Rapid Fire
I made this deck to focus on Base set and promo Arcanine, and Base set Electabuzz. I feel this deck is pretty solid but I thought I should get an experts help. The strategy is near the bottom.
8 electric energy
17 fire energy
2 oaks
4 bills
2 mr fuji
3 gust of wind
2 switch
4 super potion
3 fossil magmar
1 basic magmar
1 basic arcanine
1 promo arcanine
2 growlithe
3 electabuzz
2 dark jolteon
1 dark flareon
3 team rocket eevee
1 jungle scyther
My deck's basic strategy is a quick onslaught with my Electabuzzes, Magmars, and Scyther while I prepare my two Arcanines for the kill. I would use the oaks and bills to get the cards I need fast. The fujis are to retreat the Arcanines when they have a lot of damage on them along with the super potions. Switch is to get my Arcanines out of active quick without losing energy and gust of wind is to pull out the weak pokemon. Well, here is my deck. I have tested this deck at a pokemon get together at Books-a-Million and I won 2 out of 2 games. I have also tested it against the Lt. Surge, Brock, and both Team Rocket decks and it did extremely well. I hope you can help me a little. I only have 2 growlithe and 1 of each arcanine and 1 scyther so that's why there is so few of them. Please help me. Thanks.

***

This is the deck I chose to do along with Souper-- so when you're done, go read what he had to say.

Okay, first of all, I like what you've done here. I've been thinking of making an Arcanine deck myself (now that Arcanine has sadly been taken out of Cinder) and your deck runs pretty close to what I was thinking. Good idea. I'll help you tune it a bit.

First question I have is what are the Eeveelutions doing there? You don't mention them in your strategy. Could it be they don't fit into your strategy? Do you think? Well, I think so too, which makes it unanimous. Eeveelutions gone. That gives us 6 slots right off the bat.

Your Arcanine family could stand to be beefed up a bit. 4/3 would be ideal. Base Growlithe and Arcanine are uncommons, so I'm assuming you can pick up a few relatively easily. That uses up 3 of the slots we had. I'll just say "Arcanine" and leave it to you how to divide them between promo and Base. I think we should give the other 3 slots to 2 more Scythers, holding a slot for later. Yeah, I know you only have one. Sorry to say, but you have to be able to acquire the good cards if you want to go far in this game. Trade around. It's not too difficult. Lastly, lose the Base magmar.

We move on to trainers. Your choices are some good, some bad. Your use of Fuji is technically illegal, and Super Potion just isn't that great. I don't think I'd even run Switch, because most decks are going to be hurting for card space, and I think Switch reflects a defensive mentality that is inappropriate there. Just stick Arcanine out and let him work his magic. Take Down. Take Down. Take Down. By the time he is knocked out, you will usually have a 2-1, probably 3-1 prize advantage. Try it with and without Switch, but my guess is you'll go without.

2 Oaks are not enough right now. Splitting the Bills and Oaks 3-3 is better, and I'd go with 4 oaks if you possibly can. Add in Searching and Item Finding, 2-3 of each is good. 3 or 4 Nightly Garbage Run is also a must, as it allows you to run less energy than you thought you needed, prevents decking, and recycles key deck elements.

That should have taken us about to the end of what space we had, but go ahead and put in some PlusPowers. In an aggressive deck like this, these are incredibly helpful. We'll be waving goodbye to some energy real soon.

Energy-wise, start with 4 DCE as a given. Next partition off 6 slots for electric energy-- really all that 3 Electabuzzes need. That gives us about 10 slots left for fire energy, which will be enough given your relatively low requirements and aggressive card-drawing and recycling. This totals to around 20 energy, which is about the standard number these days for a deck such as this.

Hope you found this helpful!

-Spike


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