Hello again Pojo readers,

First off, I would like to thank MANY of you for replying to my
origional article regarding Neo Genesis.  You inspired me to continue
writing and furthermore answered some questions I had in regard to
certain situations.

Since my first article, I have pretty much bought the set and have
played a number of matches with the Neo cards.  Upon doing so, I have
discovered a few new things about some Neo pokemon I failed to mention
and would like to do so now.

MORE WATER FRIENDS

Like I mentioned earlier, Neo really will put Water decks back on the
MAP in the trading card game.  The Steel Pokemon are nice in conjuction
with water.

Skarmory

Although this Steel bird doesn't look too good on paper... 60 HP, weak
to Fire, 2 retreat and first attack which is only works 50% of the time,
the resistance to Grass is truly what the doctor ordered vs scyther.
It's second attack is quite nice indeed when you factor in the Metal
energy capability.  Skarmory, with a DCE and metal energy attached can
attack for 30 and can minimize damage from the following attack against
it by 10-30.  With three metal energies attached, Skarmory can minimize
damage by 30-FIFTY!  Playing with Water pokemon that are weak to grass,
you can handle Skarmory's weakness to fire and at the same time cover
the Water pokemon's weakness to Grass.  They both scratch each other's
back...so to speak.

Steelix

Although he's a stage 1 and  has an EXTREMELY HIDEOUS retreat of
FOUR.... YEEESH, Steelix has the benefit of being the only pokemon (at
least that I'm aware of) that has 110 HP and has two decent attacks.
Two colourless energies for 20 Damage and his second attack for 2
colourless and 1 Steel for "Tail Crush" 30-50 damage, nice!  With that
steel energy attached, killing (excuse me, knocking out) this pokemon
will be a difficult task...well unless you are using a powerful Fire
pokemon.  Again, he makes friends well with weak to grass pokemon.  Be
SURE to use switch, double gust or ANYTHING else that will get Steelix
back to the bench without having to pay that retreat cost!  SNORLAX
almost moves quicker!

If I had to choose as to which Steel pokemon to go with... I would take
Skarmory..as he is a basic pokemon and you NEED to benefit from Grass
resistance ASAP as most trading card decks include Scyther (which you no
doubt see right away!)

HOP, SKIP and JUMP!

When I bought the Neo set and my friend asked me to make him a
grass-colourless deck, I was flipping through and found a REALLY nice
peice to the puzzle.  Hoppip, Skiploom and Jumpluff.

Just LOOK at these cards!  ALL have no retreat, resistance to Fighting
and are weak to fire.  Although Jumpluff is a stage 2 with only
70HP..their attacks MORE than make up for their HP!  Practically AUTO
EVERYTHING for ONE FRIGGIN energy!  TOTALLY devistating when having both
a skiploom AND jumpluff out in play at the same time.

Skiploom - 60 HP, resists fighting, weak to fire, no retreat cost and
for only one grass energy can either do 10 damage and AUTO poison OR do
10 damage and flip for paralysis.

Jumpluff - 70 HP, resists fighting, weak to grass, no retreat and for
only one grass energy can either do 20 damage and AUTO sleep OR do 20
damage and heal 10 damage from itself.

They are arguably the best Status effect attack set in the ENTIRE game.
Too bad hoppip doesn't confuse... or they would have them all!  Put
these pokemon with all the Scyther's, Team Rocket Scyther's, Clefables
and Ditto's you can muster.. THEN you got yourself a deck to recken
with.  ESPECIALLY good in the 15 T-3C environment (as most people don't
cover themselves well for Status effects) VERY rare I see a deck made
with the switch trainer these days on Killer deck reports.

One last note about this set is that Hoppip has that attack which calls
out MORE Hoppips.. you can get this set out even quicker.

AND YOU THOUGHT WIGGLYTUFF WAS WRONG!

Sneasel - 60 HP, no weakness, resists psychic, no retreat.  2 Wicked
attacks!

First attack - for 1 colourless energy you flip 3 coins and do 10 damage
X the number of heads.  If darkness energy is attached then it does 10
extra damage.... so 20-40.  You could do nothing..but most of the time
you are going to flip at LEAST one head out of three.
Second attack - "Beat Up"  for two darkness energy you flip a coin for
every pokemon YOU have in play (not your opponents as well) but
including the active sneasel (so 6 max) then flip a coin for EACH and do
20 damage X the number of heads!  Well when you factor in the darkness
energy damage... Sneasel is capable from 0-140 damage!  Sounds like an
english darts game score rather than capable pokemon attack damage!  One
hundred and FOURRRRTY!  And that's an average of 80 Damage per attack (2
dark energies with 3 heads out of 6) two words - TOTALLY ABUSIVE!

He's an all or nothing kind of pokemon...but that power CAN'T be
overlooked.  Getting that Dark Energy on and on to stay for a while is
the tricky part.  Rainbow energies can be used for the price of 10
damage or an even quicker method (but more costly) is using Base
Electrode!  You must understand that Electrode and Rainbow energies
don't give the properties of darkness energies (the +10 damage bit) they
only act as a replacement for the attack cost.

Of course Sneasel isn't without it's enemies.  BEWARE that if you decide
to try out Sneasel that DITTO and CLEFABLE will take advantage of that
nasty attack with Colourless costs!  Make sure to build your deck around
taking care of these pokemon Primarily!  Perhaps..Fighting with a Magby
or two will do the trick!

UPON FURTHER REVIEW

Togepi - Togetic

This line will NOT replace the Clefairy-Clefable line... as I missed
that all important three words at the beginning of Togetic's Super
Metronome attack!  FLIP-A-COIN!

DOH!  I don't get it.  It's automatic and they call it Metronome... you
have to flip a coin and they call it Super Metronome.  What so Super
about it working 50% of the time???


THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO UMMM - PART II

I recently posted a question on Pojo's Q & A forum (Jan 19th) and got
different answers and I would like to put in my two cents worth.

My question was:  If you had an Ecogym trainer in play and a Buzzaped
Electrode attached to one of your pokemon and your opponent removed it
by way of Energy removal (or an attack like Dragonair's Hyperbeam), will
Ecogym work for Electrode?  Does Electrode go back to your hand or does
he go to the discard pile?

FIRST OFF let's look at Ecogym closely.  Ecogym states:

"Whenever an attack, Pokémon Power, or Trainer card discards another
player's non-Colorless Energy card from a Pokémon, return that Energy
card to its owner's hand."

The Duelist replied, quote "it says so right on the card.  For the
Energy card to come back to the hand, it has to be discarded. For it to
be discarded, it must actually go to the Discard Pile. So, a card will
first go to the Discard Pile, and then to the player's hand, although
most people will just automatically put the energy into their hand to
save time."

What the Duelist is implying here is that once Electrode goes to the
discard pile, it reverts back to a pokemon and REMAINS in the discard
pile.

Evypooh31 repied, quote: "Since elctrode is discarded, it reverts back
to a pokemon and will not go back to your hand."

Later Big Daddy Snorlax repied, quote " The last word I can find from
Wizards of the Coast does allow a Buzzapped Electrode to go back into
your hand. Here is the Chat reference from last December:

quote:  Q. Could I return a Buzzaped Base Electrode to my hand with an
EcoGym
                 in play?

            A. We think that the answer would be yes...but we all want
to check on
                  it, so we'll let you know. (Dec 21, 2000 WotC Chat,
Q172)

 At yesterday's Chat here was the answer:

 quote:  master_trainer_mike presents the speaker with question #17 from

             pokemoncardkid500: can you save buzzaped electrode with Eco
Gym?

             master_trainer_mike says, "Yes."

So you see... even WOTC wasn't quite sure about the ruling!  It may
still be in debate but the official ruling is YES he can be saved... but
of course Electorde would become a pokemon again once it returned to
your hand!

Here's my thoughts on this.  When you think about the word "discard"
most people associate it with the "Discard Pile".  In just about all
other cases.. when something is discarded, it goes to the discard pile.

BUT

Think of this process as two steps.  First, there is the action (the
discard or energy removel) and there is the result (cards going to the
discard pile).  Ecogym kicks in BEFORE the standard result..and the
result is the cards go back to the player's hand INSTEAD of the discard
pile.  I look at the word "discards" and I don't associate it with
discard pile...but rather associate it with the word "removes".  Have a
look if this word was inserted instead.

"Whenever an attack, Pokémon Power, or Trainer card REMOVES another
player's non-Colorless Energy card from a Pokémon, return that Energy
card to its owner's hand."

In this case... The energy that is discarded or removed from the pokemon
goes directly to the player's hand...and avoids the discard pile
altogether.  Hence the ruling by Master Trainer Mike!

IN CONCLUSION

If you Play with Sneasel and want to get him powered up at a suicidal
rate..and use Electrode.  If Electrode gets removed... you know what to
do now!


Send any comments or questions to:

dtaylor@nas.net
--
Don Taylor