Attack of the Rogue Decks! Well, we all know that Kingdra, EnCargo (or Intense Fire, as some white rappers call it), Dark Blastoise and Kabulix are great decks. They are. They work really well. However, now, without Slowking, a whole bunch of new, rogue decks are popping up. I don't mean Tyrogue. I mean, ROGUE! NEW AND THOUGHTFUL! Here are a few of them, what they're good at and what they aren't. First and foremost.....Noc-Lock Why the deck works: It's a few simple plans working together. The Espeon (or Donphan, if you choose) plan works nicely. It's a solid attack, and can two-hit ko almost any pokemon out there. The Noctowl plan is solid: see what your opponent is planning, throw out any huge tricks and set up your third plan, the Murkrow plan. Locking a Cleffa or some other bad pokemon, or pokemon who Murkrow is resistant to, is darn near impossible to get out of while you're locked. Why it doesn't work: There's one real difference between Noctowl and Slowking: Noctowl keeps trainers from being in your hand. Slowking keeps them from hitting the field. If your opponent has the trainers he needs in his hand, you can take away a MAX of four. That doesn't stop them from getting played. It stops him from being able to play them. This makes getting that Copycat, Switch or Double Gust harder, but not impossible like it was against 3 Slowkings. Also, Espeon has major troubles with 80 HP. Things like Magcargo and a new rogue deck, Nidoking, One Hit KO that. The bottom line: It's a solid deck. Skilled players have been known to own just about everything with it. The only problem is that it doesn't excel at anything. The boy wonder known as Martin Moreno created this to at least 50/50 everything, and it does, but is 50/50 good enough? It takes mad skill to play this.... Next up....Ampharos The good: With the new, resistant Zapdos, we suddenly have a much needed counter to Tyrogue. This deck is solid. It's fast. Really fast. How fast? Turn 2, you're doing 40+para or 60. The only real problem is how to get those lightnings on Zapdos. You have to either a)Use Crystal Energy and the Reflect Energy attack of the Aquapolis Ampharos, which I'm not a fan of, or b)Use Rainbow energy. Still, it's not easy.... The bad: Two pokemon: Tyrogue and Nidoking. Tyrogue OHKO's Mareep. Nidoking OHKO's Flaafy and Ampharos. And Hitmonchan being reprinted? =\ It's not pretty. Zapdos has helped this deck, but Tyrogue is normally splashed, not the center of a deck, and Zapdos gets KO'd at some point. Basically, the fighting pokemon mess you up. Big time. The bottom line: This deck is tournament-worthy. How worthy? Good enough that people should start considering this for the Super Battlezone. Nidoking has not become big yet, and more importantly, water is HUGE! HUGE! Dark Blastoise? Pretty screwed against this. Kingdra? Same thing. Just kill the Seadras. However, you've gotta TeCH accordingly. Tyrogue a problem? Use Zapdos+Rainbow/Crystal or even NH Raikou as a staller. It's rough, but Zapdos+the ability to own almost everything and outspeed most decks is nice. It can easily keep the pace with Intense Fire, and if you go first, you can ko the Slugma before it gets Cargoed. Another nice deck.....Nidoking The Good: This deck is PURE POWER! Like you wouldn't believe! Nothing is safe! Strength Charm loves this deck. I know, most of you say Strength Charm sucks, but OHKO Kingdra? OHKO Kabutops? Very nice! On a flip, though, which kinda sucks, but still. The power is total ownage. OWNAGE. I like to combo my Nidokings with Double Gust and Warp Energy. Power up one Nidoking. Double gust up your benched, energyless one, use it's power, then Warp it to the bench. It's a great way to take out babies. Not to mention that 110 HP and a weakness to the less-played Grass is solid. With Hitmonchan reprinted, this deck packs a punch! The bad: Well, most people would say the color-switching-evolution thing is horrible, but I'm not most people. We got CRYSTAL energy in this deck. Crystal energy MAKES Nidoking. It LIVES off Crystal. Just throw on a Grass to use for Nidoran and Nidorino, then power up. With Crystal, you only need ONE Fighting energy on it. ONE. Very nice. The MAJOR problem are the prevolutions. The Nidorans and Nidorinos available in MMF suck. A lot. No great attacks. The other problem is speed. It's slow. Unless you're using Boost Energy, you aren't attacking until turn 4 with Nidoking. That's not good at all. The bottom line: This is a great deck for casual play, but I doubt it will see much tourney play. It's too slow. Most decks are up turn 3 at the latest, leaving this beast too slow behind to get much done. If you can get it out, the game is all but over. Getting it out is another story. A new take on an old favorite...ScizPeon (That's a bad name, but better than EspeOr =\) The good: Two SOLID pokemon. Espeon, who we all know, love and love to hate. Solid attack, goes off turn 3. Scizor, the bane of all Babies, helps give Strength Charm MORE life, because with that, you can just start slaughtering babies with it's lovely first attack. Two solid pokemon who can get up pretty quickly and start kicking butt fast. The bad: It's like Noc-Lock - You won't suck against anything, but you won't be great. This deck has a major issue with fire decks, as most good fire pokemon discard energy to use their attacks. That messes up Espeon, and Scizor is nice and Weak to it. The lack of a huge hitter against energy-efficient attackers like Kingdra is also rough. The bottom line: A totally playable deck. Splashing in Electabuzz is a GREAT option to use against water decks, but I've never seen it done. Definitely worth trying though. This deck is tournament worthy, no doubts. It has a small Intense Fire problem, but then again, what doesn't? However, being able to build any pokemon quickly is nice, and this deck has 2 great attackers capable of hurting anyone. And finally........Alakruel! The good: This is one of the most LETHAL combinations in pokemon history, bar none. Forget Raindance. Forget Entei and Magcargo. Forget Kingdra and Pokemon Center. THIS is lethal. Alakazam's Psyncroblast attack does 80 EVERY TURN, if you have the same amount of energy as the defending pokemon. 80! Toss on a Strength Charm (again with the charm? yup!) and you OHKO Kingdra and Kabutops! Tentacruel, from Aquapolis, lets you add an energy from your opponent's discard pile to his defending pokemon if you have more energy on your active than he does. What does this mean? Stack the powers (Get multiple Tentacruels up) and you're going to be tossing energy onto the defender to do 80 to it every turn. Another nice move is gusting up a baby, tossing a Darkness from the discard onto it, and sending it back to the bench to be ko'd while you KO something else with Alakazam. The bad: You have to get energy in their discard. That's the huge problem. HUGE! No energy in their discard is big trouble for you! Also, Pokemon Tower and Neo Parasect are major, major problems. If you can use the old Kadabra to do 50 turn 3, you can probably ko SOMETHING. However, the 60 HP is kinda low. The bottom line: This is a fun deck. If you wanna mess around with friends, this is a great deck. It's so much fun, doing 80 every turn. However, it's hard to get the energy in their discard, because the Alakzam evolution line doesn't do much damage. A nice idea is to play mostly water energies, because of the Pokemon Power which lets you use your opponent's attacks, and with all of the water going around pokemon, well.....Another nice trick is Eeeeking with Alakazam! :) Still, it's not exceptionally fast, and needs luck to get the energies in the discard. Play it for fun. Not for number one! That concludes my analysis of the big "Rogue" decks of the moment. I'm currently trying to decide between TurboAmpharos and Espeon/Scizor/Electabuzz, because both seem like they can do really well. Still, play hard, play fair, and join the Apprentice league! From: AuSeNsTrAk@aol.com