he could have anything. 

  

Spoiler

Energy (17)

 

Grass Pokemon (12)

   

-------------------------------------

Colorless Pokemon (8)

   

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Trainer Cards (23)

    

  

=====================

  

Leading off, I thought I was in an advantageous position against Rod's lead Dratini...

  

I was completely caught off guard when he suddenly dropped an energy on his Dratini just to retreat into Charmander! Obviously I was aware of the Charmander on the bench, but I figured he'd let his Dratini go down first to avoid wasting early game energy. In hindsight, this was a pretty solid trade, though, because he sacrificed a single energy to take out my Bulbasaur, claim a prize card, and waste one of my energies as well. Of course, I haven't overlooked the fact that, of all the different types he possibly could have gone for, he went for Fire which just happened to counter the grass-type deck I chose arbitrarily!

  

Putting my salt behind me, Tauros came out next to fight back!

  

In order to keep his Charmander alive, he evolved it into Charmeleon! But he caught me off guard by dropping a double colorless to let it attack me! Unfortunately for him, hitting me with a Slash gave my Rampage enough strength to take him out!

---------------------------------------

  

His follow-up was a standard Dratini which knocked Tauros out with a single Pound.

  

I had a second Tauros at the ready, though, to deal with this little guy! Before he knew it, he was down!

---------------------------------

  

Another Charmander came next, but this one was less prepared than his previous one and went down in a couple of rounds.

------------------------------------

  

His Scyther lacked the energy to fight back, so it went down pretty easily as well. I was wary the entire time of the possibility of a Double colorless being dropped at any point. Had he so much as dropped a single energy onto this thing, I would have been baited into using Rampage which may have left me confused. Instead, he never so much as dropped a single energy onto this thing, so I felt content with just going for Stomp over and over.

------------------------------------

  

Kangaskhan was up next and all it was set to do was stall out with Fetch. Although the possibility of getting that Comet Punch off at any point thanks to another Double Colorless was scary enough for me to go for Rampage to finish it off quickly.

---------------------------------

  

Last but not least was his Dark Dragonair which unfortunately is incapable of evolving into the legendary Dragonite card. Tail Strike failed its coin-flip chance for an extra 20 damage and I passed the check to attack through confusion, so I was able to take Dark Dragonair out in a single shot. He was probably banking on either getting the Tail Strike flip or Tauros knocking itself out in confusion. I can imagine being pretty salty in Rod's position.

-------------------------------------

 

And with that, I was able to defeat Rod as well!

Once again, it's worth mentioning his Legendary Dragonite card. When played, Dragonite's Healing Wind power heals 20 HP from all of your pokemon in play. Its second attack, Slam, does 30 damage times the number of heads across two coin flips.

=====================

And for clearing the Final Cup, I am awarded once again with the Legendary Pokemon cards!

   

These are all pretty solid pokemon on their own. In the original game, they didn't really see much play outside of the minimal postgame content. But it seems I'll actually be able to use these guys in a few real decks coming up! I'm excited to actually be able to use them for once, even if only for a brief time. Each of these pokemon are pretty solid additions to a variety of decks.

Moltres' free Fire energies are a huge help for any fire decks.

Zapdos' Peal of Thunder is a little bit dangerous, but if you play with a small bench you're much more likely to hit your opponent. Just make sure to only use Big Thunder when it's your last defense. A good strategy is to play Zapdos while you have a lone active pokemon. When your active pokemon gets defeated, use Big Thunder to fight and (very likely) KO the opponent. When its about to be KO'd, you can drop another pokemon on the bench and use Scoop UP to bring Zapdos back to your hand. It can also be used in conjunction with the promotional Articuno's Aurora Veil to protect your own benched pokemon from its attacks. Jungle Mr. Mime can also avoid the damage from Zapdos' attacks and so can the promotional Dugtrio.

The Legendary Articuno can be seen as a much safer alternative to Zapdos which works really well in probably the widest variety of decks. Its Quickfreeze has a chance to paralyze the defending pokemon for free. In addition, while weaker, Ice Breath only targets the opponent's pokemon. Perhaps running it in a deck that disrupts the opponent's bench a lot is a good way to go! 

Dragonite is probably the least impressive of the four. While its Healing Wind seems pretty useful, you have to consider that it's a stage 2 evolution. It might work well in conjunction with a deck built around Jungle Dodrio's Retreat Aid, but I imagine by the time you have a bunch of pokemon taking damage, your opponent is going to be using attacks much stronger than 30 damage. And with no way to easily reuse this ability, it just seems like a huge vat of wasted potential, especially compared to the other three pokemon. Even its attack isn't impressive with only two coin flips, it has a pretty decent chance of doing nothing. I can't guarantee I'll be using this guy for much.

==================

Anyway, with our prizes collected, I don't think there's anything else of any particular interest here on Card Island, so I think it's time to return to GR Island and finish what we started!