Bella Sera Is Pokemon for Girls?

There's a trading card game for girls called Bella Sera. It's so... girly. Ponies, unicorns and fairies. Will the girls who enjoy card collecting be the girls who like girly things? and vice versa? Will this draw more girls into the trading card genre?

My girls LOVE pokemon. Seems like Pokemon is a nice balance betwen what the guys want, and what the girls want. Cute little critters that fight each other. Everyone's needs are met. What do Bella Sera's critters do? I'm sure they don't battle. Because, you know, girls don't do battle.

HA! They don't know my girls.

What do you think? Trading cards for girls: thumbs up, or thumbs down?

Pokemon TCG: Secret Wonders - An Unexpected Adventure

For the first time in a month, we went to our Pokégym this weekend. What a surprise, it was a Secret Wonders new pack tournament!

The buy-in was a pack of Secret Wonders Pokémon cards and two expansion packs. The kids had 20 minutes to put their decks together. They played 2 out of 3, with 3 prize cards.

Our 6 year old beat the Gym leader in the first round! Unfortunately, we couldn't stay because after nearly two hours, our 4 year old was getting really, incredibly, completely bored. And hungry.

There was no prize for winning the tourney other than extra stamps on their Pokemon Gym cards, so we left. Our 6 year old was disappointed. But she was also hungry. So we said our goodbyes to the other players.

Overall impression with Secret Wonders? It's getting hard to keep up with all the cards. But, with there being so many expansions now, the odds are pretty good that if we buy a booster pack, we'll get cards we don't have. The kids love getting cards we don't have.

It's also interesting that the two starter decks for Secret Wonders are Fire/Grass and Lightening/Fighting. Odd combinations, yet complimentary.

Pokemon - We Are All Family, Aren't We?

Dawn over at GameSpot had a great article about Pokemon. Well, more specifically, about the DS.

She's a mom, like me. And she plays DS, like me. She's playing Puzzle Quest (awesome game! I actually played that one until the end.) And she finds that it brings people of all ages together in public social situations.

As a mom, having kids is a great topic for random conversation with other women. Sometimes grandfatherly like men. But, young people don't usually strike up conversation with me because I have kids.

Now, having a DS with me, or playing Pokemon, that's what gets their attention.

Between the kids and the pokemon, I'm pretty much guaranteed something in common with someone while we're out. The kids too. Seriously, the world is their friend - all they have to do is whip out the pokemon cards.

Moms Who Play Cards With Their Kids

I found this mom today in the blogosphere who played with her kids too. The ebay thing sounds interesting. I wonder if it would still turn a profit today.

Gotta Catch Them All - for only $147!

Hubby was poking around looking for deals on Pokemon cards when he found a place to pre-order a box of mysterious treasures booster packs.

Only $147 folks! We refuse to link the site because we do not want to endorse these prices!

We're planning on buying the starter decks. But a box of boosters? Maybe if we can find a deal.

Ah, we just found a deal on eBay. But wait, how can they be selling them on ebay when it's not even out yet?

Update: Found a decently priced website. Anyone know what list is?

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.

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.

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!

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 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?

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.

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?