~ Doll's House ~

KID STUFF
Simple Deck for a 4 Year Old
March 28, 2001

 

Heya all!

Jeremy here is a dad that is helping his 4 year old play in a league style environment.  Of course, the deck needs to be as simple as possible, so that will be my aim here. Probably the most important thing will be to bring a very tight focus to the deck to give it that simplicity.  After heavily considering this, I'm actually going to do 2 fixes for this, one focusing on the fire end of it and then next week I'll work on the grass and Dark Vileplume end.

Doll,

This may be a strange deck to you.  It's a deck I'm helping my 4 year old
son, Sam, build.  The central ideas are: keep trainers out of the game as
much as possible; evolve the heavy-hitters quickly.

If you have the inkling, please look it over and keep the player in mind: a
4 year old kid who loves the game, can't read, and who isn't really able to
keep complex deck strategies in mind.

Will it work?  Is it silly?  Doomed?  Please remember: the deck is designed
with my 4 year old in mind, and is meant to make the game more fun for him.
I'd at least like it to keep him competitive, but winning against every
possible deck isn't really the point.



Name: Sam and Jeremy Jones

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mIRC nickname: N/A

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Email Address: jajones@rmci.net

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Skill Level: Beginner/Novice

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Speed Metagame in your area: Fast

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Strategy of your deck:

This deck is for my 4 year old son, who recently started playing in the
League at a local card shop.  The deck I'd like to help him build should do
the following:

1.  Enable him to use the Pokemon he likes (Charizard, Typhlosion, etc)
within a reasonable amount of time
2.  Stop the other players from wiping him out with their trainers
3.  Keep his own trainer cards to a minimum, and keep them simple (he can't
read, but he can memorize the simple ones)
4.  Give him a fighting chance

The idea is to get Dark Dragonair and/or Dark Vileplume out as quickly as
possible, and to render useless 1/3 of the other kids' trainer-ladden decks.
The 8 trainers we've picked help him to get his Dark Vileplume and Dark
Dragonair out as quickly as possible.  Then he can concentrate on getting
his heavy-hitting fire Pokemon out.  Dark Muk is in there for an added
gotcha - the kids using the 20+ trainer decks generally don't have alot of
energy to spare, so the extra two energy cost for retreat will get to them.

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Deck Name: KID STUFF

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Deck Listing

Pokémon: 27
2 Dratini
1 Dark Dragonair
3 Oddish
1 Gloom
1 Dark Gloom
1 Dark Vileplume
2 Grimer
1 Dark Muk
3 Charmander
1 Charmeleon
1 Dark Charmeleon
1 Charizard
3 Cyndaquil
2 Quiliva
1 Typhlosion
2 Blaine's Growlithe
1 Blaine's Arcanine

Trainers: 8
2 Breeder
2 Boss' Way
2 Pokemon March
2 Pokeball

Energy Types: 25
13 Fire Energy
6 Grass Energy
2 Double Colorless Energy
2 Full Heal Energy
2 Potion Energy

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How does your deck do?:

I'm still working on getting some of the cards together for him to build
this deck.  In particular, the Dark Dragonair, one of the Breeders, and the
special energies.  He's been using Dark Vileplume and Dark Muk to his
benefit, but the finished deck isn't quite there...

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Other info you feel is important:

Sam (my son) is the youngest at the shop, by several years, and he's having
trouble (duh...) against the older kids.   His trouble is this: he wants to
use the Pokemon he thinks are cool (Charizard, Typhlosion, etc.), and I've
helped him build decks with all his favorites.  But when he goes up against
the older kids, they dazzle him with all their trainer cards right off the
bat.  End result: he gets confused, discouraged, and loses his battles.
Occasionally he'll get lucky and win here and there, but for the most part,
he never gets to use his favorites.

 

Hey, Jeremy and Sam...

I  think if you really focus your deck, you will have a lot more success with it.  You won't win every time, but it will run smoother and more efficiently.  If any of the trainers are too hard, you can switch them out for ones that Sam can understand more easily.  I'm going to give you some tools that will hopefully hold off Sam's opponent, giving him time to set up and get on equal ground.

Focus:  

Stall out and disable your opponent to give yourself more time to get Arcanine up and energized on the bench.  

Pokémon:

Narrowing the types of Pokémon included in a deck can really give it a lot more synergy.  As I said, I'm going to focus on fire this week.  I'll start with Blaine's Arcanine's line, though I had a suggestion from Spike that Base Set Arcanine may be a better card here, if you have access to it.  It's also an uncommon, and easier to get a hold of.  

You can't go wrong with Fossil Magmar in a fire deck, so he's a definite here.  He can really stall out when necessary too.  I'm including Rocket's Moltres as you requested in our correspondence, but he probably isn't the greatest pick.  But sometimes that's not the point, is it ;)

I've also added Kangaskahn... it seems that Fighting has really died down in a lot of areas, hopefully yours too.  If so, he's a great staller, giving you card draw and big HP while you set up your Arcanine on the bench.

Trainers:

I tried to keep to the very simplest yet effective trainers.  Without a good base of trainers, games will be very difficult to win.  BUT, since you aren't running a lot of them, the greatest trick of all will be using Lass in your deck.  Once Sam has played what is useful in his hand, he can Lass away his opponent's trainers and disable him for a bit, hopefully again buying more time to set up.  Energy Removal should also help, setting your foe back a turn.  Gold Berry should help keep your 'Khan or whatever alive, again affording more set up time.  Bill is just a simple addition that will give you critical card draw, and hopefully put the cards needed into Sam's hand.  Same with Elm.  If you think this won't work with him, consider replacing it with either Erika or Potion, both of which are fairly simple cards.

Energy:

With the mono-fire deck, the energy becomes more focused of course.  The numbers here are a little high, since he is running few trainers.  But for a young player, lots of energy often works out best.

New Deck Listing:

Pokémon - #17
4 Blaine's Growlithe (the one with Stoke)
3 Blaine's Arcanine
4 Fossil Magmar
2 Rocket's Moltres (on request)
4 Kangaskhan

Trainers - #19
4 Energy Removal
4 Gold Berry
4 Bill
3 Professor Elm
4 Lass


Energy - #24
4 Double Colorless Energy
17 Fire Energy
3 Full Heal Energy

 

Good luck, Jeremy and Sam!  Please write me back and let me know how the deck does =).  I heard that Flareon is also doing a fix on this one, so I'll be looking forward to seeing what he came up with. =)

 ~ Doll

A Bit of Clefairy Doll Wisdom:

~ I do whatever my rice krispies tell me to do. ~