Originality

Originality....seems to be a lost art in this game, doesn't it? After all, the only way to compete in today's environment is to take one of the Big 3 types (Tuff, Hay, and Rain dance, for those of you who are new), build them EXACTLY the way you have seen them on any website or magazine article, and play.

Well, that may be okay for some, but the deck seems to lack a soul. It has nothing of the opponent thrown into it. It's just a copy. No hard work, no effort, no thinking went into these soulless decks. I don't mind playing Hay when I see that some creativity went into it. It could be a fav Pokemon, Trainer, or even an Energy card.

But that's very hard to find, nowadays. Maybe it's laziness. Or maybe its because no one knows how.

With that in mind, I'll leave you my day, in which an original deck was born.

Side note: I'm a cab driver for the city of Orlando. So? Well, when you hit the slow times, you either think really hard, or go insane. I think about the game, and get some weird ideas.

It all started after reading about the Trap deck. The ability to rid your opponent of their hand sounded cool, but I feared one thing. My luck isn't the best, and I would hate to see all that work undone by a God-Draw. With no cards in their hand, they would get a Professor Oak.

So, how should we overcome this? Well, Moltres's Wildfire attack would rid the top card of their deck. BUT! What if it wasn't an Oak? How should we find out what the card is?

Mankey! Pokemon Power: Peek! Now, this was intriguing. Pick your spot on when to Wildfire.

Mankey lost his spot when I read Pojo's translations to Neo 2. The Promo Annoon "O" took his place. Being able to see the top 5 cards will allow you to accurately wildfire when needed.

Doduo/Dodrio was thrown into the mix. I can't afford to be wasting energy retreating out a Gusted Pokemon.

Blaine's Charmander works well in the Fire Environment with Kindle. Then it hit me. How about an Energy Ban deck?

While Energy Denial Decks work on ridding energy from the Pokemon, my deck rids energy from their deck! Wildfire away all Energy cards and other annoyances, such as Nightly Garbage Run, Energy Retrieval, and that annoying Promo Mewtwo. Use either a Trap theme to Rid their opening hand, or Blaine's Charmander to rid any energy they get in the opening. I like the second way.

If you can rid them of enough energy cards and key trainers, then you can slowly beat them down without retaliation. Now, how to construct.

Pokemon: Well, we need Moltres, Blaine's Charmander, Annoon O, Ditto (I love Ditto), and Neo Electabuzz (Splashable - Covers the Water Weakness, mostly)

Trainers: CPU Search, Item FInder, Nightly Garbage Run (For all that discarded Fire), Pokemon Center, Scoop Up, Energy Removal (To be more annoying)

Well, there you have it. The guidelines of my new deck, Power Outage. No, I'm not going into exact details. Those come from my heart, head, and soul, putiing together this deck.

Why don't you, using the above, compile a 60-card deck and send it to me? I'd love to see how much originality is left. I'll send a post to Pojo next week with all of the different decks one theme created.