Mysterious Treasures

The new expansion for Pokemon TCG Diamond/Pearl, Mysterious Treasures, is coming out on August 22nd.

Various stores around the US, Canada and Mexico are holding pre-release tournies. Here's one in Rancho Cucamonga, California. And here's one in Littleton, Colorado.

Here's a searchable database for tournaments. Are there any tournies near you? You gonna go?

Wallets BEWARE!!!

I was doing a little searching for the Pokémon Center and I found the store site: http://www.pokemoncenter.com/

ZOMG, there is so much Pokémon material for sale. I can imagine buying up a ton of this stuff for the kids. Megan is especially interested in some of the stuffed animals (as is the Wife :>).



Piplup is a danger to all and must be acquired at all costs.

I suppose these guys are too:

Another Pokemon Vacation

So, if Japan is too far, the next best thing might be in New York. We'll have to put the Pokemon Center on our list of places to visit when we make it out there. (scroll down a little in the article to find the reference.)

Pokemon Vacation

It's a good thing the kids don't know what Google alerts are. This is a blog that came up in my alert for "pokemon" this morning. If they see this, it'll be hard to convince them out of wanting to go to Japan for our next vacation.

Birthday Packs

Cameron turned 9 this weekend. His cousins Mark and Josh gave him Pokémon booster packs.

We got one more Torterra. That makes 4. When are we going to get Torterra X!!??

We also got a few stage ones that we were missing. 2 Purgly (one regular, one halo) and a shiny Cascoon and a shiny Silcoon.

His cousins also gave Cam a Power Keepers starter pack. Now we have 5 complete decks that the kids play with. They are all so different, that there isn't one clear dominant deck.

Although, Green seems to be the best competition deck, purely because of it's powerful Torterra line. But because it doesn't have a ton of trainers to support it, another deck can win against it if the person playing doesn't draw the Torterras when they need them.

All Fire Deck

It's interesting to see what tournament decks look like. Generally, these decks are put together without concern for how hard cards are to get. Tournament players know exactly what they want to put in their decks, and make it happen - even if that means scouring Ebay for specifics cards.

This fire deck is an example of what can be done with infinite resources. Even so, there's a strategy in how to play it. Because, well, all the other players have infinite resources too. What happens when everyone has boundless choice of what to put in their deck? It boils down to tactics.

Fortunately, we don't have to worry about that, since we put together decks based on what we have. And the kids aren't really interested in long-term play tactics. They just enjoy throwing down cards and playing the game.

What's Your Favorite Pokemon?

Allison says: Mantyke
Cameron says: Torterra
Megan says: Onix
Mom says: Mantyke

Which one is your favorite?

(Dad, don't forget to put in your two cents!)

New Ways to Play Pokemon TCG

Of our three kids, our 6 year old daughter is the most enthusiastic about playing Pokemon TCG.

She has memorized all the pokemon's names, evolutions, powers, special abilities, hit points, resistances and which set they come from.

Do you have a kid like that? Pretty amazing to witness, isn't it?

She's been playing so much, we're all having a hard time keeping up with her. So she's come up with her own version of Pokemon that she can play by herself.

Based on a mix of pokemon nintendo DS game, and the books (which the kids also love to read), she uses one of her decks (usually water or leaf) to capture as many pokemon as possible before she runs out of cards.

We have a lot of old pokemon cards, and pokemons from the new expanstions that didn't make it into our decks. She puts them in a pile, and with her own rules, battles them with her prefab deck.

I'm helping her play right now as I type this, and so far, she has about 30 pokemon that she defeated. Yesterday, after she had played pretty much everyone in the house at least twice, she played her own solitaire version for almost two hours.

We are really enjoying her enthusiasm for the game.

Three Torterras!

In the booster pack we got today, we got another Torterra. Our green/colorless deck rocks even more now!

More Deck Building

As I've written previously, the basis behind all of our decks so far have been the starter decks for Diamond and Pearl. What that means is that all of the decks follow the Fire, Leaf, or Water lines almost exclusively.

Given the number of boosters we've been buying and the number of Lightning and Psychic cards we've been accumulating, the desire to build out a Lightning and Psychic deck has been growing. However, we just do not have enough cards to complete some evolution lines (we lack Luxray and Elekid and lots of our lines are only singles). Further, we are challenged by our total lack of adequate Trainer cards.

The only recourse we have is to continue to purchase DP boosters and hope for the best. Recently, we've found that single boosters have become unavailable in our area for some reason. The only way to buy DP boosters is to buy a combo blister pack with a DP promo, DP coin (Palkia or Dialga), 2 x DP boosters, and 1 Crystal Guardian booster. This combo pack comes in at around 12 bucks a pop, so its an expensive way to go. We will just have to be patient and wait for DP boosters to become more plentiful. That or we just try to tread water until until the Mysterious Treasures expansion comes out (we plan on buying a box of boosters).

Draw Your Favorite Pokemon

Here's a website with tutorials on how to draw several of the popular Pokemon characters. I didn't see Manytke on there though. That would be a good addition to the site, IMHO.

Airline for the Kid in All of Us

Pikachu!

Pokemon and Lego

My kids love Pokemon. But they also love Lego. I better not show them this site. I might not get them off the internet if I do.

More About the Pokemon Learning League

We started with the card game. Then, hubby bought the Pokemon DS Diamond. Then, we found a waaaaay old Gameboy-Color Pokemon Red that the kids have been playing. Now, since we seem to be much more invested in the whole Pokemon brand, I'm reconsidering the Pokemon Learning League. Here's a review.

Have any of you used it? What do you think?