Do You Have Rare Candy?

Rare Candy is a COOL card. And very powerful. But it can be confusing. Here's a QnA from Pokebeach about how to use Rare Candy:

Q: Can I use Rare Candy during my first turn???
A: Yes, ALL Trainers or pokemon attacks that evolve a pokemon INSTANTLY.

Q: Can I use Rare Candy to a Mysterious Fossil, Root Fossil, or Claw Fossil???
A: Yes. As stated on the card, " **** Fossil is a trainer card, as well as a basic pokemon.

Q: Can I use Rare Candy to a pokemon I just put down???
A: Yes, it applies the same as evolving it during you first turn.

Q: Can I use Wally's Training to evolve a pokemon I just evolved with Rare Candy???
A: Yes, as Wally's Training does Instant evolving. Just as long as you don't evolve a pokemon with wally's training, then using Rare Candy as Rare Candy can only be used on basic pokemon.

Q: Can I use ' Make A Wish' to evolve a pokemon I just evolved with Rare Candy???
A: Yes, it applies the same as using a Wally's Training on a pokemon that evolved from Rare Candy

Q: Can I use a Rare Candy to evolve a basic pokemon, then using 'shuffle and draw' cards like Professor Oak's Research, Admin. etc. and then evolve it again with Rare candy???
A: No, as said before Rare candy Can't be used on an evolved pokemon.

Relax at Pokemon Beach

What a find! A place to hang and learn more about Pokemon TCG.

Everyone is abuzz about the Nintendo DS Pokemon game right now. (Even hubby went and got a copy.) Not so much buzz about the card game. But there is still a strong following for the card game. And Pokébeach has all the info about it!

There are card scans, sample decks, card info, event lists, and more.

Enjoy!

Deck Building

So, I spent some time this weekend putting all of our decks together with the boosters that we've purchased to make bigger and better decks.  Realize that these are not "optimal" competition decks, but rather decks that we are working on based on what we have on hand.

The first one that I will be showing is the Water deck.  Originally, it started out as a base starter.  On playing this deck, I noticed that there was a fair amount of capacity to get cards out in a hurry, but there is definitely room for improvement.  In some posts on Pokémon forums, there are decks described that only have 15 total energy.  I'm still trying to wrap my head around that one.  Bottom line, we have lots of stuff in this deck, we know its not optimal, but its fun to play.

24 Pokémon

1 x Zangoose ∂

2 x Onix

1 x Steelix

3 x Magnemite

2 x Magneton

1 x Magnezone

2 x Goldeen

1 x Seaking

3 x Piplup

2 x Prinplup

1 x Empoleon

2 x Buizel

1 x Floatzel

1 x Mantyke

1 x Mudkip

11 Trainers

2 x Energy Search

2 x PlusPower

2 x Potion

2 x Rival

1 x Rare Candy

1 x Super Scoopup

1 x Professor Elm's Training method

24 Energy

18 x Water Energy

6 x Metal Energy

Parent's Pokemon Corner

Now Pokemon Center is an interesting website. It has a section just for parents.

Basic rules, how to throw a Pokemon themed party and projects to do with the kids.

Otherwise, it's an online card store. But any website that has a section just for parents, even if its purpose is to get us to part with our money, gets my vote.

Pokemon TCG Magazine

Did you know there's a Pokemon TCG magazine? It's called, appropriately enough, "Pokémon".

In it, there are pictures of all the Diamond/Pearl cards. It has explanation of the new rules, samples of competition deck builds, buying prices for old cards and articles about pokemon name origins. There is also cursory information about the DS games, the Wii, the TV show and Yu-Gi-Oh cards.

The website has a little bit more. But doesn't seem as developed as it could be.

Still, I'm going to keep an eye on the website, and if it has updates, I'll be sure to link over there.

New Pokemon Decks

Last night, dad went through all of our cards and created three decks from scratch. I'll let him tell you more detail about what's in them, and how he made his decision.
But it took him over an hour to go through them all.

Eventually, he ended up with three decks that were similar to what we had before. Mostly because we didn't have enough evolved critters in each energy type to create a deck that wasn't water, grass or fire.

Dad's main goal, I think, was to make all the decks balanced, so one deck wouldn't cream either of the other two. We'll have to play with them a little more to get a feel for how powerful they are.

Two things I learned last night while testing out the new decks.

1) Make sure to shuffle a LOT before starting play. Especially if the cards had just been organized in some way. Or else the deck will be imbalanced in the pile, and you won't get any energy cards in your hand.

2) Mantyke is an AWESOME card, and all water decks should have one.

New Cards Today

We bought six booster packs for Diamond and Pearl today. We got Shiftry, Azumarill and a few other evolved critters.

We took all of our decks apart. The most promising deck builds, with what we have, are psychic and fighting/metal. We wanted to make a lightening deck. But Diamond/Pearl doesn't have enough lightening to do that.

We learned a thing or two about putting decks together. Now that we have more trainer cards and more evolved pokemon, we have some flexibility to put together some faster, more streamlined decks. And, enough cards to make some fun, all-low level decks, since we have so many basics.

Pokemon Learning League

Our friends, who also play Pokemon TCG, said we should try the Pokémon Learning League. I'm tempted. But we already play sooo much pokemon. Would it be too much to add this to our list of things to do? Or is it worth it?

Pokemon TCG Rule Clarification

When we first started playing the Pokémon TCG Diamond/Pearl expansion, we had many questions about gameplay. There was some confusion because the old rules are a bit different from the new ones. Here are some of the rules that confused us at first.

1. The first player draws a card. This player may not evolve basics or use trainer, supporter or stadium cards.

2. The second player cannot evolve basics, but s/he can use trainer, supporter or other non-pokemon cards.

3. The player who wins the flip can choose to go first or second.

4. Fossils now give a prize card when KO'd.

5. Fossils are considered pokemon when in play, trainers when in one's hand.

6. New weakness/resistances are +10, -20, etc. On the old cards, that don't have numbers, they are played as weakness = double damage and resistance takes -30 off damage.

7. If an active Pokémon is KO'd doing damage to itself, the opponent takes a prize card.

8. If a benched Pokémon is KO'd, the opponent takes a prize card.

Any other rules that I should list here that are sometimes confusing?

Pokémon for DS

This mantyke blog is about Pokémon TCG. But after reading this review, I'm jonesin' for some Pokémon DS action.

Way back when, years ago, when pokémon was just starting out, I played one of the original pokémon games on the Gameboy. The old-school Gameboys. Mine was green.

I played so much, I got some kind of carpal tunnel thing in my thumb. And I had to stop.

Perhaps, one day, I might play the new pokemon on the DS. Maybe I should ask for the pink DS-lite for my bday?

Basic Rules of Pokémon TCG

Over the course of the many expansions, the rules for Pokemon TCG have changed here and there. But for our household, we have only known one set of rules: Diamond and Pearl.

Since the rules have changed over time, finding the most up to date rules on the internet is hard to do. The rules that come with the game in the starter pack aren't complete. But they are a pretty good overview.

Pokecorner has the best rule set that I can find online. Although, I did notice some discrepencies.

For example, in the pokecorner's rule set, it has an opponent drawing "up to two cards" when the other person doesn't have any basic pokemon on the first draw. In the current rule set, if a person does not have any basic pokemon in their first draw of 7 cards, they discard the cards, and then their opponent picks 1 card, not two.

This website explains what's new in the Diamond and Pearl rule set.

At some point, I'll write out a complete rule set that incorporates everything I know about it, in easy to digest bits for people like me who need it all spelled out clearly.

Unless, you know of a better place to get a good rule explanation which includes the new Diamond rules?

Legal Pokémon Cards - The Basics

One of my main goals was to make sure that we don't inadvertently use cards in our decks that won't be legal for tournament plat starting Sept. 1st, 2007. We did some research to figure out which sets are legal. There was not one place that had it clearly laid out to say, "These card are legal to play starting Sept. 1st". So here is what we found.

The following card sets will be legal for play in tournaments and at gyms starting Sept. 1st, 2007.

EX Holon Phantoms
EX Crystal Guardians
EX Dragon Frontiers
EX Power Keepers
Diamond and Pearl
Mysterious Treasures (Due out in Oct. 2007)
OP Series 4
OP Series 5
Black Star Promos 37 and up
Any card printed in an earlier set that was reprinted in one of these listed sets (i.e. energy cards)

Anything I'm missing?

The following list are the sets that were legal in the 2006-2007 season, that will no longer be allowed in game play starting Sept. 2007.

EX Deoxys
EX Emerald
EX Unseen Forces
EX Delta Species
EX Legend Maker
EX Trainer Kit 2
OP Series 3
OP Series 2
Black Star promos 29 to 36

You can check here to know which cards go with which sets.

List of Pokemon Cards

This website lists all the pokemon cards, with a picture of each card. It's organized by the set it came from and/or alphabetical order. There is also a search option.

We've used this site to help us figure out where some of our random cards came from, and whether they are gym/tournament legal for 2007-2008. It took us a while to figure out which cards are legal.

I'll post about that next, because it's a little complicated. Well, for a newbie like me anyway.

The pokégym website is by far one of the best indexes I've seen. In fact, it's the only one I've seen. If you know of another, please let me know.

Starter Deck Ownage

We're totally new to Pokémon but we're not new to Trading Card Games. We both have played Magic: The Gathering and Jyhad. Note however, that this was about 10 years ago and the last time we bought cards was when the Ice Age expansion was release for MTG.

So, going into Pokémon, we knew that there was some work to be done with deck optimization and card selection. We started out with the three starter decks for the Diamond and Pearl set and soon accumulated about 6 booster packs worth of cards. With these extra cards, we balanced out the decks so that the fire deck wouldn't get totally annihilated by the water deck and the leaf deck wouldn't get burned to a crisp by the fire deck.

Enter Father's Day. Early in the morning we all went over to our Game Empire in Pasadena to have the kids play in their tournament. Fun was had, but the kids could only get through about three games before we had to jet for my brother's house for Father's Day festivities.

My nephew has been playing Pokémon for about 8 years and has played in many tournaments and has had literally years to optimize his deck and his tactics. We had our cards with us because we just came over from the game store. It seemed natural to get a couple of games going. Well, the first game that I played ended in total disaster for me. He played a fire deck with a bunch of cards that you can't play in current Tournament play and it was very apparent after a couple of rounds that I was completely outclassed. Tammy played a second game with him where he played a Tournament legal deck with one of our augmented starer decks and was also defeated handily.

This experience has certainly shown us that we can't just go out and play with decks that are generically crafted by Nintendo. That said, what are we to do with our almost factory decks. More boosters from the 2007 Tournament legal sets are certainly in our future. However, I don't think we'll go out and buy specific cards from EBay. I really like the mystery of buying a booster and possibly getting something unexpected that will help out all of our decks that we play in the family as well as at the game store. Also, I would like all the decks we create in the house to be balanced so that everyone has the possibility of winning no matter what deck is chosen. (I know that it will be very challenging to achieve this particular goal.)

Just as a baseline, I'd like to list all the cards that are contained in the default Fire deck. It will be interesting what we do with this deck as it matures over time.

1 x Infernape
2 x Monferno
4 x Chimchar
1 x Medicham
4 x Meditite
2 x Rapidash
4 x Ponyta
2 x Starly
1 x Hippowdon
4 x Hippopotas
1 x Professor Rowan
2 x PlusPower
2 x Poké Ball
2 x Pokédex HANDY910is
2 x Energy Search
2 x Potion
16 x Fire Energy
8 x Fighting Energy

Why Mantyke?

We chose the name Mantyke for this blog because it's a baby pokémon. And it's cute. And it matches the color scheme of this blog.

Plus, the names of the other baby pokémon that we like; munchlax and mimejr, already had blogs named after them.

We like baby pokémon because they are harder to hit, and have interesting and useful poké-powers. Mantyke can "Call for Friends", which can be really useful if we have an empty bench.

Baby Pokémon have a 50% chance of being missed on an attack. And they have a decent number of hit points considering they are only babies.

From what I understand, baby pokémon are new for the Diamond/Pearl expansion. (Correct me if I'm wrong on this.)

Do you like the babies? Do you use them in your decks?

Pokémon TCG for Dad

Dad just left a message that he plays too! So, I better add him to our blog, or I'm in trouble!

For Dad's day, we went to the local Pokémon gym. Dad didn't play at the tournament, but he did have a great time checking out all the new cards the kids won.

After dinner and jammies, the kids want to play Pokémon with Daddy! Our decks are a little unbalanced, so he lets them play the "winner" deck, so it's a more even game.

They love playing Pokémon with him. He's a patient player, yet he doesn't just "let" them win. He challenges them and makes them think about strategy.

So, with that, we're adding Dad to this blog. When the little one is old enough to play (she's only 3), we'll add her too.

Pokémon TCG for kids

My kids and I have started playing Pokémon, The Card Game.

We each bought one of the starter decks for the Diamond/Pearl expansion. We are helping each other learn how to play.

We have been playing at a local gym, and are trying to gather cards to make more interesting and powerful decks.

We created this blog to help other parents who want to play with their kids. And to help kids who want to learn how to play but aren't trying to win competitions.

But most of all, we just want to share our love of the game and invite you to join us on our learning adventures.